Words of faith

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on June 25, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!

As some of you may know, I have a fascination with words. I love to read, love to write and words are such a part of my being that it's difficult not to pay attention to a word when it jumps out at me. Earlier this year, I came across a website, MyOneWord.org. This website's goal is to encourage people to choose one word that the person will use to form their entire year around. The idea is that instead of a New Year's Resolution, you choose one word and use that word to change the world around you. Being a word-lover, this really appealed to me. And so I started searching for my own word. At first, I thought my word would be something fun like "Family" or something important like "Peace". Maybe even, being the mother of a newborn, "Sleep". But none of those words would stay with me. All this time, God kept pointing me toward another word: forgiveness. Now, I'll admit, I kept thinking "I really don't want that word! That's too hard. I want something fun, like KNIT! or PARTY!" So I sort of ignored Him and tried to find another word. A few weeks later, still word-less, I saw an announcement in the church bulletin for a Bible study group focused on, you guessed it, forgiveness and I said "All right, all right, I get it, that's my word!"

Now, I wasn't looking forward to owning this word. See, for me, and I'm sure many of you feel the same way, forgiveness isn't an easy word and it isn't a fun word, but I knew that it was the word He wanted me to have. So, for the past six months, I have been owning this word. You would be amazed how often a word comes up in your life once you pay attention to it. I find that it creeps into my world in little ways; in songs, in conversations, it's everywhere. Last week, my husband and I were having a tense night. The kids were tired and pushing buttons left and right and by the end of the night, I was grumbling at my husband and we close to not speaking. As I was walking upstairs to get ready for bed, my husband was sitting on the couch. As I passed by him, God said to me in this soft voice "How can you treat someone you love like this?" And there it was again, that word: forgiveness. I'll tell you I felt about two inches high for the rest of the night.

I can hear you thinking, what does this have to do with faith? To quote Matthew, 6:14, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

I learned quite a few things about forgiveness during that Bible Study. For me, the major theme was that it's very difficult to really extend forgiveness without having faith. When you're confronted with forgiveness, whether it's forgiveness you're extending or you're hoping someone will extend to you, faith allows you to understand the meaning of forgiveness. When we are the ones extending the forgiveness, our belief in the Lord gives us the capacity to understand how we have been forgiven and sometimes that understanding makes the forgiveness just a bit easier to extend. I won't say that forgiveness is easy; sometimes it's simpler to stay mad or in other cases to not ask for forgiveness. But in almost every case, if you are able to keep in mind what your faith has taught you, that you are already forgiven by a God who loves you and gave His only son for you, it is becomes possible to move toward forgiveness.