1.  What did Jesus say He would not do if we did not forgive others?  Matthew 6:12-15. Answer: He would not us.

Answer: Our , and those who have us.

Jesus said here that His followers would have the ability to love in the face of hate, and if we have any unforgiveness in our heart, we cannot truly love as God intends!  This failure to love will be sensed and felt by wives, husbands, children, parents, and those around us!

3.  Did Jesus call hatred, and anger the “works of the flesh”?  Galatians 5:19-21.

Answer: .

Anger and hatred are works of the flesh, and God’s Word says that if we do such things we will not inherit the kingdom of God. So harboring unforgiveness in the heart, which creates anger and hatred toward anyone is not only damaging to us, but it could be spiritually fatal unless we forgive and release the hurt, anger, and pain to Jesus!  Acid hurts the bottle it is stored in most of all!  I have good news for you today.  Jesus Christ can give you power to forgive!  He can put love and forgiveness in your heart!

4.  What does God say we should “put away” from our minds and spirit?  Ephesians 4:30-31.

Answer:    

It implies in this verse that God’s Holy Spirit is grieved when we allow certain emotions to remain in our lives.  He does not want us to be bitter or filled with rage and anger!  Let bitterness go.  Let wrath and anger go.  Let arguments and evil speaking go. Put all malice away.  Be kind.  Forgive others as God forgave you!  O friends, much healing takes place when we forgive those who have hurt us.  We can have Christ living in us, and He can forgive anything!  He forgave the ones who nailed Him to a tree!

The Christian is to forgive even when he does not feel like forgiving.   We are to forgive because it is right, and because Jesus commands us to forgive.  Unforgiveness is a heart problem. The great physician can operate and cure the heart, but we must sign the paper so to speak and give Him permission to operate.

No one gets heart surgery because they feel like it, but because they desperately need it!  Our feelings may say, “No way! I can’t forgive.”  But we must never let feelings stand in the way of the life-giving heart surgery.  Jesus can give us a bypass operation in which we can bypass the clogged artery of unforgiveness and let the blood of Christ flow in our veins!  If we wait until we feel like forgiving, it will be a long time coming or it might never happen.  There are times in life when we must do what is right even when the thought of it is distasteful.  Remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane?  He didn’t relish the pain of Calvary. He cried Out “Father, if it be possible, take this cup from Me.” But then He said, “Father, not My will, but Thy will be done.”  It is God’s will that we forgive all those who have hurt us, abused us, been mean to us. etc.

5.  What did the man who was forgiven much do to those who owed him a little debt?  Matthew 18:23-25.

Answer: He took him by the , and said, "Pay me !"

Jesus was serious about forgiveness.  He forgave us a vast debt, and sometimes we want to choke the life out of others who have wronged us!  Jesus said in verse 35 that we are to “Forgive from the heart.”  No grudges, no hatred, not human revenge, but divine forgiveness that comes from the heart, and that the Holy Spirit alone can grant!

The good news is that through Jesus, we can release these hurts to him -- He bore all our infirmities!  Modern psychiatry draws up these painful memories, and then places blame on the offender, but offers no real cure!  You’re this way because your mother or father made you this way.  It’s their fault.  Or it’s that person's fault.  People often come away from analysis with nothing more than labels and scapegoats.   They have wasted their time, and a whole lot of money.  But Jesus offers a better way.  Yes, it might be their fault, but rather than blame and hatred, He offers the grace to forgive -- a Godlike quality!

6.  Through Jesus Christ, what can we do with those unpleasant experiences of the past AFTER we give them to Him?  Philippians 3:13-14.

Answer: We can the pain that torments us, and we can on Christ!

We press on in Jesus -- forgetting the unpleasant past, releasing it through Christ’s power of forgiveness!   2 Corinthians 5:17 states:  "If any man is in Christ, He is a new creature.  Old Things are passed away, behold all things are become new!"   Praise God for that!  Although we can not relive the past, or truly blot out from our remembrance the hurts of the past, we can, with heartfelt forgiveness and emotional healing, reach a point where recalling the offender or the offense no longer triggers emotional pain.  If looking back leads us to forgiveness, it’s healthy.  Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross, was asked if she remembered a despicable incident in her past.  She said, "No.  I distinctly remember forgetting that."  Through Jesus Christ, we can refuse to remember the pain!  When we forgive, God does not want us to act like everything is wonderful and go back for more abuse and pain.  God does not want us to continue to be abused without end.  He doesn’t even ask us to face the one who caused us pain if we cannot handle this.  He asks us to forgive from the heart -- and God alone knows the heart.

There are some Bible principles that will help us understand and forgive our hurts and pains.  In Mark 8:33, Jesus said “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”   From the context, it seems that Peter was saying to Jesus something like, “No, you don’t have to die on the cross.  Never.”   Jesus here rebuked Peter, but He addressed Satan because he knew it was not really Peter, but Satan who was causing him to say that.  Many times those who have hurt us with either words, or with physical abuse did it under the control of Satan.  They were mere pathetic pawns of the devil.  Through anger, or alcohol, the devil had a foothold on them, and he played them like a violin to do his dastardly deeds. Just as Satan spoke through Peter’s mouth, he speaks or acts through the abusive mouth, or hands of those whom he controls. If we understand this, it will help us forgive those who under the control of Satan hurt us with their words or actions!

7. What did Jesus tell us we must all take up?  Matthew 16:24.

Answer: Our .

We all have a cross to bear.  Jesus said in this world we would have tribulation.  We live in a sin-sick world, and the god of this world causes pain, horror, and sin with all its ramifications. Perhaps the cross you have to bear is one of abuse from parents or relatives, or violence, or whatever.  Jesus will help you carry the cross, and bear it with noble dignity.  Will we bear our cross nobly as did the Master, or will we let it crush us in bitterness and hopeless despair?

8.  Who was Paul talking to when he forgave those who hurt him?  2 Timothy 4:16.

Answer: .

Forgiving someone is a sacred act done before God in response to His forgiveness of us and His command to forgive others.  God was there when you were wronged, or abused, or hurt.  You can forgive someone to the Lord, in the sight of Christ like the Bible says. In Psalm 51:5, David, who had committed adultery and murder repented, and said to the Lord, “Against Thee, and Thee only have I sinned.”  David could never apologize to his victim, yet it was sufficient to apologize to the Lord.  In the same way the one who mistreated you may be dead, or it may be just too painful to face that person, or impossible to do so, you can still forgive that person to God as David apologized before God. Truly, every sin committed against us is really committed against God.  Jesus said,  “What ye have done to the least of these My brethren, ye have done unto Me.”  Stephen, when they were stoning him to death, cried out to God asking God to not hold this sin against them!  He forgave the ones who were stoning him, and he did it in the presence of God as he looked up and saw the Lord in vision.  If you can go before the one who hurt you to let them know you forgive them, you can do that.  But it is God we go to in either case for He alone can change the human heart.

A good method to help you give these hurts to Jesus is to write them down as the Holy Spirit brings them to your remembrance. Don’t save these hurts, and place them in a file where you can read them and be hurt all over again!  Once they have been written down, you can offer them to the Lord by forgiving those who have trespassed against you.  You can burn up that paper, or blot out the offenses with a marker as Jesus blots out our sins never more to be a cause of pain and shame again!  We can give them to Jesus.

Many people have never forgiven themselves for what happened in their past, and this perhaps is the most crippling unforgiveness of all!  The person who feels this way is tortured by their conscience, and they condemn themselves.  You might expect perfection in yourself, and your failures are literally torturing you. Friends, we can offer them up to Jesus and forgive ourselves as Christ forgives us.  We can rest in the salvation Jesus has already provided at Calvary.  Our sins and shortcomings have already been covered, and we have salvation in Christ as a free gift! Forgive yourself, for God has already forgiven you!   Hebrews 8:12 states:  "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."  Romans 8:1 states:  "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit."  God accepts you in Christ, no matter what you have done!  In Christ, God forgets what you have done in the past! Praise His holy name!  In Jesus we are already accepted.   Ephesians 1:6 says "He hath made us accepted in the beloved."

Isn’t it time for you, if you haven't done it already, to forgive and release the past?  You can bring your burdens today to Jesus.  Are your hands filled with burdens?  Good.  Bring your burdens to the cross, but be prepared to leave them there.  Nothing anyone had ever done to us can hurt us as deeply as our sins hurt Jesus.  He died for our sins when He did nothing wrong, yet He forgave us. Through Christ we can forgive others, and also forgive ourselves! We can start with a clean slate in Christ today!  Why not, right now, take your burdens to the cross in prayer, and leave them there?  Jesus is listening.  He’s the great physician, and He can do heart surgery for you too!

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