Again I ask: Have You?

I have learned a lot the last two and half years of my life.  About myself, about other people, and about God.

What I have learned about myself has not been fun.  Its kind of like once I figure it out, I figure something else out that is worse or harder to confront.

What I have figured out about other people has been both good and bad.  I have learned what true people of God look like.  The love that radiates from them.  The desire to bring God glory and lovingly correcting those in need with out judgement.  To say the truth, even when it is hard to hear.  But, I have also learned a lot about the "not so good side" of people.  Those who are rude, think they know everything, only think of themselves part of people.  I have seen what true repentance looks like, and what it does not.

What I have learned about God, though has not changed.  I may have learned more on the same topic, or learned the same God just in a new light.

For example.  I have learned a lot about love.  At first it was just knowledge based.  Love this, love that.  Then I learned how far God's love for me stretches.  Despite how I view myself.  Despite how others view me.  Despite how other treat me.  Despite my own fears and failures.  Despite how deep my sin goes into the core of who I am.  His love for me has never and will never change.  The only thing that needs to change is my response to it.  Then it grew to application.  God loved me, so I can love others.  How do you do that when you have been hurt so deeply?  How do you love the unlovable?  How do you love those who do not want to be loved?  I know I am on a journey to keep growing in this area.  I do not have it all figured out but I am learning a little bit more everyday.

Another example is forgiveness.  Ohh how I have learned on this subject.  Again at first it was superficial.  Then I felt what it was like for me.  The deepest parts of me that no one saw but me and the Lord.  Those parts I tried to hide from myself, from others and tried to with hold from the one who has always known.  He already forgave them.  On the cross... "It is finished"  Those three words will be enough for eternity.  Then we move to application.  Each time, the cut is A LOT deeper.  The forgiveness goes a bit further, encompasses more of who I am.  The pieces of my heart get smaller.  The get harder to find and put back together.  Forgiveness takes one piece at a time.  Each piece that is put back into place, is one less piece I chose to hold onto, which is one more piece of forgiveness.

The one thing that has not changed in ANY of these concepts, though each time gets a little harder, and each time gets a little deeper, each requires nothing of me, and everything of Him.  The only thing I can do is lay it ALL at the cross.  The rest is already done.  "It is finished".  I learn this every time, in different ways, through basically the same sin, by the hands/hearts of those I love.

To experience forgiveness, I had to be forgiven first.  To give love, I had to be loved first.  By my one True Love, by my Only Comforter,  by my Lord & Savior.  Again, I ask the question:  Have you?