Who's on Your List?

Some of us are carrying a list. Nobody else can see it, but you know every name on it. The coworker who took the credit. The parent who wasn't there. The friend who repeated what you told them in confidence. Maybe your own name is on there too.

Pastor Lonnie Clinkscale opened his message on the power of forgiveness with a story that gets a laugh and then lands hard. A man gets bitten by a wild dog and finds out he has rabies. No cure. The doctor tells him to get his house in order. When the doctor checks back, the man is writing on a notepad, and the doctor is glad to see him working on his will. The man looks up and says, "This is not my will. It's a list of all of the people that I am going to bite."

We laugh because we recognize it.

The debt nobody could pay

The message is built on Matthew 18:21-35. Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive somebody. Seven? Jesus answers, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times" (Matthew 18:22, ESV). Then He tells a story about a servant who owed a king 10,000 talents, a debt he could never pay back in a lifetime. The servant begged, and the king forgave the whole thing.

Pastor Lonnie says that debt is ours. "He paid for our sins in advance and we owe him everything." Our good deeds don't cover it. If you've spent your life trying to earn your way into being enough, sit with that for a minute. Effort was never going to settle this account. Jesus said it at the Last Supper: "this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28).

He also points to Romans 7:18-20, where Paul admits he keeps doing the very thing he doesn't want to do. We fall. But Proverbs 24:16 says the righteous fall seven times and rise again. Grace isn't for people who have it all together. It's for people who keep getting back up.

Then he went out and found somebody

Here's the turn. That same forgiven servant walks out and finds a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii, a fraction of what he'd just been let off for. He grabs him by the throat. Pay me what you owe. Then he has him thrown in prison.

Pastor Lonnie doesn't let us off the hook. He says we've done the same thing, casting our "loved ones, co-workers, spouses, church family into a debtor's mental prison," conveniently forgetting what the Lord just forgave us.

And he's clear about what the real thing looks like: "Our forgiveness must be from the heart, not pretended, not merely outward." No storing up revenge for later. No smiling at somebody while you keep their file open.

The cemetery of dead memories

This is the part that hits close to home. Years pass, and we still can't leave the hurt in the grave. Pastor Lonnie says some of us have dug the hurt back up and climbed right into the coffins of the past. Unforgiveness, he says, "has kept us captive in the battlefield of our minds." It costs us rest, relationships, even our worship.

He doesn't pretend it's easy, either. "This will not happen overnight." Forgiveness starts as a decision. You choose it, and the Lord gives you the power and strength, day by day, to overcome the emotions.

Ribbons on the oak tree

He closed with a true story. A young man getting out of prison after about ten years calls his mom. He knows he did his father wrong. If Dad will forgive him, he asks, tie a sheet around the oak tree by the railroad tracks. The closer he gets to home, the louder the voice in his head gets, reminding him of every way he let his family down. When they round the bend, the passenger beside him tells him what he sees. Not one white ribbon on that oak tree. A white ribbon on every branch.

That's what forgiveness from the Father looks like. Not barely. Every branch.

Live It This Week

•      Answer his question honestly. Who do you need to forgive? A parent who wasn't there, a spouse who broke your trust, a child who walked away. Or yourself.

•      Decide, then let God handle the feelings. Pastor Lonnie says to forgive immediately and make it an act of your will. Don't wait until you feel like it.

•      Lay it down by name. The anger. The offense. The disappointment. The betrayal. The pain. Hand each one over.

"Bitterness is a burden that you were never created to carry." You can put it down today.