Lies We Are Told About God — Pt 9

My wife collects cou­pons. Perhaps – “collect” is not the right word. I think she actually loves them. The child­like delight she gets when she opens the mail­box , pulls out the junk mail and dis­co­vers cou­pons – well it’s something to behold.

“Honey look, vinyl siding 10% off!” “But we already have siding…” “Yeah but 10%… and look here’s a buy-one-get-one-free cou­pon for Bob’s res­tau­rant!” “Don’t we hate Bob’s food?” “You’re mis­sing the point, it’s a great deal.”

You pro­bably know that’s not a real con­ver­sa­tion – but it could have been. My wife loves cou­pons. Each one repre­sents an oppor­tu­nity. It’s like money in the bank. For the most part, these cou­pons seem harm­less — except for one major draw­back. “What could pos­sibly be bad about cou­pons you ask?”

Simply put – they get in the way. They pile up. They fill up the mail hol­der. And when that is full, they begin to pile up on the desk. They even begin to fill empty shoe boxes. Then of course comes the task of remem­be­ring — which ones you have, what they are good for, and when they expire. Many times we’ve gone to use one and found out — it’s expi­red. Not so sec­retly I’ve won­de­red if cou­pons aren’t worth the effort requi­red to manage them?

But paper cou­pons aren’t the only things peo­ple collect. Peo­ple often collect emo­tio­nal and rela­tionship cou­pons. We issue these cou­pons to our­sel­ves when we are wron­ged (or think we’ve been wron­ged) by others. These cou­pons of unfor­gi­ve­ness, ins­tead of giving us 10% off of office sup­plies, allow us to hold others emo­tio­nally hos­tage. We then use them to mani­pu­late things to our liking or to feel jus­ti­fied in our treat­ment of others. Often we just hoard them – sto­ring them future use.

But some things just don’t store very well. I can recall saving free music points in a music club I once belon­ged to. For every CD purcha­sed, you got a cer­tain num­ber of music points. These points could be redee­med for free music. I collec­ted these points every time I bought a CD. I fan­ta­si­zed about the day I would turn them all in and get a whole pile of CD’s for free. Unfor­tu­na­tely a bunch of them expi­red (always read the fine print) before I could use them.

Isn’t that like life? We hold on to little things thin­king that they may come in handy later. But later never arri­ves. Ins­tead of hol­ding cou­pons of bit­ter­ness and resent­ment, we should refuse to open the junk mail and for­give the offense on the spot. We should remem­ber our own weak­nes­ses and offer grace ins­tead. Isn’t that what our Hea­venly Father does?

Or maybe you’ve been lead to believe that God holds a list of offen­ses ready to read back to you at a moment’s notice? A mile long list that con­tains every wrong you’ve ever done — from your dee­pest dar­kest sec­ret to the tiniest fib. Every sin­gle one. And God is glee­fully wai­ting the oppor­tu­nity to read them back to you — espe­cially the ones you’ve forgotten.

But the Bible says that “love keeps no record of wrongs.” Scrip­ture tells us that God is patient and long-suffering. He does not want anyone to be crushed under the weight of the wrong that we’ve done. God tells us that we can have free­dom from this past and hope for the future. That we can have real life — right now — when we place our trust in him. “So there are con­di­tions?” There is one. We must each receive the for­gi­ve­ness he has pro­vi­ded through Jesus. We simply turn toward him and ask for grace. Ins­tead of run­ning from the angry God we’ve been told about — we turn ins­tead toward the bro­ken hear­ted father who des­pe­ra­tely wants to save his kids.

Unlike my paper cou­pons, God won’t let the cou­pons of my sin get in the way. When I pla­ced my trust in Christ, he emp­tied them out of the shoe box. Each cou­pon — a wrong that I was res­pon­si­ble for. He took each one out of the box and put it in the shredder.

You know that satisf­ying grin­ding noise a shred­der makes as it chews up a cre­dit card bill? Next time you hear that sound – remem­ber the Father can shred your sin and remem­ber it no more.

~Truly Free