Father Forgive Them For They Do Not Understand

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 22:34). Oh, my God, how profound are those words . . . spoken by Christ as he hung on the cross at Calvary, dying for the sins of the world.

How important is it for us to understand why HE who was without sin became sin, by taking our sins upon him and became separated from his heavenly father that we might inherit the righteousness of God? How important is it that we understand?  Very!  I have come to understand that because of my sojourn with Jesus.  I understand it because of my love for my family and my Lord, and I realize it through my relationship to people I encounter and many other experiences on the journey of my life.

I have always had a reverential fear of God, but to me Jesus was a sideliner . . . He was the opening act, rather than the final curtain call. I can’t explain it, except to say that in order for me to understand where Jesus fit in the Lordship of God’s kingdom, I had to understand how I fit in with Jesus – and where I stood in relationship to the people in my life.  That took some doing.  In fact, it took thirty-five years of doing.  Thirty-five years.  Wow!  Even so, I am vilified, because I shaved five years off my wilderness experience because of fervent prayer and revelation knowledge.

Ever since I first heard the story of the Exodus, I adopted myself into the family of the Israelites. I identified strongly with them, because I always felt that I was separated from my true ancestry.  For many years, I felt detached from this world . . . like an alien who landed on the wrong planet after the mother ship spiraled out of control and crash landed.  Honestly, I never felt comfortable about being a human being.  I never felt that I fit in anywhere.  I felt a continuous void in my life, and I know that it was not only the physical aspects of life that I was missing.  I had an insatiable yearning to be spiritually fulfilled.  However, I could not understand that at six, seven, or eight years. In fact, I could not even understand it at twenty-five.  I just knew that there was something that should be there that wasn’t, yet I didn’t know what it was – There was a big chasm in my life, and I couldn’t cross over it, and that was very frustrating to me.  So, in child-like faith, I would sit and pray my feelings out to God, then I would cry and feel better, and I would be okay for a little while.  What I later discovered was that for many years, I was shadow boxing with the enemy, and I didn’t know it.  I just knew that whenever those feelings came, if I would pray, then I would cry, and I would feel better.  I didn’t know why it worked, but it did, and it became somewhat of a sanctuary to me.   However, as I grew older and became more mature, God had a different method of treatment in store for me – Confrontation.

Up until now, I was a runner and that worked fine, so far. Now, what God was asking me to do was to open myself up to more hurt, more pain, more anger, and more emotional anguish – so confrontation was not going to be an easy method of treatment for me.  God wanted me to put myself on the firing line.  He wanted me to confront the shadows of life – past, present and future.  He wanted me to go into the pits of hell and come out victorious, but I was too afraid to even consider the venture, and so I was thrust into it.  Without a moments notice, every lifeline was cut, and I was no longer hovering.  I was free-falling.  My life skidded out of control, and I found myself standing at the gates of hell.   When I tried to seek God’s will in my life, he pointed out to me in my spirit that even though I did not fear the darkness of life, I was not trusting Him enough to turn to the light, because I didn’t really know who the light was.  Then, He pointed out to me that when Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12), it was not a boast, it was a statement of fact.  That means if you are not looking to Jesus, you will not see light, and eventually darkness and fear will set in and cripple your ambitions.  Whoa! He said that I could not find inner peace because my spirit was not at peace and that my physical life was in turmoil, because I was hovering in my spiritual life.  God had a purpose, and he had a plan.  He wanted me to see for myself that the reason why everything in my life looked so bleak was because I was not looking toward the Son.  However, for someone like me who was standing on the threshold of darkness and light, I would see shadows, because though the light was shining on me, it was not shining through me, and so the light reflected the shadows of evil that dwelled in the darkness.   That is the chasm that I needed to cross.  I needed to stop hovering, and make a direct connection.