Sermon Central
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Forgiveness Kills, Unforgiveness Gives Life
Contributed by Joseph Bachman on Oct 16, 2006 (message contributor)
Summary: Unforgiveness will hold you back where forgiveness will set you free.
Un-forgiveness will kill you
Forgiveness will give you life
Pastor Joe Bachman
10/15/06
9 "Pray, then, in this way:
’Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10’Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11’Give us this day our daily bread.
12’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13’And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’
14 "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 "But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
NASU
Look at verses 14 & 15
Those are some powerful verses
So many times they are looked over
But that does not make them any less true
I noticed something about people
When they read the bible they always rejoice in a verse that is comforting and compassionate
But they seem to ignore the challenging ones
How many people do you know that have these verses as their life verses?
That’s because we have a hard time putting these verses to practice
Sometimes it is so hard to forgive isn’t it?
Oh it is easy to accept forgiveness but it is hard to give it
1) Let’s look at what happens when you can’t forgive
2 Cor 2:7
7 so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
NASU
alot of us should have this for our life verse
it says we should not only forgive but we should also comfort the person who has offended us
why?
Look at the last part of this verse
otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
Notice it does not just say sorrow it says excessive sorrow
The hardest step to heal from forgiveness is to forgive ourselves
Sometimes it is easy to forgive others but it is hard to forgive ourselves
There is a lot of mental health problems such as depression and other mental health problems caused from un-forgiveness
There is where people are living in the sorrow mode
But see un-forgiveness does not stop there it moves to excessive sorrow
Here is where it becomes dangerous in this stage a person could hurt others and or himself.
A prime example of this is what happen in Lancaster
Everyone is asking the same question
Why did this happen?
Let’s look a little bit about the man that did this horrible crime
His name was Charles Carl Roberts
Charles Carl Roberts IV was born December 7, 1973 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
His father is retired from the local police force.
His mother works at Sight & Sound Theatres, a Christian organization that stages Bible plays in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.
Neither he nor his family were Amish.
In 1990, Roberts worked as a dishwasher at Good `N Plenty Restaurant in Smoketown, PA.
Roberts drove a milk truck for Northwest Food Products Transportation in East Earl Township.
He shared a home in Georgetown, with his wife and children, a daughter, 7, and sons, 5 and 18 months.
Their first child, a daughter named Elise Victoria, died twenty minutes after birth on November 14, 1997.
This is a brief overview of his life
Now let’s look a little deeper
What was going on behind the seen
Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person with what they write
"I don’t know how you put up with me all those years. I am not worthy of you, you are the perfect wife you deserve so much better. We had so many good memories together as well as the tragedy with Elise.
It changed my life forever I haven’t been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like every time we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us and I go right back to anger."
These are words form a person who had a hard time forgiving himself from the past
This type of un-forgiveness turns to anger
So what you see here and what I believe that God is trying to show us here is what happens when we let un-forgiveness into our hearts
It causes death
Not always like this but it does always cause death
It might be physical
It might be emotional
It might be Spiritual
But it always causes death
But you know what
God is always a God of balance
Say God is a God of Balance
2) Let’s look and see what happens when we do forgive.
