Charity 4
This morning God reminded me of a short presentation that I gave at a church weekend many years ago.
At that time, I used half a liter of water and a drop of ink to illustrate the effects of sin in our lives and how much pure, clear water is necessary to remove the contamination.
Connected to God, His pure, clear, living water flows through us and impacts the environment in which we move. But as citizens of heaven who no longer belong to this world but still live in it, we ALL remain sinful people. And the sins we commit contaminate this living, clear water again and again. We can't prevent these contaminations because that's just who we are. Each of us has our skeletons in the closet.
So we must enter into a permanent process of forgiveness.
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive…”
First we ask God for forgiveness and only then is it our turn. This order is elementary. Because without God's forgiveness we are unable to express genuine and clear forgiveness ourselves. But sometimes a whole barrel of hazardous waste ends up in the riverbed of our lives. Then it is necessary to hide it together with God and bring it to light. Because otherwise it poisons our flow of life. This process of forgiveness, on the one hand, ensures that the defilements disappear and, on the other hand, makes us sensitive to new sins.
Charity as God intended it is only possible if we constantly purify the water of life.
And since we sin again and again, the process of forgiveness should be our constant companion. Now one or the other may think that this cannot be meant, but we are stuck in our respective life systems. Often we are not even aware that we are sinning because we have been living with these systems for a long time. Stinginess, waste, badmouthing, dissatisfaction, sexual immorality, envy, unkindness, etc. I could extend this list endlessly. And NONE of us are exempt.
So you can see how important it is that we keep our water as clean as possible.
I wish this process of permanent forgiveness for ALL of us.
Be blessed!
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