Daily Devotional: Thursday, Dec 10
Speaker:Ben Sigman
Theme: Healing Family Rifts
Weekend Music links on iTunes: The Time Has Comeby Hillsong United ; Angels We Have Heard on High arranged by Chris Tomlin; Cannonsby Phil Wickham; From the Inside Outby Hillsong United.
Read: Luke 6:37, Psalm 51:6, Hebrews 12:15
Think: Forgiveness is not an option with God, it's a requirement. Just look at Luke 6:37 to see what I mean: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
As children my brothers and sisters would often fight and our parents told us to "say we're sorry" and mean it. Then they made the one we said we're sorry to say, "I forgive you" in return and mean it. Neither of us meant it. Sometimes as adults we "forgive" the way we did back then.
Pastor Ben reminded us this weekend that forgiveness is not pretending it never happened. Denial is not the same as forgiving. We know people that feel unforgiven, they are unforgiving. We know people that are judgmental, they are feeling guilty. Our family knows a man whose emotional abuse drove his daughter out of his house. She was later killed far from home and he became an angry, judgmental man. Unforgiven, he was unforgiving.
When we try as humans to keep the beach balls of unforgiveness under the water of our lives, we can't. Alexander Pope said, "to err is human to forgive divine". There is a lot of truth in that statement, it is not human nature to forgive. We need the grace of God in order to forgive! Hebrews 12:15 gives us an apt instruction: "Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many."
Do:Carefully analyze people you have "forgiven" - especially the ones you hate to run into at the mall. Take care of any unforgiveness you have hidden in your heart.
Pray: Father, I need your grace to forgive this person. I will no longer pretend, I accept your grace poured out on me and in that grace, forgive. Amen.
The eDevotional is written each week by a team of volunteers from Timberlake Church. |
