If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that’s why you’re worshiped. (MSG)

How many of us remember that thing that happened way back in elementary school? And, I’ll admit, it was longer ago for some of us than others. Maybe it was your best friend that stopped playing with you and started playing with another kid, maybe it was that bully who kept pushing you down in the lunch line, or maybe it was something so simple that the other kid wouldn’t even remember.  

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Guess what: holding on to that is like holding on to a piece of radioactive rock. It’s not worth anything, and it is killing you. Why do we hold on to this pain? What is it in us that makes us keep holding on to these toxic thoughts and harmful emotions? In writing this devo, I looked up “why we don’t forgive,” and what I found was surprising. At the top, there were six articles about why you shouldn’t forgive. Most of them had something to do with “protecting yourself.”

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In an earlier Psalm, King David deals with someone who is standing against him, and he is completely at his end. David is raw with his words, and he is angry. “May his name be blotted out in the second generation” sounds suspiciously similar to the southern “bless your heart” (109:13b).

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After sharing his anger and pain, David walks away from the situation and worships God’s power and forgiveness. But, like the articles I read, we tend to hold on to the anger and pain when we are wronged…why is that? Author Kevin Thompson says, “Forgiveness is only possible because we know what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. On the Cross, Jesus paid the penalty for our sin. Nothing is greater than his love. No one is beyond God’s forgiveness. When we realize that God has forgiven us of every sin we have ever or will ever commit, it will give us a radically different perspective when others offend us."

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“Forgiveness is your habit,” King David says of God in our verse today, because he knew one thing: our God forgives. It is in his nature, something he can never change. Before God created the heavens and Earth, before he created Adam, he knew us and knew we would fall from grace. Before he made us, he had in mind the way to redeem us. Why? Because forgiveness is who he is.

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Today’s verse closes with “that’s why you’re worshiped.” David was the guy who seemed to never have it together. He neglected his duties as a king when his men went to war, he had an estranged relationship with his son, he was an adulterer, a murderer...not the guy you would say should be a church leader. So why is he called a “man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22)?  Not because he killed a giant, not because he was a good poet or because he could write, but because he knew that even thousands of years before Christ came to earth, God was and is a God of forgiveness. And he worshiped him because of it.

God doesn’t hold a grudge; he doesn’t keep a tally of all the mistakes. The problem is, when we are in the low points of life, we pull away. We act like little kids who don’t want to get scolded after taking a cookie from the cookie jar. We hide and wallow in our own shame. This sends us down a slippery slope of anger and resentment, either with God or with others, and it builds walls in our hearts.  

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It’s so incredibly simple yet so very hard all at the same time. I’m reminded of the song that says, “I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you, it’s all about you Jesus.” The heart of our worship is that we are forgiven, the debt has been paid, the war has been won. Jesus paid that cost of your sin on a tree with you on his mind.

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When we worship, he meets us where we are, and we see his forgiveness. He breaks those walls down, enters into the pain, and begins the healing process. Instead of finding an angry parent because we ruined our dinner with a cookie, he wraps us in his arms and says, “You are loved and forgiven, let’s make you more like me.” We don’t worship him to get forgiveness, we worship him because we are forgiven.

Jesus you are so good; we give you praise for the work you did on the cross. We praise you that your habit is forgiveness, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Jesus, when we are in the bad times and life seems to drag us down, place it on our hearts to fall at your feet and worship you!