God Hates Sin

Today, we arrive at the tenth and final attribute of God as we continue with our series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness. Since God loves all that is good and right, it comes as no surprise that he hates everything that stands in opposition to his chacter.

God's opposition to evil is total and permanent.
The Bible reassures us that if we believe in Jesus, we will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven. But it also tells us that if we reject Jesus, we will experience God's wrath. John 3:36 (NIV) reads: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

God's character does not allow him to turn a blind eye to evil. He must punish it, otherwise it would make a mockery of all that is good. If we understand this attribute of God, we can feel better as survivors of abuse, knowing that God opposes those who have hurt us. We are not alone in our suffering.

When we hate the injustice that has occurred in our lives, we are imitating God. He hates evil, injustice, and sin. Therefore, we no longer need to feel guilty about the rage we feel. It is natural if we are made in the likeness of God to become upset when someone sins against us.

Imagine what the world would be like if God didn't get all that upsest about child molesters hurting little children. Think about what life would look like if God either delighted in sin or was not troubled by it. I sure wouldn't want to worship that kind of God. He would be as warped as the child molesters and other criminals on our planet.

God is slow to act on his anger.
God delays the punishment that people deserve for the evil acts they commit, because he wants them to come to a point of repentance. Remember, we learned earlier that God is merciful, gracious, and patient. Psalm 103:8 (NIV) reads, The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. While God hates sin, he loves all people.

We must be patient with our enemies.
Like God, we know that it is part of our character to hate evil. But we must also remember that God still loves sinners, so we must do the same. Our enemies may not yet have come to a point of repenting for their actions. Therefore, it is up to us to remain patient while they work toward that point of change.

As at teacher, I frequently taught small children who couldn't seem to learn at the pace of the average kid. God has always blessed me with the ability to patiently work with people who are slow to pick up on new concepts.

I once had a student in kindergarten who could not grasp what we call 'sight words.' These simple words, such as and and the needed to be memorized in order to move on to more difficult reading tasks. Every other student had moved ahead to beginning readers, but this poor little boy couldn't get it.

One Monday morning, he came up to me as I was preparing to start our day. With confidence, he said, "Look what I can do." He opened a little book and read it perfectly from beginning to end.

I was flabbergasted and figured that someone at home must have been drilling him all weekend. I asked, "Who taught you how to read?"

Without hesitation, he smiled up at me and said, "You did."

That moment showed me that we never know how much of an impact we are having on someone. Even when our efforts seem to be fruitless, we never know what is going on in someone's heart or mind.

As I wait for my father to repent of his sins of molesting children and my mother to learn how to love as God does; I remember that little boy. I must be patient and kind to the people who have hurt me the most. Like my student, my parents may be the type of people who are slower to catch on to God's lessons for them.

I want to be there when someone asks the question of my parents, "Who taught you to love?" Hopefully, they'll give God the credit first and also mention that my kindness toward them helped along the way.

How do we find the patience to love slow learners?
I find it extremely difficult to love my parents. My mother, especially, is the type of person who pushes people away or turns on them when they try to express God's love to her. While my kindergarten student was eager to learn and please, my mother is more reluctant to do so.

I do not have the capacity to love either of my parents without God's help. Learning more about his character and how I am supposed to imitate him shows me what I must do. With ongoing prayer, I can tap into God's power to do the impossible. So can you.

Apply God's moral attributes to your own life so that you can forgive.
Over the past several weeks, we have looked at our own problems that have been caused by abuse or trauma: anger, fear, lack of trust, low self-esteem, guilt, revenge, pride, hatred, and depression. I call these the roadblocks to forgiveness, because as long as they remain in place, we cannot move forward.

Along the way, we have also learned what it means to become more like God. We have studied his goodness, love, mercy, grace, patience, holiness, peace, justice, jealousy, and wrath.

With a well-balanced view of God's character, we can better understand where we are out of balance. By understanding our own weaknesses and imitating God for strength, we can approach forgiveness with greater confidence. We now have the tools to remove the roadblocks so that we can continue on our journey toward forgiving.

Today's Challenge
In your journal, write about the anger or hatred you have felt against people who have hurt you with their evil actions. Ask God to give you the patience you need to pray for them while they work toward repenting for their sins. If it is safe to do so, think of ways to show your enemy God's love through acts of kindness.

By Their Fruit, You Will Recognize Them

After my father's arrest, he hired a lawyer from his church to bail him out of jail and defend him against the charges he is facing for criminal sexual conduct. Even though Dad already confessed to some of the charges to the police, this lawyer has instructed him to deny any responsibility for his actions. What kind of a Christian tells a fellow believer to lie?

My brother urged Dad to turn from this lying and repent completely. Dad told him he has implicit trust in this attorney to save him. The family all gave a corporate groan over this statement. No man can save us from God's wrath if we live so deeply entrenched in sin.

My father is now considered a fugitive, because he refused to go to the state where the charges have been brought against him. He and his lawyer will appear in court next week to try to convince a judge that he should not have to travel anywhere to be tried for his crimes. He hopes that lying will get him off the hook. His goal: to stay out of jail for as long as possible.

This course of action is costing him dearly in this life; the legal fees are crushing. The price it will cost him in the next life, though, is what concerns us the most.

When my father's crimes were brought to light, my siblings rushed to him to point out his need for repentance. They felt confident that Dad would turn his life around if they just loved him enough and prayed for him. I told them that this might backfire on them, and I stood back to watch what would happen next.

I got a call from my brother yesterday. He felt completely discouraged by Dad's refusal to face his punishment, his relationship with this attorney, and his willingness to lie in court. After years of thinking that Dad would suddenly change, my brother said, "You were right. He's just doing what he always has."

My brother's statement made me think about what Jesus said in Matthew 7:18 and 20, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit....Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." We can discern the condition of a man's heart by observing the kind of spiritual fruit he produces.

During this conversation with my brother, I also learned that my parents are angry with Joe and me, saying that if we were real Christians, we would have forgiven Dad already and patched up the family feud. Dad said to my brother, who has continued to visit my parents, "I'm glad you're standing behind me." My brother was shocked by this statement. He thought, I'm not standing behind you. I'm just walking beside you! Now he understands my wisdom in watching from a distance.

We must be very, very careful when dealing with people whose lives are steeped in this much sin. As Christians, we believe it is our duty to show our love to all people. Some people, like my father, get the mistaken belief when we love them in overt ways, they are forgiven. In their minds, if we're part of their lives, they're okay with God. This is very far from the truth.

It is much wiser to love people like this from a distance, praying for their salvation. The pain of being separated from us may lead them to turn to God. Joining them where they are often sends the message that we are letting them off the hook. By standing too close to them, they may never come to a point of repentance. Holding their hand may cause us to experience spiritual confusion and tremendous heartache.

Since I have stepped back from this situation and looked at it as God does, I feel a surprising sense of peace. As my brother put it yesterday, "We've all done everything we could to help Dad see what he needs to do. The rest is up to him." We will all continue to pray, the Holy Spirit will do his work, and my dad will have to make a choice. Let's pray that he chooses more than just temporary relief from earthly punishment. God's prison is a whole lot worse than any that man has ever devised.

Has your life become enmeshed with someone who is sinning, lying about it, and running from God? What do you think is your best course of action for protecting your spirit and leading this person to salvation?

Freely You Have Received, Freely Give

I awoke one day with Matthew 10:8 running through my head: "Freely you have received, freely give." Give what? I asked. As the day progressed, God gave me an answer to that question.

I received an email from a friend who is in her early forties. When I was a child, I found refuge in this girl's home, where her mother frequently claimed to have adopted both of us. My adoption was one of the heart; my friend had been legally adopted by my heart mother.

To my surprise, my friend wrote that she was struggling with her own unhappiness from her past. It seems that while my beloved heart mother had provided a safe haven for me, she had smothered my friend with too much love and the hyper-vigilant protection that is typical of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I began to realize that just because a mother fails to meet her own child's needs, it doesn't mean that God can't use her to meet the needs of someone else's child. My heart mother failed to give her own daughter wings to chase after her dreams. And yet, she succeeded in making me feel safe whenever I was with her. It made me wonder if my own mother had failed to protect me from my father's sexual abuse while succeeding to make another girl feel special.

My thoughts turned to my children and how I had failed to protect them from the hurt of abuse and divorce. Marrying my second husband, Joe, brought me great joy. It frequently brought my children incredible pain, as they struggled to adjust to having a strange man telling them what to do. I know that my teenage sons often found solace at the kitchen tables of their friends' mothers.

All of my children could blame me for failing to protect them from the fallout of my father's sexual abuse. Fortunately, not one of them does. How was this possible, I wondered, when I felt nothing but anger for my own mother's failings? God's Word came back to me: "Freely you have received, freely give." That's when I knew what he was calling me to give: grace. He was asking me to freely extend grace to my mother, just as my own children had freely extended grace to me.

I began to look at life as a stage, where a monumental production needs to be acted out. I imagined something as complex as the movie, The Sound of Music. The Swiss Alps are breathtaking, the actors are tremendously talented as singers, and the costuming and staging are impeccable. I tried to think of my mother or my heart mother cast in the role of Fraulein Maria. I realized that the production would be a bust, and critics would trash their performances, because neither woman had the skills to play the part.

Unlike movie critics, God would never condemn either of these women for their poor performances. He looks on their lives with grace, understanding that each one has bravely done the best things possible, given their circumstances. Suddenly, I could see these women through God's eyes, and I felt ashamed of myself for having judged my mother so harshly.

My mother grew up during World War II on a farm, where her father regularly beat her mother. From behind a locked bedroom door, my mother and her brothers clung to one another, hoping that their mother would survive the brutal abuse. My heart mother was only 10 years old when her parents sent her into the German countryside, as far as possible from the dangers of war. She lived in a gardener's shed with her two younger brothers, stealing vegetables from nearby gardens so that they would have something to eat.

When we experience trauma of this magnitude over a long period of time while we are young, we can become stuck at an early level of development. Neither my mother nor my heart mother had an opportunity to grow up emotionally, since both of them went straight from the trauma of their young lives into early marriages. Their generation never spoke to others about the pain of abuse or trauma, and they viewed counseling as something for weaklings. Instead, they painted on pretty smiles and did what they thought was best. For my heart mother, this took the form of over-protecting her children. For my mother, it meant leaving the farm and always, always exhibiting nothing but perfection in her new life in the city. These were the coping mechanisms that these women with PTSD adopted...coping skills which, unfortunately, did not bring about perfect results for their children.

How can my friend and I extend grace to our mothers? Before we do so, we must take note of two important matters. First of all, extending grace does not mean that we cover up the truth. It's okay for us to say that our childhood needs were not met. As Christians, we are called to speak the truth in love.

Secondly, if our mothers turned to sinning as a means of coping, we must understand that they are accountable to God for the wrong things they did. While it was not a sin for my mother to arrive at parenthood without the prerequisite skills, it was a sin for her to turn to alcohol to numb her pain. I must separate my mother's lack of parenting skills from the sins she committed. I can only extend grace for my mother's inadequacies. It is God's job to extend forgiveness for her sins.

Why should I extend grace to a person who doesn't deserve it? you may ask. That's what is so unique about grace. None of us deserves it. But God extends it to us anyway, just because he loves us so much. (See Romans 3:23-24) Love is what allowed me to overlook my heart mother's shortcomings. It was also love that allowed my children to grant me the grace I needed for my inadequacies. I began to see that a lack of love was preventing me from extending grace to my mother.

It used to be easy for me to believe that Christ's blood was shed for my forgiveness, but not for my mother. I know now that Jesus wants to offer all of us forgiveness. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." This doesn't say, "Come to me, all you except for Cheryl's mother, and I will give you rest." His forgiveness is extended to each of us.

While it is true that Christ's forgiveness is extended to all people, each one of us must respond appropriately to receive it. Just as someone may give us a gift-wrapped present, we cannot fully enjoy it unless we open it. Acts 20:21 tells us how to receive God's forgiveness: "...turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus." Forgiveness comes as a result of turning away from sin and placing our faith in Jesus' ability to lead us in the way he wants us to go. Faith means that we quit using Jesus like a genie in a bottle who grants all of our requests so that we can maintain control over our own destinies.

Mere belief in Jesus is not enough. Even Satan believes that Jesus is Lord. It's the submission of our will to God's that turns away his punishment and replaces it with grace. If we have fallen into sin as a result of our abuse, we must make peace with God over our own failings. In the same way, our mothers must take up their issues with the Lord.

God's Word opened my heart to the fact that I needed to adopt an attitude of love and to extend grace to my mother. This means that I am willing to see her as God does and to make concessions for her inadequacies which resulted from her childhood trauma. As soon as we apply grace to another person's actions, our forgiveness for the hurt that he or she caused us eventually follows. It is difficult to hang on to resentment for someone who has hurt us when we see them through God's eyes.

Grace is the key that unlocks the door to forgiveness. God's grace through his Word prompted me to acknowledge my sin of resentment against my mother. As soon as I confessed this sin to God, he looked at my broken life with tremendous compassion and understanding (grace), and then extended his forgiveness to me. Immediately, peace flowed in.

Freely you have received grace. Freely give it to someone who desperately needs it. It's a priceless gift that benefits the recipient. But the giver usually comes away with the much greater gift: peace.