Debt Free

There’s a comical variation of the song “Heigh Ho” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that some of us have sung (as we’ve headed off to that dreaded job). It goes, “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.” We sure do owe, don’t we? We owe the electric company, the gas company, the bank, and some of us, the credit cards. Oh the dreaded credit cards. Why aren’t they called debt cards, or better yet slavery identification cards?

Debt is a burden, a heavy chain, all of us know in one form or another.

The bible says that love keeps no record of wrongs. It is speaking to the list of debts owed you by an offender. We’ve all been offended and it’s hard not to keep a record of that offense. The neighbor’s dog that does his business in your flower bed. The boss at work that makes it difficult to enjoy any time off. The unfaithful spouse. We’ve all suffered resentment.

The heart is hurt, the heart breaks, the list is added to. Be careful! Look at the list and check it twice before you enter into that relationship; before you open your heart. All of us long for intimacy, but that damned list. And I do mean damned. There is nothing heavenly about it. It pulls our hearts down, while promising to protect. And it flies in the face of the cross; the cross that holds no record of wrong.

What we need is a mind-shift; a metanoia.

Jesus tells the story of a servant who owed a great amount of debt to a king (about 200,000 years of salary). It couldn’t be paid off, but it was forgiven. The king ate the debt. But the forgiven servant did something odd. As if his debt wasn’t wiped, he went around to everyone who owed him piddly amounts of money and exacted it from them. “I will pay the king back,” he thought to himself.

The problem with this servant was not that he wasn’t forgiven, but that he couldn’t accept that his debt had been completely cancelled. And he lived out of that. He lived out of fear and the smell of his misspending hanging in the air. He just couldn’t believe that he could be forgiven so much. He needed to do his part. Forgiven, but not living forgiven.

Releasing the debt owed us by others is a challenge, but what about the record we keep against ourselves? It has a name and its name is regret. Regret, the self-imposed debt. Yet even the harshness towards your wife has been forgiven. Even that affair or those months you spent drinking and gambling. Wiped. Forgotten. That bad decision that caused pain to yourself and your children. Gone. Cleaned.

This is the “new religion”; where love is above ego and accomplishments. Where “accepted in the beloved” is not only talked about but also walked about. Where heaven meets earth and God’s people live as if they were unconditionally loved by their Father.

This is what is being released on the earth today.

Live loved my friends.