“Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace; for you will forget the shame of your youth and the disgrace of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, and the Lord of hosts is his name; the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.” Isaiah 54:4-5
How liberating those words are for those in need of forgiveness! Indeed, how liberating they are for us all, for lets face it, we are all in need of forgiveness aren’t we? We all need God’s grace. Obviously forgiveness was big on Jesus’ agenda because, in fact, he spoke more about forgiveness than any other topic. Just as we listened to the story this morning where Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, I want to tell you another story about a woman in today’s world who also was in dire need of God’s forgiveness.
As a young girl, this woman grew up in a family of five: a mum and dad and two brothers. They lived in a small country town in New Zealand. As both the mum and dad worked, after school both the boys had paper rounds and the young girl had the job of preparing the family meal. That all worked pretty well until one afternoon, alone on her own, the young girl opened the door to find a young man, known to the family, standing on the doorstep. He made some pretence about needing to meet with her older brother and explained that he would wait. However, once inside, and realising the young girl would be on her own for some considerable time, he seized his chance.
Rape is a terrible thing and leaves the victim believing that she has done something to encourage this to happen. Not only did she suffer unthinkable sexual abuse but was then threatened with very her life and that of her family if she dared breath a word to anyone! Why did she not ignore the threat and tell someone? Well at age twelve, a threat of this kind is extremely real! Eventually, sitting on such a terrible secret became too much and the young girl determined to steel herself and divulge what had happened. However, after dinner that evening, her father, reading the newspaper, made the statement that a woman had been raped walking through the museum grounds in Auckland. “Well” he declared, “a woman putting herself in that position is asking for it and is nothing but a whore and a slut.” Such was peoples’ understanding of such crimes in those days.
Well you can imagine that young girl’s horror. All the determination to divulge her situation went right out of the window! And so began the years of hiding this terrible secret. Rape, I am told, affects women in two ways, especially if they haven’t received counselling and support. They either become very wary of men, or they become promiscuous, searching for love in the wrong places. Sadly, in this situation, the latter was the case. Fathers, as I mentioned last week, you are so very important not only in the lives of your sons but especially in the lives of your daughters. The input you make into their lives and how you demonstrate your love, will help your daughters make wise decisions when it comes to choosing a life partner, because as women, we often choose partners who emulate our fathers, whether good, or bad.
Sadly, as this young girl became a woman, the terrible secret, though buried deep inside her, began to affect her life, and finally after two marriages hitting the wall, God intervened. Through discernment, God revealed this woman’s deepest darkest secret to her Christian doctor, who, took her a course of the healing of memories. Through this journey she was finally able to release the secret that had crippled her development as a woman. Through time with a psychiatrist who specialised in this kind of thing, she learnt for the first time how, for any child who experiences serious trauma in their lives, unless they receive specialist counselling, their emotional development ceases. In fact, it became apparent that it had been nothing short of a miracle that this woman had managed to raise a family, while all that time, she was operating at the emotional level of a twelve year old!
I wonder have you, like this woman, been hiding a terrible secret all through your life? A secret that paralyzes who God wants you to be? Hear God’s word as he speaks into your life this morning. “Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace:” You see God is the great healer for those of you who have suffered at the hands of others, and to those who done things of which you are ashamed, he offers forgiveness.
And let me assure you, God’s forgiveness is a fact. It is the central truth about who God is. The Bible says that when we come to God, admitting our sin, repenting of it, we are forgiven. For, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1John 1:9) There is no need to be like this woman in my story, who unwittingly, carried not only the burden of that secret but also the weight of her sins for far too many years.
So often, it seems to me, our problem is not feeling forgiven. We may understand with our minds that God has forgiven us, but somewhere inside we feel we don’t deserve it and when we continue to carry around the guilt and shame, we open ourselves up to condemnation. Condemnation tells us that we have really blown it and there is no way back. Condemnation tells us our sin has stained us forever. We are worthless and we might as well resign ourselves to it. There is no hope for the future. These, however, are condemning words and they run contrary to the Word of God. For Romans 8:1 tells us quite clearly, “There is therefore now, no condemnation, for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Please understand this; Condemnation is not the same thing as conviction, because condemnation is from Satan who wants to keep us in that place of shame and captivity whereas conviction is from the Holy Spirit. Condemnation reminds us of where we have been and it keeps us chained to the sin. Conviction reminds us where we should go, to God, for his free gift of forgiveness. If we will let it, conviction through the power of the Holy Spirit nudging us, can move us forward. Conviction signals where we’ve gone wrong so that we can do something about it, instead of burying it deep within our lives.
In the our reading of the woman at the well, and the woman whose story you have heard this morning, here were two women who saw themselves as unworthy and inadequate. But you know something? Jesus didn’t see either of them that way. He knew it all. He knew their wounded, longing hearts, just as he sees yours. He saw the way they could be. He accepted them where they were, just as he accepts us just where we are right now. He accepted them where they were and addressed their deepest needs without reproach. Jesus didn’t make excuses for either of these two women. He didn’t say, “Never mind, you’ve had such a hard childhood. It’s perfectly understandable you went looking for love in the wrong places.” No, he didn’t say that. But he also didn’t condemn. He met them where they were, loved them in that place, and then released them from their shame, with His grace, so they could move forward to be what God intended them to be. For the woman at the well, she changed her life and by her testimony, brought many others to Christ.
The other woman in our story, was healed, and truly understands what it is to be forgiven. You see, God had a job for her to do and when she repented of her sins and surrendered her life completely to him, God led her on to minister into the lives of others. How do I know this for certain? I know because that woman is me.
Why have I shared this with you? I have shared in order that you might understand how God sees you and loves you, right where you are. Most of all I have exposed myself in order to bring glory to God and to testify to the fact that he does heal brokenness, that he does take away the pain of loneliness and he does totally forgive sin without reproach, when we are truly repentant.
In the words of the song, I know, with absolute surety and conviction, that “I am redeemed. By His blood I am made clean and now I can know Him face to face.”
I wonder, do you have that certainty, or are you in need of his gift of forgiveness? I invite you to hand over whatever it is to Jesus, this morning, in order to receive his gift of forgiveness, so you like myself and that woman at the well, can be set free to live life with all the freedom and joy that God desires for you. Will you do it for yourself this morning?
