I try to make it a regular practice to get away on my own for periodic prayer retreats. Just me and the Lord. No emails, just reading and prayer and lots of space for God to speak to me. A couple of years ago, I embarked on one after a full and stressful and demanding season.
I had no idea how badly I needed it.
Already on the drive to the Christian retreat centre here in Abbotsford, BC, as I was praying, I was made aware of the bitterness I was carrying in my heart towards various people. Bitterness, I soon realized, that I was also carrying towards God. It became apparent that this sense of anger and hardness were things that God was going to want to do some work on.
My first stop before the retreat centre was a thrift store that has the best local selection of Christian books that I know of. This is a dangerous place for me, as I have something of a book-buying addiction. I managed to limit myself to 10 books (for less than $20 total!). One of them was a very short volume on getting beyond your anger, written by a Christian chaplain. I spent time the rest of the day interspersed between reading the book and going for walks on a nearby trail.
Here’s one of the insights from the book: much of our anger comes from a particular interpretation of events, one that often assumes the worst about the other person. If we are able to understand why a certain person did or said what they did, it becomes much easier to forgive them. And so that’s what I did. Through a series of long walks that day and the next, I worked through a host of situations and people I felt embittered by. I asked the Lord to show me what I hadn’t considered before, to humble me to the point that I wouldn’t hold on to my self-righteousness, and instead put myself in another’s shoes. And as I did, I felt my heart softened. I sensed grudges released. I felt a love for these people return. In so many cases, it seems, people hurt others because they themselves have been wounded or hurt in some way. It doesn’t justify those actions or make them ok, but it does aid in our understanding and compassion.
And then there was this: as I worked through forgiveness and understanding, as my heart was softened, I began to understand in a fresh way the love of God in Christ for me. This was something I had been praying about for some time: “Lord, help me know your love for me…because it seems distant right now.” But as I released this bitterness, it seemed that my heart gained a new capacity to receive the love of God, His grace shown to me in Christ Jesus.
Is it any wonder Jesus linked forgiving others and our own reception of God’s forgiveness? “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15)
My heart needed some serious spring cleaning from God. All kinds of junk had built up, hindering me from truly walking with Jesus. What about you? Have you made space for the Lord to identify the junk in your life and start cleaning it out? Is there bitterness and anger, unresolved, building up like plaque in your heart? You might think you don’t have time to deal with it- trust me, it’s worth it. This needs to be a priority for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. Make the space, He can lead you through the process. Forgiveness is a powerful cleaning agent for the heart.
