I’m Forgiven

Today part of my family went to a neighborhood church that held VBS this past week. The Sunday service is given over to the VBS crew and all the kids sing, recite and basically show off to their parents…it’s great fun. As I watched Becky (8) and Isaac (10), my two youngest, strut their stuff up front I couldn’t help but reminisce. There were so many triggers to jog my memory, the biggest was sitting next to me…I call her mom.

Jesse Temple is not my real mom but in almost every sense of the word, she is mom to me. Mom Temple is part of the reason I follow Christ today, some 40 plus years later after meeting her family. Her son Alan and I have been close friends since we were seven…that’s a long time (I’m 54). He was sitting with his family in the same pew as us, next to his Mom with his wife and two daughters…it was quite a picture. You see, those forty some odd years ago, I accepted Christ at a Kid’s Crusade (much like a VBS) after Alan invited me to come with his family.

During the service, Mom Temple leaned over to me at one point and whispered…

“Seeing all those kids up there gives me hope.”

She’s right of course but I realized something else and I thought…

My kids are up there because I’m forgiven…because I’m His.

The hope that Mom sees and the heritage I see are the result of forgiveness…mine.

I desperately needed (still do) a Savior, someone to rescue me…and my future. When I think of the near death experiences and the attempts to derail my life, I shudder inside. Forgiveness has enabled me to live the life God has intended for me, it’s so much more than being “saved” it’s a calling to become. I can become the husband, the father, the brother, the son and the man I was designed to be…because I’m forgiven.

Thank you Father, knowing I’m forgiven…sets me free to become.

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
Philippians 1:6 (NLT)

I'm forgiven. And I don't have to carry. The weight of who I've been. Cause I'm forgiven!

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