Mark Quanstrom

Pastor College Church University Avenue

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

https://t.co/GAiLJBSim3

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

Forgiveness: The Gospel Is Big Enough for Tyler Robinson

The bullet didn’t just pierce skin. It cracked the illusion that we could disagree and still stay human.

Charlie Kirk’s body hit the ground beside a folding chair.

Someone screamed. Others froze. Phones fumbled in trembling hands. The white tent snapped in the wind. Somewhere in the crowd, a father whispered, “Get down.”

By the time sirens carved a path through the silence, a young man with a gun had vanished into the American bloodstream.

Now he has a name.

Tyler Robinson. Twenty-two. Alleged. Caught. Handcuffed. Alive.

And we are left behind with questions hotter than justice.

What are we supposed to do now?

It would be easier if we were only angry.

But there is something more complicated churning inside the body of Christ.

A grief too bruised to name. A rage we feel guilty for carrying. A hollow place where vengeance crouches and licks its lips.

Some Christians are praying. Some are cursing. Some are doing both.

But there is a story older than our fear.

It starts with a sermon.

Stephen stood before men who claimed to speak for God.

He opened his mouth, and the old story of Israel came pouring out.

He called them stiff-necked. Blind. Murderers of the Righteous One.

They dragged him outside like garbage.

The first stone broke the skin. The second, the jaw. And as the blood filled his mouth, Stephen did something no modern Christian seems quite ready to do.

He prayed for the man who held the coats.

He asked forgiveness for the hands that shattered his bones.

He gave grace while his heart was still beating.

What would it mean to forgive that fast?

Not when the verdict is read. Not after the funeral. But while the shots still echo.

What kind of gospel grows in a soil that broken?

We’ve spent so much of our modern Christianity numbing ourselves with safe slogans and forgettable prayers. But Stephen wasn’t reciting bumper stickers. He was standing inside the furnace of God’s Spirit, praying through blood.

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

That line is not soft.

It is a declaration that the kingdom of God is real, and it does not play by the rules of our tribe or our politics.

The Church today is full of clenched fists and sharpened tongues. We post screenshots like scripture. We bless and curse from the same mouth. We say things like “just saying what needs to be said” and ignore the rot we’re feeding.

And yet we wonder why the Spirit feels so far away.

Forgiveness isn’t forgetting.

It isn’t pretending nothing happened.

It’s war. The kind that happens inside the chest when the Holy Spirit tells you to lay your weapon down and bless the one who drew theirs.

You don’t forgive because the world tells you to.

You forgive because the man on the cross forgave you.

And he didn’t wait.

Neither did Stephen.

Stephen’s prayer was heard.

Not just by God.

But by a young man named Saul, whose fingerprints were all over that execution.

And though Saul went on raging, rounding up Christians and dragging them from homes, something had cracked open inside him. A goad buried deep. A prayer he couldn’t forget.

And one day on a Damascus road, that man heard a voice from heaven.

“It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

It always is.

Forgiveness leaves a splinter.

Even in your enemies.

You may never stand beneath a tent with bullets flying. But you will be wounded. You will be hated. You will be misunderstood. That is not failure.

That is the cross-shaped road.

You will want to hate back. You will have verses lined up to justify it. You will call it justice.

But the real question is not whether you’re angry.

It’s whether you’ll trust Christ enough to lay your vengeance down.

Stephen looked up and saw Jesus standing. Not seated. Standing. Ready to receive. Bearing witness to the kind of faith that stops heaven mid-song.

And even then, Stephen died.

He did not get a reprieve.

He got a Savior.

So what should we do now?

We pray for justice.

We ask for peace.

We name the evil.

And then we say it aloud, even if our voice shakes:

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Not because they deserve it.

But because Jesus does.

Forgiveness isn’t a soft option.

It is a blood-soaked, Spirit-driven revolution. It is a war against hell that begins inside the heart of one believer who dares to look up instead of looking back.

So if you’re asking what now?

Do what Stephen did:

Speak the truth.

Stand tall.

And when the stones come…

Pray like heaven is listening.

Because it is.

Let them say of us:

The bullets flew.

But we did not return fire.

We knelt. We forgave.

And we looked up, where Jesus was still standing.

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@w_bitterman Thank you.

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

Luke 6:27-38 | Andrea Mantegna | Do good to those who hate you https://t.co/l4NCER3U7e

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@musk_news13 A!!

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@ElonMNews Yes

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@RevDMQ Refs are biased towards the chiefs.

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@SweChurchman Ascension indicates eternal corporeality.

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@bethfelkerjones Love youtube as picture window!

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

https://t.co/wIJ4UaqHLj

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

If you listen to just one, listen to this one. https://t.co/wIJ4UaqHLj

[David Fitch @fitchest]

"NO SIN IS MORE BASIC than the presumption ... that we can know on our own what it means to say that we are sinners."
Stanley Hauerwas

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@amandaknox Wow

[Amanda Knox @amandaknox]

After I was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, when the earth dropped out from beneath me, and global shame rained down on top of me, I had my first ever epiphany.

/thread

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@pastorrobprince @TaraBeth82 Such a powerful conversation we’ve bumped it up to be aired March 6th. Thank you my friend.

[Rob Prince @pastorrobprince]

Honored to be with @mquanstrom and @TaraBeth82 (and Chaz the producer) on The Pastor's Table podcast today. We were talking migraines, ministry & chronic pain and living w/ someone dying of cancer. Two good topics for Ash Wednesday. Look for it in early April. Thanks 4 the invite

[David Fitch @fitchest]

With due respect, and much love for @timkellernyc (seriously), apologetics, as traditionally conceived, is not a strategy to engage an already post Christendom culture. Embodied witness is. More to come on #TheologyOnMission podcast next week. https://t.co/9IXFSGQ9b3

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@bethfelkerjones But most of them think they are.

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

https://t.co/q2aqjgDOxa

[Mark Quanstrom @mquanstrom]

@bethfelkerjones