What I Owed Bob was Forgiveness

31 January 2010

Dear Phyllis,

This morning I was speaking at a Thai church near here. That is an unusual privilege and a church that has a lot of life. This is my third time speaking there.

 The Lord laid on my heart to take an unusual approach to the story about the fellow who had a friend coming to him at midnight and he had to go out to get three loves of bread (Lk. 11:5-8). The Lord gave me this message several years ago through an extremely painful experience, but through that experience He taught me a basic lesson in life.

The passage starts out with the wonderful experience of a disciple who was listening to Jesus having His devotions, and asked Jesus to teach him how to pray. That response was a life-transforming teaching for me, but it didn’t have time to delve into that this morning.

 In response to that request – how to pray – Jesus repeated what He had previously taught them a year and a half previously in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:9-13). In that instruction, which we call the Lord’s Prayer, there are seven points. Of the seven points, the Lord only singled out one to give further emphasis of the essential need we have in dealing with forgiveness. Jesus told us, when we pray we should ask the Father to deal with us just like we deal with our fellow men. “Forgive us of our sins just like we forgive those who sin against us” (Mt. 6:12). I sure don’t like that. But Jesus warned if we don’t forgive we won’t be forgiven (Mt. 6:14, 15).

In the passage in Luke, where Jesus is teaching how to pray, the Lord uses the parable of the fellow who had a friend show up at midnight with a need of something to eat; and the poor guy didn’t have any bread in his house. The obvious teaching here is that there is a close relationship between our relationship with our fellow men and our relationship with God. It is impossible to be rightly related to God when things are out of place on the horizontal level. In the Ten Commandments, the first four deal with our vertical relationship with God. But the next six deals with our horizontal relationship with other people. In His teaching on prayer, just as Jesus singled out the point of forgiveness in Mathew 6:15, here again after repeating the same prayer, Jesus tells a story about a relationship of a man and his friend.

The Lord taught me this lesson through an extremely painful experience. Several years ago I was at a crossroad in life and had to make an important decision. I asked another man his opinion, and my decision would be dependent upon his yes or no answer. But rather than giving me a yes or no answer, he misjudged me and wrote the most insulting character assessment of me. That hurt me more deeply than any wound I have ever had from any man in my life. For six months I felt like I had gone through the new-birth in reverse. I felt like something had died inside me.

 A year later he was coming to Japan for the dedication of a new printing press at New Life League. To say I had a problem with him is a gross understatement. I couldn’t imagine looking at his face, much less talking to him. Rather than attending the celebration of the new printing press, I decided I needed a vacation. I went up to stay in the NLL cabin in Karuizawa. While up there the Lord spoke to me about this story of the guy who came to his friend on his journey at midnight. The Lord told me that I owed Bob three loaves of bread. And there are three loaves of bread that we all owe to every one in our circle of associates.

The Lord told me that the first loaf of bread that I owed Bob was forgiveness. This is something that it is safe to say you owe every single friend. It is impossible to have much of a relationship with anyone before sooner or later there will be problems. It is from our friends that we receive the deepest wounds. Enemies can’t hurt us. Enemies can insult us and persecute us, but that is nothing compared to the wounds that come from friends. It is impossible for husbands and wives to live together unless they daily keep short accounts of forgiving each other. We must keep our heart right before God by staying clean and forgiving all our friends regardless of how serious the offence is. The first loaf of bread that we owe them is forgiveness.

The second loaf of bread that we owe them is love. The Christian life is very simple. The Lord only requires that we do two things – love God and love out neighbor. That’s all! Everything in the Ten Commandments and all the law of heaven is fulfilled in just doing those two things. But that ain’t easy. 

 Friend of mine was going to a liberal church before he was saved and heard a message on how he was to love his neighbor. There was a guy in his office that he despised. Tom was convicted about his bad attitude and decided to love the other guy. Monday morning he went to work and vowed to love the poor fellow with all his heart. And he did – for fifteen minutes. Then he had to go to the water cooler to cool off because he wanted to kill the dirty bum.

The problem with forgiving others and loving our neighbor is that they show up at our house at the most incontinent time and we simply don’t have a thing in our house to give them. Try like I might, I flat couldn’t forgive Bob; and Tom didn’t have it in his heart to love the guy at the office. We have a responsibility to meet the needs of others, but we don’t have it in our house to give them. That is why we have to go to the bread store at midnight to get something to give to our friend.

The third loaf of bread that we owe our friend is to have confidence in them. Or to trust God to work in them. The greatest thing we can do to help others is to express confidence in them.

 In 1956, the Lord led Dave Wilkerson to work among the street gangs in New York. There were horrible gang wars going on, and Dave rented a hall to have an evangelistic meeting for the warring gang members. The police expected a major riot. Wilkerson preached the Gospel and then said they were going to take up an offering. Shockingly, he asked the leaders of the two gangs to be the ushers to take up the offering. Everyone thought that was an enormous joke. The two gang leaders were delighted to take up a large offering at knife point. When they got their baskets full of money they went backstage and one leader said to the other, “Okay, we got the loot. Let’s take off.” Nicky Cruz was the leader of the feared Maw Maw gang. They were as violent animals as there were anyplace. Nicky said to the other guy, “This is the first time in my life that anyone has ever trusted me. I am not going to let him down.” Nicky Cruz was saved that night; not because of the Gospel that Dave Wilkerson preached but because of the trust he placed in him in asking him to take the offering.

Twenty years ago I was at an extremely low point in life. I was right on the ragged edge of a major nervous breakdown. I was acting very strangely. My friends would have been right if they had put me in a mental hospital. I was working at that time on a large construction job in Karuizawa. The job foreman saw the bazaar way I was acting and called to the office asking that they send up a new carpenter. “Cook san is sick.”  I was working with Robbie Edmonds at the time, and he got mad. He roared, “We don’t need a different carpenter. Bill is just fine.” Of all the people in my life, at that strenuous time, Robbie was the greatest help. He refused to accept that I was sick and placed confidence in me that I was okay. That saved me.

Any message you hear on this parable, the main point is that the man got his bread because of his “importunity” (Lk. 11:8). In another place Jesus was teaching “that men ought always pray and not faint” (Lk. 18:1). Here He was talking about a widow who had a weak position, but won a court case by wearing down a bad judge. The parable in Luke 11 and the one in chapter 18 are basically teaching the same lesson. It is bewildering that Jesus should teach that praying to God is like that. Is that the way God is? Is that the way the system works? Why is it that Jesus said that prayer is like that? The reason is not because of God, but because of the problem with our heart.

When I pleaded with the Lord to give me a loaf of bread of forgiveness to give to Bob, it was terrible. It has taken years. I hope no one else is wired together like I am, but it has taken many years. But thank God I finally got the bread I needed to forgive Bob and love him. God has worked in my heart. Today my heart is clean. These three loaves of forgiveness, love, and to trust God to work in the other persons heart to make them good; are three things we owe to everyone in our relationships. But those are things that we don’t have unless God gives them to us. We must plead with the Lord to give us something we don’t have by nature. But the bottom line is Lk. 11:13 – the Holy Spirit. It is when God so fills us with the Spirit of Christ, then the things which we need so desperately are made real in our heart.

 What an answer to the request asking Jesus to teach us how to pray! In 13 verses of Luke 11 the Lord covered an enormous amount of ground in teaching the basics of the Christian life.

Well here I am in the sand box with my little shovel and bucket trying to learn some of the basics of life. Please shake the sand out of your shoes as you leave.

 See you next week;                   bill