{"id":24027,"date":"2018-10-25T03:30:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T10:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=24027"},"modified":"2018-10-23T16:48:14","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T23:48:14","slug":"october-25-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2018\/10\/25\/october-25-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"October 25, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cNow all things are of God, who has reconciled\u00a0<\/strong>us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the\u00a0ministry of reconciliation<\/strong>, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself<\/strong>, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>2 Corinthians 5:18-19<\/p>\n

God\u2019s Pleading<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Part 2<\/em><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve gotten pretty good at apologizing for things I\u2019ve said and done. I\u2019ve had lots of practice. I remember a time when it is was so hard to look a person in the eye and tell them I\u2019m sorry, and ask for forgiveness. I also remember a time when it was hard to allow a person to ask me to forgive them, and then to forgive them. But I know the freedom forgiveness brings. Chains drop away from both the offender and the offended, and life can move forward as God meant for it to.<\/p>\n

As we saw in yesterday\u2019s devotional, God is pleading with us to be reconciled to Him. In much the same way, God wants us to reconcile with one another.<\/p>\n

This is why He has given us the \u201cministry of reconciliation.\u201d This is why He has \u201ccommitted to us the word of reconciliation.\u201d This means the same for us as it does for Him\u2014\u201cnot imputing the trespasses of others to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today we might call it \u201cthe Blame Game.\u201d It\u2019s the excuses we make for not loving or forgiving others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did such-and-such to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one can be expected to forgive such a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked for it. What did they expect?!\u201d<\/p>\n

I talked to a believer once who said emphatically that she would NEVER forgive her sister for stealing away her fianc\u00e9 when they were younger. The fact that she was undoubtedly being spared a relationship with someone who did not love her enough to stay with her was beside the point. It\u2019s what the sister DID TO HER. She\u2019d held on to her hurt for decades. She never came to a place of believing that God had a better plan for her, even though she later married a wonderful man whom she dearly loves. She is now a person who blames others for hurting her at every turn in her life. It is much easier to hold a grudge and ignore others than to be reconciled to them.<\/p>\n

Having the \u201cministry of reconciliation,\u201d I implored her to be reconciled to her sister. The \u201cword of reconciliation\u201d is that since God reconciled us to Himself by forgiving us, we must forgive others. Christ died for our sins; we are asked to do far less than die for those who injure us. We are asked to not impute (reckon, account) others\u2019 trespasses to them.<\/p>\n

Forgive. Let it go. Be free to love again.<\/p>\n

\u201cFather, it\u2019s hard for us because we have to deny ourselves, but help us be reconciled to one another\u2014even in the impossible things. Amen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-6fx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24028,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24027\/revisions\/24028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}