Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, September twenty-seventh. Are you able to freely forgive those who hurt you?
Or do you tend to harbor hostility? Today's podcast leads us in forgiving others in the same way as God forgives our sin. Here's more on the ways of God. Forgiveness for your sin is a one-time act. For me, I was twelve years of age, knelt at the altar, asked Jesus Christ to forgive me of my sin. I did understand that He died on the cross for me.
I didn't understand a whole lot more than that. But He knew my heart, that I was guilty as a twelve-year-old kid, the Spirit of God. He convicted me of my sin. He saved me that day, and I've never, never doubted that. Some are saved at twelve, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, or even before. Whatever it might be. It's a one-time act on the part of God to save you, to forgive you of your sins, write your name in the Lamb's Book of Life.
Now watch this. Forgiveness for my salvation took care of the penalty that He paid for once and for all. Forgiveness for my daily sins does something different. That forgiveness saved me forever. Forgiveness for my daily sins has nothing to do with salvation. Forgiveness for my daily sins restores my broken fellowship for getting upset with my brother with whom I work and telling him off. It deals with that. Or some lust that you may have.
Or some attitude that's wrong. It may be sin against somebody else, or it may be something that just only you know about. So we're talking about forgiveness for salvation and forgiveness for my daily sins. I want you to turn to a prayer that we all learned probably when we were kids. Matthew chapter six.
Look at that if you will. Matthew chapter six and notice what he says. Jesus talking to His disciples. This is a Sermon on the Mount.
Most of us learned this when we were kids. We learned to pray this prayer. So let's watch what the prayer praise.
Now, remember, we are talking about sins that we commit now that we're saved, taken care of our pardon, has nothing to do with eternity, it has to do with daily living. Watch this. Here's what He taught them to pray. Beginning in verse eight. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask. Pray this, He says, this is the way you pray.
This is a pattern. Pray in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed or holy be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Forgive us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts or our trespasses, our sins, as we also forgive those who sin against us. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Now, most people stop right there.
Hmm, that's pretty good, making me feel good. Watch this. For if you, listen to this, if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Now watch this. Jesus knew that you and I would sin after we were saved. That's why I put this prayer in here, one of the reasons. And so He says, I'm to pray for, give me today my daily bread, meet my needs today. And He said, I'm to forgive those who wronged me today.
So let's deal with the first part first. I'm to forgive them. Now think about this as a child of God. I do believe that the probably the major reason the body of Christ is so weak is because most people somewhere in their life have somebody they've not forgiven.
Where it could be way back yonder, resentment, hostile, angry. But you've covered it up and things are pretty good with you and so you've just said, I don't have to deal with that. You know what I've already told God how I feel about it? I'm not going to keep bringing that up. I've even heard pastors say, don't bring up the past.
I've even heard pastors say, God don't want you bringing up the past. In other words, so what do you do? You hide it. You dig deep enough down and you can cover it up with enough good things that come your way still down there. And what you don't realize is it's poisoning you. It's like a poison leak in your system, in your bodily system.
It's going to have a devastating effect. But let's just put it this way. Anger, bitterness, hostility, whatever it might be. And here's what God says. If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. We're not talking about salvation. We're talking about relationship. Personal, intimate relationship with Him. We're talking about your fellowship with Him.
And here's what He says. If my fellowship with Him, my relationship with Him, which affects what? The way I live. It affects my prayers. It affects my abilities, my talents, my skills. It affects my attitude. It affects my worship.
It affects everything. If you forgive those who have sinned against you, then your Father will forgive you. But if you do not, neither will He. You say, well, if He doesn't forgive me for my sins, I'm lost.
No, we've already dealt with that. He has pardoned you from all sin. Now, we have to deal with daily sins.
And He put it in this prayer, Jesus, because He knew we were going to have to deal with it. So, I'm to pray, God, forgive us of our debts, so forgive me of my sins, as we also forgive those who sin against us. So, here's what I'm praying. God, forgive me today as I forgive others, so I don't forgive others.
So, a whole anger and bitterness and resentment. You know what I just prayed? God, don't forgive me.
So, you just prayed. If there's anybody in your life of mine, we're not willing to forgive, you can just write this down and you sign Jesus. Until you deal with it, our fellowship is broken.
Fellowship's disrupted. Let's just read it to be sure you get it. If you forgive others, big F, if you forgive others, their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will forgive you. If you do not forgive them for their transgressions against you, neither will your Father forgive you. Has nothing to do with salvation, it has to do with your daily walk. You say, do you know what somebody did to me? I understand. But if you've just been where I've been, suffered like I've suffered, God doesn't expect me to forgive them.
Where is that? You see, I'll tell you something, living a Christian life is serious business. And we treat it like it's not. We treat God like He's this Heavenly Father who overlooks it. Fathers who overlook the sins of their children and do not discipline them wisely, lovingly but wisely, and sternly when necessarily are doing what?
Contributing, listen, contributing to the destruction of their own children. And so, because we're that way, we think God's going to be that way, He's, you know, if I do enough, man, if I preach enough sermons, God, He won't pay attention to that. And this is what we do sometimes, we say, God, then I teach Sunday school, I sing in the choir, I'm, you know, I have a good witness, I share my faith, I give my tithe. Now, I know God over here that, God, I, you know what? I just can't forgive them.
Look, well, look what, you don't expect me to forgive them for that. Now, look at all the good things I'm doing. You know what God says? He's not paying one bit of attention to that. Listen to this, you can't substitute good works for sin.
In other words, He doesn't operate that way. You can't get enough of this to cover up over here. Disobedience, rebellion, indifference to the things of God, sinning against my brother. Now, let me just say this. I know that some of you have gone through some very, very difficult times in your life.
And so, when somebody says to you, be forgiving, it's just real difficult for you to handle that. Let me say this. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who've heard a lot more than I have. I can tell you this. The worst thing that could happen to me, I had to go through in my life. But you know what? I knew from the very beginning the one thing I must do is to keep a forgiving spirit no matter what.
But watch this. If you don't forgive those who wrong you, you get hurt doubly. You get what they did to you. And then you keep this unforgiving spirit in your life and so now you're getting what God's doing to you. The truth is you're doing it to yourself.
You get hurt doubly. You have to be forgiving. You say, yeah, but I just can't.
Yes, you can. You say, but I don't feel like it has nothing to do with your feelings. So, I'll make something clear. Forgiving someone who's wronged you has nothing to do with your feelings. You say, but I'm so hurt.
I understand. It has to do with a decision you make. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden you're going to have this awesome love and joy with this person. They've wronged you, hurt you deeply, and you won't forget it. It's not a matter of whether you forgive or not. It's a matter of whether you hold it against them or not. Listen, you have to be willing to forgive them whether you feel like it or not. Do you mean to tell me I can forgive them and not feel like it?
Yes. And there are times when you have to forgive. It doesn't mean you go hug them and just say everything's just fine because sometimes that person's walked out of your life, they're not going to ever have another relationship with you. Sometimes the things that people's personalities, they didn't like you the first day they saw you and they knew nothing about you. They just didn't like you. They start wronging you from the very beginning. You're not going to ever have a relationship with them, but you got to forgive them.
Because here's what He said, if you don't, I won't. So, I have to be forgiving. And what happens?
Here's what happens. This daily asking of forgiveness does what? Keeps me clean. Keeps my motives right. Keeps my heart pure. Keeps my relationships right.
But most of all, it keeps me right with Him. Let me ask you, if you lie down at night, cut the lights off and thank God, is there anybody in my life I'm not right with? Anybody I haven't forgiven? They wronged you, yes. You hurt, yes. You may still hurt and suffer the consequences, but you can still forgive them.
It's a decision you make. Father, I forgive them. I don't hold it against them anymore. If Jesus Christ can forgive those who crucify Him, nailed Him to the cross and said, Father, forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing. What right do I have to hold against anyone and unforgive spirit? Because, and He reminded me also, Charles, what sin have you committed that I haven't forgiven? Oh, my goodness.
That was it. I don't have a right to be unforgiving. So, you know, I have to ask the question, God, what are You withholding from me because I won't deal with this unforgiving spirit? If your spirit is unforgiving, don't expect Him to answer. Because here's what He says. And I'm so grateful that He put this in the pattern prayer.
I'm so glad He said this. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, that is, our sinfulness as we also forgive those of others. You could, forget the rest of it. That one verse alone, forgive me like I forgive them. I don't forgive them. Don't forgive me. How many of you would ever pray, God, don't forgive me. Forget it. I don't want any forgiveness from You, God. Just forget this whole forgiveness bit. Just forget it. But you know that's what you and I do. I don't want to be forgiving, but I want Him to forgive me.
As you and I would say, it ain't going to happen. You know why? Because He loves you and me too much. To allow us to have a wonderful relationship with Him. And at the same time, of animosity, bitterness, resentment, you name it, towards someone else. It took me a long time to deal with my unforgiving spirit toward my stepfather. And it's one thing about being a pastor and you being true to the Word of God, you have to apply it to yourself first.
And I remember, I forgot what I was preaching on, but I remember the Lord just pointing that right to me. Well, He keeps saying, what about John? It happened to be my stepfather's name.
What about John? Mistreated my mom something terrible. And I didn't like it. There wasn't anything about him I liked.
I didn't even like to hear his name. Well, well, well, finally he made me realize I can't stand up and tell somebody else to be forgiving if I'm not. Didn't make any difference what he did to my mother. Made a whole lot of difference to me then.
Hurt me very deeply. Only by the grace of God, I didn't do something drastic. I had to forgive him. You say, would you write him a letter?
No. I went to see him. I went to see him for one reason. And I began, I said, John, I want to talk to you about something. I said, I need to ask you to forgive me for something. Oh, you don't need to ask me for something. I said, yes, I do. I need to ask you to forgive me for whatever I did, for whatever I may have done to have displeased you and made me have hard feelings.
And I said, so, it doesn't make any difference what happened. What happens is, I want you to know that I need to ask you to forgive me for my attitude towards you. I never said to him when I saw you choking my mother. I never said to him the way you would curse my mother.
I never named all the things. Because, you see, if I had done that, I'd have been just getting my venom out. I wouldn't be forgiving him.
I'd just be doing something for me. I had to forgive him. I wanted to forgive him.
And it was interesting how he responded. He came around the table, hugged me, asked me to forgive him. I wasn't about to let that man die. And one day, God confronted me with that, and it'd be too late to deal with it. Put this prayer in here for a reason. I'm forgiven of my sin eternally. But I have to be forgiven daily. And that's my prayer. If you've never been saved, you want to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive your sins? Know that you're saved.
You want to pray this prayer? First John one-ninety says, if we confess our sins. And that doesn't mean, well, okay, all right. It means that I agree with. You see, the word confess means to agree with.
That is, the Greek word is homilegeo, which means I agree with God. I agree with God that what I said was wrong. I agree with God that my attitude is not right. I agree with God that this action was a sin against God.
I agree with Him because of my conviction. I regret that. I ask Him to forgive me and in the process of confessing that, I turn away from that and I choose not to do that. Does that mean that you will never repeat it?
No, it doesn't. There's some things all of us have done in our life that we confess and ask God to forgive us. And you know what?
We did it again. Just as guilty the next time. Confessed it again and again and again. But you see, when you grow in the Lord, you can tell one of the evidences of your growing is, that's gone.
Takes some people a long time for it to be gone, but it's gone. Here's this wonderful, awesome love of God who's willing to forgive us if we ask Him to. If you want to be the person God wants you to be, you have to begin to understand His ways.
And one of His ways is this. He saves you in one act of faith and repentance toward Him. He forgives you and me daily for those things that we allow to creep into our life by confession because we're guilty, asking Him to forgive us and to strengthen us so it will not happen in our life again. But until I'm willing to deal with my brothers and my sisters, God says, Sorry. Here's what He says to us. I'm answering your prayer. See, He answers it either way.
Watch this. If I ask Him to forgive me and I forgive someone for what they've done, then I'm clean. Or I'm forgiven. If I'm not willing to forgive them, then I'm asking Him not to forgive me, so He doesn't.
So, I get the answer either way. One for good, one for bad. And I want to encourage you to look at your heart and just do what He tells you to do. If there's somebody out there, somebody, listen, please don't let them die before you deal with it. And you'll be glad you heard this message. Father, how grateful we are that Your forgiveness is absolutely beyond our comprehension. We think about things in our life that have not been right. How many times we've had to come to You? You've always been willing when we have been willing to deal with those things that You have brought to our mind. Thank You, thank You, thank You that the Holy Spirit is willing to go back into our life with us and show us things that need to be dealt with, or on the surface, things that we did yesterday or even this very day. Teach us how to live in this awesome, forgiving Spirit, whereby our fellowship with You, our relationship with You, our intimacy with You is undisturbed every day. We love You and praise You in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to He Forgives Our Sin. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
