Amen. If you're in the room, you can have a seat. If you're at the Frederick campus, it's good to have you guys. You can have a seat and if you're online, you probably already have a seat sitting on...
Amen. If you're in the room, you can have a seat. If you're at the Frederick campus, it's good to have you guys. You can have a seat and if you're online, you probably already have a seat sitting on the couch. So it's good to have you, um, with us and man. Good to see everybody. I know it's summer. It's a little crazy, but great things going on. We had a worship night this last week and uh, tons of people came. And one of the things, if you were there, uh, one of the things that was coolest to me is we sang nine songs and of those nine songs, eight songs were songs that our team has written about things flowing right out of this place. And it was just fantastic. So, um, man, every time you come in worship, just know this team, man, they are doing some great things.
Great guys, great ladies that are just leading us and uh, super thankful for that. Hey, one thing, there's a lot that you're doing this summer, but as we go through summer, we're gonna come ramping out into the fall and we wanna make sure that you're ready. And so I wanna give you an opportunity to just give you one announcement before we get in the message about something that's coming in September, that if you don't sign up for now, you're gonna miss out. And so if you've been around this place very long at all, you know that we do something every September calls, shine prom and it is one of the most awesome, wonderful, beautiful, most exciting joyous times of the year. It's one of the best days we have. And so our shine prom is this. We do a special needs prom for our special needs friends.
It's, it's teenagers all the way through adults. And uh, we just allow them to be the, the king or the queen of the prom for a night. And we've got hundreds of volunteers, literally from both campuses, um, that sign up to help out with this. And so what I wanna do today is just give you an opportunity to let you know that signups for volunteering are opening are open right now. And usually what happens is when I say that somebody, everybody gets out their phones or the people who've been around here, get out their phones because they know it will fill up like today and tomorrow. So if you want to sign up and help out with shine prom, there's all kinds of opportunities. Volunteer wise to do that. You should do that today at latest tomorrow because they will fill up fast and it'll be awesome.
It's September 16th. We're having at both campuses. And so the Nyah campus man sign up and help us out at Nyah Frederick campus, sign up, help us out at Fred. If you're online and you haven't been here, you should jump in for this one. It's gonna be a fantastic thing. And then if you have a special needs child or adult or a young adult, um, or if you know someone who does you'll want to get them registered fast because there are limited spots, um, available for that. All right. So jump in, do that today. It'll be great. I want you to get to Matthew chapter five. Um, we're gonna go to verse seven, the next B attitude in our series, Jesus manifesto. Would you believe me if I told you, would you believe me? If I told you that God will treat you the way you treat others, I'll say it again.
Would you believe me? If I told you that God will treat you the way you treat other people? Well, my oldest daughter, my oldest daughter, grace is 18 years old. Getting ready to be 19. She's got a sister Mattie who's 16 getting ready to turn 17. I'm getting old guys. It's him. And, uh, they're growing up and it's crazy watching 'em grow up. I was looking at some pictures the other day and uh, remembering when they were really young and a story came to mind. Um, my oldest, when she was four years old, she's always been like the most energetic, most active, just, I mean, the kid is crazy all the time, just always running and going. And when she was younger, um, there would be some emotion that would come out with that. And I remember you probably know this as is different. Your kids react differently to different situations.
And so when grace, you just so active, so energetic and so much emotion would come out joy and also frustration when she would get frustrated with her little sister, we just started noticing that she would not just react emotionally. She would react physically. And so it would happen all the time. Like there would be moments where Maddie would just kind of do something, you know, take a toy or whatever.
And instead of saying, give me that back. She'd just smack my, my oldest would just rear back and just smack her. And it might be the shoulder. It might be the chest, push it. Sometimes it was a slap right? Upside the face. And we'd just sit her down and we'd say, grace, you can't do that. Mom would look her in the eye. Dad would look her in the eye. I mean, we would ground her.
We would like put her in timeout. We would spank her, everyone. We would say, we just like, here's the deal. You can't do that. Like you don't treat other people that way. We'd, we'd teach her the golden rule. Right? You treat other people the way you want to be treated. That's just a good wise way to live. Well, we were camping one time and as I said, grace is four years old and Maddie's two and we're camping and Maddie did something and grace just turned around and just whack. What she didn't realize is mom was standing right there and we had dealt with this so much that mom just in the moment reaches down, grabs her little chin, turns it to her and gives her the slightest little right there. And you would've thought you would've thought that she did the worst thing ever in the world.
Now, if you're ready to call CBEs or whatever, just know the statute of limitations has like expired. So don't do that. But, but she just reached out, grabbed that little chin. It was literally about that hard. And grace looked at her with this just you can't do that. You know, it was that idea. She didn't say it was like, you can't do that. You're my mom. And you see the lips start quivering and the tears start coming and she starts tearing up and Jen just gets down. She looks at her and says, you look, you need to understand. I'm going to treat you the way you treat Maddie. Would you believe me if I told you that in one area of your life, not in all areas, but in one area of your life that God will treat you the way you treat others. Now it's a good thing.
I didn't say all. And because some of you that, that would be like little whiplash there in the moment because you would be like, I know how I treated some people this last week. The looks that I gave the silence that I gave, the emotional reaction, the words that I said, I didn't say all areas, but there is one area of your life where God does say, I will treat you the way you treat other people. Matthew chapter five, verse seven next, be attitude in our Jesus manifesto series. And I'm gonna give you a warning right now, as we start that this teaching is a difficult teaching. It's not easy. And there will be a moment where there might be a few of you at this campus. A few of you that's at the other campus at Frederick. There might be a few of you online that are like, I'm gonna turn this off.
I'm gonna get up and walk out. I would encourage you just to stay seated because here's what I know is my experiencing life is the best things for us in life are usually on the other side of the most difficult things for us in life. Matthew chapter five seven says this blessed or the merciful for they will be shown mercy, say it again, blessed or the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Now that sounds pretty easy. Doesn't sound too difficult yet, pastor, what are you talking about? That's that's not the, that's not the difficult part yet, but understand that Jesus identifies mercy. The idea of not giving someone what they do deserve the idea of mercy. He identifies that as the fundamental expression of your relationship with God of my relationship with God, merciful people reflect the acceptance of God, acceptance of unworthy people, acceptance of people in the wrong accept of people who have hurt people. They accept everyone based on the understanding that I have received mercy. I have received forgiveness. Therefore I am to express the same mercy and forgiveness that I've been given question.
So if God says blessed of the merciful for they will be shown mercy, then what does he say about those who don't show mercy, Matthew chapter 1821 and 22. Start off a story that Jesus tells. And, and I think when we talk about this idea of mercy, when you study throughout scripture, you don't just get the idea of mercy. Mercy flows into the idea of forgiveness and Jesus knew that would be hard for us. And so he tells this story in Matthew chapter 18, where it starts off with a conversation with a guy named Peter, which we're all very familiar with. And I don't know what had happened with Peter right at the moment. But he comes asking this question about forgiveness. I don't know if he'd run into something, he's got an
issue with somebody he's in business with or whatever, but he comes to Jesus and he says, then Jesus came or Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me up to seven times.
And I dunno about you, but I asked the question, but why did he say up to seven times? Well, he said it up to seven times because that was the normal teaching of the day. The rabbis, the pH sees the teachers of law. All of that, what they taught people was you are to forgive seven times, but after seven times draw the line and you are not required to forgive anymore. That person, sins against you. You can push them away. You can just cast them out. You can be done with that family member. You can just cut that business deal off. You can say, I'm done with that. Peter is saying is the line seven times? And Jesus response raises the bar. He answered. I tell you not seven times, but 77 times the number is irrelevant. The idea is everything here. What Jesus is saying is there's no line, not seven times, but 77 times or in another passage. It's 70 times sevens. Again, the number is irrelevant. Jesus is saying when it comes to forgiveness and extending mercy, because of what you have received, there is no line. There is no easy forgiveness. I'll forgive up to this point. But after that point, if you do this or they've done that, or that has happened to me, then I draw that line and I will not step over that line. And forgive Jesus is saying, I didn't draw a line and you shouldn't either.
I knew he would struggle. He knew Peter would struggle. I can see him just saying that to Peter. I can see Peter just going what? Just saying, okay, let me give you an example. He dives in says, therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king. So Jesus tells a parable, understand this parable says king. What he's saying, what he's getting ready to tell. He's telling a parable about a fictional story with a real life application. And he's saying there's a couple characters in this parable. I am the king. You are the servant. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags, 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him since he was not able to pay the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that.
He had be sold to repay debt that this servant fell down on his knees before him be patient with me, he begged and I will pay back everything. The servant's master took pity on him and he canceled the debt and he let him go. Now there's a lot in that part of the parable right there. So I jumped online this week and I started just kind of study it out. I was like, okay, what can I learn from this? I learned two really important things. First, the reason the guy had to borrow 10,000 bags of gold was because the price of a gallon of gas in pallet. That was terrible joke, man, this guy liked it right there, but that was terrible now seriously. So I was checking out, I was like 10,000 bags of gold. Like, what is that today's money? What would that be?
And so I just found the price of gold per ounce. You do the math and here's, what's really interesting. Would you do the math with that? Your calculator can't even calculate the number. Have you ever done that? You do one of those math raw and it just comes like with that E at the end, or it's like one of those 10 to the like 32nd power type numbers. What Jesus is saying here is, again, the number is irrelevant. He's saying this guy owed a debt that would be impossible to repay in his lifetime. And so, again, we're talking about the king of Jesus and we are the servants. He's saying you owe me a debt like Peter, get this. We're talking about forgiveness here. You owe me a debt. Your sin puts you at odds with me. It puts distance between you and me and you owe a debt that you can never repay, but I'm gonna pay for it.
I'm gonna pay for it. And Jesus did when he went to the cross and he didn't just get, he didn't give us justice. What we did deserve. He didn't even just give us mercy withholding. What we do deserve what Jesus did at the cross. And the resurrection is he gave us what grace. He gave us something that we did not deserve. He gave us grace and that grace through grace, he gave us forgiveness and brought, closed the distance with God and brought us back into fellowship with God. Jesus is saying, this story means
something here. If I've responded to you this way, then how should you respond? And then he goes on and he says, but always hate that when these kind of stories with Jesus, that's swear, it gets hard. He says, but when the servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.
He grabbed him and he began to choke him, pay back what you owe me. He demanded, I, I don't know about you, but you read that story. If you were to read that story for the first time, like if you've been in church for a long time, you've read that story. And it just does not have the impact as it would. If you read the first time. If I read this the first time I'm grabbing that big guy over there and that big guy over there, and that guy over there, and we're taking that dude out behind the woodshed, right? Because we're talking like, how much are we talking here? This guy's like a hundred bucks.
And his debt to the king was like, billions. And so the story goes on and it says that the servants reacted the same way. They look at this guy and they're like, you were just shown mercy. He just forgave your debt. He got your family outta jail. You got all your possessions. And you just ran over to that guy who owes you a hundred bucks and choked him and said, pay me what you owe me. So they take him to the king. They bring him for the king. And the king looks at me and says all the same thing. He said, how much did he owe a hundred bucks? How much did you owe? And I forgave you.
And then he looks at them and he says to his other servants, he says, take that one and throw him into prison to be tortured until he can repay the debt. Let's step back for a second. Was it possible to repay this debt? It was impossible. And Jesus gets to his point, verse 35. This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from the heart. That's hard. And this is how my heavenly father will treat you. If you do not forgive your brother or sister or family member or friends or boss or ex, if you do not forgive them from the heart. And we say, no, God treats us in this area. The way we treat other people, you're actually saying, God, wouldn't forgive me. You know, there's seven or eight times in the new Testament where God literally says through the writing of Paul or through the writing of Matthew or through the MI writing of John or Peter there's seven or eight times where he says, if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven.
And it's not talking in the context of the other person. It's talking in the context of our faith and our spirituality. And we say, no, he couldn't do that. He's a God of mercy. He's a God of forgiveness. Da Carson famous theologian says this. Jesus sees no incongruity in the actions of a heavenly father who forgives so bountifully and punishes. So ruthlessly and neither should we indeed it is precisely because he is a God of compassion and mercy that he cannot possibly accept those who are devoid of compassion and mercy and forgiveness are the chief evidence. Like it's the chief evidence of a follower of Jesus, that you are a person who has received salvation, that you are a person who has received God's holy spirit. It is one of the most hardest thing to give, but it is also the thing that says, yes, that is a follower.
Jesus. It is the chief evidence of our salvation. Jesus is saying you were forgiven in the same way. And to the same extent that you forgive others, somebody you sit there and you say, okay, if that's a Jesus manifesto and this whole mercy thing is really talking about forgiveness. And if you're telling me that, I gotta forgive the person who left me, I gotta forgive the person who abused me. I gotta forgive the person who did irreparable damage to someone. I love. I gotta forgive the person who you name it. Then you're probably some of you're probably saying I'm out and I would encourage you not to be because here's the thing. Again, the best things for us in life are usually on the other side of what's most difficult for us and God doesn't leave us there. He doesn't just say, Hey, this really hard. You should forgive. He says, this is really hard.
And I'm with ya because it was really hard for me too. it caused a lot of pain for me too. It cost me a lot. But on the other side of what was really hard was what was best. So how do we do it? Some of
you're sitting there and you say, man, I got a name. And you're saying, I don't even know how I would do that. So how do you do it? I, I, I don't know if I've got all the answers on that, but I would say, I think for us to understand how we do it, we've gotta understand what forgiveness is not like when you step back into a difficult situation, you gotta understand, this is what we're not talking about here. And I would say this forgiveness, number one, it's not easy. Like it's a part of life, but there's nothing easy.
There's nothing immediate about forgiveness. And as we said, a part of life, if you don't wanna learn to forgive, don't get married, right? If you don't wanna learn to forgive, don't have kids. If you don't wanna learn to forgive, don't have friends. Like we're just all flawed people. And this thing is not easy. And it's incredibly difficult. Why? Because those people that have wounded us, they got names and they're real. And sometimes we've been really, really close to those people who have hurt us. And it becomes really, really difficult. And you've got a name like it may be that it's a mom, who's degraded you for years and you just never can get out from under that thumb. And it's just difficult. And maybe a dad who's got anger issues. It may be a spouse who cheated or left. It may be a person who abused you or someone that you love. It. It could be a friend who betrayed. It might be a church or another Christian that you're like, well, that's not like Jesus, but they, and it hurt.
You see it has names. And here's what I'd say. I, I got a name I'm sitting there preparing this message two weeks ago and I'm working through this and I'm going, I, I think, you know, I think I've kind of worked through this. Like I got a name, but I think I've worked through that. I'm all good with that. But you know what? I began to notice. It's funny how God does this in the last two weeks that person's name has come up a few times. You know what, every time that person's name came up, I didn't have a physical reaction, but I did have an emotional reaction. And I noticed that there were some snide comments that were coming out of my mouth about that person, some sarcastic comments, some things where I just kind of, and, and even bringing up an extra thing that wasn't talked about in that conversation.
And I'm going, I got a name and obviously I haven't let go of that little bit of wound that was there. And I'm guessing in your life, whether you sit at the Frederick campus, you're sitting online or you're sitting right here in this room, you got a name, but here's the thing. You know, what else I know is there are some people in my life, a couple people that I look back in my past and you know what my name's on their list. I guarantee it. And I bet that your name is on somebody's list.
And because of what sin did to us, your name and my name was on Jesus' list. And he still went to a cross and he still shed his blood. And it was not easy, but it was the best thing. And the big thing that God is asking of us is he's saying you got a name. And if you keep dwelling with that womb, what you get is you get bitterness. And the big question about bitterness is, do you want to just remain bitter? Or do you just wanna get better? Do you wanna stay bitter? Or do you want to get better? There's nothing easy about forgiveness. And the other thing is there's nothing fair about forgiveness, like forgiveness. Isn't fair because you think about it. When you forgive some, someone else, it doesn't cost them anything. Like you got that name on your list, no matter what they do, it doesn't cost them.
Who does it cost? It costs the forgiver Timothy Keller says. And the reason for God, he says this, and he's talking about God's forgiveness. And then he switches to our forgiveness. He says, God's grace and forgiveness while free to the recipient. Recipient are always costly to the giver from the earliest parts of the Bible. It was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who is seriously wronged. Here's what switches. No one who's seriously. Wronged can just forgive the perpetrator. See when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself, all forgiveness then is costly and there's nothing about forgiveness. It seems fair. What seems fair? What seems fair is payback? What seems fair is revenge. But again, Jesus would say, yeah, the cross wasn't fair either, but it didn't bring fairness. It brought forgiveness. Like if you've ever wondered, like if you ever thought,
man, I, I wondered if God was just, just be glad that he's not just, or he, the Bible says he is just, but glad when you, that he wasn't just, just that's the, that it wasn't the only thing because he, he was just about justice.
You'd get what you deserved. And I would get what I deserve, but God is the God of forgiveness and mercy, which costs.
And he did it not to bring fairness. He did it to bring forgiveness. So what is forgiveness, if we're gonna move from being bitter to being better, we've gotta ask ourself, what is this process? What is forgiveness? And I would say this number one, forgiveness is a process. It's not something you just check off your list. It's a process. And it's interesting when Peter came to Jesus and he said, Jesus, how many times should I forgive? Seven times? Jesus said 77 times. What if Jesus was saying, Hey, Peter, this thing is harder than you think it is. And it's a process. And that process may take you 77 steps. It may take 77 tries to just let go and, and be able to say, I, I forgive this person. And some of you're like, man, I, I don't even know what that looks like. What is, what is forgiveness? Actually look like. I was talking to a pastor friend of mine and he had a great definition. He said, you know what? Forgiveness is? This forgiveness is when you can look at another person, no matter what they've done. And you are able to say, I wish you will.
It is well with my soul. And I wish you will. And man, that's a process to get there. That's a process of letting go. And it may be a process where you say, it's always a process where you say, I need supernatural help with this. Like, God, if you would help me with this. And he goes throughout scripture and he says, all kinds of things about forgiveness. And he says, one of those things is prayer God through it says, it says, one of the starting points of forgiveness is when you can begin to pray for someone else, he says, what do you do? He says, pray for your enemies and pray for those who persecute you in the Lord's prayer right before the end. He says, father, forgive those, forgive us. And forgive those who ascend against us. Pray father, forgive them for what they've done. And father, I release them to you for you to deal with them. And I wish them well.
And forgiveness is a process. And it's a process that takes time. And it may not just be a process. That's a supernatural process where God helps you. He may actually work through some other people where you may need to jump in, share with other friends, share with your small group, but maybe even get some professional help and say, this thing is so big. What happened to me was so difficult and so big that I need some help from a counselor to help me through. And one of the interesting things this week, we're gonna jump onto our podcast, Rocky unscripted. And, uh, we're gonna have a guy named Michael Beamer. Who's a Christian counselor here in the area and we're just gonna talk to him about this idea, Michael, what do you do? Like when it comes down to forgiveness, like what are the steps like?
What do you actually do to be able to say about another person? Not that I wanna hang out with you. Not that I wanna trust you. Not that I, but to set up boundaries enough, but still be able to say, I wish you will. You should tune into that second thing that I think forgiveness is, is it's healing. It is a process of moving from being bitter to getting better because not forgiving man, it's we all know it, but we don't realize it in the midst of the emotion, not forgiving is about the unhealthiest thing that we can do.
And it's not just unhealthy for us. It's unhealthy for those around us, because what happens is that anger and emotion ends up. That's pointed at this other person usually blows back on other people. Have you, have you ever like been with a kid when they throw dust into the wind? You ever been walking around with your kids and my kids, if there's like sand or dust or whatever, they will reach down and pick up a handful of my little guys and they'll Chuck it, but they never think about the blow back. They'll Chuck that dust into the wind and it blows back on them. But it blows back on me too. Lack of forgiveness is the same way. The bitterness, the anger, the emotion usually blows back, not on the other person, but it blows back on us.
Forgiveness is a process where we hand the power over to God, the power that someone else has had over us because of what they've done to us. We hand that over to God and say, would you deal with this? It is a process that leads toward healing and somebody sit there and you say, okay, great. That's great for the little work issues and little family issues that can be taken care of Byan adultery. Yeah. And you wanna go throughout scripture? I'd say that man adultery is discussed in scripture, like it's in the 10 commandments and Jesus even talked about it in the law. They talked about it. And it even says that adultery is grounds for divorce, but you know what else adultery is grounds for or an opportunity for is forgiveness that leads to healing. And he might say, but Sean, you, you don't know what abuse feels like.
Okay. I hear you. Abuse is grounds for separation. Abuse is grounds for running. Abuse is grounds for calling the authorities. Abuse is grounds for separating ties, all of those things. But it's also an opportunity where God says, I want to heal you through forgiveness. And those things are hard to hear, but what would happen if God was able to take those wounds in our life and turn them into scars? I mentioned my 18 year old. I remember when she was a little bit older than the story I told she was just learning to ride her bike and, and dads and moms. You can, you can totally remember these moments, but I taught her to ride her bike. And we were out on kind of our first like family little bike ride thing together. And, and I remember she was kind of running out ahead and we'd always say, grace, come on back.
But same, same thing I said earlier, she just has so much energy. She's always out there. She's always going. And, and I remember yelling at her and saying, grace, come on back. Don't go over the top of that hill. Well she did. And dad just like busted out, chased her. And I got up the top of that hill and I looked back, I looked down. And by that time, you, you know, the picture that I'm talking about, she is barreling down. This hill legs are out like this pedals are flying. You know, you know the picture cuz you've been there and I'm seeing her go straight toward this curve or this, uh, curve and a curve. And I'm just, I'm saying grace hit the brakes, hit the brakes. She does not hit the brakes. She hit that curb. She went over the handlebar. She hit her chin.
First, her forehead, her elbows, her knees. There was blood everywhere. By the time I got her and I got there and I just scooped her up, left the bike, where about a block from the house. And I just walked her straight home. We went straight into the bathroom and she is screaming and the screaming got worse when the hydro hydrogen peroxide hit the wound. Right? And then later that week as we're working through and she's got scabs everywhere, you know what a scab does, what does it do? Is it dries up? And then they start playing and running around and they bend that thing and it hurts.
And a week later week and a half later, and you just keep treating this thing and what happens all of a sudden that scab starts falling off. It hurts a little less. And it turns into what it turns into a wound that has, it turns into a scar that has a pretty good story attached to it. Right? And you look back on some of the things that happened in our life, what's interesting about scripture is God says, this is really hard, but here's the thing. You don't have to deal with this thing alone. Like I am right there in this. And what I'm right there in this to do is I'm in there to help you turn these wounds into what, into scars. And I'm here to help you take that bitterness and help it get better. And I think here's the thing about this whole forgiveness thing that gets really difficult, man.
I will show mercy to those who have shown mercy. I will show forgiveness to those who show forgiveness. And we think there's way I could do that. You can and what God knows and why God pushes us on this so hard is because he says, it's one thing to live wounded. It's another thing to live scarred like because wounded people walk around in life and they keep experiencing the pain of those wounds. They keep reliving the situation. They keep saying in their mind what I do to that person, they keep wishing them harmed. They keep just getting angry, all of those things and they don't heal. It was interesting when Jesus came back from the cross and he appeared to his disciples the first time they
were up in a room together and he looked at them and he said, look at my, what if you actually look at the Greek language, he didn't say, look at my wounds. He said, look at my marks.
Look at my scars because here's the thing. Your wounds don't have to hold you there forever. God can help heal those wounds and he can turn them into scars. Right? And scars. They still have the memory. I'm alright with living scarred because scars still have the memory, but they don't constantly bring back the pain. And what's interesting about scars is if you look at Jesus, when he came back, man, he just didn't forget. We're not talking about forgetting about the whole thing. He didn't say what cross. He came back and said, look at my scars and its at the point of those scars, going back to where he was wounded, the point of what had healed into scars that unleashed the greatest power in history to forgive and to love and to change the world. And what if man, what if in our life, what God's saying is I want you to move from being better to just get, I want you to get better.
It's gonna be a process. It's gonna take time. But out of that, I can actually use your scars to sell someone else, heal their wounds. If you'll be willing to allow me to, we're gonna take communion. And, and I wanna just encourage you just as you pull out your communion. I, I want to just to think through this whole thing for a minute, man, mercy, we'd love to say that. God, why don't you treat us the way you want to be treated? The golden rule God says I do in every way except this one. Because it's so much of a part of my character that I cannot accept someone who won't extend the mercy and grace that they've been extended. We're not talking about forgetting. We're not talking about re-engaging in a relationship. We're not talking, but we're talking about creating boundaries and saying, God, I'm just gonna let you deal with this so I can be well in my soul and wish someone else well, and there's, we're gonna take communion. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to give you an opportunity to do two things. First is this. I want you just to thank God for the forgiveness you've received because you were on his list
Of those who'd sin against his son. And he sent his son to go to the cross. So you could be off that list and on another one, and then I wanna give you an opportunity to do something a little more difficult. And that thing is to start the process of forgiveness to potentially just say, God, I here's a name it's on my list. And some of you may struggle more than others. Some of you say, Hey, I don't really have a whole lot. Well just you spend your time with God thanking him for forgiveness. But for those of you who do what if he took that name and you just released it to God and said, God, here today, I give this to you. I know what to do with it, but I'm gonna start praying for this person and praying starts now God heal my heart and help me to be able over time to release them and wish them well. And then this week, pray it again and pray it again because here's what we live in. We live in this world that is just at war with each other. Like you look around politically right now, you look around relationally. Really right now you look around in every single way. We live in a war in a world that is at war with itself and what does it need?
It needs a people who will extend the same mercy that they have received. And what happens in a world is over time. If every single person in this place would go out of this place and live that way, it would get noticed. And if more people begin to extend that mercy, it would get noticed. And there might be just a way that the way Jesus did it and the disciples did it. You're like, ah, I don't know if we could affect 12 people did. And it changed. The world might change your relationships. It might change your family and it might move you from being better to getting better. I'm gonna pray for you. And then I'm just gonna give you a little bit of time for you to take community, to do those two things. And we're gonna sing a song that I think we need to sing. Lord, I need you because we do because forgiveness takes faith. Let's pray, father, I, I just asked that right now you would remind us of the debt that has been forgiven for us. Father, remind us that no matter what has been done to us, the amount that has been done to you, you're the one saying this. And you've had to experience more put up with more and forgive more than
any of us will ever imagine. And you say lesser to the merciful for, they wish that we see mercy. And so father, I pray that we will release somebody in today
And that maybe in the process that you would release us, it's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.
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