We Need To Forgive. Part One 9/17/2017

Good Morning,

Greetings from the patio and our trusty picnic table. It is a beautiful morning to be outside drinking a big cup of Door County Maple Coffee. Our Springer Spaniel Gibbs is patrolling the back yard for rabbits and birds that taunt him by their presence. It is quite the circus out here today. Gibbs is the ring leader. I am watching a few leaves fall to the ground already. It is quite peaceful here.

Yesterday I promised that we would take some fundamentals of Christianity and explore them through to the end of this  month. One fundamental that is often the most difficult to do, fathom, and obey is that of forgiving others. Forgiving others for doing wrong or causing harm just doesn't make sense. Turning your cheek after someone slaps you a good one and asking "Please sir may I have another," doesn't line up with how we are wired. I know my first feeling would be to unload this right hand of mine that I have nicknamed "Thunder" and knock that person into next week. I believe this subject will take two to three days worth of writing. So today is Part One.

But God has a different thought and plan on the subject. God has just one plan for forgiveness. Man has added to the plan, to give it multiple parts, but that isn't God's plan. He expects us and literally commands us to forgive and move on. He also expects us to draw on a well of forgiveness that has no limits. He has also set the ultimate example for us in forgiving. First off the inability to forgive does harm to us.

Consequences of Bitterness  This is taken from The Institute Of Basic Life Principles

How a lack of forgiveness affects body, soul, and spirit.

Harboring bitterness in your heart brings consequences that affect you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Physical Consequences

• Chemical imbalance

Resentment causes imbalance in the hormones from the various glands of the body, producing many physical symptoms and diseases.

• Weakened immune system

The stress of bitterness weakens the immune system and heightens your susceptibility to physical ailments. Often doctors can trace physical disorders to a point in time when bitterness began to develop.

• Diminished comeliness

Refusal to forgive causes fatigue and loss of sleep. Soon your eyes and facial features reflect your inner distress.

Mental and Emotional Consequences

• Depression

It takes emotional energy to maintain a grudge. When your emotional energy is exhausted, you become depressed.

• Stress

Hating someone produces stress hormones in your body. You become worn out and unable to cope with daily challenges.

• Detrimental emotional focus

Bitterness and resentment create an emotional focus toward the person who offended you. This focus causes you to become like the one you resent. The more you think about his actions, the more you begin to reflect the basic attitudes that prompted his actions.

Spiritual Consequences

• Inability to love God

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also” (I John 4:20–21).

• Doubts about our relationship with God

Jesus said, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15).

• Major hindrances in the spiritual development of others

Bitterness is easily passed from one generation to another, and it will have a significant impact on your children. (See Deuteronomy 5:9.) Attitudes of bitterness also cause your family, friends, and acquaintances to discredit your Christian testimony.

Scripture relates bitterness to gall and describes it as something that can grow and spread to hurt many people. (See Acts 8:23 and Hebrews 12:15.) When Jesus instructed His disciples to forgive again and again, “until seventy times seven” (see Matthew 18:21–22), He challenged them to a lifestyle of forgiveness that offered freedom from the consequences of bitterness.
“Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:30–32).

We all know someone who is struggling with the inability to forgive, or it could be us who are fighting this battle. Tomorrow we will look at the example of forgiving that God gave us and then look at how we can have the desire, strength and power to forgive and obtain the victory.

God bless. This might be a series you want to save or pass on.

Marty