Forgiveness, Grace and SYSTEMS
Have you ever missed a deadline? I thought I did for this article. As a recovering perfectionist, that thought gave me two invitations: – one to embarrassment (“I did wrong”) and the other to shame (“I am wrong.”). Let’s explore two questions: First, what do most people do when they have made a commitment and think they have blown it? Second, how does God’s word tell us to handle that situation?
On the first question, one popular approach is to ignore it. Then, if someone points it out, deny it and be defensive and aggressive. “Oh, I never said that. You must have misunderstood. Are you accusing me of lying? I’m offended! You really need to be more careful before you accuse!”
Another approach is to hastily throw something together and make an excuse. One version, which was more popular when we relied more on postal mail, is to say “I mailed that last week. The Postal Service is so slow. If you itemize the cost of a postage stamp, it’s 23 cents for transportation and 50 cents for storage!” The modern version is more like “I’m sure I sent it, but now I can’t find it in my sent folder. Oh, there it is in my DRAFTS folder! I’m so sorry!”
Moving to our second question, what is a God-honoring way to deal with those invitations?
A. Reject invitations to shame.
Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.” As we have heard before, “when we see the word ‘therefore,’ we need to find out what it is ‘there for’. The preceding chapter, Romans 7, speaks of wanting to do good, but finding ourselves doing evil. The author concludes with this summary, in verses 24 and 25 “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin”. If God accepted the reality of the struggle with sin in the life of the Apostle Paul, (who wrote so much of the New Testament), we can take comfort in the fact that He accepts us, even with our struggles.
B. Learn from invitations to embarrassment
I confessed to the GraceNotes coordinator that I thought I was late, and found to my relief that I had not missed the deadline after all. The potential embarrassment spurred me to want be more systematic in fulfilling my commitments. One of my coaches, James Malinchak, says that “SYSTEMS” is an acronym, which stands for Save Your Self Time, Energy, Money, and Stress. I want to have SYSTEMS in many areas of my life to be effective in the work to which God has called me. That is a work in progress!
Finishing this article was like firefighting. Developing SYSTEMS is like fire prevention. “It’s better to solve a problem once and for all than to solve it once.” Here are a couple of “fire prevention” tips to consider.
Sometimes we are too hasty to make commitments. We know that a requested assignment will not help us achieve God’s best purposes for us, but we want to please the person who asked us. We proceed, make the commitment, and regret it. “Stress is when your brain says, ‘no way” and you suddenly hear your mouth say, ‘sure no problem’!”
How can you decide whether or not to accept an invitation? Adapting another nugget from James Malinchak, when presented an opportunity, evaluate whether that opportunity will Contribute to reaching God’s goal for you or Contaminate reaching that goal. Figure out which C it is, and you can quickly decide whether to accept the opportunity or politely decline it. Keep your primary audience in mind. Galatians 1:10-11 reminds us: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
In summary, what lessons can you learn from my mistake?
- Don’t panic, rather, re-check your information and assumptions.
- Recognize that we all fall short of God’s perfection and God loves us anyway.
- “When you mess up, ‘fess up”. Proverbs 8:13 says “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” 1 John 1:9 gives us this assurance “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
- Accept God’s forgiveness, ask forgiveness of those you have wronged, and put in place a SYSTEM to do better next time.A final word of encouragement comes from Romans 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.”