Seen by Jesus: Repentance and Making Amends

Right? I did something wrong. Shame says, I'm a bad person. There is no shame with Jesus. There's only what did you do, what can you learn, and how can you repair that harm. Well, in the moral category, a lot of that is things like expressions that we've said to people, things that we've said that were hurtful. And so there was a young man who was in a fraternity, and he and his fraternity brothers were standing around one day. And a young woman walked by, and they just started abusing her verbally, [00:58:41] (37 seconds)  #NoShameOnlyRepair

And the problem is it becomes a practice. Right? So when we lie once, we have to lie again, and we don't think anything about lying another time. And so that backpack gets heavier and heavier until we can't carry it anymore. And that's where Fred was, and his counselor was inviting him to take a brick out of that backpack and to look at it and to see what he could learn, to be honest about what he had done and see what he could learn, [00:48:42] (31 seconds)  #UnpackTheBackpack

We can intend to do the best things in the world, but it can have a different impact on the person who's receiving that. So maybe you didn't mean to back into the mailbox, but you impacted that person by backing into it, and so you repair the harm. And that's the cool thing. This is not about shame. There is no shame with Jesus. Remember, shame is how you feel about yourself. Guilt is how you feel about something you did. [00:58:08] (33 seconds)  #IntentVsImpact

And Zacchaeus is so moved by Jesus' presence. He is so moved that Jesus saw him and said to him, I wanna stay with you. He was chosen out of that whole crowd. You're chosen out of the whole crowd, and Jesus wants to stay with you. Can you imagine the love that Zacchaeus must have felt? Maybe for the first time in his life, but certainly for the first time in a long time. [00:52:59] (34 seconds)  #ChosenAndSeen

Now, thankfully, most of us have never killed anyone, and yet, there are probably still people that we have harmed, that we've never tried to repair that harm. You know, one of my favorite ideas from the scripture is that sin is defined as, hamartia is the Greek word, and it's defined as missing the mark like a bow and arrow shooting for a target. But I read in the, Center for Action and Contemplation devotions this week, that we were meant to hit the target. [01:07:52] (37 seconds)  #MeantToHitTheTarget

And so it doesn't depend on how the other person responds. It depends instead on your genuine heart in offering the apology and the changed behavior. And so it's more than just, I'm sorry. It's, you know, show me, don't tell me. Here's what I've learned from this. Here's how I'm going to change. Here's what I want to do differently. [01:00:51] (28 seconds)  #ShowMeDontTellMe

And so that was his choice, to try to either make amends or not. And we have that same choice. I was reading this week about when we try to justify ourselves, when we try to rationalize what we've done wrong, it's like taking a brick and putting it in our backpack and carrying it around. And so brick after brick after brick starts weighing us down. [00:48:12] (29 seconds)  #ChooseAmendsNotJustification

Fred went to a counselor because he was struggling with self hatred. He was struggling with resentments that he had towards others and not being able to trust people, and he struggled with this sense of always being a fraud. You see, Fred was a pharmacist, and he never was a good test taker. So even though he knew his subject, when he went to his licensing exam, he cheated. So this was ten years later, and he still couldn't live with himself. He couldn't figure out what to do. [00:46:20] (37 seconds)  #CarryingGuiltTooLong