1st talk: One Thing I Ask
2nd talk: One Thing You Lack
3rd talk: One Thing I Know
And finally the 4th talk: One Thing I Do, click on here to be encouraged to ‘forget what is behind, strain towards what is ahead, and to press on towards the goal to win the prize…’
Below are some juicy quotes that I used which are worth cogitating over:
“When God forgives, He forgets. He buries our sins in the sea and puts a sign on the shore saying, ‘No Fishing Allowed’.” (Corrie ten Boom)
During the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa in the days immediately after the ending of apartheid, there was a hearing involving a policeman named van de Broek. He recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body, turning it on the fire like a piece of barbecue meat in order to destroy the evidence. Eight years later van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it. The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?” the judge asked.
She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement.
Then she added a further request, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”
Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.
He wasn’t sorry..only sorry he was caught!
It’s good that the Lord have her so much grace in her heart though, as it protected her heart.
What a shocking thing that was done to those two men!
Oh God! Poor little lady!
Thank You Lord for helping her to forgive!
What an Inspirational story!
Nothing is impossible with God – even great forgiveness. How much more has God forgiven us?
Thank you, Lord, that you lovingly invite us to be with you.
I LOVE this story! This is how Jesus loved us when he asked God from the cross to forgive us because we did not know what we were doing. This lady overcame evil with good and I cannot imagine the number of lives that will change because of her story. Reminds me of the people in Charleston at the bible study who forgave the man who killed nine of their members. When you can forgive something horrific you bear the image of Christ in a way that startles people and causes them to note you are different from the world.