Faith for Forgiveness

I’m a particularly skeptical person. I rarely believe things that I read or hear in the media. Regularly, we hear studies that contradict other studies.

I don’t believe in global warming. I don’t dis-believe it either. I am not in a place to form a strong opinion because the sources of information are suspect to me.

I was like this about the Bible too. I grew up in a Christian home and studied the Bible all of my life. But as I said, I don’t take anyone’s word for it. I studied the history of the Bible. I researched the events described in the Bible. I even studied other religions.

I came to the conclusion that every one lives by faith.

We believe many things that are simply not true

From WebMD:
1. Medical Myth: Drink at least eight glasses of water per day.
Reality: There's no evidence that you have to drink that much water to assure adequate fluid intake -- and drinking too much water can be unhealthy.
2. Medical Myth: We use only 10% of our brains.
Reality: Most of the brain isn't loafing. Detailed brain studies haven't found the "non-functioning" 90% of the brain.
3. Medical Myth: Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals.
Reality: "Rigorous testing in Europe found minimal interference and only at distances of less than one meter [about 3.28 feet]," write the researchers. But that may be a point of controversy. In September, Dutch doctors reported that cell phones may interfere with critical care equipment and shouldn't be used within a meter of medical equipment or hospital beds.
4. Medical Myth: Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy.
Reality: Turkey isn't all that rich in tryptophan, the chemical linked to sleepiness after eating turkey. But eating a big, decadent meal can cause sleepiness, even if turkey isn't on the menu.

Did humans really land on the moon? On February 15, 2001 the FOX television network aired a program titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon? This program showed alleged evidence that NASA faked the moon landings.

Believing the story from someone about events that occurred when you were not there.

If you believe in science you are doing so by faith unless you were present personally to make the observation yourself. Maybe you read it in a scientific journal but you are still taking it on faith that the scientists reported are reliable and the reporter hasn’t filled in any details.

Do you believe everything you read in the newspaper? The People Magazine or USA Today or the Wall Street Journal? I’m not saying that they are not reporting events as they are related to their reporters. I’m only saying that we take on faith the truthfulness of the events.

If you have ever been on a jury, you have had to take on faith the testimony of witnesses to events because you were not present to witness them for yourself.

Many people believe that if you live a life by “faith” that somehow you are simple, uneducated, or narrow minded. But everyone lives by faith.

Do you believe in global warming? If so is it because you read or saw it in the media? Have you been to the Arctic and observed for yourself? Have you visited the ocean buoys that record temperatures and compared them to prior records that you recorded? I’m guessing not. The you are trusting in the testimony of those who claim that they have done this research.


So when we believe the things written in the Bible we are not behaving any differently than when anyone reads the newspaper or a scientific journal or sits on a jury. We believe these things to be true based on witnesses that we trust.

This week I had the strong impression that God was asking me if I had enough faith for forgiveness.

It’s an interesting question because when we first come to faith in Christ we also are accepting that He paid the price for our sin and bringing us into a relationship with the Father. We basically express a “global sorry”. We confess that we are sinners and need His forgiveness.

Still each day I feel like I need more forgiveness.

I can’t live each day without feeling that I have not lived as Jesus would or how He would like me too. Sin and selfishness has once again crept into my mind. Evil thoughts sometimes are given voice by my mouth.

Once again I must ask for forgiveness from the Lord.
In the Bible God tells us

1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Wow. Cool. Is that really in the Bible?

Each time though I wonder if I’m reaching the end of my forgiveness account. Is He getting tired of hearing the same things over again? Worse still will I avoid Him for awhile because I’m too ashamed to ask again?

A good friend and a professional Psychologist tells me that there is healthy shame. We should experience a healthy shame when we are mean to someone or are dishonest or behave immorally.

Healthy Shame is the consciousness or awareness of dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation. Genuine shame is associated with genuine dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation. This often results in trying to repair the fault or offense. – Wikipedia

With toxic shame we believe that something wrong with us and there's nothing we can do about it; we are inadequate and defective. – John Bradshaw

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the cage of shame and tells us that we are loved and are not defective. Jesus came to give us this message. We are loved by God and we are not defective.

Together with the question whether I had enough faith for forgiveness, I was reminded by the Lord this week that Jesus has paid the price for all of my sin and shame long before I was born.

As we continue to read through the New Testament we will find these verses in the book of Colossians.

Col 2: 12-14 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
Col 2:13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
Col 2:14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.


When Jesus was nailed to the cross God put onto Him all the sins of the world. Past, Present and future.

There are no penance to do. There is no purgatory where you have to sit for awhile until your sins are absolved. All means All. At Dictionary.com it says “wholly; entirely; completely;” as in “He ate all of the peanuts. They are all gone.”

“God put onto Him all the sins of the world.”


John 19:30 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.
Joh 19:30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Jesus said “It is finished”. Done. Over. Our sins have been paid for so that we can now live a new life.

Haven’t you ever wanted to start over? To have a clean slate?

This is the message of God. He loved you so much that He gave His only Son for you. For the joy set before Him Jesus said “yes” I will take their sin on me so that they can be together with me for all eternity.


Do you have enough faith to be forgiven?

Do you believe what the Bible teaches that Jesus has already paid the price for you, past, present and future?

If you have been avoiding God for awhile because you feel that you cannot be forgiven? Is today the day when you will get over it? It is finished! Over! Done!

Bubbleheads in the Media

Peggy Noonan writing in a WSJ editorial. Very perceptive and honest.

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent -- we're on one now, in Minneapolis -- where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren't there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication, and judge by the rules of Chevy Chase and Greenwich, of Cleveland Park and McLean, of Bronxville and Manhattan.

And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.

But we also forget it.

And when you forget you're a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin's daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who'd judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something's wrong with us, that man's a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. "This just in – there's a lot of sinning going on out there" is not a headline they'd understand to be news.

So the media's going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they're not going to do it because it's not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren't immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as "Republican loyalty" and "talking points." But that's not what it will be.

Another Bubblehead blind spot. I'm bumping into a lot of critics who do not buy the legitimacy of small town mayorship (Palin had two terms in Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,000 or so) and executive as opposed to legislative experience. But executives, even of small towns, run something. There are 262 cities in this country with a population of 100,000 or more. But there are close to a hundred thousand small towns with ten thousand people or less. "You do the math," the conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway told me. "We are a nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos."

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html