Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each
other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32, NASB)
Bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also
should you. (Colossians 3:13, NASB)
Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything
against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your
transgressions. (Mark 11:25, NASB)
Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and
if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and
returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” (Luke 17:3-4,
NASB)
As we finish
our series on forgiveness today, I ask your forgiveness for missing
yesterday. I have no excuse except that
the day just got away from me. I am
seeking to make amends by writing on Saturday 😊
One the reasons I chose to write
this series on forgiveness is a bit selfish.
I have felt a calling to write a book on forgiveness for more many years
and have worked on that book off and on since then. For whatever reasons, it has been really hard
to get it done. Beginning to write these
devotions every weekday at the beginning of the pandemic established the discipline
of regular writing for me. So I chose to
use that established discipline to work toward the goal of getting the book
done. Thank you for indulging me in
hearing about forgiveness longer than anyone except myself wants to hear.
The working title of the book is
Forgiveness Revolution. I remember vividly
when I put those two words together for the first time. I was preparing to preach for the first time
the sermon series that would come to be named the same as my intended book
title. After reading all the scripture I
could find on forgiveness and several books as well, I was asking myself a
question that I was taught by my preaching professors to always ask when
preparing to preach; “what do I want to happen as a result of people hearing
this?”
The answer that hit me like a
flood is “I want a revolution.” We live
in a world where so many feel like their mistakes have damned them. I’ve listened to countless people talk about
the crippling shame they feel. Further,
I’ve watched my entire life as it seems we become more and more divided. Divorces outnumber lasting marriages. Family feuds begun because of relational
mistakes escalate into complete community upheaval, which has escalated into a
whole culture of “us vs. them.” The
world seems to be more and more fractured and by what I see as a lack of
ability to forgive and working towards reconciling our relationships. People are becoming more and more isolated. We struggle with experiencing the forgiveness
of God and so we struggle with forgiving each other. Sometimes, we even struggle with forgiving
God. We need a revolution.
A revolution can start with one
person but it is impossible to sustain without a community. Jesus, the Son of God incarnate knew that. The movement He started would never have the
legs to continue if He didn’t build a community. So He gathered disciples and spent three
years immersing and training them in the ways of God’s kingdom, which, by the
way, are intrinsically communal. He also taught them to do the same community
building after he ascended. One of those
ways of the kingdom was forgiveness. The
needed revolution I talked about earlier was started over two thousand years
ago by Jesus.
We don’t need to “reinvent the
wheel.” We just need to re-establish the
patterns of forgiveness that Jesus taught so long ago. Jesus chose and called the Church to do exactly
that. Bask in the lavish forgiveness of God. Adopt the discipline of forgiving each other
as God as forgiven us. Practice grace
and forgiveness every day. When we have
something against God, we keep talking and relating to God until we work it
out. My friends who call themselves the
church, this is who we are. We are a forgiveness
community! Let’s start acting like it.
Question: How can the church model forgiveness in a way
that helps the world become a more forgiving place?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for giving us the
experience of forgiveness. Help us share
and celebrate that experience of forgiveness with each other and, at the same
time, show the world what it is missing.
Amen.
Prayer
Focus: Pray for your church today.
Song: Reconciliation Song - Buddy Owens, Claire Cloninger, Morris
Chapman
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