Tag Archive - Forgiveness

The War Is Finally Over!

April 26, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

Hiroo Onada, 1944

On March 10, 1974, Lt. Hiroo Onada was the last World War II Japanese soldier to surrender.

Onada had been left on the island Lubang in the Philippines on December 25, 1944, with the command to “carry on the mission even if Japan surrenders.” Three other Japanese soldiers were left on the island as Japan evacuated Lubang. One soldier surrendered in 1950. Another was killed in a skirmish with local police in 1954. Another was killed in 1972. Onada continued his war alone.

All efforts to convince him to surrender or to capture him failed. He ignored messages from loudspeakers announcing Japan’s surrender and that Japan was now an ally of the United States. Leaflets were dropped over the jungle begging him to surrender so he could return to Japan. He refused to believe or surrender.

Over the years he lived off the land and raided the fields and gardens of local citizens. He was responsible for killing at least 30 nationals during his 29 year personal war. Almost a half million dollars was spent trying to locate and convince him to surrender. 13,000 men were used to try to locate him.

Finally, on March 10, 1974, almost 30 years after World War II ended, Onada surrendered his rusty sword after receiving a personal command from his former superior officer, who read the terms of the cease-fire order. Onada handed his sword to President Marcos, who pardoned him. The war was over.

Hiroo Onada, 1974

Onada was 22-years-old when left on the island. He returned a prematurely aged man of 52. Onada stated, “Nothing pleasant happened in the 29 years in the jungle.”

Like Onada, many people are still fighting a lonely war against their sin. Struggling with sin and shame. Living a meager life from the scraps of religious duty and obligations. Hoping that will help them get by. Inflicting pain and hardship on others because of their own misery. Like Onada, nothing pleasant ever happens.

The message of Easter is that the war is over. The battle has been won. No longer do we need to hide. We can come out of the jungles of our own making. We can give up our rusty swords of defensiveness and unforgiveness. We can return to the our home and enjoy the blessings of pardon and freedom.

The message of Easter is that we are finally free. Christ has conquered sin and death. Let us rejoice.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. ” (Romans 8:1–2, NIV)

 

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Will You Shout?

April 20, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

W. E. Sangster

Margaret Sangster Phippen wrote that in the mid 1950s her father, British Methodist minister W. E. Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, his throat would soon become unable to swallow.

Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write and he would have even more time for prayer. “Let me stay in the struggle Lord,” he pleaded. “I don’t mind if I can no longer be a general, but give me just a regiment to lead.” He wrote articles and books, and helped organize prayer cells throughout England. “I’m only in the kindergarten of suffering,” he told people who pitied him.

Gradually Sangster’s legs became useless. His voice went completely. But he could still hold a pen, shakily. On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter. In it, he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice to shout, ‘He is risen!’–but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.”

Nest Sunday is Easter. This day is the cornerstone of our faith. Because of Easter, disciples through the centuries gladly faced trials and struggles, persecution and hardship. They boldly proclaimed the good news of the resurrection because they knew that Easter changed everything. Without a risen Christ, everything about Jesus would be pointless. Without Easter, we would have no message to proclaim, no hope for our future, and no salvation from our sins.

But because of Easter we have all that and more. The Resurrection made Easter different from every other day, because it made every other day different as well. We now have hope. We now have joy. We now have life! No longer do we live in sin and despair. No longer do we live in shame and sorrow. We now have courage to face all this world throws at us.

Why wouldn’t we shout?

HE IS RISEN!

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The War is Over!

April 7, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

Georg Gaertner, a young German man, found himself in North Africa in 1943. He was a part of the German Army’s Afrika Korps. He was captured by the British army at Tunis in 1943.He was handed over to the Americans along with thousands of other prisoners and was brought to prisoner of war camps in the United States. Georg was sent to Fort Deming, New Mexico.

In September of 1945, because he was afraid of being sent back to his hometown which was now under Soviet control, he slipped past a guard, lifted up the fence, and escaped from that prison camp. And he ran.

He started out working as a farm laborer. Because he was afraid of being captured, he was constantly on the move.

He became a tennis instructor. He had played tennis in Germany as a young man and was rather good.

He became a ski instructor in the Rocky Mountains. In fact, in 1952, he was part of the team that went into the Donner Pass. There was a train that had wrecked in there, and it was locked in because of the snow. The skiers went in and rescued some 200 people out of that train wreck.

He was continuously running, continuously trying to stay away from the authorities.

One day he came home fearful that he’d blown his cover: They’re going to know who I am, and so I’ve got to move again. He told his wife: “Pack it all up. We’ve got to move immediately.”

After 20 years of this, she said: “Wait a minute. I can’t take this any longer. What’s wrong with you? Why are we constantly moving like this?”

Georg sat down and he shared with her what he had never shared with anyone else: He was a prisoner of war, a man condemned. She looked at him and said: “Go to the office of immigration and naturalization. The war is over.”

Finally, Georg, who went by the name, Dennis Whiles, after 40 years of running, at 64 years of age, turned himself in to federal authorities. Instead of condemning him, they released him to live a free man.*

The war was finally over for Georg Gaertner. He no longer had anything or anyone to fear. The past was over. He now lived free.

Because of the Cross, our war is over. Jesus Christ won the victory over sin and death. If we trust in Christ, we have no thing or no one to fear. We can live in the freedom that God designed for His creation. We no longer live in condemnation for a life in the past. No longer do we have to live under guilt and shame. We are free to become the person God meant us to be, His child.

　

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. – Romans 8:1-2 (NIV)

*”Hitler’s Last Soldier in America,” by George Gaertner and Arnold Krammer.

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Washed Away

April 5, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

 Paper is such a common item today. Writing paper is inexpensive. Notepads are given away by businesses. We rarely concern ourselves with throwing away or recycling paper.

This was not always the case. In Biblical times, paper as we know it didn’t exist. Parchment was the most common used material used for writing documents. However, it was expensive. It was made from animal skins, but it was not tanned as is leather.
Because of its expense, it was often used multiple times. This was made possible because the inks of that day did not contain acid as inks today. Therefore, all one needed to do in order to reuse a parchment was to wash off the ink and let the parchment dry.

This was often done when a debt was paid. The debt was simply washed away. The record was cancelled.

What a picture of what God does with us. In Isaiah 43:25, Isaiah writes the words of God, “I—yes, I alone—am the one who blots out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again.” (NLT)

And centuries later, Peter, after being filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke these words, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, ” (Acts 3:19, NIV84)

The message is simple. Jesus took the record of our sins and wiped it clean. When we trust in Him, we are forgiven. Our sins are washed away.

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The Cross Not the Scales

April 1, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

Because of recent events, there has been much interest in the religion of Islam. Sales of the Islamic scripture known as the Qur’an have been record setting. Many people have wondered about the differences between Islam and Christianity. We both believe in the one God of the universe. We both claim Abraham as our spiritual ancestor. So, what is the difference?

 

 

John Stott, in his book, Authentic Christianity, states this one critical difference. “The repeated promises in the Qur’an of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighed in Allah’s scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.”

The Cross is the one critical difference between Christianity and all other religions. All other religions admit that the human race has a problem with sin, but none have a solution that is so complete and final as the Cross. With all other religions, one must wait until death to see if you made it. One has to wait until that final breath to see if the scales will tip in their favor. The guilt and shame are never wiped out. There is no certainty of hope in life.

But the Christian’s forgiveness was settled once and for all on that Cross. No more guilt. No more shame. Just joy, peace and everlasting life. The Cross is the difference. It is the difference between Christianity and all other religions. It is the difference between sin and forgiveness. It is the difference between life and death. It is the cross and not the scales that make the difference in not only in our future but in our lives today.

 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”  (Ephesians 2:8–9, NLT)

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Come Awake!

March 28, 2011 in Daily Faith, Videos with 0 Comments

HE’S THE ONE!

March 26, 2011 in General with 0 Comments

The judge glared down from his bench at the prospective juror. “And just why it is,” he asked, “that you don’t want to serve on this jury?”

The man replied, “Well, judge, I’m biased. One look at that man convinced me that he is guilty.”

The judge scowled and replied, “That man is not the defendant, he’s the District Attorney.”

Did you know that the same sort of situation happened to Jesus? He had every right to be the prosecuting attorney, but He chose to be the defendant. The one who had no sin had every right to point our transgressions out. He could have convicted us of all of our failures and disobedient actions, but instead He chose to take them upon Himself and bear the guilt and shame that were really ours.

During this time of Lent, when we think about Jesus’ death upon the cross, we need to remember that He died for OUR sins. He took OUR place and He died OUR death.

I am glad that we have such a God who would give us such a Savior.

Saved by Another’s Blood

March 11, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

 

   On November 26, 2008, a gang of terrorists stormed the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India. After the carnage had left 200 people dead, a reporter interviewed a guest who had been at the hotel for dinner that night. The guest described how he and his friends were eating dinner when they heard gunshots. Someone grabbed him and pulled him under the table. The assassins came striding through the restaurant, shooting at will, until everyone (or so they thought) had been killed.

 

Miraculously, this man survived. When the interviewer asked the guest how he lived when everyone else at his table had been killed, he replied, “I suppose because I was covered in someone else’s blood, and they took me for dead.”*

As we go through Lent, we need to remind ourselves that this life of faith we live is a gift because someone else shed their blood. Because of our sin, all of us deserve to die. But because we are covered with the blood of Jesus our savior, we live. We live, not because of our goodness or even because we try to be good, but simply because His blood is on us.

How is that blood get on us? By faith. The Scripture is clear that if we believe He died for us, then His blood is on us.

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ” Romans 5:9 (NIV84)

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*Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You? (Zondervan, 2010), p. 42;

 

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Bargain Hunter

February 16, 2011 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

 

One day a man drove into a service station. He said he was out of money, out of gas and just needed to get to the next town a few miles down the road. The generous owner offered to put a few gallons in his car. The man hesitated and then asked, “Could you give me the money instead? The station across the street is cheaper.”

Even though we are not surprised at this fellow’s ungrateful attitude, it still bothers us that someone would be like that. I am certain that most of us would send him on his way without gasoline or money.

Let us not be so quick to judge. We at times come to God, broken and poor in spirit, and ask for help. God, who is compassionate and generous, offers to fill our lives with what we really need, His very self. Then we respond, “Really God, all I wanted was a little blessing to get me along. Just give me a little peace so I can go somewhere else where the commitment is a little cheaper.”

We need to be careful when looking for spiritual bargains. We could very well end up with nothing. Just as I think our friend probably ended up without gas or money, we could lose our blessings and God.  Not because He gets mad and says, “Forget it!” It is because He cannot give less than the best and the best is Himself.

Our problem is, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, that God wants to give us more and we too often settle for less.

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The Joy of Forgiveness

May 18, 2010 in Daily Faith with 0 Comments

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

According to an often told story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, once decided to play a practical joke on twelve of his friends. To each he sent an anonymous telegram that simply read, “Flee at once . . . all is discovered.”
Within twenty-four hours, all twelve had fled the country.   Evidently, they all had something to hide.

Most of us do have something to hide.  We have some secret we don’t want discovered?  We have regrets, real and imagined.  We’ve made bad choices.  We live hoping that all will never be discovered.  Guilt tugs at our souls, nags our minds and saps our spirits.  In fact, I’m convinced that most of us live lives robbed of peace and joy because of this.  What can we do?
There are just two answers.  One,  we can go on just as we’ve been doing.  Hoping that we can keep up appearances.  Hoping that no one will find out.  Letting our past drain our present and future of joy.  Or two, we can confess to God and receive His forgiveness. The first answer fails miserably, the second is our only hope.
God doesn’t want you to live in guilt and shame.  He doesn’t want your life empty of peace and joy.  He wants you to live in the joy of forgiveness.  He wants to free you from the chains of the past so that you can experience the fullness of His life today.

“If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.”
1 John 1:8-9 (NLT)

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