Forgiveness Kills, Unforgiveness Gives Life

Un-forgiveness will kill you

Forgiveness will give you life

Pastor Joe Bachman

10/15/06

Matt 6:9-15

9 "Pray, then, in this way:

’Our Father who is in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

10’Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

11’Give us this day our daily bread.

12’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13’And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’

14 "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

15 "But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

NASU

Look at verses 14 & 15

Those are some powerful verses

So many times they are looked over

But that does not make them any less true

I noticed something about people

When they read the bible they always rejoice in a verse that is comforting and compassionate

But they seem to ignore the challenging ones

How many people do you know that have these verses as their life verses?

That’s because we have a hard time putting these verses to practice

Sometimes it is so hard to forgive isn’t it?

Oh it is easy to accept forgiveness but it is hard to give it

1) Let’s look at what happens when you can’t forgive

2 Cor 2:7

7 so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

NASU

alot of us should have this for our life verse

it says we should not only forgive but we should also comfort the person who has offended us

why?

Look at the last part of this verse

otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Notice it does not just say sorrow it says excessive sorrow

The hardest step to heal from forgiveness is to forgive ourselves

Sometimes it is easy to forgive others but it is hard to forgive ourselves

There is a lot of mental health problems such as depression and other mental health problems caused from un-forgiveness

There is where people are living in the sorrow mode

But see un-forgiveness does not stop there it moves to excessive sorrow

Here is where it becomes dangerous in this stage a person could hurt others and or himself.

A prime example of this is what happen in Lancaster

Everyone is asking the same question

Why did this happen?

Let’s look a little bit about the man that did this horrible crime

His name was Charles Carl Roberts

Charles Carl Roberts IV was born December 7, 1973 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

His father is retired from the local police force.

His mother works at Sight & Sound Theatres, a Christian organization that stages Bible plays in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.

Neither he nor his family were Amish.

In 1990, Roberts worked as a dishwasher at Good `N Plenty Restaurant in Smoketown, PA.

Roberts drove a milk truck for Northwest Food Products Transportation in East Earl Township.

He shared a home in Georgetown, with his wife and children, a daughter, 7, and sons, 5 and 18 months.

Their first child, a daughter named Elise Victoria, died twenty minutes after birth on November 14, 1997.

This is a brief overview of his life

Now let’s look a little deeper

What was going on behind the seen

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person with what they write

"I don’t know how you put up with me all those years. I am not worthy of you, you are the perfect wife you deserve so much better. We had so many good memories together as well as the tragedy with Elise.

It changed my life forever I haven’t been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like every time we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us and I go right back to anger."

These are words form a person who had a hard time forgiving himself from the past

This type of un-forgiveness turns to anger

So what you see here and what I believe that God is trying to show us here is what happens when we let un-forgiveness into our hearts

It causes death

Not always like this but it does always cause death

It might be physical

It might be emotional

It might be Spiritual

But it always causes death

But you know what

God is always a God of balance

Say God is a God of Balance

2) Let’s look and see what happens when we do forgive.