Off Your Back

There is a saying that refers to a constant burden as the ‘monkey on your back.’  Some say it began as ‘monkey off your roof’ in reference to the burden of a mortgage payment.  We all have different things that have been a burden at one time or another.  In sports often times we carry the errors of the plays before us.  What happens is like we are going up to bat with a physical monkey on our back in the ways that we carry those previous mistakes and burdens with us.  Life is the same way.  Whether it be the mistakes of our past, resentment, unforgiveness, bitterness, woundings; we carry those with us until we let them go.  It may be hard to admit those things are there and begin to deal with them in their pain and the ways they have affected us, but so is carrying all of them everyday, everywhere we go.  So why not get that monkey off your back and start to walk  lighter and more free?  You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it earlier.  It’s time to let go.    

“Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk.  Be gentle with one another, sensitive.  Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.”

Ephesians 4:31-32 Message

Forgiveness means letting someone off of your hook and onto God’s.  Somehow in our pain and suffering from the actions of others we believe that if we carry the burden of it that will somehow even the score.  The problem is they often don’t know we are carrying them, and so it costs them nothing, but costs us everything.  So much is lost at the hands of unforgiveness: joy, freedom, hope, and life.  Not to mention the ways that our unforgiveness affects others.  The giftings God has given us are at stake and our freedom to relate with one another as God intended.  That is why we must forgive as quickly and as thoroughly as Christ did.  Quickly means not letting it linger or waiting for it to build.  Thoroughly means forgiving not only for what’s been done to you but also all the ways it has affected you.  He did it first that we could go back to His forgiveness and forgive out of that.  So make a clean break, stop carrying the weight of it.  It’s about more than you. Be quick.  Be thorough. Be free.