Findind God's Love In Forgiveness Series

Love Worth Finding Series

Finding God’s love in forgiveness

Introduction-

Every one of us has a story to tell…what is your story?

What are you telling others not only with words, but by your actions?

People are watching you at the grocery store, your work place, sporting events you attend and one’s you participate in. Your children not only see you but hear you, and they are trying to absorb both.

People with phones and cameras make it very hard not to record every move we make and every word we utter.

We have been in a series of finding love in every area of our lives. I hope you have discovered new areas of where you can find God’s love and show God’s love.

What we have looked at

Loving God, God loving you

The love God has shown for you and I by sending His Holy Spirit to empower and equip us for life’s struggles.

Last week finding God’s love in loving others.

This week, I am making it a bit more personal… finding God’s love in forgiveness.

God’s forgiveness is life changing.

To experience God’s forgiveness from the heart and know that you know that your sins are forgiven by the one and only person who can forgive sin will set you free and will set your mind free from guilt and shame

Un-forgiveness is life changing.

Un-forgiveness will do the exact opposite of what God does for us. Un-forgiveness places heavy burden on you that drags you down and your mind is filled with guilt and shame and you feel all alone and isolated from everyone else.

Our D.S. Kerry Willis said in a meeting this week that isolation from God and other people turns to ignorance and then to idolatry.

(My take) You turn your back on God and keep tuning Him out ,you begin to think you don’t need God and you get arrogant, then as you go from God , you create your own God.

Don’t say that will never happen to me because it is only by the grace of God that you don’t do these things because sin will take you farther than you want to go.

Forgiveness is freeing and a blessing and un-forgiveness is tormenting down to your very soul.

What Forgiveness is… according to Webster-(Noun) the action or process of forgiving or being forgiven.

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a decision to release feelings toward a person who has harmed you. Key word feelings, that is true but there is more to forgiveness.

God’s Word defines forgiveness as a deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.

But it comes with certain precautions.

Christians who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you should not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. (We do not make excuses for the offender)

Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses.

Though forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship, it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person who harmed you, or release them from legal accountability. Repeat

Your brother popping you in the nose is definitely a different forgiveness than someone who has physically or mentally abused you.

The end result God wants for us is wholeness and for you to not carrying around guilt and torment, or rehashing the event over in your mind.

But how much you open yourself up to the offender is one that God has to help us with.

Some can move pass and forgive and restore relationships and some need to forgive for their healing and stay away from the person so that they can be made whole by the Lord.

3 questions to ask ourselves

How do we forgive ourselves after God has forgiven us?

How do we forgive others that have sinned against us?

How do we seek forgiveness from those we have sinned against?

Matthew 18:21-22

“Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brothers and sister who sin against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, seventy- seven times.”

For those keeping numbers, He is not saying on the 491st time you can legally not forgive them. It is remembering how much the lord forgave you.

We forget what God has done for us as we attempt to forgive those that trespass against us.

We think we have special circumstances.

That statement shows Gods boundless love that he has for us and how we ought to forgive others.

Illustration

Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom was put in a Ravenbrunk concentration camp with her sister for hiding Jews in the wall of their family watch shop during the war and they were beaten and starved and if it would not have been for their building being infested with fleas, she would have been raped. She was miraculously spared and released after years and even watched her own sister die in the camp. Years later after speaking about her torment and pain around the world, she was in Munich Germany and meet a man at a revival one night that was her prison guard. After listening to her talk about her God and His forgiveness, he was moved by her words and the God that could forgive sin. Now she was faced with if she lived out what she talked. He extended his hand to her, but would she take it? She struggled with what she thought was a lifetime, but extended her hand. She said that it was a release of God’s love for a man that literally all but killed her.