Friday Notes: Forgiveness & the Future

"For I know the plans I have for you,

declares the Lord,

plans to prosper you to give you a hope and a future." 

~ Jeremiah 29:11 ~

Note: It's been quite some time since I posted, some 4 months. I often have the desire to sit down, to write something that's been ruminating in my mind, but I don't for fear that it would just be one more distraction from my work on a PhD.  I haven't been satisfied with that approach though, so I've decided that the thing to do is to take one day a week to sit down and, during the time I would usually spend studying the Bible, share something I'm learning or thinking about, that I feel like God's teaching me.  So, I'm beginning a new series entitled, "Friday Notes". May they be encouraging, challenging and a blessing in your own journey of faith.

Source: http://www.visitfortaleza.com/

Eight Years Ago: Fortaleza, Brazil

The prophet Jeremiah's words in chapter 29, often quoted and all too frequently taken out of context, were for the Israelites during the 70 years in exile.  This was God's call for them to trust Him even through those dark and hopeless days in a place they didn't want to be.  I would think they felt forsaken and betrayed by God, given up to their enemy, and facing their darkest days in exile.  For me, some of my darkest days came eight years ago during a mission trip to Brazil.  I was part of a leadership team mentoring younger, college-aged leaders who were guiding and discipling a group of 60+ missionary kids from around the world.  

Over the course of that summer, I felt compelled to approach my leaders about some decisions they had been and were making that were affecting myself and my other teammates.  Eight years later, I believe my heart was in the right place, desiring good from the conversations and wanting to see healing in our team.  I held on to the passages throughout Scripture that speak to the Holy Spirit's role in uniting our hearts as believers and leading us into unity. I prayed and hoped for the fruition of those promises.

Then, one night, they confronted me, using Matthew 18 (the passage on confronting a brother or sister in sin), with two other leaders from our team.  I heard that I was the "disease killing our team" and the "splinter tearing it apart".  Those harsh words and the deep feelings of my heart being misunderstood were hard to handle. I left the meeting and took the elevator to the roof of the high-rise hotel we were staying in.  I remember climbing up to the highest part of the building, a smaller roof above the larger one and curling up under a panel of some sort. I remember crying in ways I never had before, asking the Spirit why he had let me down - why disunity had been the outcome rather than the unity I had honestly hoped and prayed for.

My heart broken and disappointed, I walked away from my relationship with the Lord, not feeling like I could trust His Word. The next 6 months were the spiritually driest months of my life.  But in the midst of the desert, I came to realize the way our brokenness - even as believers who are redeemed, made new and being transformed - permeates even our best intentions.  How my brokenness, the hurt I brought into my meetings with my leaders and the ways I failed in communicating, without love over all, contributed, whether I was aware of it or not, to the disunity in our team that summer.  And even the brokenness in my leaders, as they tried to navigate what I was sharing, that lead to the ways in which they responded.  We are broken and sinful - even though we are clothed in Christ - and I realized that our sinful habits work, at times, against the Holy Spirit's desire for unity. Our hurt, our self-protection, our selfishness, our pride, our self-righteousness are all sins that get in the way of the Spirit working.

Source: http://www.kenya-advisor.com/nairobi-life.html

Eight Years Later: Nairobi, Kenya

This month at our church here in Nairobi, Simon Mbevi has been doing a series looking at gratitude, humility, forgiveness and love.  Last week, he spoke on the "Revenge of Forgiveness". An ode to an odd use of "revenge" by Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, Mbevi's sermon on the importance of forgiveness brought to mind that summer eight years ago.  And what struck me is that, had those hard events never taken place, my life would look so different now.  Before the events of that summer, my focus was on international missions and the hopes of working with the ministry, which I had been blessed to work with for 6 years, for the foreseeable future. In fact, I had taken a year out of college to work with them to see if that was, in fact, the direction God wanted me to go.  Out of the brokenness of that summer, came a life I never could have imagined!

I changed my college major and life focus after that summer. Instead of majoring in Cross Cultural Studies and Spanish, I majored in History and Biblical & Theological Studies.  I then went on to do a Masters in Modern History at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Had that not happened, I never would have met the Gilmore's, Meghan, Dale, Melissa, Dave, Jude, Derick and the Fisherwick Presbyterian family.  More importantly, I never would have met Lauren - my future wife - on that St. Patrick's Day, 2009, in Dublin, Ireland. As a result of a great day together, we were married 14 months later.  We've just celebrated our first 2 years together and are looking forward to welcoming our first child, a baby girl, into this world in 2 months time.  Had it not been for my Masters at Queen's, I never would have been in touch with Prof. Dave Anderson at Oxford who invited me to come do a PhD under his supervision: an opportunity I had only ever dreamed of, but never given serious thought to. Had God not opened the doors to Oxford, we never would have met our friends and family in Oxford and at St Andrews Church and wouldn't be finishing up our year of research in Kenya that we've spent with wonderful people like the Mumley's, the Odell's, the Cone's, the Pelts, Miracle House, Gabriella, our Plugged-in Small group, the Nairobi Chapel family and more.  Had it not been for the brokenness, the heartache and the time of wandering through the desert in the summer of 2004, my life would look so different now.  God did answer my prayers for that year.  Through the hurt, the pain and the disappointment He has and continues to guide me into His plans for my life - plans that are far greater and so much more then I would ever imagine on my own.

So Much to Learn...

I have learned and continue to learn so much from the events of 2004.  Looking back, I believe my choice to speak up for my teammates and myself, when we were hurting, was the right thing to do and I know it took courageous. Things didn't go as I had hoped and for my part in letting my brokenness and sinful nature derail that "train", I continue to be grieved and saddened. I learned, the hard way, that right motives don't always lead to right actions, which in turn don't bring the right outcomes. Sin gets in the way. It has broken the way things are and were meant to work in this world.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from that summer is that truly, God knows His plans for us - He knew them for me - and those plans have been for me to prosper in the callings and giftings He has given me (to learn, to teach, to serve), to renew my hope and trust in Him and to give me a future, the future He desires for me.  Truly, He is a good God, trustworthy and great.  Worthy of all our, and my, devotion and obedience.  In our exile, in our deserts, in our wastelands, and in our heartaches, Jeremiah's prophecy is a call to trust God - even if it takes 70 years as it did for the Israelites - that in the midst of and coming out of that time, our Heavenly Father, who loves us so much, has a plan for us: to prosper us, to give us a hope and to give us a future. Sometimes we can't see it until 8 years later, but in the midst of those difficult times, let's hold on to Him!