Monday, April 27, 2009
4-26-09 The Shack - Part 2: Forgiveness
Today is Part 2 in our 8 part series on W. Paul Young's book "The Shack."
This week's topic is "why is there evil?" Click the above video to view this past week's message. If you have comments or questions, click the "comments" button below and "blog" in those comments or questions.
This week's topic is "Forgiveness." Click the above video to view this past week's message. If you have comments or questions, click the "comments" button below and "blog" in those comments or questions.
God's Peace and Give 'em Heaven!
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2 comments:
Louis Smedes, a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has some pretty good insights about forgiveness:
Forgiveness is a redemptive response to having been wronged and wounded. This is simple but important. Only those who have wronged and wounded us are candidates for forgiveness. If they injure us accidentally, we excuse them. We only forgive the ones we blame.
Forgiveness has three basic actions: (1) First we give up our right to get even. (2) Second we remember that the person who wronged us is still human…not all that different from us. (3) We wish our wrongdoer well. Is that too much to ask? Maybe, but God give us grace and forgiveness that we don’t deserve, and we need to do the same for the person who wronged us.
Forgiveness takes time. God forgives in a single breath, but for us it takes time.
Forgiveness does NOT require forgetting. On a human level, it is futile to try to forget; the more we try to forget, the more we remember. But we can dethrone the memory; we can refuse to let it control our lives; we can purge its poison from our souls.
Forgiveness, ideally, leads to reconciliation. But we often have to put up with less than the ideal. There can be no reunion without forgiving, but there can be forgiving without reunion.
Forgiving comes naturally to the forgiven.
--Louis Smedes
God has some pretty great things to say about forgiveness, too (!!)
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15
Yes, forgiveness is probably one of the best learned habit of the Church and yet most difficult! May God help us all to forgive like we have been forgiven
Shalom, PT
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