Recently, I wrote a 7-part series entitled Courtroom Drama which was based on a sermon I was fortunate enough to deliver while pastoring at North Way Christian Community. There was a story I told in the middle of that sermon that I left out of the recent series. But I think it is worth recounting separately here.

The story is of a middle-aged married couple who over the years had allowed their relationship to grow stale and really didn’t enjoy being together much anymore. They had two problems really; one was that the woman in this relationship was easily irritated. There were a whole host of things that her husband did that quite frankly drove her crazy, and it resulted in a critical and nagging attitude. The other problem was that the husband couldn’t help himself. And, frankly, her nagging had caused him a long time ago to stop caring about her reactions.

One day, though, the wife had had enough – she was simply tired of feeling irritated all the time – and she came upon an idea of how she could improve their marriage and consequently raise her level of peace.  So, she sat down that morning and wrote out a list of all the things her husband did that made her angry.  It took her a while, but she persevered.  Then she prayed over that list and decided to forgive her husband for all the past, and more importantly, all the future times he would do one of those annoying things. From that point forward, whenever he would do one of them, rather than get angry and critical, she would just smile inwardly and say to herself “lucky for him, that’s on the list!”

I can be irritating. I have annoying habits that are part of my relationships as a husband, father, pastor, employee, boss, friend, life coach. . . need I go on? I can be annoying. And I am quite sure you are not very different from me. We all need the people in our lives to have a list for which they pre-decide to show us grace.

Of course, this is particularly true of my/your relationship with God. Talk about a list!

I Timothy 2:5 tells us that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” We also know from Hebrews 4:15 that Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses because he has, in every respect, been tempted as we are. Yet he was without sin. Since Jesus is our mediator with God and sits at God’s right hand, we can visualize the following:

Every time we sin, when we yet again do a worse than annoying thing that should offend God, Jesus leans over to the Father and says, “pay no attention to that, it’s on the list of things I died for. Randy (fill in your name here) is already forgiven for that.”

If God does that for us, and we all desire others in our life to do that for us, then surely, we should have those lists at the ready for when somebody offends us. I also encourage you to know your own list. I am quite certain that the man in our story earlier found that when his wife quit nagging him, he recognized that difference and sought to improve himself as well. Live in such a way that Christ no longer need lean in toward the Father for things you already know are on the list! But remember that when needed, they are still there. Thanks be to God for that!