WHEN YOU HAVE A RECORD

"When you have a record" commonly refers to someone who has committed a crime and been incarcerated for it.  Once this crime is on your record, it can follow you for life, affecting your ability to get a job.  After you do your time, the government may forgive you but it never forgets.  Once you have a record, you ALWAYS have a record.  It takes a hero of a person to overcome that kind of mistake. I personally know a hero like that.  He doesn't give up. Keeps trying. He is the bravest soul I know.  

Fortunately for the human race, GOD is not like the government.  Sure, He requires payment for our mistakes but for some divine reason, He has come up with a system where we make the mistakes and, if we ask, He will allow His Only Son to pay for them. Well, more than pay for particular sins, but pay for our state of being sinners.  We sin because we are sinners and not the other way around. This is a kind of love that we cannot, in our human reasoning, even begin to UNDERSTAND.

Furthermore, He promises that once He forgives our sin, HE FORGETS OUR SIN.

WHAT?????  YUP.

The only thing God requires from those of us who have received this gift of LOVE is that we give it back to those around us.  For some unknown reason, many Christians I know don't seem to want to believe that God is serious about this whole LOVE thing.  We kinda brush Him off.. sort of like, "Well, yes, I've read about love.. but I think He really wants me to devote myself to helping to build the gym my church is trying to add on to our building and to sing in the choir." 

The Holy Spirit has tried to describe this kind of love all through The Bible.  God doesn't just hint at it.  Jesus didn't suggest it. He calls LOVE the NEW COMMANDMENT.   1 Corinthians 13 describes LOVE the way GOD DESCRIBES it.   

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."

Nice.  Part of the way we can evaluate whether or not God's love is controlling us is whether or not we keep a record of someone else's wrongs against us.    

Remember this...LOVE IS A BIG DEAL TO GOD.

And if GOD is BIG enough to FORGET your sins against HIM...What KIND OF PRIDE DOES IT TAKE TO THINK YOU CAN KEEP A RECORD OF SOMEONE ELSE'S SINS AGAINST YOU????? (big questions require multiple question marks)

WHEN YOU HAVE A RECORD... OF SOMEONE ELSE'S WRONGS AGAINST YOU... you do not have the kind of love that God is desiring to plant in your inner being through the Holy Spirit.   IF.. when that person's name is mentioned.. you IMMEDIATELY remember a long list of offenses against you.. you cannot love that person.  Why? Love keeps no record of being wronged.  

When that happens to me, when someone's name is mentioned and the first thing I remember is how that someone else has hurt me... 

I consider it like a text message from the Holy Spirit,"See that record you are keeping?  It isn't love.  Give it to Me."  I do.  I try.  Sometimes I have to try and try and try again, but I never think it is OK with God that I have that record. Why? Because it isn't o.k. with God.

I "HAVE A RECORD" against God. Yes. I do.  I have sinned against Him and others.  
In His mercy He chooses to forgive AND forget my record against Him... 
I have learned that..

WHEN I HAVE A RECORD of SOMEONE ELSE'S sin against me
I DO NOT HAVE LOVE.

If I don't have love.. I am nothing. 

And....so are you.

"If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."1 Corinthians 13:2