Fooling Around

Abraham muffed the next one, big time —fooling around with Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar. He belittles God’s promise and miscalculates God’s ability to accomplish His promise with the true son, Isaac. One explanation would be; the works of God still seem vague to Abe, and not always so easy for him to discern.

Not to defend Abe, but maybe when Sarah made the suggestion to reproduce a child with her handmaid, Abram could have thought, “God must work this way in a practical-sense.” Lets be real, Abraham was being schooled in an intricate-walk-with-God “faith” classroom. To state the obvious, God shows Himself not to the human eye. Abraham, not quite getting it yet, opens the story’s other side to view.

I will concede, however, Abe’s sexual-manhood most likely encouraged the compromising. His motives were wrong. Because this was sin, God’s forgiveness remains the only remedy.

So, for us a problem also exists; we condescend to the current level of our learning progress as did Abe. Doing this, we fall short of the vital facts not yet revealed, learned, digested and solidified. This typifies the “rationale” behind many of our screw-ups too. What am I saying?

The old sin nature of every man, though judged and sentenced permanently at Calvary, has not been extinguished with finality. This eradication will happen in heaven fully, but presently we must reckon it dead by faith. Consequently, till we die, the judged old nature with ego, daily tries to re-create itself in the realm of our experience in spite of our inexperience.

Its very possible we don’t have this daily-cross thing down-pat yet. If we don’t, God perseveres in whittling, extinguishing our Old-Excuse-Nature in a process of time. Psalm 130 is very helpful here because it says “if the Lord should mark iniquities, who should stand?” Then it goes on to say “but there is forgiveness with thee that He may be trusted.”

So, experience has trained us, when we do wrong, it’s best to just say to God; “I have sinned, forgive me.” Why? — in Psalm 19 the writer prays “cleanse thou me from secret faults.” See, because of the gap between God and man, we may never understand exactly what just happened that last moment in our life. And we should not try too hard to do so. Simply, trust the leading of the Holy Spirit and confess it as part of our “falling short” of God’s glory.

See, we must embrace a forgiving attitude toward ourselves in order to move through life with God’s hand holding us. We must trust God’s healing and delivering process and leave self-defense behind.
The most important thing is to keep walking close to Him and just keep going forward. God forgives us for our sins, shortcomings, lack of knowledge. We must not let failure hang us up.

The unfortunate truth is that we miss the mark in “applying” truth. Forgiveness delivers us from the consciousness of sin, period. We simply leave something behind one more time; and this time it is our besetting sin. Sin and failure consciousness oppose God’s perfected solution for a healed and delivered life.

That solution requires, first; forgetting what is past. To go on, I put the past behind me. Next, I must have a current vision future-ward in terms of God’s promises. In opposition, sin makes me look within; to introspect, and a person can’t look there and at God’s promises at the same time. Sin also resurrects guilt, and guilt destroys forward vision. Third, sin unforgiven, will not let me look God in the eye for shame, and thus hinders the moment-by-moment fellowship with our Friend and God.

God has a sovereign plan that forgives this way: First, God forgets in Isaiah 43:25. Next, He promises you a future in Jeremiah 29:11. Lastly, Jesus will never leave your side so as to assure that forgiveness goes into effect, in Hebrews 13:5 and 1 John 2:1. Forgiveness never contradicts the heart of God. As we are agreeing with God about our sin, we simply take forgiveness into our heart.

I counseled a girl once on God’s forgiveness without much release, and then she suddenly proclaimed to me; “now I must forgive myself”. Aha! God put all her sin on Jesus. While not winking at her sin, He lets freeing forgiveness flow from His innate Holiness. She followed through, and just “applied” it to herself. She was released. Love Ya