Day 20: The Grace Of Mercy

GOD stopped me in my tracks,

and asked me to FORGIVE.

Not just one person.

Multiple people.

People who had hurt me.

People I didn't necessarily

FEEL like FORGIVING.

And it happened in the most ordinary of moments.

My hubby and Iwere sitting together,

playing a game of

backgammon.

Right there,

in the middle of the game,

GOD began bringing people to my mind.

People I needed to FORGIVE.

One.

Then another.

And another.

Hmm.

Apparently,

this backgammon game was going to have an intermission.

Because

GOD

was asking me to stop what I was doing

and

FORGIVE.

And I knew I had a CHOICE:

Keep playing while continuing to carry the hurt~

or stop and

SURRENDER

it to HIM.

So...

I STOPPED.

Right there,

in the middle of the game.

I pulled myself away and

I began FORGIVING

the people

GOD brought to my mind.

One by one.

I RELEASED them.

I RELEASED the hurt.

I RELEASED the BITTERNESS.

And I placed

into

GOD'S HANDS

what I had been carrying in mine.

And when I did,

something happened

 IMMEDIATELY.

A WEIGHT WAS LIFTED OFF OF ME.

Nothing around me had changed.

The circumstances hadn't changed.

The people hadn't changed.

What they had done hadn't changed.

But something

IN ME

had changed.

I had

SURRENDERED.

And then,

I went back to our backgammon game.

I quietly asked GOD,

"GOD, give me double fours."

And I rolled

DOUBLE FOURS.

I smiled.

Then I looked at the board.

There seemed to be absolutely

no possible way I could win.

So I asked HIM again:

"GOD, let me win this game."

And somehow—

I WON,

as I rolled double sixes.

Just ask my hubby,

as he watched me place my last piece home.

It was like the parting of the red sea,

even though it was only a backgammon game.

Now,

was GOD promising me that every time

I FORGIVE someone,

HE will give me the perfect dice roll and let me win

a backgammon game?

Of course not.

But that wasn't what the moment was about.

For me,

it became a sweet, personal reminder from GOD

that

HE SEES YOUR SURRENDER.

HE SEES YOUR OBEDIENCE.

And asks for you and I to

KEEP TRUSTING HIM.

And suddenly,

I realized the real victory had nothing to do with backgammon.

I had already WON before the game was over.

Because I thought I was releasing the people who had hurt me,

but GOD was actually RELEASING ME.

There it is.

IT'S NOT ABOUT ME.

It's not about winning

MY GAME.

It's not about getting

MY WAY.

It's not even about

whether the people who hurt

ME

ever understand what they did.

It's about

OBEYING JESUS

and TRUSTING HIM

with what

I cannot control.

FORGIVENESS

didn't declare that what happened was right.

FORGIVENESS declared

that I no longer had to carry it.

I could put the people,

the pain,

and the outcome

into the hands of

THE ONE

who judges rightly.

And perhaps that is another way

a

PEARL is formed.

A pearl begins with an

IRRITANT.

When an IRRITANT

finds its way inside a mollusk,

the mollusk begins coating it with layer upon layer of nacre.

Over time,

what began as an

IRRITANT

becomes something beautiful~

a

PEARL.

Hmm.

The hurt was the IRRITANT.

FORGIVENESS was the SURRENDER.

And MERCY began covering what had wounded me.

Layer upon layer.

MERCY upon MERCY.

Until what once felt like a weight

became another

PEARL

in my testimony.

"Forgive, and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37).

And—

"Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other,

 just as in Christ God forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32).

Because of

GRACE UPON GRACE~"For out of HIS fullness [the superabundance of HIS grace and truth]

we have all received

GRACE UPON GRACE

 [spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing,

favor upon favor, and gift heaped upon gift]"

(John 1:16)

Oh,

THE FREEDOM OF FORGIVENESS

that began when I first received

the FORGIVENESS purchased for me on the CROSS.

The

GIFT OF MERCY

flowed from

THE CROSS

for you,

for me,

and for everyone who will receive

JESUS.

So who am I to withhold

 FORGIVENESS

when

JESUS GRACED ME WITH MERCY

first?

IT'S NOT ABOUT ME

It's about JESUS,

and what HE has already done for me.

Do you have an

IRRITANT OF BITTERNESS

that is waiting to be

GRACED BY HIS MERCY?

Is there someone you are still carrying whom

 GOD is asking you to place into HIS HANDS?

What if the next PEARL on your strand begins with FORGIVENESS?

Because when I stop making it about what they did to me

and start remembering what

JESUS DID FOR ME,

I can SURRENDER.

I can FORGIVE.

I can LET GO.

And that day,

sitting at a backgammon board,

I learned something

I never want to forget:

THE REAL WIN WASN'T WINNING THE GAME.

The real win was the

FREEDOM

that came when I obeyed GOD and FORGAVE.

Because...

IT'S NOT ABOUT ME.

It's about

JESUS

and

WHAT MERCY DID FOR ME.

(Listen to the song below.)