State of Grace

So I was praying today at the main chapel, as God had told me that there was one more question I needed to ask Him. As I was praying, the reference Matthew 6:9 came into my head. As it happens, that reference begins the Lord’s Prayer. Right after the Lord’s prayer, Jesus is preaching about forgiveness, saying how “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

And so, I asked God, “Who do I need to forgive?”. He gave me a name, and I called that person, saying how God told me to forgive. In the recent days, God was revealing to me the lies that I had believed, that I couldn’t trust the body of Christ, that people were only going to hurt me, that no one could ever love me, that my identity is that of someone who was just meant to go about it alone. In realizing the truth, that the body of Christ is a gift given by God, that I am a beloved child by God, and it’s a big fat lie and absolute shame for me to believe that I am unlovable. In the past, I had felt hurt by the body, and it had seemed the perceived cliqueness of our church just reinforced the lies. And in explaining to her my past, I realized what God was doing. He’s breaking down the barriers within the church that prevented us from being united via forgiveness. 

It really just is like this - If God atoned for my sins, if He loved me so much that He gave His only son, if He loved me so much that He closed the wide expanse that separated me and Him, how can I not but forgive? It’s like JESUS you know? jesus jesus jesus yay!