Waist Deep 2018 - November 18

Colossians 3: 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (NIV)

Men drink in forgiveness by the bucketful, and spoon it out under pressure.*

I was looking at some old pictures today. Apparently it wasn’t as random an activity as I thought – God was preparing me for this verse. In pictures from grade school, I saw the faces of two kids that, I must confess, I treated badly. I was a Christian back then but not always a nice one. I don’t know why I chose those particular kids to be mean to. Thanks to Facebook, I know that one of them is a preacher now. The other one actually accepted my “friend request” and doesn’t seem to harbor any animosity towards me. I would like to apologize to them - but perhaps that would only benefit me. Seems they may have already forgiven me. 

When it comes to our offenses, we tend to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. As another writer states it, “We have a tendency to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.”* The thing is, the Lord judges us all according to the same set of rules. He doesn’t think that what you did to me is worse than what I did to you. There’s a line in a song that says, “Ashamed to hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers . . .” This is what the Lord has forgiven me for. What I did to him was much worse than anything that has ever been done to me.

It’s striking to realize that Judas was one of those whose feet Jesus washed. The betrayer was served in the
same way as the faithful.*