Forgiveness and Paint Cans

So there’s this great sermon series called “God’s Will is Whatever” that was preached by Pastor Steven Furtick at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. I’ve seen the first three installments of the series and I’ve absolutely loved it. The third one is called 43 Shades of Orange, and that’s what I watched recently. Go ahead, go Google or YouTube it (or click right here), it’s fantastic.

Are you back? Did you watch it all? GREAT!
Did you not leave in the first place or give up when you found out it would take more than just a few minutes to watch? I mean, it IS 50 minutes long, but well worth it! I promise! So, for all of you who didn’t go watch it or haven’t seen it, quick recap:

Pastor Steven talks about discovering God’s will and how difficult that can be. But, once we discover God’s Will (or His ways) we need to DO them. We actually have to put them into application in our lives. He uses the illustration of paint cans representing the theological and spiritual knowledge we’ve acquired. We can stack as many paint cans as we want in the basement of our lives, but until we open them up and begin to paint with them, they’re useless. In the same way, we need to make sure that instead of getting distracted by figuring out what is God’s EXACT will for our lives, we can already be putting His Will into action in the little things every single day.

Of course, as I’m listening to this sermon, I’m nodding along the whole way and agreeing with every word of “go out and do it”, “you have to actually do something”, and “JUST DO IT” (I’m hearing Shia LaBeouf in my head for some reason.) But, as I’ve begun to think about things, there are some gaping holes in my life where I am not applying God’s Will. There is some knowledge that I have that is still sitting around in the basement that I should be painting with this very moment, but I’m not … because I’m scared.

So what am I dealing with that’s so terrifying? Well, you know how there are all sorts of sermons on unforgiveness and how we need to forgive others like Christ forgave us and what a big deal that is? Yeah, I’m on the other side. I’ve done some things that have hurt other people in such a way that I wouldn’t at all be surprised if there was some unforgiveness. But there’s nothing I can do about it, right? I mean all of the sermons we hear preached are over the other person needing to forgive. So, I can just go on about my day without a care in the world, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

I still feel terrible. I want the feeling to go away so I keep wanting to run and beg for these peoples’ forgiveness, but I don’t at all expect them to forgive me because I haven’t forgiven myself. (*boom* life just got real) So what is it that I need to do about this situation? I’m sure I’ve got some color of paint in this basement that will help me. Somewhere over.. ah, here it is!

God already forgave me