Does everyone want what they deserve? Everyone should read this. i read this years ago and it will help you in many areas of your life-marriage, friends, strangers and enemies. Here are a few quotes that will change the way you think when you judge and deal with others. It's long but it's worth it If it can change the way you think for life.
"Jonah feels Ninevah doesn't deserve to be saved. That's why he's running. But guess who else doesn't deserve to be saved? Jonah."
"If Jonah demands that everybody gets only what they deserve, then he must also accept what he deserves."
"We are commanded to love and honor others, and it is likely that people fail to do that-just as you and I fail. There is only one thing we truly deserve, and that's to be sent to hell-you, me, Jonah, Ninevah, all of us. Love and salvation are gifts. How grateful we should be to receive them in any measure!"
"Hell is all we could ever hope for, If it weren't for the redeeming power of the Savior's atonement. We don't want what we deserve, believe me. Our only hope is to receive what we don't deserve-mercy that brings the gift of eternal life."
"Whether or not Ninevah is righteous is critical, of course-but only for Ninevah. It has nothing to do with Jonah. And if he thinks he does - if he thinks he is more deserving because he is somehow better than Ninevah, then he in that moment becomes more 'ninevitish' than the people he is blaming."
"If Jonah really is more righteous than they are, it will not occur to him to think that he is more righteous than they are because he will understand fully and deeply that he is entitled to nothing but hell. At least in one sense, 'righteousness' is simply a humble understanding of how unrighteous one is, coupled with a deep commitment to be better. The truth leaves no room for feelings of superiority. Such feelings are nothing but lying vanities."
"We are each working out our own salvation with fear and trembling before The Lord. And that gift will come to us only if we know in our hearts that we deserve it no more than anyone else. We are all equally damned without the mercy of The Lord. Eternal life is a gift. I have no cause to feel entitled. I have cause only to feel grateful."
" The Lord saved Jonah and Nineveh alike, and in the same terms-repentance. The Lord asks Jonah, should I not spare Nineveh?"
"If Jonah answers, "no, the ninevites, who you have saved, shouldn't be saved,' who, then, by implication, must also not be saved?"
"Jonah is already unworthy of salvation, as is Nineveh. No one merits it. Salvation is an act of mercy."
"The Lords question to Jonah is the same one he posed in the parable of the unmerciful servant, whose debt The Lord -his master-had forgiven: 'shouldest thou not have compassion on thy fellowservant, even As I had pity on thee?' The Lord asked. And his lord was wroth, the savior taught, and delivered him to the tormentors....so likewise, the savior continued, 'shall my Heavenly Father do also into you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses."
"Is there anyway you are forgetting your own sins? Anyway that you are failing to remember mercies that Others have showed you? Any way that you are forgetting The Lord? Anyway that you have become blind to your own Nineveh-ness? Any way that you persist in feeling entitled?"
"Inasmuch as ye have done it (or done it not) unto one of the least of these, ' the savior taught, 'ye have done it (or done it not) unto me." When we withhold forgiveness from others, we are in effect saying that the atonement alone was insufficient to pay for this sin. We are holding out for more. We are finding fault with the Lords offering. We are in essence demanding that The Lord repent of an insufficient atonement. So when we fail to forgive another, it is as if we are failing to forgive The Lord-who needs no forgiveness."
"The lord has already forged forgiveness for everyone. What more could your forgiveness add? They don't need you to forgive them. You need to forgive them, so when The Lord in his mercy comes to you and says, 'The atonement applies as much to them as it does to you. I have already claimed their sins. Let it go."
"He has atoned for those sins and our failure to forgive is therefore in essence a withholding from The Lord.
