I was walking this morning and listening to a study by Beth Moore. I won’t even begin to try and paraphrase, I’m just going to tell you exactly what she said. They are all her words so don’t think I came up with any of it! It is so good that I thought it worth passing along. I have so far to go in my walk with the Lord but I am so thankful for the baby steps He is orchestrating in my life. I am one stubborn chick but by the grace of God I’m still in this race! Many may look at the year we have had and think “poor Stacey, I can’t imagine going through what she has gone through. I would not have stayed with Greg, I would kill my husband if he ever did that.” Can I be so bold as to say, PLEASE ask God to change your heart and beg for His mercy and grace to flow through you when you are faced with ANY wrong done to you! God has allowed me to forgive Greg and love him more than I ever imagined possible. BUT the battle is not over. Satan still wants to trip me up and daily I have to take thoughts captive. As all of you, I too have been hurt in many ways by other people, not just Greg. You might think, “if she can forgive that, she can get over anything.” Oh, you would be so wrong. Well, by God’s grace, yes I can, but it’s not that simple. Sometimes the “smaller” offenses as we consider them, are the hardest to let go of. My sweet Katie just asked me the other day (after being hurt by a friend), “isn’t it easier to forgive when someone says sorry and asks you to forgive them?” I said, “of course, but that’s conditional forgiveness and it’s not what God asks of us.” We all need grace. We’re the ones who “rate” sin from the little ones to the really big ones. Consequences of course are greater with some sins, but we need to stop going only so far with our forgiveness and then saying, “no, that’s too big…can’t get past that one.” I’m not even talking about sexual sin as I’ve faced. I’m saying it could be something another person said to you that you just won’t let go. Tal Prince says withholding forgiveness is the same as taking a drink of poison and expecting the other person to die. YOU will be the one to suffer. If we don’t see sin the way God does, we won’t be able to move forward. We will stay in the dark pit. ALL of our sin had to be paid for and Jesus paid the price! Accept His forgiveness (which we don’t deserve) and then lavish it on others!! The freedom is unimaginable!! Ok, that was all me, the rest is Beth Moore. I hope you find it challenging and encouraging!

“Oh my God, it occurs to me afresh today that there is only one thing worse than what I have been in my life: what I would have been without it. I cannot comprehend your ways but I am so thankful that my life demanded the unreasonable from You so that I could learn the essence of grace. I would have missed it if I could have Lord. I wanted to be good, even perfect, so righteous so badly. Instead I have come face to face with an undeniable fact: I am a ragamuffin. Oh how I hate my sins against You Lord. How I despise them but how You use them to set me free from my own self, my own gospel. Thank you for dining with sinners my Lord. Thank you for dining with me.”

The following is also from Beth Moore. I was listening and typing so it may not be word for word but it’s all hers!

Eph. 4:32 says forgive others as you have been forgiven…God is saying “grace them”; they don’t deserve it, neither did you deserve My forgiveness. To the degree that we allow the grace of God to be spread abroad in our soul’s spirit, our heart and our mind, to that degree we will be able to grace others. The reason why we have such a difficult time gracing others is because if we’ll look at it, we are probably a people of the law. If we have trouble forgiving, it’s because we have a stronghold very often (I won’t be dogmatic enough to say every time) of legalism in us somewhere.” We all wish we could forget things that have been done to us and things we have done. God has a sea of forgetfulness, we don’t so what do we do with it? We have to re frame it. We have to allow God to take that horrible experience and baptize it in the river of mercy and do what 2 Peter 3:18 says and grow in grace. There are a whole lot of people in the body of Christ growing in a whole lot of ways, but they aren’t growing in grace. As we continue as the body of Christ, in the generations until the return of Christ, surrounded by increasing depravity, surrounded by increasing deception, what I would like to suggest to you is, we’re gonna need a lot of grace.” Beth Moore

Greg encouraged me very recently, we may stumble and limp along but as long as we’re moving forward in His ways, be encouraged and keep moving!

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