forgiven & giving forgiveness

  Is being at the right place at the right time merely a coincidence? I don't think so. I have had many of these moments in my life; a moment where you know that there is no where else in the world that you are suppose to be. My husband had one of these moments the other night.

    A little bit of background: A few years ago my husband Josh and I were dirt poor, we already had one little one, and one more on the way. Josh was working for himself, and we were riding the highs and (mostly) lows of self employment. Finally Josh got a few big jobs from someone (we'll call him Joe) fully expecting to get paid for the work. The money never came. After many invoices, phone calls, and letters, a judge finally  ordered that Josh was to be paid off over the next few years. Joe at long last began to send us money, but when about half of the debt had been paid off, out of the blue Joe's checks stopped coming. God however had already been working in our hearts and we had already decided that we were going to pardon Joe's debt (see Mathew 18: 21-35). We were trying to decide how to let him know that his debt was now cancelled, a letter, a phone call, what would be the best way to do it??

         God gave us an opportunity to do this in a way that we didn't think was possible. We hadn't seen Joe in a few years until the other night. Josh had to run to the store to grab some batteries for our garage door opener. It was a totally random trip to the store (and we found out later that the batteries weren't even dead...the garage door opener just didn't work a few times...hmmmm). Josh pulls into the parking lot and as he looks for a spot he sees Joe and Joe sees him. Joe starts rushing quickly to put his things into his truck so that he could get out of there. Unbeknownst to Joe, Josh was excited to see him, so he rushed over to him and immediately asked him, "Hey, ya know that money that you owe me?" Joe slowly replied, "Ya..." "Don't worry about paying it back" Josh said quickly so that Joe would understand that he wasn't upset. "Are you serious?" Joe said with a bit of apprehension. "Yup, I sure am" Josh said back to him so thankful for this God sent encounter.

     Josh went on to ask him how he was doing, and Joe expressed to him that he really wasn't doing well, and that he was barely getting by financially. Because Josh (only through Christ) had cancelled the debt, he was able to reach out to Joe in such a way that there were no longer any walls between the two of them. We can only forgive others debt because Christ has completely forgiven our debt.  We are praising God for such an unbelievable answer to prayer and, Lord willing, Joe saw Christ in Josh that night! We wrote Joe's name on our "Pray without Ceasing" wall in our home, and we will continue to pray for his salvation!