For too many of us, forgiveness is seen as an act that really spiritual Christians do. That's not the was forgiveness is presented in Scripture though. "Forgive and you will be forgiven," Jesus tells us (Luke 6:37). Forgiveness doesn't mean you feel that what's been done to you is ok. it doesn't mean you have warm feelings towards the persons forgiven. it means you relinquish the right to exercise vengeance. you rest in the fact that God's justice is carried out by God, either at Judgement day or at the cross. If [the people you need to forgive] are in the Christ who took their place, they've already been to hell for [whatever they've done to you]. If they never come to Christ, they'll answer to a God who searches every heart, and he will do what's just. You aren't a vigilante, even within your own mind. You believe in God.
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety
~ George Muller
Most men and women of God must, at some point in their lives, attend the University of Tears, where they will be trained in humility and perseverance
Our story is perhaps a paradigm for every trusting disciple. The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity; not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.
~ Brennan Manning, in Ruthless Trust
Prayer is not for the purpose of getting God to help us…but for getting us in line with what God is about to do. Prayer is God’s invitation to enter His throne room so He can lay His agenda over our hearts.
~Henry Blackaby
