When it  comes to holding us back from living the life our Heavenly Father wants us to have--a life of freedom, peace, and unmitigated joy--there aren't many shackles stronger than an unforgiving spirit.

God makes a straightforward promise to us in I John 1:9: If we confess our sins He will forgive us.  He will wipe our indiscretions away, then scrub us clean from the stains our sins often leave behind. What a liberating thought: If we come clean, we will be clean.

But there's a catch. God's stipulation is that His children not just experience His forgiveness, but that we extend it. In fact, His forgiving us is dependent on our forgiving others (Matt. 6:15).

Whoa. God can't mean that, can He? We're supposed to forgive parents who have abused us? God wants us to forgive ex-spouses who have betrayed us? He is asking us to forgive people who have hurt us, destroyed our reputation, and who have showed zero remorse and would do it all over again if given the chance?

The answer is yes.

When it comes to experiencing all that our Heavenly Father has to offer us, we must be on both the receiving and giving ends of forgiveness. Offering forgiveness to others, no matter how gut-wrenching their infraction, is not optional. Forgiveness is not always easy. It is not always fair. But it never optional.

The weight of unforgiveness can be paralyzing. If left unresolved, the offenses of others can dominate our thoughts, destroy our bodies, and deplete our souls. We must offer forgiveness not because the offending party deserves it. We must offer forgiveness because we deserve it. 
 
Leonardo daVinvi’s masterpiece, the Last Supper, is one of his most memorable works. The story is told that there was a bit of a delay in completion of that painting. It seems that when daVinci was putting the finishing touches on his project he had a violent disagreement with a man. Leonardo became so incensed that he lashed out at the man, threatening to harm him.

After the incident, still seething, da Vinci went back to his place to continue work on painting. He was up to the point of painting face of Jesus. But he found that he couldn’t do it. There was too much evil stirring inside him. He was angry. He was consumed by thoughts of vengeance.

Robbed of inner peace, daVinci knew what he had to do. He put down his brushes, left his unfinished painting, and went looking for the man he fought with. When he found him he asked his forgiveness. Only when he was freed from the bonds of unforgiveness could daVinci return to his studio and paint the face of the Savior who had forgiven him.
 
Forgiving others does not mean that we are absolving them from their actions. It does not mean we are giving them a pass. It does not always mean that relationships are fully restored. It means that we are so deeply grateful for the way that our God has treated us despite our unworthiness that we long to treat others the same way.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.--​Eph. 4:31-32.

It had been another rough night. Dad didn't come home for supper. Again. Clearly, the bar stool at Alex's Tap had much more appeal than sitting at the family table.

I was in my room feverishly working on my 7th-grade science project when I heard him come in the back door. Having developed keen hypervigilance at an early age I could determine my father's level of his intoxication simply by listening to him come into the house. When I heard his lunchbox scrape against the wall as he maneuvered the three-step landing leading to the kitchen I braced myself for a long night.

After eating his supper alone, all the while blaming my mother that his food was cold, he stumbled into the bedroom and shut the door. I prayed that this would be one of those nights when he slept until morning. I had to concentrate on my schoolwork. 

But as was often the case, my prayers, no matter how fervent, seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Dad got up every hour or so to drink more beer and to make sure my mom and I knew what worthless human beings we were. He would sit in the dark with his seemingly endless supply of of Stroh's and irately lecture us long into the night. Best I could tell, the reason he got drunk all the time was because my mom was a nag who didn't appreciate all he did for her and I was a lazy kid who would never amount to anything. It's funny how our brain tells us something is utter nonsense yet our heart believes it anyway. 

I put together my school project as best I could, all the while trying to ward off the unrelenting barrage of hurtful attacks and accusations coming from the kitchen. I really wanted to do well on this assignment. But the end result wasn't close to what I wanted it to be. It was a maddening metaphor of my life: not good enough no matter how hard I try. It wasn't fair.

I could feel the anger stirring in the pit of my stomach as I ate breakfast the next morning. Usually, that's where my anger remained. But on that particular morning, I let it out.

Without looking up from my bowl of cereal, I said to my mom who was tidying up the kitchen, "He can ruin his life if he wants to. But he's dragging you and me down with him. You need to get a divorce." 

Her response was immediate, as if she had rehearsed it a thousand times. Honestly, I was taken aback by the force of her words. Decades later I can still hear them in my mind, with the same intense inflection. With her hands on her hips she said emphatically, "I made a vow to him and to God and I'm not going to break it."

I had always viewed my mom as stubborn. And while that assessment was right on the money, these words weren't born out of hardheadedness. They emanated from a deep sense of conviction.

My mom was committed to husband. She made a promise to him in the presence of God that she would be his wife, for better or worse, till death did them part. Granted, she couldn't have known what worse was going to look like when she made that vow. But, to her, it didn't matter. A promise was a promise.

As a kid, I didn't appreciate her firmness. All I knew was I wasn't happy living with an alcoholic father and I was quite sure she wasn't too thrilled to have had an alcoholic husband.  But my mother's response made me realize something at age twelve that many adults still haven't figured out. God doesn't want us to be happy. God wants us to be holy. 

We live in an age in which personal preference often takes precedence over God's principles. Driven by our own desires, we are quick to disregard the will of God if we deem that it might make our lives unpleasant. The stark truth is, the Christian life is often unpleasant. Sometimes it's downright unfair. 
But we bring honor to God when we, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, remain devoted to Him.

This is not to judge those who chosen divorce. I understand that all circumstances are different. But I also know that God is in the business of fixing broken things. He is truly able to do "immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20)." And He most certainly came through for our family.

Some twelve years after my mom's declaration to me, God miraculously delivered my dad from his addiction. I was blessed beyond words to see my parents enjoy several years of life together, free from the effects of alcohol. I was able to reconcile with my dad and grow to love him for the gentle and kind man he really was. I came to understand that he was a good man who had a bad problem.

Before God took him home, I received Dad's permission to share our story with others who have experienced the horrors of alcoholism so that they, too, could discover hope and healing in the arms of a Heavenly Father who cares deeply for His kids. I have a sense that both of my fathers are proud.

I still find myself wondering, what if? What if my mom took the advice of her adolescent son? What if she decided to bail on her marriage? What if experiencing happiness in life was her primary motivator? And whenever my mind goes there I am overcome with gratitude for giving my mother the spiritual gift of stubbornness. Her uncompromising commitment to holiness has led to immeasurably more happiness than we could have asked or imagined.

Mainline Christians used to shake their heads at those cardboard carrying zealots who stood on street corners warning the world that The END is NEAR. Now we have become them.

In light of recent political events many of us have come to the conclusion that life, as we know it, is over. It is wasn't obvious before, it is now: America is going to hell in a handbasket.  Depending on our party affiliation we will be destroyed by either illegal immigrants or intolerants, criminals or corrupt law officers, conservative Supreme Court justices or liberal judges, big government or big business, pacifists or terrorists, sexists or humanitarians, socialists or capitalists. By the sound of it, our nation's future may very well be determined by those in the adjoining rest room stall or those who allegedly hate them.

And for folks who believe that our country's moral demise may one day be traced to the wife or husband of the 2016 president elect, let me remind you that Kanye West is planning to run in 2020.

The truth of the matter is, if we have this kind of miserable and misguided mindset, we are doomed. As long as we put our hope and faith in people we can expect our country to go into a free fall. 

Our trust must be in God and God alone. He is our Hope. He is our Deliverer. He is the Savior of the world. If we truly believe that He sits on the throne does it really matter who sits in the oval office?

Imagine how different our Facebook pages, our lives, and our world would be if, instead of expecting the worst from people we expected the best from God.

Centuries ago, the Holy Spirit inspired an anonymous writer to pen lyrics to a powerful and profound song which today we know as Psalm 146. Since the Middle Ages, believers of various spiritual traditions have found peace, confidence, and hope by reciting, singing, and more so, by believing these words. We may want to dust off the sheet music.

Praise the Lord! Let all that I am praise the Lord. I will praise the Lord as long as I live. 
I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.
Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.
When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them.
But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God.
He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever.
He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The Lord frees the prisoners.
The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.
The Lord loves the godly.
The Lord protects the foreigners among us. 
He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.
The Lord will reign forever. He will be your God, O Jerusalem, throughout the generations.
Praise the Lord!
(Psalm 146, NLT)