Let us settle accounts with some of you my friends.

Breaking News?

I just heard this last Sunday. “The most unloving thing we can do to our neighbors is to know the cure and withhold the medicine.” I agree with this statement and also with the God of Hippocrates, who makes him say by common grace, “Do no harm.”

Ours is the Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.
As soon as someone offends me I am already wrapping up the gift of forgiveness and extending my gift with outstretched hands for my offender to take away from my hands as I also have by repentance appropriate the gift of forgiveness in Jesus from the hand of God.

For me to forgive or not to forgive is not an option. I must and always do forgive for my own sake because otherwise I can not pray, “Forgive our sins us we forgive those who sin against us.” I need the forgiveness of God always and I must always forgive others from their sins. The lack of forgiveness and reconciliation is the best weapon the evil one uses to put hindrance to our prayers.

My problem is that my strength is weakening as the days go by and the packages of forgiveness offered as a free gift with outstretched hands are getting heavy.

I am not a postman delivering a package at the front or back door of a house for anyone to pick it up whenever they notice the package or come out of the house at their convenience.

My gift of forgiveness is the same as the Gift of God in Jesus “Personally delivered and personally received and acknowledged” and signed by me and scanned by the Holy Spirit the monitor of all such a transaction in spirit and truth.

As the years go by I have noticed that some of those who love me are easily offended by the things I say or do. I do not feel they are right when they do that and punish me with their silent treatment and mean letters in some cases. I just think they need more attention and they are hurting, and hurting people hurt others, as they have nowhere to go but to those that love them, “knowing” well that I will not cut them off just because they do what they do. They are to me too valuable because of what they are in Jesus. Besides I do understand that misery loves companion.

All this is to say; “I am tired holding with my outstretched hands several packages at once addressed to a handful of you my beloved and stubborn friends”. Please relieve me because I would hate to take back your gifts, “back to sender”, who in this case is not even me but the Father of all grace and mercy in whose name I am knocking at your door once again.

This is a gentle as I can be in reminding you that, “To sin against another person is very easy. To insult and accuse another person is unfair and abusive. To say, “I am sorry” is easy and even to apologize is cheap.

What an offender needs to do is to take back every word and only then can they erase the offense and that is Repentance. “The change of mind.” For without that change of mind the fellowship cannot and will not be restored. Though the relationship might go on if we are truly brothers, but to think of eternity having to apologize for the things not untied on earth that would be to live in disadvantage.

For the proud it is nearly impossible to humble himself or herself to the point of repentance. To the self-righteous it is impossible to repent because he or she has entrenched in the “Fox Hole” of self-deception.

Deception is bad, but self-deception is worse.

For the humble it is easy to repent, because humility to him is not an act to perform but a nature to display in every given opportunity as the master requires of him to be “Meek and humble as Jesus”.

My prayer as I close this letter to you my most beloved friend is that you do not see anything in this letter but a childlike attempt to be loving to you in the name of Jesus.

Gerry Gutierrez.

PS My evolutionary years.