[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Saturday, January 19, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all out there.  For us in North America, it's evening time and time to prepare our hearts for the Lord's Day, whereas you in Australia and New Zealand have already had your corporate weekly fellowship time with the Lord and with your fellow congregants at your respective local houses of worship.  I hope and pray that you received a good word from the Lord as imparted to you by your pastors and/or Sunday school teachers and, more importantly, that you applied what you heard and learned to your individual lives as the gracious Holy Spirit enabled.  I pray the same for those who have yet to attend their local houses of worship in other parts of the world.

The article for today is taken from a collection called "More Stories For The Heart," with this particular story by an unnamed author entitled "A Vision Of Forgiveness," rendered as follows:

Have you ever felt the need for forgiveness, or perhaps the need to forgive?

I meet so many people who are paralyzed in their present circumstances because they're chained to something in their past.  They are either unable to forgive or to accept the fact that they are truly forgiven.

I once heard a legent of a priest in a small midwestern parish who, as a young man, had committed what he felt was a terrible sin.  Although he had asked God's forgiveness, all his life he carried around the burden of this sin.  He just could not be sure God had really forgiven him.

One day he was told of an elderly woman in his congregation who sometimes had visions.  During these visions, he had heard, she would often have conversations with the Lord.  After a while the priest finally got up enough courage to visit this woman.

She invited him in and offered him a cup of tea.  Toward the end of his visit, he set his cup down on the table and looked into the woman's eyes.

"Is it true that sometimes you have visions"? he asked her.

"Yes," she replied.

"Is it also true that, during these visions, you often speak with the Lord"?

"Yes," she said again.

"Well, the next time you have a vision and speak with the Lord, would you ask Him a question for me?"

The woman looked at the priest a little curiously.  She had never been asked this before.  "Yes, I would be happy to," she answered.  "What do you want me to ask Him?"

"Well," the priest began, "would you please ask Him what sin it was that your priest committed as a young man?"

The woman, quite curious now, readily agreed.

A few weeks passed, and the priest again went to visit this woman.  After another cup of tea, he cautiously, timidly asked, "Have you had any visions lately?"

Why, yes, I have," replied the woman.

"Did you speak with the Lord?"

"Yes."

"Did you ask Him what sin I committed as a young man?"

"Yes," the woman replied.  "I did."

The priest, nervous and afraid, hesitated a moment and then asked, "Well, what did the Lord say?"

The woman looked up into the face of her priest and replied gently, "The Lord told me He could not remember."

God not only forgives our sins; He also chooses to forget them.  The Bible tells us He takes them and buries them in the deepest sea.  And then, as Corrie Ten Boom used to say, "He puts up a sign that says, No fishing allowed."

When I originally read this article over five years ago, it spoke powerfully to me, and it still does.  I hope and pray that it did for you also.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul B. Smith