Ichoose To Forgive Series

iChoose

Pt. 1 – I Choose To Forgive

I. Introduction

Choosing may be the greatest power and privilege that we have as humans. It is this power that separates us from the Angels and animals. We are faced with multiplied thousands of choices during the course of our life. We face choices on a daily, minute by minute basis . . . what will I wear? Will I laugh at that? Will I respond? Will I ignore? Will I go? Will I stay? Regular or decaf?

You have to choose to choose.

For instance if you visited Sonic today you had a choice to make . . . what to get to drink? SONIC boasts 168,894 drink combinations and you had to make a decision.

If you went to Barnes and Nobel’s website you had to pick a book out of the 1 million books they stock (35 miles of shelving). They offer 15,000 publishers, 40,000 videos, and 1 million audio clips. How can that be? In the last reported year, 2005, there were 172,000 books published in USA that year.

As we examine Scripture you have to make a choice. How will I look at Scripture? You can examine Scripture as history. You can look at it for commentary on ancient culture. But one way that is never really mentioned is that you can choose to look at the Bible as a collection of people’s choices. Scripture is full of serious choices that had to be made. Noah had to choose to build an ark when it had never rained. Abram had to choose to leave his home on a faith journey. David had to choose to commit adultery. 3 Hebrew Children had to choose not to bow. Disciples had to choose to lay their nets down and follow. All tough choices. All similar to tough choices we have to make.

Where you will go to college? Leave your country?

Who you will marry and will you remain faithful? The balcony battle?

Stand up for what you believe in? Refusing to bow?

What career path you will choose? Laying your nets down?

We are faced with all kinds of choices easy choices, silly choices, meaningless choices, and life altering choices.

What I want to do over this month is talk to you about 4 life altering choices we must make. The reason I want to deal with these 4 areas is that these 4 areas have such huge and long lasting implications for every area of our lives and the in the lives of those we are in relationship with.

In these 4 areas I think too often we are like the man described in James 1:8 “8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” A Double Minded man according to the same text in the Message Bible keep all of their options open, but they drift at sea. If we don’t make the right choices in these 4 areas we will be unstable in all of our ways.

I want to challenge you this morning to make the first choice. Choose to forgive.

One of the most crucial choices that we must make and more times than not fail to make is to choose to forgive.

Video – Antwone Fisher (Find your family - Available from WingClips.com)

Antwone Quenton Fisher was born in prison to a teenaged mother. He became a ward of the state of Ohio and was placed in foster care immediately. He spent two years in a loving foster home, but when it was apparent that the foster mother had become too attached to Antwone, deeming a reunion with his birth mother too difficult for the child, he was placed in a foster home where he would suffer twelve years of abuse at the hands of the foster family. He survived the cruelties of foster care and the brutalities of homelessness and set on a course of healing after joining the United States Navy where he served his country for eleven years.

Currently, Antwone works in Hollywood as a screenwriter, author and film producer. The film, Antwone Fisher, based on Fisher’s life and written by Fisher himself reflects on Fisher’s life as a sailor in the United States Navy and as a child growing up as a ward of the State of Ohio, living in Cleveland. Through his collection of poetry titled, Who Will Cry For The Little Boy?, a National Best Seller and now one of the bestselling books of poetry of all time, Fisher reveals the inner truths that took him from a tumultuous childhood to the man he is today.

The truth is that, although you may not have a movie made about your life, you will be hurt, you will be dealt a bad hand, and you will be wronged and offended. That is the fact of life. You may not have made the choices that created the pain or the hurt, but you do have a choice to make in the matter. Will you choose to forgive?