A) What I want to talk about this morning is something that I have had a hard time
admitting, and that is, I have a limited capacity – I’ve made a list .......
* I cannot do it all ... I can’t say it all ... I can’t be it all ... I can’t fix it all ... I can’t
solve it all ... I can’t carry it all ... I have a limited capacity.
B) Today, I want to talk to you about a choice.
* It’ll change your life ... If you can just come to the place where you can honestly admit,
“You know what? – I have some limitations.”
C) I can’t carry all the uncertainty of the future.
* I can’t carry all the burdens and what’s gonna happen, or what I’m afraid about, and all the
things I can be anxious about.
* I can’t carry the future – But I can trust God with my future.
D) But today I’m gonna talk about dealing with the past.
* In regard to the past, and when I was younger, I totally did not get this.
* When you’re young, you just don’t realize how life just piles up on you.
E) When you’re young, you just don’t see it ... But by the time you’ve flipped a few
pages on the calendar, and you’ve been through a few years, a few decades .......
* Stuff starts to pile up on you, and things happen, and people disappoint you, and rejection
comes, and disappointments come – And here’s what I’m telling you .......
F) If you don’t find a good way, a godly way, a biblical way of dealing with the things
that happen in life .......
* Your attic (mentally speaking) is gonna be so filled with nonsense and garbage, it’s gonna
be so hard for you to go forward if you don’t make a choice about the past.
* That’s what I want to talk about today ... The choice is this .......
(1) I CAN’T CHANGE MY PAST – I CHOOSE TO FORGIVE
A) How many of you have things about your past you wish you could change?
* Things you’ve done ... Things others have done to you – Put up your hand – Be honest,
let everyone else see your hand.
* “Preacher, if I could just live my life over, I’d do some things differently.”
B) I totally agree ... But we can’t go back.
* And God didn’t make us to carry the weight of the past ... We don’t have the capacity for
that, so we’re gonna make a good choice today – The choice to forgive.
* I’m speaking about this from experience – I shared this with you a couple of weeks ago,
but the Lord wants me to share it with you again for this message.
* People left – July 8, 2016 .......
SO LET’S START WITH THIS MOST OBVIOUS POINT IN THIS MESSAGE TODAY
A) I choose to forgive – It’s a decision that I’m making.
* I choose to forgive – Look at our text one more time – Matthew 6:14-15 .......
B) Sometimes when I’m studying a passage of Scripture and I’m thinking about you
guys, and what I’m gonna share with you .......
* Sometimes what I think to myself is, “Man, I hope I can make this clear, I mean,
that’s just complicated.”
* Like when we were going through the Book of Revelation, some of that stuff, I thought,
“Oh, I hope I can make this clear, I don’t hardly understand it myself.”
C) Not a thought like that came to my mind when I read Matt. 6:14-15.
* I mean, that’s a serious verse – That’s nothing you want to be messing around about,
or, “I sort of got it right.”
* There’s not gonna be no “nice try” people in heaven ... You really want to get this.
D) It’s not saying you get saved by forgiving ... It’s saying that people who are really
saved are forgiving people, increasingly so.
* Not perfectly – Not entirely – But increasingly, we are more and more forgiving.
* As the love of Christ penetrates our hearts more and more deeply, we just become more
forgiving people.
E) You ought to be the most forgiving person in your neighborhood.
* People ought to say about you, “He’s just not someone who holds grudges – Not just
someone who finds fault.”
F) “She’s not a person who tries to make people pay – She just moves on.”
* “She’s not petty – He’s not a scorekeeper – He’s just not like that ... You got to know
this guy ... He’s ... I’m looking for the word ... He’s ... He’s forgiving, that’s what he is.”
* That’s what people ought to be saying about you ... The more you get to know Jesus,
that ought to be true in your life, that you choose forgiveness.
NOW I WANT TO GIVE YOU THE CONTEXT OF THE PASSAGE HERE
A) Jesus had just said the Lord’s prayer – v.9-13 (You know the Lord’s prayer)
* Most people know the “Our Father” prayer ... Imagine if you could go back to the time
that Jesus told the disciples this for the first time.
* He said, “Yea, I want you to pray like this,” and you could hear it for the first time.
B) You might be thinking, “Well, I wonder what He was thinking about after He told
them this prayer, that it was gonna be said countless times through the ages.”
* What was He thinking? ... Well, He was probably thinking to Himself, “Man, I hope they
get this prayer thing, cause this prayer thing is really important.”
* Or maybe He was thinking, “I wish I didn’t know the future, cause they’re gonna make
it into a ritual and just say it over and over, and that’s not what I meant at all .......”
* “I meant it like a pattern and not like a religious ritual where you just say the same thing
over and over.”
C) Actually He wasn’t thinking either one of those things as far as we know.
* If you look at what He said next, you can tell what He was thinking next.
* He was thinking about the part of the prayer that gives them forgiveness ... And what He
was thinking was, “Yea, people gonna have a hard time praying that.”
D) It’s hard for people to pray – It’s hard to pray, “Lord, I want You to forgive me
the way I forgive other people.”
* I don’t hardly know of anybody who really feels that way.
* How many people want God to forgive them better than you forgive other people?
* It’s just really hard to pray that.
E) “Forgive me my debts.” ... My stumblings – My failings – My fallings ... And we all
fall in many ways.
* You’re at church today with a lot of people who have fallen in a lot of different ways,
including the person that’s talking to you right now.
F) You think about the ways that we’ve failed God.
* “God, I want You to forgive me the way that I forgive other people.”
* Well, Jesus knew that they’d be hung up on that, so He went on and said in v.14-15 .......
G) You really ought to choose this forgiveness thing.
* And let’s make sure we know exactly what we’re talking about here.
* What is forgiveness? ... Here’s the definition: A decision, an act of my will, a choice .......
* That’s the first thing – It’s a choice.
ILLUSTRATION: EVERYBODY RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND
A) Whether you did or didn’t raise your hand was your choice.
* You made an act of your will ... And forgiveness is just like that ... Don’t glamourize it,
don’t make it bigger than it is.
* Forgiveness is an act of your will – It’s a choice that you make – It’s a decision.
B) Let me add something to the definition now.
* To release a person (set free) from the obligation that resulted when they injured me.
* When you hurt someone, there is an obligation.
ILLUSTRATION: TAKE A WALLET AND REMOVE THE MONEY
A) Now he has a choice to make – He’s either gonna hold that over me .......
* Or he can make a choice to release me from the obligation – What’s the obligation?
* The obligation is I owe what I took ... Forgiveness is the decision to release a person
from the obligation that resulted when they injured me.
B) Every time someone hurts you – Every time someone acts against you .......
* Every time someone punishes you and takes from you, you have a choice to make.
* And by the way, in this dark world, that doesn’t happen once a decade or once a year,
does it? ... It happens often.
* And don’t you think for a moment that I haven’t thought of every horrific possibility
that’s covered in a message like this – Every one of them I thought of this week.
C) What choice do you have? ... You cannot change the past.
* And God did not give you the capacity to carry it forward ... So what remains for you?
* Just the choice to forgive ... Cause if you don’t choose to forgive, that stuff will pile up on
you till it crushes you and throw shrapnel into every person that you love and care about.
* Unforgiveness will destroy you and those around you.
FORGIVENESSES
A) These are forgivenesses that are not quite as hard – I call them tangible forgivenesses.
* You cut me off and took my place in traffic – You took my parking space at WalMart.
* You took my friend Billy away and turned him against me.
* You released them from the obligation that resulted when they injured you.
B) Then there are intangible things, harder still to forgive them for.
* You took my right to fairness – You took my dream for a happy marriage – You took my
dignity as a person – You took my confidence – You took my safety – You took my purity.
* Forgiveness is a decision – It’s a choice – It’s an act of my will to release a person from the
obligation that resulted when they injured you.
C) Unforgiveness sounds like this ... You owe me ... I’m gonna make you pay by
hating you ... By slandering you ... By returning back the same way .......
* By recruiting other people into my bitterness ... I’m gonna make you pay for what you did
to me – What you took from me – That’s unforgiveness.
D) Here’s forgiveness ... You don’t owe me ... I’m not looking for payment.
* I’m not trying to get even – I’m not looking for a chance to pay you back.
* I’m not doing it ... I’m writing it off ... I’m letting it go.
E) I can’t carry all this – God didn’t make me that way.
* It’s crushing me, and I have to get it off ... I can’t handle the weight.
* I choose to forgive – I’m choosing.
F) Preacher, I can make that choice today, but I want you to know by Thursday I’ll
have that thing back on my back again.
* I understand that – But get this – Forgiveness is a crisis and a process.
* The first thing you have to do is you have to see your unforgiveness as sin ... And you have
to know that God is not gonna forgive you if you don’t forgive others.
G) You got to have the crisis – You have got to stop explaining it – Defending it –
Holding on to it – Cherishing it – Reviewing it .......
* You got to say, “I don’t want this for my life.”
* So there’s the crisis – I choose to forgive – I forgive him – I’m letting it go.
* But get this – This is very important .......
THERE IS THE PROCESS
A) That means the next time you see her, it’s gonna come back into your mind again.
* And you got to promise yourself – Here it is – Here’s forgiveness in the process .......
* I won’t bring it up to the person – I won’t bring it up to other people – I won’t post it on
Facebook – And most hard by far, I won’t bring it up to myself.
B) But Preacher, I can’t help myself ... As soon as I see this person, BAM, my mind
goes right to that thing.
* That’s why forgiveness is a crisis and a process ... In the crisis you decide – In the process
you live it out.
* Here’s the key sentence – When you fail in the process, you have to return to the crisis.
C) Preacher, I can’t help it – I was just sitting there, and all of a sudden the memories
just flooded into my mind.
* You failed in the process – You got to return to the crisis ... You got to get before the Lord
and say, “God forgive me – I want to be a forgiving person .......”
* “But here I am holding on to this again – Lord, help me again – I commit afresh to let it go.”
* Crisis – Process – Crisis – Process – Crisis – Process ... Over time, you’ll let it go, and you
will be a lot happier because of it.
CLOSE
A) Some people who have troubles with forgiveness think that forgiveness does not take
the harm of sin seriously ... But forgiveness does take it very seriously.
* Forgiveness does not excuse sin ... It does not say, “O that’s alright, your sin really wasn’t
a bother ... It was like pouring water on a duck’s back – No problem.”
* No – Forgiveness calls sin, sin, and in many ways it holds the sinner accountable for their
actions.
* Forgiveness says, “You hurt me, and what you did was wrong, but I will not hold it against
you – I will not try to get back at you, and I will not hate you for it.”
B) Forgiveness also initiates the process.
* You have most likely heard someone say, or maybe you have said yourself, “I’ll forgive
them when they come and tell me they’re sorry.”
* This is not God’s way ... Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them,” and not a one of
them that crucified Jesus asked for forgiveness.
* If we wait for a confession to forgive, most often we will be waiting a long time.
C) In his book, “What’s so Amazing About Grace,” Philip Yancey tells a story about
a man and wife who one night had an argument about how supper was cooked.
* It was so heated that night they slept in separate rooms.
* Neither has approached the other to say I’m sorry or to offer forgiveness, and they have
remained in separate rooms for years after the argument.
D) Each night they go to bed hoping that the other will approach them with an apology
or forgiveness, but neither goes to the other.
* God’s forgiveness does not wait for repentance ... It initiates and calls out repentance by
offering forgiveness.
E) This is why some people have great difficulty forgiving people.
* Either they hate confrontation and don’t want to confront someone with their sin, so instead
they stew in their unforgiveness and hate, not wanting to do the hard work of forgiveness.
* Who do you need to forgive today – Right now?
