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Let your light shine

Darkness Pierced

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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. – Romans 8:15

For a young man by the name of Andy Nieman, the darkness in life had become complete. “I lived in a place of total darkness,” he later said. Given his life history up to that point, perhaps you and I would have felt the same way.

He grew up in a violent home with alcoholic parents. His earliest memory was that of waking up in a cold house during the winter. He was alone. He remembers screaming in panic because no one was there.

At age ten he was placed in a boarding school. For the next three years he endured abuse. By the time he left, he said, shame covered him “like a cloak.”

In the years that followed, Andy staggered through a haze of alcohol and drugs. He ended up on the streets of Vancouver. The sheer misery and loneliness of his life had now reached a point where he just wanted it to stop. On what he described as “one of the loneliest days of [his] life,” Andy purchased enough cocaine to give himself a fatal overdose.

Before he acted on it, however, something happened. Somewhere along the line, someone had told him about Jesus. And so in that moment, on that day, in the total darkness of his life, Andy simply prayed, “Help me, Jesus.” And Jesus did. An old friend of Andy’s came and carried him through that terrible day. Soon after, the message of God’s Word refreshed Andy in what Jesus Christ had done at the cross to embrace him and forgive him and wash him clean. And the darkness went away.

Today Andy Nieman serves as a Christian pastor, reaching out to those who are still in that “place of total darkness.” To pierce that darkness he has the light of Jesus Christ—the same light that can pierce your darkness too.

Does forgiveness mean there are no consequences?

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First of all, I think we need to have a definition of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is when you give up your right to punish someone for what they have done to you.  You cancel the debt that they have with you. Forgiveness does not mean that what the person did to you is okay, nor does it mean you excuse them for their actions.  You are simply filing a quit claim on the law suit and turning them over to God.  Our motivation to forgive comes from a God who has forgiven us again and again for the wrongs we have done toward him.   His Son, Jesus, paid our debt on the cross.

However, just because you forgive somebody, or somebody forgives you, does not mean that there won’t be any consequences.  Back when the world was first created by God, and our first parents disobeyed God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there were consequences for their actions. For all of us, one of those consequences was death.  We would no longer live forever on this earth.  In addition, the ground was cursed.  That meant that weeds, thorns, and thistles would infest the ground, and that there would be natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.  Even though God gave a promise that His Son would one day come and die on the cross and provide us with forgiveness of our sins, those hurtful consequences would remain.

So today, if you were abused as a child by your father, you will strive to forgive him for what he has done to you.  However, you probably will never be able to live with your father or care to live with him again.  Family members may spurn him.  Another example may take place in marriage where one partner is unfaithful to another.  The wronged spouse will strive to forgive the adulterer.  But there will be lingering consequences, such as a lack of trust and respect for the unfaithful spouse.  In addition, a divorce may be part of the equation.

For every sin we commit, there is a consequence.  Fortunately, we have a gracious God who does not set a number on the times he will forgive us. Instead he offers us free and full forgiveness for every wrong we commit.  May we have that same spirit toward those who hurt us again and again. St. Paul sums up this truth succinctly when he says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).