This evening we live in a world that believes there are certain things that can influence your life. Those who put their confidence in astrology believe your life is planned out by:
· Pattern of the stars
· Positioning of the moon and sun
· The month you (or your spouse) were born in
Some folks rely heavily on:
· The “luck of the draw”(in life)
· The “odds of occurrence”
· “As fate would have it”
Believers of Christ know those things are not true. The month I was born has absolutely nothing to do with how I live my life.
There really is only two things in life that can influence how I live:
1. The sin in which I am born in
Psalm 51:5
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
2. The forgiveness of Jesus Christ
II Cor. 5:21
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
I have a choice to make everyday of my life. I can live each day in the disappointments and heartaches of sin. Or, I can choose to live in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
Transition
The fact is this –
The habits of the sin in our lives do control who we are and how much we enjoy, or don’t enjoy, our lives.
It’s not the pattern of the stars, rather it is the pattern of our sins, and whether we are delivered from them.
If we were honest with ourselves, we often/sometimes make the same mistakes we have made all our lives.
I speak to you from the voice of experience. Unfortunately, I have been guilty of facing the same battles over and over (in my life).
For each of us, there are certain sinful things that keep repeating themselves in our lives. Some of us may need deliverance from these old feelings, these same old heartaches, and/or these same old habits.
It is God’s desire that we all become a new creature in Christ. I want us all to experience what the Bible tells us about in II Corinthians, Galatians 6 and Colossians 3.
That is –
· The newness of Christ,
· The newness of His covenant,
· The new wineskin (with the new wine),
· The new creation,
· The new commandment, (Jesus told His disciples about),
· Singing the new song (in Psalm 149),
· Waiting on the new heaven and the new earth (in Rev 21).
Jesus made you and I a promise in Rev 21:5 that should excite us:
"Behold, I make all things new."
I cannot speak for you, but I am just simple enough in my faith that I believe that can be true for any of us.
For Me - There was once a time in my life that I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like where my life was heading.
Somebody told me that I could become new.
Some Christians told me –
· That Jesus didn’t like the way I was living (in my sins).
· The Good News was that Jesus would take me just the way I was (with all of my old habits, and my old hurts and heartaches.)
For some of us, that was a long time ago. And yet, every once in a while, we see something from the old days. Some of our old ways just pop up out of nowhere.
When that happens, we are reminded of –
· The way we used to be,
· Who we used to be,
· And what we used to do.
This is not always a pretty sight…
This can be very disappointing.
I can remember that I really did want to experience this “new life”, and to be a “new creature in Christ.”
Transition
But it’s almost as if there is this spiritual DNA that is not right with God.
Overall, a person may not be too troubled about how they are living.
But the fact remains that you may find yourself cycling through the same old garbage of old feelings every once and while.
So what is the answer?
It all has to do with whether or not you really have forgiveness in your life. It is important that we are truly walking in the forgiveness of Christ.
Text: Matthew 6:9 thru 15
Christianity is all about forgiveness. And yet, many Christians don’t understand it. They understand how important it is to pray the “sinner’s prayer”, but they don’t always apply it to the rest of their lives.
You may be one of those who don’t want to forgive others for what they have done to you. This is common even among (so called) godly people.
Example:
There was once a man considered to be a prophet of the Lord:
· He knew God.
· He spoke with God.
· He lived under the Laws of Moses.
· He followed very closely the religious traditions of his day.
· He was well respected by other godly people.
· But he did not understand forgiveness.
· He refused to offer forgiveness to a certain group of people who lived in Nineveh.
· His name was Jonah.
Application:
There are many folks who are like the prophet, Jonah. They would rather have the City of Nineveh destroyed than to have to deal with forgiveness.
There are some people who would rather have judgment come to those who have hurt them, than to ever offer them forgiveness.
This is not God’s plan for their life.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. There have been those certain people (in our lives) that have knowingly hurt us.
And we have never –
· Forgotten what they did to us.
· Forgiven them…
Many of us can become very angry with certain people from our past.
No one can understand all of the pain these people have caused us.
This is our little secret, in our little closet that we hide from everyone else.
And then we read what Christ told us in Matthew 6.
These words spoken to us by Jesus will bring us into a level of accountability with how we deal with unforgiveness.
· Some people enjoy wallowing in their old feelings caused by unforgiveness.
· Some people may even pride themselves on their old hurts.
I have seen this happen many more times than I care to remember.
· It is the number one hindrance for anyone’s growth and relationship with the Lord.
· It is always the number one hindrance in the growth of a church.
· Some people expect the person (who hurt them) to come to them with an apology.
· Some can demand outlandish and ridiculous apologies from the people that have hurt them.
We often think that those people simply don’t care if they hurt us or not.
(What is interesting is that some of those people might not even know they hurt you.)
We not only want an apology, but we want a public apology so that everyone we know will know exactly what they did to us and just how badly they have hurt us.
Illustration:
We may want to call this our -
FANTASY of FORGIVENESS:
The place of forgiveness should be a cathedral of forgiveness. A shrine of towering Greek pillars that lead up the marble steps to my throne of forgiveness.
The people will be lined up into the streets wringing their hands with shame and crying their eyes out for what they have done to us.
The world will witness this event because Wolf Blitzer from CNN will be there with the lights and cameras.
All of the enemies of my life will (one by one) bow before me and beg of me to forgive them.
And as a result of our deep spirituality and all of the humility that we have, we are more than willing to grant to them their requests.
We will be sure to tell everyone that we have forgiven that terrible person that hurt us…Hallelujah!
Sound ridiculous? It should.
There is no FANTASY OF FORGIVENESS.
Jesus has told us how to pray,
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
The soul-searching question I ask myself when I read that passage is,
“How do I know whether, or not, I have truly forgiven someone?”
The answer is simple. I would say,
“In any situation that we’re waiting for an apology, we have not forgiven.”
Transition
Perhaps, at this moment, there are people’s faces appearing in your mind that you have told yourself you have forgiven. But you haven’t.
With no one looking around, I would say this would be a good time to make a written note to yourself and to begin to deal with this.
Don’t put this off another day.
You see, while you may wait for these apologies, you are going to continue to suffer in certain areas of your life.
By not having forgiveness:
1.We will prevent ourselves from being delivered from our old habits, our old heartaches, and our old ways of thinking.
As a result, our relationship with Christ will be stopped from growing.
In some cases, you may think you are justified in waiting for an apology from someone. After all, you didn’t do anything wrong.
The ball is in their court.
You tell yourself that you can’t change that. It isn’t your fault.
By not having forgiveness:
2. We become bitter.
Hebrews 12:15
See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble
The Bible tells us in that passage that there is a type of spiritual poison that can destroy us (as a result of bitterness).
3. We can become trapped
2 Timothy 2:26
the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.
At this point you no longer have control of your life. You will find yourself doing things that are ungodly.
Close:
4. We can take offense to anything and everything
Ephesians 4:30 thru 32.
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.
[31] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
[32] And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.
King David once had failed God and was living his life in unforgiveness.
He soon sensed the Spirit of God had left him. He was miserable.
We cannot make it without the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We may be pleading with the Holy Spirit to help us, or to baptize us with power while we have unforgiveness in our lives. We cannot pray and ask for the anointing while we are living in unforgiveness.
5. We can give the devil an opportunity to control us.
Look at Ephesians 4:26 and 27.
The Greek word for place is “an opportunity”; the NIV says it is an “foothold”. Typically what happens is one sin of unforgiveness leads to another.
This foothold can start at an early age in life with an act that is left unforgiven. A child can be come angry, but later in life that adolescent can turn to drugs and alcohol to cover up the pain.
And later in life (as an adult) he/she can become bitter, resorting to violence and physical abuse.
The unforgiveness was never dealt with and he/she will eventually become retaliatory toward others.
The devil is not satisfied to have a single small victory in your life.
As a person continues to live in unforgiveness, the devil will make sure that he seizes every opportunity. Because the devil is always looking for that “foot hold”.
As your pastor I do not want to become your psychiatrist.
But we all need to understand the great dangers of unforgiveness.
6 We can become insensitive to our sins.
Psalm 36:2
For he flatters himself in his own eyes, when he finds out his iniquity
This is the final stage of the destruction of unforgiveness. It is when we loose touch with how corrupt we have become because of our unforgiveness. We no longer see the need for forgiveness. We begin to flatter ourselves with our own justification for our “faults”.
Read I John 2:9 thru 11
This person hates someone and this causes him to be blinded. Is it possible that some of the reason why we do not know where we are going in life has to do with our unforgiveness?
Read I John 3:15
If we are involved in any kind of hatred towards those whom we have not forgiven, we do not have eternal life (zoe) within us. With unforgiveness, we will not have a personal relationship with Jesus. (He said that He was “the way, the truth and the life”.
Christ cannot and will not forgive us if we are not forgiving those who have offended us. There is no easy way around this matter of forgiveness that will fit into your beliefs.
CONCLUSION:
Forgiveness has two methods of redemption.
1. One translation of forgiveness means to “send away” the wrongdoing. Much like what the priest would do in the Old Testament. He would lay hands on a ram and then send it out into the wilderness never to return.
2. Another means to “release” the wrongdoing much like a prisoner is released from prison. There is a type of stronghold that controls people when there is unforgiveness. If we forgive someone who has wronged us, we release them being imprisoned.
Colossians 3:12-13
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
There are those whom we have not forgiven that are waiting to be released from the unforgiveness we have had for them.
