trial and conviction
Good Saturday morning gang!
OK, maybe gang is exaggerating the readership of this here blog thingie. Maybe if I were any kind of consistent in posting, more would read. It's not that I don't try, it's that either nothing is going on or stuff happens that I can't really find proper words to describe.
Honest. I still enjoy writing. I just don't know what to write about.
Today, I have a subject though. It's about trials and conviction. Those are two words typically associated with criminal cases. To Christians, though, they have other meanings. Like trials in the things we face in our day-to-day lives. Conviction is that inner feeling from the Holy Spirit of God that what we are doing we shouldn't or we're not doing something we should be doing. For me that conviction has been about making a past wrong right.
But how do you do that? Especially when it was decades ago? Tough question. I don't know that I found a satisfactory answer for it but I do know that today someone from my past will venture forth to their mailbox and find a letter from yours truly to attempt to do just that. A letter sounds kind of cowardly for what should be done face to face but let's review my little foray into the past. It was a bad idea. Start to finish and it literally would change my life because of the events that would unfold around it. To say I was hesitant would be an understatement.
I did what I felt I was being convicted to do, though. For me personally, I was content to leave well enough alone; to let sleeping dogs lie. I even tried for months to bargain with God. Please, I'll do anything but that. Can't we just call this one forgiven and forgotten? OK, we can do that. I'm not that guy anymore and it's been forgiven.
And it is. I could have very well left well enough alone. And God was willing to leave me right where I was until I did something about it. I first started thinking about this thing a couple of months ago and that's when the denial and bargaining started. Then I heard a story on the radio about this subject on Thursday. I'd already agreed that OK, I'll do something about it because in an answer to a prayer about what was holding me back, this is what God showed me.
I've said it before: Just because our sins are forgiven does not mean that there will not be consequences for them. So I was able to muster up the courage to deal with this the best way I could. And in God's providence, I was quickly able to find some way to contact the fellow human being I needed to in an attempt to set things right. We both live in Ogden now. Who'd have thunk it?
I need to say this, too. I'm not one who thinks you need to hurt someone else to clear a guilty conscience. I was quite content to leave this one alone. When you measure time in decades instead of years, I didn't see any point in disturbing the status quo. However, for Kingdom reasons that I don't see, I needed to fix this. I think part of it is willing to admit to myself and others what I was. I think it's unfair to expect God to fix wrongs done to us if we're unwilling to do the same ourselves. I think a lot of things about this little experience. Trying to set it right was more than anything about being obedient to God.
Out of the things I could think of that I've done wrong, I wonder why this one was so important to straighten out. Maybe it was just the first one. I have a couple of others that I'd like to straighten out and I'm sure I will.
As I said, I mailed a letter. With my name on it and a return address. I told the person that I was willing to apologize in person but didn't want to show up unannounced on a doorstep after all these years and say, "Hi, remember me?"
I really don't understand things sometimes. But I know that it's important to do. If it wasn't I wouldn't have heard a similar story being told as part of a testimony on "Unshackled" last night. It's a radio program where people's testimonies are dramatized and broadcast on the radio.
Today, I found out, is singles' appreciation day. Should I see the irony that it was four years ago today that the former told me I was about to be single again?
OK, maybe gang is exaggerating the readership of this here blog thingie. Maybe if I were any kind of consistent in posting, more would read. It's not that I don't try, it's that either nothing is going on or stuff happens that I can't really find proper words to describe.
Honest. I still enjoy writing. I just don't know what to write about.
Today, I have a subject though. It's about trials and conviction. Those are two words typically associated with criminal cases. To Christians, though, they have other meanings. Like trials in the things we face in our day-to-day lives. Conviction is that inner feeling from the Holy Spirit of God that what we are doing we shouldn't or we're not doing something we should be doing. For me that conviction has been about making a past wrong right.
But how do you do that? Especially when it was decades ago? Tough question. I don't know that I found a satisfactory answer for it but I do know that today someone from my past will venture forth to their mailbox and find a letter from yours truly to attempt to do just that. A letter sounds kind of cowardly for what should be done face to face but let's review my little foray into the past. It was a bad idea. Start to finish and it literally would change my life because of the events that would unfold around it. To say I was hesitant would be an understatement.
I did what I felt I was being convicted to do, though. For me personally, I was content to leave well enough alone; to let sleeping dogs lie. I even tried for months to bargain with God. Please, I'll do anything but that. Can't we just call this one forgiven and forgotten? OK, we can do that. I'm not that guy anymore and it's been forgiven.
And it is. I could have very well left well enough alone. And God was willing to leave me right where I was until I did something about it. I first started thinking about this thing a couple of months ago and that's when the denial and bargaining started. Then I heard a story on the radio about this subject on Thursday. I'd already agreed that OK, I'll do something about it because in an answer to a prayer about what was holding me back, this is what God showed me.
I've said it before: Just because our sins are forgiven does not mean that there will not be consequences for them. So I was able to muster up the courage to deal with this the best way I could. And in God's providence, I was quickly able to find some way to contact the fellow human being I needed to in an attempt to set things right. We both live in Ogden now. Who'd have thunk it?
I need to say this, too. I'm not one who thinks you need to hurt someone else to clear a guilty conscience. I was quite content to leave this one alone. When you measure time in decades instead of years, I didn't see any point in disturbing the status quo. However, for Kingdom reasons that I don't see, I needed to fix this. I think part of it is willing to admit to myself and others what I was. I think it's unfair to expect God to fix wrongs done to us if we're unwilling to do the same ourselves. I think a lot of things about this little experience. Trying to set it right was more than anything about being obedient to God.
Out of the things I could think of that I've done wrong, I wonder why this one was so important to straighten out. Maybe it was just the first one. I have a couple of others that I'd like to straighten out and I'm sure I will.
As I said, I mailed a letter. With my name on it and a return address. I told the person that I was willing to apologize in person but didn't want to show up unannounced on a doorstep after all these years and say, "Hi, remember me?"
I really don't understand things sometimes. But I know that it's important to do. If it wasn't I wouldn't have heard a similar story being told as part of a testimony on "Unshackled" last night. It's a radio program where people's testimonies are dramatized and broadcast on the radio.
Today, I found out, is singles' appreciation day. Should I see the irony that it was four years ago today that the former told me I was about to be single again?
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