Perhaps the more shocking thing to realize when being in a country that has suffered a genocide is that only some of those alive today were the victims. The other part of the people who lived through it were the ones pushing the movement and murdering. No matter what side you were labeled within back then, it led to a great deal of bitterness and loss for Rwanda. While the country has already made a great leeway in unity, for some, it still lingers as a painful load of regret or unforgiveness.
I was speaking in church last Sunday on a few things I have learned throughout life and The Race. The message circled around self-worth and freedom in Christ. Firstly, it is never God’s plan for us to suffer. You can begin to see and understand that when you grasp the fact that God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.
Romans 8:28
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
Do you REALLY believe God is always good?
Do you KNOW that all the time He is working for your good?
Maybe you do… When hardship or pain strikes, the common question often arises of, “How could God allow that to happen to me?”.
While serving a God who does not enslave us to love Him back, we are given free will to follow Him, or not. A world with choice means there will always be both good and evil, and when there is evil, bad things will undoubtedly happen to people. It is never the Lord’s will to ALLOW you to be hurt.
Pain and suffering are not His work in your life. For those of you who believe in karma, you can toss it out the window with that simple statement. God does not meet a person’s wrong doing with pain. He is always and undoubtedly waiting to welcome people back with love, not throw them deeper into turmoil.
When you step into the mindset of knowing God is always working for your good, you can begin to see where He is in the messes. If the Lord intercepted every time evil raised its hand against us, this would defeat the gift of free will. It could be happening because you used your free will to walk away from God and ended up in the enemy’s snare. It could also be that others have chosen evil deeds and are committing them on you, such as the genocide. Either way, neither scenario is the Lord choosing to make you suffer.
Perhaps the better question for us to be asking is, “God, where were you in that situation?” When you walk away from Him and into evil, He is still pursuing you and offering you ways out… Working for your good. And when you are caught as the victim in others’ evil deeds, God’s heart is pained because yours is. Both situations will lead to needing forgiveness. The first will require you to forgive others. The second will require you to forgive yourself. You may even find that you need both.
SELF-FORGIVENESS
Finding freedom in self-forgiveness means first stepping into the separation of shame and guilt. Without walking in the freedom Christ has given you, the enemy can easily use situations to make you feel shame. When feeling this, you can know it is not of God. While the Holy Spirit uses conviction to let you know you are guilty of doing something bad, shame is the lie that tells you that you are something bad. It makes you feel unworthy. Is that not always the way of the enemy? Twisting what is true to separate us from freedom with lies.
Jesus calls you worthy. Once you place your identity in Him and walk in true self-worth as you were meant to, shame can no longer lie and enslave you. You become able to separate shame from guilt and you take your guilt to Him asking for forgiveness. Finding freedom.
Jeremiah 31:34
“He will forgive our sin and remember them no more.”
FORGIVING OTHERS
Colossians 3:13
“If one has a complaint against another, forgive one another, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must be forgiven.”
I know that unforgiveness in my life towards others was the hardest thing for me to learn how to walk out over the years. It has also become my favorite thing to do. Forgiveness is capable of bringing much joy and relief. But how do you come to terms with letting bad things that happened to you go? There are a few key truths to be spoken about this.
-To forgive is not to condone or excuse wrong doing.
-Forgiving does not always mean reconciliation.
-Forgiving transfers power from the one who caused pain to God.
You are not gaining anything from holding onto bitterness towards someone except for the ensnaring of yourself. To hand it over to God is to give Him the power over your life instead of the person who hurt you.
Now we can refer to John 8:1-11. A woman is caught in adultery and a group of people bring her before Jesus saying that she should be stoned. Jesus says to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” He bends down to write on the ground and when He stands up, only the woman is left before Him. Jesus says to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
We have all sinned, and Jesus did not only die for you and I. Jesus died for the people who hurt us too. To say that they do not deserve forgiveness is to say that His sacrifice on the cross was no enough.
While I cannot imagine having come through the genocide and losing everyone I knew to torturous ways of death, or being one who carried those actions out, I do know that the bigger the bondage in unforgiveness for one’s self or others, the bigger the freedom is in Christ on the other side.
You might feel a bit of what I did when I learned that in the church service that Sunday were a couple of elderly men who had suffered from the genocide. The one in the second row who was beginning to cry, his wife and two children were murdered.
And what about you, reader? What is it in your life that calls you shameful, or says you or another are not worthy of forgiveness and freedom? Have you been wondering why God “allowed” bad things to happen to you instead of asking Him where He was during that hard time? Do you truly believe that even then He was working for your good?
Getting to freedom means being aware of what ensnares us. If you read the Bible to better understand who God is and actively pursue intimacy with Him, He will begin to show you where the enemy has you ensnared. You are called to be free in Christ. Work towards conquering what is holding you in bondage instead of freedom. And once you become free you will be able to free others as well. Which leads me to leave you with one of my most admired quotes from The Race so far.
“Free people free people.”
So get free, and get to freeing.
