“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from, along with all malice. 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
I felt moved to write about grudges today. It is something that we all have to deal with, and that we all need to get out of our hearts and minds. Webster defined it: “a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment.” “Persistent” is the key word. It began with anger over something, and that something has been internalized and rules in your heart – persistently. What is wrong with grudges? Grudges are bad for us personally. When we persistently hold ill will against someone, it literally robs us of peace of mind and heart. Persistent ill will can also ruin our health. Grudges can stunt, or halt, our spiritual growth. Think of it: We are saved by the grace of God. This means that grace becomes a part of our lives. We are to act toward other people with grace. If we are filled with bitterness and hatred, we cannot practice grace towards other people. Grudges interfere with our prayers. Really, if you are holding a grudge against someone, do you, or can you, really pray for them? What we need to pray is for the Holy Spirit to remove that grudge so that He can help us in our growth in Christ. Grudges hurt our witness for Christ. People are not drawn spiritually toward bitter and resentful people. What do we need to do about our persistent ill feelings towards other people? Paul gives the answer in the next verse. He wrote, “be kind to one another.” That advice might have blown someone’s mind. You might ask, “Do you really think that I can be kind to that person?” Hey, you might give it a try. For example, bake him her a cake, or, more likely, go to the bakery and get a cake, and take it to the person who is eating away at your witness and, for that matter your health. Paul followed that with be “tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Grudges make us grow callous in our outlook on life. To be tenderhearted is to be merciful. (Doesn’t that look something like Jesus?) I tell myself, when I get peeved at someone and they are beginning to, let us say, get on my nerves, I know that I need to forgive them. Why? Let’s let Paul answer that question: “…forgiving one another, as Christ forgave you.” It’s not always easy but it will always be Christlike. Come on! Let it go! Bro. Joe
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“If we confess our sins (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I refer to this text a lot in preaching and writing because it hits at the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the grave and ascended to the Father for the purpose of forgiving us for our sins. There are a lot of other things that are involved in the Christian life, but forgiveness of sins is what gets us started, and what helps us to live victorious Christian lives. We can be forgiven for our sins by repentance and confession. After we are forgiven for our sins, we are expected to forgive others who sin against us. There is one other thing that we need to consider, and it is one that I have to work on in my own life, that is, that we forgive ourselves. I point out to others with whom I talk and to myself that if it is important to forgive everyone else, we should certainly forgive ourselves. Why would it be difficult for people to forgive themselves? It might be that this lack of self-forgiveness is because we expect better of ourselves than we have done. I can certainly say that this has been true of me in my own Christian experience. There have been many times that I have looked in my car mirror after inwardly fuming at another driver and said to myself: “You can do better than that.” Lack of self-forgiveness might come from a poor self image. I realize that we have taken “self image” today to a higher level than demanded of the Christian life, but we should certainly feel good enough about ourselves that we have a healthy self image. It might just be a matter of behaving ourselves better and we would have a better self image. (Just saying!) There are, no doubt, many other reasons why people would have a difficult time forgiving themselves, but what I have mentioned above should help. When we fail to forgive ourselves, we have not done anything about our guilt. The chances are good that those who cannot forgive themselves have genuinely asked for forgiveness, after which Jesus took the load of guilt away, but they hung onto it. It’s like we are carrying a load of iron on our backs and Jesus comes along and says “I will carry that load for you.” We might thank Him for the offer, but just trudge on with the weight on our backs. That might seem to be a silly illustration, but it is no sillier than going to Jesus with our load of guilt, asking Him to take it, which He does, then we continue to walk on with the weight on our minds and hearts. It almost seems that some people think that carrying a load of guilt somehow makes them holy. That is just plain silly. It is our faith in Christ that makes us holy and guilt over forgiven sins has no part in making us holy. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, He saves from sin and the guilt that sin brings into our lives. When we fail to forgive ourselves, we cannot live victorious Christian lives. This does not mean that we are not Christian, or any less Christian than other Christians. It just means that we can’t have the victory of forgiveness and maintain the defeat of unforgiveness and guilt in our lives. I know that Jesus just looks at the person still carrying the load of guilt and says, “But I have given you better than that.” I want you to think about what the apostle Paul had to overcome in his Christian experience. No one initially caused more harm to the cause of Christ than Paul, yet he accepted the forgiveness of Christ and went on to live victoriously for him. In Romans 7 Paul bemoaned the fact that he still had to deal with living the Christian life. But he concluded that by writing in Romans 7:24-25: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So when with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” He accepted his humanness, as we should, but knew that Jesus had forgiven Him and that Jesus was his hope. What is the point here? It is that if Christ has forgiven us, we can, and should, forgive ourselves. Bro. Joe “Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. 5. For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. 6. Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplication. 7. In the day of trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me.”
Someone mentioned to me one day that a lot of my articles are based on Psalms. I thought about that and came to the conclusion that since I am in the process of reading the Bible through all of the time, and there are one hundred fifty psalms, a lot of my Bible reading time is spent in psalms because there are so many of them, and they teach us a lot about life and about God. The text that I have used today is a case in point. David gives a wonderful description of God in the entire 86th psalm, but verses 4-7 especially spoke to my heart. In verse 4, David was rejoicing in the Lord and was in a spirit of prayer. He stated it “I lift up my soul.” When David thought about God, he was touched in the deepest part of himself – his soul. When is the last time that you meditated on God and He touched your soul? I asked myself the same question and concluded that I don’t do it nearly enough. In verses 5-7, David points out why he chose to go in this way. David meditated on the goodness of God: “For thou, Lord, art good.” There are many people who dwell on the judgments of God, and dismiss Him. That is a bad mistake, because God is not just a wrathful deity; rather, He is the God who sent His Son into the world to die for our sins. Take a little time today and meditate on the ways that God has been good to you, and you will feel Him in your soul. If you can’t think of the ways that God has been good to you, you need to do some soul searching and discover, or rediscover the ways that God has been good to you. What about your family? What about your children? What about your grandchildren? What about your Christian friends? What about the fact that you live in this great country? What about the fact that he died on the cross for you that you might have everlasting life as well as a relationship with Him. These ought to give you a few hints about how good God has been to you. David meditated on the forgiveness of God: “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive." I don’t know what point in his life that David wrote this psalm, but if you know the full story of David, there was plenty for God to forgive. I like to think that David wrote this psalm after he wrote Psalm 51, which was David’s prayer for forgiveness after his sin with Bathsheba. Take a little time and read David’s heart cry to the Lord to take him out of the misery of his guilt. We should praise God, for He is a forgiving God, who will cast our sins behind us and lead us on to a better life. The problem with a lot of people is that they think that they have no reason to be forgiven. Whatever you need to be forgiven for today, take it to the Lord in prayer and you will find that He is still “plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Him.” David meditated on the willingness of God to hear his prayer: “In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me.” David didn’t have to wonder if God would answer him; he knew that God would answer him. He will answer you too. He might answer immediately, or He might tell you to wait for the answer, but He will answer. He is, after all, Sovereign God, and He will answer you based on what is best for you. I have heard people say that they prayed and God did not answer. This is because they do not realize that God answers in His time. Take a little time today and meditate on these verses and draw closer to the God who is good, who is plenteous in mercy, ready to forgive and to answer your prayers. Bro. Joe “And (God) said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded you that you should not eat? 12. And the man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. 13. And the Lord said unto the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
I wanted to write on the error of making excuses today, and the text printed above came to mind. Adam seemed to be saying that if God had not given him “the woman” he would never have eaten the forbidden fruit. In turn, Eve blamed “the serpent.” (This is called “The devil made me do it.”) Eve’s excuse might have made more sense, but they were still excuses for what they had done. So what is wrong with “making excuses? First, making excuses does not solve the problem. In spite of Adam and Eve’s excuses, we are still paying the price for their sin today. (Thank God that Jesus came and died as a sacrifice for our sins.) In spite of their excuses they were still expelled from The Garden of Eden, and paid a heavy price for their sin. When you give in to temptation, or when you make a costly mistake, do not make excuses, but admit the truth and find the real solution to whatever the problem is. As long as we excuse our errant behavior, we are not dealing with the real problem. Second, making excuses does not deal with the real problem of humanity, i.e., sin. Adam did not say “I am only human,” but he came mighty close. This is how we excuse our giving in to temptation. This is why our loving Lord gave us the opportunity of confession and forgiveness. Before we start to make excuses for our sins and foibles, we should remember the promise of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God knows that we will sin and He is always ready to forgive us, but to excuse ourselves does not solve the problem of sin that we all have. Third, we need to believe that God will really forgive us for our sins. Making excuses for our sins is like trying to escape our need for forgiveness not claiming it as the blessing that it is. As I have already mentioned, Jesus paid a steep price for us to have forgiveness for sin. I know that I rejoice in the forgiveness that is offered me through Jesus. If you are bogged down in some sin today, the thing for you to do is stop excusing yourself and run to Jesus for forgiveness. He is always ready to forgive our sincere confessions. Bro. Joe “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
The text written above is one sentence from the Lord’s Prayer, and it is probably the most difficult. In it we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. Jesus added fuel to the fire in verses 14-15: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This puts a premium on forgiving others. I have entitled this article “Revisiting Forgiveness,” because I have written about it, or referred to it a lot on CouchPotatoRedux. I looked up the word “forgive” in The Revell Bible Dictionary and found it to be helpful in helping us understand why forgiveness is so important. This article will be based on the three parts of this definition. The first part of the definition was: “To pardon or absolve of wrongdoing.” When God forgives us for our sins, He absolves us of them. In other words, we are free of them. Our sins have been cast as “far as the east is from the west.” We do not have to feel guilty about them anymore, because God has absolved them. This is something like what our forgiveness is to do for others and ourselves. When we forgive someone, we are saying that what they did to us, said to us or about us, has been absolved. When we say that we have forgiven everyone who needs our forgiveness, we need to think way back in our lives. Have we forgiven everyone who has hurt us in some way or another? I don’t mean to nitpick, but we really need to forgive it all. This would include parents, teachers, bullies from school days, etc. etc. Have you absolved people of the wrongs they have done to you? The second part of the definition was: “to cancel a debt.” I don’t mean to be redundant, here but when we cancel a debt it means that the debt is no longer outstanding. We sometimes feel that people who have hurt us in some way or other are indebted to us to apologize, and until they do, we are unwilling to forgive them. It is true that when we ask God to forgive our sins, we need to repent and confess in order to receive the forgiveness. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you are not God. Jesus, who is God, prayed as He went to the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” I’ve got news for you: “them” means you and me. Jesus forgave us because He died for our sins on the cross as well as for those who crucified Him. It is real Christian faith that will help us to cancel the debts of others even though they do not apologize. I personally know that this is not easy, but it needs to be done if you are to have the peace that Paul describes as “passing all understanding.” The third part of the definition was: “to give up resentment.” This might be the most difficult of all. Think back on your life: what resentments do you still hold? Hey, I’m not just preaching to you in this matter. It takes a lot of prayer for me to get over resentments in my life. But you might be thinking that since I’m a preacher I shouldn’t have a problem with this. We preachers can have ego problems like everyone else. People give us ample opportunity to hold resentments against them. But this is not just true in the lives of preachers, it is true in everyone’s life. There are people who will go out of their way to offend us, or hurt us in one way or another. The Holy Spirit knew this about people when He inspired: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” If Jesus doesn’t resent us because of the sins for which He has forgiven us, then our excuses for resentment are very thin, or downright invisible. The business of forgiveness is not an easy business, but it is very important. We will be happy Christians and churches when we forgive each other. Bro. Joe “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is Mine; I will repay says the Lord. 20. Therefore if your enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 21. Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
“If we confess our sins (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
“We love (God) because He first loved us…”
“For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ…”
What does it mean to have “the mind of Christ”? Among other things, it means to think like Christ. It means to be as much like Christ as we possibly can, knowing that we can’t be exactly like Christ. We see bracelets with WWJD written on them. Of course, that means “what would Jesus do?” I was thinking about that this morning and it occurred to me that we should also have bracelets with WWJND inscribed on them. That means “what would Jesus not do?” If we want to think like Christ, we need to think in the positive and the negative. I thought of a few things that Christ would not do, that we should take to heart. Jesus would not harbor hatred in His heart toward another person. I used the word “harbor” advisedly here, because I don’t want you to get the idea that Jesus would never get angry with another person. Getting angry with other people and harboring hatred toward them are two different things. For example, when Jesus cleansed the temple He was angry. He was not just angry at the situation, He was angry with the people who were “buying and selling.” This didn’t mean that he hated those people. In fact, cleansing the temple was an act of love, because Jesus was righting a wrong. Jesus would not have an unforgiving spirit. In the Lord’s model prayer, He taught us to pray: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus set the example for us in this matter of forgiving others. No one was ever more mistreated than Jesus. All that Jesus did was good. When He came among sick folks, He left them well. He touched lepers, which no one would dare to do in that day. But he was falsely arrested, falsely tried and falsely taken to Golgotha to die. The first words that Jesus said from the cross were, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This prayer of forgiveness stretches across the centuries to reach us. Jesus would not retaliate against people who mistreated Him, or for any other reason. Retaliation is almost a natural reflex. The idea is that if you do something to me, I will do it back at you and we will be even. It was Jesus who taught us: “You have heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that you resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.” At this point you might be thinking that I have lost my mind. No. I have not lost my mind, but I know that if I would think with the mind of Christ, I would not retaliate. I do not mean to imply that not retaliating is easy. What I mean that if we try to not do what Jesus would not do, we will not retaliate. This is a small portion of what it means to have “the mind of Christ.” Bro. Joe |
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