1-11-2014

   Good Morning to All,

    Psalm 103:12; “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

    As I was typing this (or is it word processing it?) I got about 1/3 of the way through and didn’t like the way it was going.  This was mostly because it wasn’t going anywhere.  So I pushed the left click button and highlighted the portion and then hit delete; “Poof” it was gone.  There was a time when you would have pulled the paper out of the platen, crumpled it up and tossed it in the waste basket, pulled out a new sheet of paper and twisted it in and started over.

    Now if it was only a mistake or two, you could use your correcto-ribbon if you had a Smith Corona Electric typewriter.  Otherwise you had to break out the white out.  Now we only backspace to get rid of an extra letter or two.  If we still used white out, I would have to buy it by the gallon.  But nothing beats the backspace or delete button to rid yourself of those pesky typing mistakes or even the entire rambling paragraph.

    There have been other times when I wish I could have had a delete button in my life.  Maybe, just maybe, some of those dumb things I said or did could have been erased before they had a chance to hurt the feelings of others.  Maybe I could have backspaced a couple of times when I had my mouth engaged but my brain in neutral.  Deleting a couple of painful actions would be nice as well but we don’t get to do that do we?  While we can’t always delete past mistakes we make with people; God makes it possible for us to delete our mistakes with Him

    Because of Jesus, our sins are forgiven, forever deleted from God’s memory.  He does this out of love for us.  He does this to bring us back into the loving, family relationship which he wants to have with us.  He does this because we need to be holy in order to be in his presence.  By declaring us holy and paying for our sins himself, our sins are removed.  The barrier of sin is removed and we are once again His beloved children.

    But if God hadn’t forgiven us, we would still be in our broken relationship.  We need to see the importance of this.  If we do not forgive, then our relationships continue to be broken.  Remembering others sins, real or imaged, only cause us pain.  As long as we hold onto the sins of others who commit them against us in our hearts and minds, we will never know peace.  Until we hit the delete button and erase those sins, those memories of pain, so that we only have a blank screen, we will suffer the consequences of having unforgiven sins in our lives.  By holding the sins of others in our heart, we tend to view our sins as unforgiven and being retained by God.

    Yet God does forgive our sins and he desires that we forgive others as well.  To delete the sins of others frees us to experience the complete freedom of God’s forgiveness.  So delete away, God has.

Father, you remove our sins and bring us back into your grace and favor.  Lead us to forgive others as well.  Lead us to see that in this way, we heal ourselves even more than we help to heal others.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret