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Introduction
1. John 20:22-23
2. Ephesians 6:1-4
How Forgiveness Works
1. Forgive yourself: If you’ve committed a sin and God has forgiven you of that sin, but you have not yet forgiven yourself, then you’ve made yourself greater than God.
2. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven or released; whose sins you retain are retained.
3. “Generational sins” pass down by the binding of unforgiveness.
4. In order to be free from the sins of others, you have to forgive them and release them out of your life
Becoming Free from a Father’s Sins
1. Many men’s problems come to them from their fathers. We want to be free from the sins of others and not bear their sins.
2. Streetwise and churchwise are hard of heart, manipulative, con parents, insolent in manner, deceptive in spirit.
3. Provoking children instead of protecting children
4. Emotional deprivation instead of affectionate balance
5. Provoking not to good works but to evil works
6. Forgive our fathers so we can be good fathers.
I want to bring you a teaching from out of the book Courage. It’s a teaching on a principle of release. Jesus gives it to us in John 20:22-23. So, if you want to get your Bible out and turn to it while I talk to you, you can do so at this particular time.
I’ve tried to put this principle in every single book that I’ve ever written. I’ve tried to put this in every single teaching that I’ve ministered because I consider it to be one of the most important principles in the kingdom of God. In fact, Jesus said when He was on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
The Bible says He was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification. That simply means that when the Lord said, “forgive them, they know not what they do,” that forgiveness opened up heaven to those for whom Christ died and for whom He was going to be raised from the dead. Interesting, isn’t it, that he could have gone to the cross, but if He had not said Father forgive them, the redemption of the cross would not be effective in our lives. We have to understand how important that particular principle is.
So, let’s take a look at it. If you have the King James Version with you at this particular time, why don’t you read along with me. Here’s where we are in John 20:22-23:
22And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
23Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Now, in Ephesians the 6th chapter beginning with the 1st verse, here’s what we read:
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
2 “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise:
3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
4 And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
In this particular principle that Jesus gives us, He is telling us to forgive people’s sins. Now, He gives us a qualification. In the 22nd verse, He says, “receive ye the Holy Spirit.” The reason He says that is because you cannot forgive as God forgives unless you do it by the power of His Spirit.
Let’s start with ourselves. You have to forgive yourself. In the book, Potential Principle, as I talked about this principle of release, I made mention of the fact that if you’ve committed a sin and God has forgiven you of that sin, but you have not yet forgiven yourself, then you’ve made yourself greater than God.
I’ll never forget one time in Phoenix, Arizona, as God was moving in the hearts and lives of the people in that congregation. There was a tremendous spirit, a reviving spirit of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. I can recall one man who was sitting in the second row who just was not in the meeting. He looked depressed and he looked saddened. Finally, I went up to him and said, “What seems to be the problem? You don’t seem to have your joy. You don’t seem to have that effervescence that the Spirit of God brings from the very nature of Jesus Christ. What seems to be the problem?” He said, “Well, it’s my sins. I said, “What’s the matter with your sins?” He said, “Well, they’re just too heavy.” I said, “Have you asked the Lord to forgive you?” He said, “Yeah.” So, we talked a little bit more and I asked him point blank. I said, “Have you ever forgiven yourself?” He looked at me with amazement and said, “What do you mean?” I said, have you ever forgiven yourself as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you? Have you ever forgiven yourself?” He looked at me and he said, “No, I don’t believe I have.” I said, “Well, that’s your problem. You’re not released from the burden of your sins, because God’s forgiven you, but you’ve never forgiven yourself. So, what you need to do is to forgive yourself. Let me lead you in a prayer!” And I did. His life changed. Today, he’s a buoyant Christian. He and his wife are in the ministry together just having a great time in the Lord. It’s very important that you understand to forgive yourself. The qualification is, receive ye the Holy Spirit. To forgive as God forgives, you can only do it by the power of God’s Spirit.
Now, the other aspect of this is where in the next verse He says, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted or are they forgiven or they are released.” So, He says, whose sins you forgive, they are released. Whose sins you do not forgive, they are retained. Now, this particular verse of Scripture, this particular passage deals with the ecclesiastical authority for the absolution of sins. Various people over the years and decades and centuries have fought concerning this very verse of Scripture and used it as the catalyst for acrimonious assaults on one another; debates, backbiting, strife. But the truth is that Jesus only gave the principles of His kingdom to those who believe and if we act on those principles by the power of His Spirit, they are the key that unlocks heaven to us. So, here’s the principle. Whose soever sins you forgive, they are forgiven or they are released. Whose soever sins you do not forgive, they are retained.
Probably this principle is best exemplified by a time when I was in Cleveland, Ohio and after ministering in the service that night, there were people who came to have me pray with them and agree with them in prayer. There was a man who was standing in front of me and I asked him, “What one thing do I want you to agree with you in prayer concerning?” He said, “Pray for my sons’ salvation. I have two sons and let’s pray they get saved.” I said, “Sure.”
I knew that was according to the way of God, the Word of God, the will of God, so I could pray for salvation knowing that God heard me, and if I knew that God heard me then I’d have the petitions I desired of Him. So, I started to pray. But, just as I started to pray, he said, “They’re both alcoholics and I know if they get saved that will get rid of their alcoholism.” I paused and I looked at him and I commanded him to look at me. I asked him a question point blank. I said, “Were you ever an alcoholic?”
Well, he’d been saved for many years. Being an alcoholic was part of his past life and he was ashamed of it and embarrassed. He didn’t want to admit to that in front of the people that were standing around him, but I pressed the point. I said, “Were you ever an alcoholic?” Finally, with head bowed, he looked back up at me and nodded and said “yes.” I said, “Were your sons at home when you were an alcoholic?” He said “yes.” I said, “Let me ask you a question. Have you ever gone to your sons and asked them to forgive you of being an alcoholic?” He sort of shrugged a little and he said, “I’m sure they’ve done that.” I said, “That isn’t what I asked you. I asked have you ever gone to your sons of your own volition and looked at them eyeball to eyeball, face to face, and asked them to forgive you of your alcoholism?” He said “no.” I said, “All right, I’ll agree together in prayer with you for your sons under one condition, that you’ll go to them and ask them to forgive you.” Well, he was rather reluctant to do it. You know, it was hard for him to grasp that. Again, I pressed the point home. There is a place where the anointing gives you a boldness and I pressed the point. I told him that’s what I’ll agree with prayer for him, on that basis. He agreed and I prayed.
Now, I want you to know when I prayed there was no great fiery bolt from out of heaven that came, but there was a quickening power of the Holy Spirit that went through him. A little later on we were talking together again and I asked him what happened to him. He said, “I don’t know, but I feel almost like a new man.”
So, I put my arm around him, looked out over the congregation and I said, “Folks, I want to explain something to you. On the basis of this scripture, the truth is that when he was an alcoholic at home, his sons hated his alcoholism. They hated what it did to them, hated what it did to their mother, hated what it did to everybody and as a consequence, because he had never asked them to forgive him, they were never able to release that out of their lives. Because they hated it, they bound it to themselves and became like the thing that they hated. You see, both hate and love are a binding emotion. They bind things to you. They bring those things to you. What happened to him was very simple. He had offended his sons. They hated the alcoholism because they never were asked to forgive him, it was never released out of their lives.”
You see, that’s the reason why sins are passed from generation to generation. It’s the reason why sins are not only passed from generation to generation, but they’re passed from fathers to sons. The reason sins pass down is not by some kind of genetic process, but by the binding of unforgiveness. Generational sins are very real. That’s the reason why you have some nationalities, some societies, you have some people who over the period of time have never had a Holy Ghost revival in their particular society and as a result of it, the degenerative process has brought them even down as low as cannibalistic levels. It’s the reason why in America, there has been a constant renewing by a spiritual revival that has been able to release or forgive the sins of a previous generation.
That’s the reason why I have tried to teach men just like you everywhere I go that one of the things that you have to understand, in order to be free from the sins of others, you have to forgive them and release them out of your life. Because whose soever sins you do not forgive, they are not released and you bear those sins and you bind them to yourself.
I was in Colorado Springs and one of the men that was there was so moved by the Spirit of God that after the meeting he said, “My whole life changed tonight.” I said, “What happened?” He said, “My life has been a hell. My life has been miserable. For the last six years, I’ve tried to serve God and I’ve been up and down, in and out, never been able to do it and just last week I told God that if I don’t get an answer and something change in my life, I’m going to give the whole thing up. Tonight when I heard the principle of release, I realized what the problem in my life was. You see, when my father and mother gave birth to me, I was an illegitimate child. I was a bastard and what happened to me was they didn’t want me and so they put me up for adoption and nobody would adopt me and I just grew up in homes. I grew up just wherever in foster homes. Because I was the son of my dad and my dad had the reputation he did in the town, everybody hated me and I had to fight my way through school. I never met my mother until I was 16 years of age. When I was 16, my best friend told me he was going with an older woman and in his words and this is the way he used, he used a little colloquialism, he said, my best friend told me she was the best he ever had and if I would meet her, maybe I could get some of the action. When he brought her around, it was my mother. I hated my mother for what she was. I never realized until tonight that my problem in my life and the reason why I’ve lived the way I have and haven’t been able to maintain that measure of spiritual victory in my life is because of the sins of my parents that were still in my life that I had never forgiven.”
Whenever I get with men like you, I always try to tell men that one of the primary, fundamental things that you have to do in order to live free and be the man God wants you to be is to forgive your father any sins that he may have committed against you. Because if you don’t forgive your father and release those sins out of your life, you’ll retain those and you’ll make the same mistake with your sons your father made with you. That’s the reason why you’ve got many men that have problems.
One of the things that happened to me was that God opened a door through Bob Rogers in Southern California, the director of Teen Challenge, and opened a door for me to go minister to the men of Teen Challenge. When I went to minister to those men, I brought them this truth of the principle of release, I had them raise their hand like we always do, and I led them in the prayer of the forgiveness of their fathers and the release of authority figures in their lives.
Well, the next day, Saturday, we went through the entire rest of the seminar and Saturday afternoon before we left I said, “How many of you have had a life-changing experience similar to what we’ve had happen to us, you know, how many of you your life changed?” And, their hands went up, 100% of them. I said, “How many of you fellas’ forgive your father some sin?” Almost 100% of them raised their hands. I said, “How many of you feel as though many of your problems in life have come to you from your fathers?” Again, almost 100% of their hands were raised.
I was up in the state of Washington and they told me that in a prison up there near Seattle, Washington, the chaplain up there told me that 100% of the prisoners in that prison feel as though that they’re there because of something that their father did in their lives. You see, it’s very important that you and I understand the role of the father. It’s the reason why everywhere I go, I try to teach men who are fathers that when your child is at home, you are the Jehovah-jireh, the Father who provides. That’s who you are. That’s who I am. But what are we providing?
I was there in Teen Challenge and I asked them, “How many of you forgave your father of their sins?” A fellow stood up and he said, “I forgave my father of committing adultery with my mother and molesting my sisters and raping me.” Another fellow in the front stood up and said, “I forgave my brother for hurting me and beating me and beating my mother and beating my sisters.” He said, “I hated my brother so much I used it like a tool and when I turned that thing loose, I could kill six or seven men at a time, there was such a hatred that was there.” Others stood up. A guy stood up and said, “I forgave my father for committing adultery on my mother during the time she had cancer and then remarrying within a week after she died and committing adultery within two weeks after he remarried. I forgave my father.” They went on down the line talking like this. It’s the principle of release. The power of the Holy Spirit to release sins out of the lives so you can live free.
Then there came a time for me to write the book, Courage. I was sitting in a hotel writing and I started teach young men they needed to forgive their father their sins. Now, many men have good fathers and I’m not saying that everybody has a bad father, but what I am saying is that we want to be free. Isn’t that true? We want to be free from the sins of others and not bear their sins. The only way you can do that is by forgiving as God forgives.
I was writing this and I was going to write about Teen Challenge. Then I remembered, hey if I put this in a book and they sell hundreds of thousands of copies of this and it goes out all over the world and Bob Rogers gets a hold of this and it really isn’t true, I’m going to be in trouble. So, I picked up the telephone and called Bob and said, “Bob I want to ask you a question. When we ministered to those men the principle of release and we heard what God had done in their lives, was it really as effective as I remember it being and recall what happened during that time? Was it really that effective?”
Bob said, “Yeah. In fact, it was one of the most important times of ministry that we’ve had in Teen Challenge. It revolutionized the lives of so many of the men. And, besides, we that work in Teen Challenge, we’ve been conned so much. We’ve been manipulated so often by so many guys that are involved in this program that we develop almost a veneer of skepticism so that when somebody says something to us, we don’t know whether we’re being conned or manipulated or taken advantage of or whatever. And, when they stood up and said what they did and exposed the most intimate details of their lives, it astounded us because most of these guys that are here at this time have come in off the streets. They have come in out of prison. They’ve come off of drugs. They’ve come out of all of these various kinds of backgrounds.
“One of the things that you learn is that in prison you never give an intimate detail about your life because it can be used as leverage against you. So as a consequence, when they stood up and told us that, we were absolutely amazed, just amazed.”
Then he went on down and as he told me this and we hung up the phone, I sat down and I wrote it down. These men that were in this program were streetwise. They’re hard of heart. They’ve had to harden their hearts because of the kind of life that they’ve lived. Not only are they hard of heart, but they’re manipulative in spirit. They have learned to con people; parents, authorities and others. They are insolent in their manner, deceptive in their spirit and desperately in need of God’s grace. Streetwise.
When Bob told me that, I began to write it because I saw a pattern. I took the manuscript and gave it to some people who were helping to publish the book. The lady that was helping said, “I’m going to help you get this book in the hands of every man in America.” I said, “Why are you feeling this way?” She said, “Because I took my daughter to a church for an overnight youth outing. I wanted my daughter to have a refreshing in the spirit, a reviving in her lifestyle and a renewing in her relationship with the Lord. I went to pick up my daughter on Saturday at noon when they came back from the Friday all-night outing and the Saturday morning convalescent hospital meeting. When I picked up my daughter, my daughter was disturbed and distressed, disheartened. I took her home and put her to bed and let her take a big long nap. The reason I did that was simply the fact that she had been with young people that weren’t streetwise but they were churchwise. Because during that outing some of the guys had tried to make out with her. A couple of them had tried to touch her. A couple of the girls had smoked. Some of the others had done some things. The youth pastor had shown “Airplane II” and it was just a bad scene. That’s the way it went during the night. The next morning they went to the convalescent hospital and had a meeting so when they came back and all the parents picked up their young people, all the parents were happy that their young people had been on a church outing and had gone to a convalescent hospital for ministry. She said, you see Brother Cole, there’s not only the streetwise, there’s the churchwise.”
Well, let’s take a look at it. These are churchwise young people who grow up in church. They grow up with fathers who never sit with them in the service. They grow up with dads who don’t pray at home. They grow up with dads who don’t worship at home. The dads do all the worshipping at church and live the way they want to live when they get home. These are young people who grow up with dads that are almost professional in their attitude toward their faith. When it comes to discipling their children at home, they leave it all up to the pastor at the church. They’re churchwise.
See, the interesting thing about churchwise young people is that churchwise young people can be hard of heart. Churchwise young people learn to manipulate. Manipulate the youth pastor, manipulate friends, manipulate mom and dad. They’ve learned how to con them. Give them the big con in order to give them what they want. They’ve learned to do what else? What else are they? Insolent in their manner. Did you ever notice the churchwise that comb their hair and pass their notes and never listen to the minister? Too busy with what they’re doing. Churchwise. The Gospel just bounces off of them. Churchwise. Take another look at it. Deceptive in their spirit. Who are they deceiving? Basically themselves. They’re not deceiving God. They may deceive their parents and they may deceive us, but they’re not deceiving God. Maybe deceiving themselves.
Now the reason why I’m bringing you this at this particular time is because as you see this, there’s both the streetwise and the churchwise. And you and I sit here tonight. We want our children to grow up to serve God and to love God. We want them to have the benefits that maybe we never even did have. We want them to be able to avoid the pitfalls that we fell into. We want to protect them from the kinds of worldliness that seduced us and caused us to have our problems in life. What happens is that in the very manner, in the very way that we want to protect them, we wind up provoking them. You see, there are ways that you can provoke your children. One of the things that I have tried to make sure is that fathers understand that there is such a thing as emotional deprivation.
You know when God created men and women, he did a very, very good thing. The anatomical way that God created us is absolutely genius. When God created the woman, He created her so that when a child is born, she would nourish that child at her breast. Now, the nourishment of the child means that that child would be undergirded by her arms. But at the same time that the child was nourishing from the mother, the mother, with love and compassion and mercy and all of the grace that she could give to the child, would look into that child’s eyes and coo and talk to that child and nourish that child emotionally as well as physically. But, children who have never been touched caressingly, lovingly, graciously; children who have been emotionally deprived grow up with perverted attitudes toward society.
Emotional deprivation is a sensory thing that’s very real in our lives. You see, when you talk about touching and the laying on of hands and the hugging and all the rest of that, those are all Bible things. Greet one another with a holy kiss, lay hands upon the sick. There’s all of that touching and hugging and caressing and all of these other things that deal with emotional life and the spiritual life of the church and of the individual and it needs to be in the home as well. Many men have grown up emotionally deprived of a father’s love. You take some men that grow up in homes where the mother is dominant and the father is passive or where there is no father and there are only women around. Because of that emotional deprivation and that imbalance of life, they have tendencies toward homosexuality. You find these kinds of things happening in our lives. Many of us don’t realize that as men it is very, very important that we be the kind of a father that does not provoke our child. By not ministering to our children and giving them the emotional support they need, we can provoke them to wrath. Not just simply by an overbearing, dominating attitude that beats them into submission, provoking them to wrath through resentment and rebellion, but by emotional deprivation.
I was in a meeting in a church in Dallas and I had ministered on Sunday or Monday night to all of the women that had been hurt or wounded or abused by some man in their lifetime. I watched literally hundreds of them pray the prayer of release and forgive fathers and authority figures for what they had done to them in their lifetime. I watched these women that forgave and were released and brought back to a wholeness and their uniqueness restored. The following night when I came back, a young lady, 21 or 22 years of age, came up to me and said, “I came forward last night for prayer; not because of what my father had done to me, but because of what my father had not done. You see, my father never complimented me. My father never caressed me. My father never showed my any love. Because my father never showed me any love, as I grew up, I tried to find it with boys. I tried to find it with older men. As a result of it, I became promiscuous and as a result of the promiscuity, my life literally was lived in a miserable, hellish kind of a nightmare. Last night, I forgave my father. I’ve been saved for a couple of years now and God delivered me from all of those past sins and mistakes, but I’ve still had problems. Until last night, I didn’t really realize what they were. But, last night, I forgave my father of emotionally depriving me from what was rightfully mine and provoking me not to good works, but to evil works.”
Are you guys getting this? Do you understand what I’m saying to you? See, it’s not just men that are abused or women that are abused, it’s those that have been ignored and been provoked that way. So, we have to forgive our fathers. It’s an absolute necessity that we do that in order to be free.
Many is the man that has had say, “I forgave my father of never paying any attention to me, of being a workaholic. Because my father was a workaholic, I am not a workaholic and I’m doing the same thing with my children that my father did to me.” I’ve found them being released through praying the prayer of release. It’s a very real thing. When you’re talking about the principles of the kingdom, you’re not talking about some motivational kind of a thing that deals with business. You’re talking with relationships, you’re talking life and death, you’re talking heaven and hell, you’re talking sin and righteousness, you’re talking things that deal with people’s lives. It’s why it’s that important. It’s the reason why we need to understand the Word of God. It’s the reason why we need to go to the Word of God and find out what the principles are.
Yeah, there are the churchwise and as fathers we can let our children grow up and become churchwise because we never do anything in Christianity. We never pray with them at home, we never sing choruses with them at home, we don’t do it when we go on picnics or anything else and the only time we ever do anything religious is at the church. But, what happens is we teach our children that if we’re going to be Christians, come to church and do something religious and when you go home, live the way you want to live. That isn’t Christianity. How many of you guys don’t want your children to grow up to be streetwise? You don’t want your children to grow up to be streetwise. How many of you want your children to grow up to be churchwise? You don’t want them to be churchwise either, do you? So, what do you want them to be? You want them to be Godwise.
For your children to be Godwise, you can’t leave that up to the professional preacher. You can’t leave that up to somebody who has taken on the burden of Sunday school teaching or children’s church responsibilities. How many churches do you go to where when the children are brought in to the nursery, it’s a woman in the nursery? Then they go to children’s church and it’s a woman in the children’s church. Then they go to junior church and it’s a woman in the junior church. Then they go on up in other graded programs and all they ever see is women working. When they go into the big church all they see is women in the choir. There should be a man in every nursery. There should be a man in every Sunday school class. There should be a man in every single aspect of church life because if children do not see men leading their families in righteousness, they don’t want it because the man, whether you like it or not, is the leader.
Isn’t that true? You don’t push string, you pull it. Isn’t that right? That’s exactly the way it is with our children. That’s why we have to provide them with the things that are necessary. But, see that’s the reason why we have to forgive our fathers even in our own lives. Forgive our fathers of what they have done to us; whether they’ve emotionally deprived us, whether they’ve abused us.
The interesting thing for me is that God began to use me in order to minister to women who had been offended or violated or abused by men in their lifetime. I was in a meeting and ministering to women who had been abused and seeing the Spirit of God move upon them and heal them. As we came to the end of that ministry that morning, one of the guys spoke up and said, “What about us men?” I looked at him and I said, “Sir, I’m sorry, it just never hit me that men would need this kind of ministry because they had been abused.”
The interesting thing is, I just read an article the other day, that 40% of the prostitutes in Hollywood are men and that 100% of them had been somehow, just like the women, violated or abused by authority figures as children. Isn’t it interesting that today, the average age of the prostitute in Hollywood, California, where it used to be 20, 21, 22 is now down to 14 and 15? Isn’t it interesting that incest today is one of the most prevalent problems in our society? Think what’s it like for a woman to have to forgive her father of incest. Think what it’s like for a man who has been abused or misused by his dad of what he has to bear in his lifetime. Do you understand what I’m saying?
You just literally need to forgive because if you don’t forgive, you don’t release that out of your lives.
I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we had about 1,000 women on a Monday night women only meeting. Women just want to get into a meeting where we are. And, so the pastor set up a women’s meeting and everybody came, every woman did. We came to the end of the meeting and I had taught little bit on the principle of release. I said, “How many of you ladies here have been emotionally deprived by your fathers? You’ve never had a father’s hug, you’ve never had a father’s caress or a father’s love in your life, you’ve been emotionally deprived? How many of you are here?” I guess about two dozen hands of the women that went up. My wife was there with me and so I turned to Nancy and I said, Nancy I want to minister another way, and I think what I want to do is just minister to these women first and then we’ll go on. I’m at an age and my ministry is such that I can get do this and get away with it. I wouldn’t advocate anybody else doing it. But, I said to the women, every one of you that’s never had a father’s hug and you’ve been emotionally deprived, I said, why don’t you just come down and line up over here and I thought we’d have a couple dozen women who’d come down and line up. Lo and behold when I said that and the organ started to play, they started to get up all over the building and they lined up all around that building. I looked at that and I said, everyone here has been emotionally deprived? You’ve never had a father’s love? They all said, yes! Well, I was committed at that particular point, so my wife stood right here beside me, I was up one step high and my wife stood right here and the pastor’s wife stood right here and I said, c’mon ladies. So, they began to come and I’d put my arm around them and I just give them a little fatherly hug. I mean I had mascara, I had powder, I had to send my clothes out to have them cleaned. I will never do that again the rest of my life. I mean I learned my lesson at that time. It was incredible.
While I was up in Bangor, Maine, I was in a men’s meeting and I touched on the principle of release and emotional deprivation. I said, “How many of you guys that are here right now have never had a father’s love? You’ve never had a father’s hug.” We have to remember a lot of guys have grown up in a home where there is no father. You see, we have a lot of guys that are that way and they’ve never had a father’s love. So, I said, how many of you here need a father’s love? They lined up and they began to come again. It was incredible! When we were in Toronto, we had so many of them lined up, I had to have a couple of other guys come and hug them for me. It’s just that important to them. There in Bangor, Maine when this guy stood there, I mean he started crying on my shoulder. He said, “I’m 56 years of age and if I would have had a father’s love when I was growing up, my life would have been different and so would my sons’. We could have avoided all of the tragedy that we’ve had.” He cried like a baby, 56 years old, crying like a baby on my shoulder; never had a father’s love before.
Now, maybe you’re here and you need to forgive your father. I was in Virginia Beach and one of the fellas who was standing up there said, “Dr. Cole, I went to look for you all over America and found out that you were coming right here to my own hometown. Tonight, when you talked about forgiving your father, it was interesting to me. I saw my father commit adultery in my dad’s bedroom in our home. I watched my dad commit adultery. It was literally almost an orgy. I could never get that thing out of my mind. You know, I never forgave my father that and as a result of that, I’ve had sexual problems in my life from then until now. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I addressed that issue and I said, ‘Dad I love you, but I forgive you your sin.’ For the first time in my life, I feel clean and free from that kind of a sin.”
Do you guys understand what I’m talking about right now? Do you understand what I’m saying? We all go through that thing. Now, our dads may be good. You may have a good dad, everything may be fine, but nonetheless whatever that father has done that’s been negative in our lives, we’ve got to forgive that to release it out. You may be sitting there right now at this particular time in tears because all of a sudden you realize that that’s the thing in your life that’s been bugging you. You’ve never been free from it. You haven’t been able to be the man that God has created you to be or wants you to be because of your father’s sins. Well, I want to lead you in a prayer right now. How many of you here right now feel like you need to pray that prayer right now too? That’s what I thought. C’mon everybody get up a hand. Get it way up high. Get your hand up and say it out loud with me right now. Right out loud, say it out loud.
“Father, in the name of Jesus, I come to you right now and by faith I receive that fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit in my life, and by the authority of your Word, and the ability of your spirit, I forgive my father, my mother, authority figures, I forgive their sins right out of my life. I don’t want to bear their sins. I don’t want to make their mistakes. I want to be free, Lord! I want to be my own man. So right now, I thank you for what you’ve done in my life. I thank you for what you’re doing in my life. And I praise you for it right now…”
Now, just thank God for it right now. Just say thank God out loud to Him right now. Right where you are. Just thank God for it. Don’t be embarrassed by it. You may never worship God like this before in your entire life, but it’s good for you. It’ll change your life. It’ll change your life.
Time after time after time, God’s Word comes to us as men because God’s trying to make men out of us. The truth is that manhood and Christlikeness are synonymous. I trust and pray that you will walk in freedom that you’ve never had before. Remember: Don’t let your children grow up to be streetwise. Don’t let them grow up to be churchwise. Train your children to grow up Godwise.
