Back in October at the re:write conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Ted Dekker. An insanely imaginative creative and gifted storyteller, Ted has dominated the world of fiction with more than 20 novels. He’s a New York Times Best Seller’s List author extraordinaire. In fact, Ted has so much imagination coursing through his veins that even when you don’t try, pictures taken with him end up all intagrammy filtered.
Ted Dekker’s Water Walker of The Outlaw Chronicles Episode 1 is currently available for FREE Download. If you’re a fiction reader, you’re not going to want to miss this opportunity for a great read.
The book focuses on forgiveness. A word that’s easily in our vernacular but so difficult to express in words, forgiveness has marked my life and story over and over again. In particular, our journey of paying off $127K+ in debt required forgiveness. It did not require debt forgiveness in the financial sense, but it did require that both Brian and I take a hard long look at the way we had used our resources unwisely and ask God to forgive us. Not only had we missed out on the blessings we could have had but we had missed out on the abundant life God promises when we follow His plan for our lives.
I’m not sure why it’s so difficult (and has always been so difficult no matter the circumstance) to admit that I’m wrong. Maybe you’re not like me at all, but I like to be right. I like to have all of the answers. I like to bend circumstances to the point that I have the upper hand. I like to have the high ground. Even when I know I’m wrong, I add all sorts of extras to the equations. Usually those extras come in the form of “well buts . . .”
Well but, he said he was going to . . . so I just . . . instead.
I might have . . . well but she . . . and I had no choice.
I would have done it like I said, well but . . .
Not only do “well buts” mess with our minds (we actually believe the junk we tell ourselves over and over again) but they also begin to meddle with our soul. Somehow, we begin to get this crazy notion that we don’t necessitate forgiveness because we haven’t done anything wrong.
Let’s just have a little heart-to-heart moment, shall we? We all do some crazy junk, friends. We all say the wrong thing, respond the wrong way, keep the wrong company, do the wrong thing, choose the wrong thing, turn to the wrong thing. It’s just straight up wrong to say we’re never wrong. You know it, I know it, the people who live and dwell the closest to us on a regular basis certainly know it.
Forgiveness is so good for our souls. It’s a fresh breath and a new start and a moment of realizing you don’t have to hold the world together because let’s face it – you can’t. No matter how many times my stubborn heart refuses to believe that I don’t need forgiveness or my “well buts” flare up, each time I return to God and ask Him to forgive me, He simply accepts me as I am. The ridiculous pressure that I place on myself – to be right, to do right, to keep everyone else doing right – all fades away. I’m awash in simply being myself, without the lofty and unattainable constraints I willing place upon my soul (why do I do that?!). I scratch my head and wonder what took me so long to learn the same lesson again.
Just out of curiosity, how do you go about the whole forgiveness thing? Am I the only one who struggles with this premise of life and faith?
Check out The Outlaw Chronicles. See what it has to say about forgiveness. Best of all, enjoy an excellent free read.
Gain inspiration to pay off debt! Check out Inspiration to Pay Off Debt: 30 Days of Encouragement from the Queen of Free
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