1 John 1:9

By Bruce Chow

I’ve outgrown the prayer guides from a time when my faith knew no better tutors whose niceties could no longer handle my baggage.

I cannot forgive. Trying only leads to fashbacks. My errant ways, my wayward thoughts are uncontrollable-Unresolved hurts, perceived injustices, unrealized hopes, and a beef with God. My tutors have now failed me, and God is distant and stern.

But the Bible speaks through history and eyewitnesses. Te word lives and shakes my soul and opens my eyes.

How does Jacob dare to wrestle with God for a blessing? How do Job and Jonah openly question God’s justice and live? How does Habakkuk dare to question God’s judgment without himself being judged?

Is blasphemy the way to get God’s attention?

Yet, contempt is blasphemy, and there is no contempt in their desperation. Ten, desperation is a form of seeking, not blasphemy.

So, I lay out all out. Horrible things, anger fnally let loose in His very presence, repeatedly, for the heavens seem like brass. But isn’t confession ejecting the horrible things buried deep in my soul? And so, I release to the one who hears and sufers with me. Confession is trusting the one who already knows. In time my beef with God dissolves, not because I won, but because He held me until I could be still and know that He is God.

Yet, there remained the fashbacks, not of my sins but of those sins done to me, unresolved.

If forgiveness was just saying the words, then I would have been freed years ago.

I must face the pain inficted on me, acknowledging the callousness of what was done to me.

Tat is confession of another type.

I can only give to Him what I lay bare in His presence with his arms wrapped around me.

Only then can I confess my desire to get even, and He gives me the power to release it.

Tat is forgiveness. Not by my might or my power, but by His spirit. Te fashbacks begin to fade.

I fnd He is no longer the stern God from my former days. He is a father in whose lap I readily climb to tell of the things that foul my soul. Fullness of joy is in His presence. Te Gospel really is good news.