WHAT FORGIVENESS IS NOT

IOI CHRISTIAN MORNING MEAL

TOPIC: WHAT FORGIVENESS IS NOT

Text: Colossians 3:13 NIV
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

.....continue from yesterday

4. FORGIVENESS IS NOT WAITING FOR AN APOLOGY.
Some of you say, "I will forgive them as soon as they say they’re sorry." I hate to break it to you, so. many people are never going to apologize. Some people are going to continue in their destructive, rebellious, and foolish life course. Some people will be stubborn and religious and self-righteous and they’ll never confess or admit.
Some people will move away, you’ll never speak with them again. Some people will die before they articulate repentance. And so you forgive them before they apologize.

5. FORGIVENESS IS NOT FORGETTING.
This is one of the great Christian myths. "Well, we forgive and forget." No we don’t! You can’t forgive and forget. You can’t. You were raped, molested, abandoned, beaten, abused, cheated on, betrayed, lied about. "Forget it"? You can’t forget it. It’s impossible. And some will appeal to Bible books like Jeremiah, where it says that God will remember their sin no more. And they’ll say, "See? God doesn’t remember our sin." And let me tell you this, God does remember our sin. He’s omniscient, he’s all knowing, he forgets nothing, he knows everything. Right? It’s not like God’s in heaven going, "I forgot a whole bunch of things." He would cease to be God.

What does it mean that God remembers their sin no more? It means that God chooses not to interact with us based upon what we’ve done, but instead interact with us based upon what Christ has done. It means that he chooses to see us as new creations and he chooses to work for a new future. It means that at the forefront of God’s thinking toward us is not all of the sin that we’ve committed, but all the work that Jesus has done for us and in us and, by grace, will do through us.
But it’s not like God has no idea what you did yesterday. He forgets nothing. And I see this sometimes in counseling, where one person will sin against another person and they’ll say, "Well, you shouldn’t even remember that." It’s impossible. I had one situation recently. I looked at the husband, I was like, "You slept with her best friend. She’s not going to forget that ever. Now, she can choose not to interact with you in light of that. She could choose to forgive you. She can choose to not be stewing on that every minute of every day and seething. But she’s never going to forget that this happened because it was cataclysmic."
......continue tomorrow

LET US PRAY
FATHER HELP US TO FORGIVE PEOPLE THAT WRONG US AND NOT HOLD IT ON THEM

share this meal
Good morning friends