Live Like You Were Dying

Live Like You Were Dying – Part 4

Give The Forgiveness I’ve Been Denying

We’ve been in a series of messages outlined for us by the song

[play the song]

There is one certainty to this life and that is no matter how long you live,

This life is short.

We are given no guarantees for a right to a tomorrow here.

Even though we do our best to deny it,

one day we are going to die.

In Tim McGraw’s song there’s a line

I hope you get a chance to live like you were dying.

Well guess what—this is your chance.

You know that everything rises and falls on relationships.

And in these presentations we’ve been learning to speak sweeter,

love deeper as ways to make all our relationships better.

Because when its all said and done the only thing that

really matter is the quality of the relationships you

have.

Today we are going to consider forgiveness.

What happens when we don’t forgive others.

We’ll consider our model and empowerment for forgiveness,

And well look at how we can forgive.

Receiving and giving forgiveness is essential in our relationships.

If we are grudge holders, it saps the emotional energy the Holy Spirit is

giving you to live your life to the full.

Hebrews 12:15 (MSG)

Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time.

A lack of forgiveness, grows bitter weeds in the garden of your life,

When you are living like you were dying you don’t have time for bitterness.

A lack of forgiveness can turn you into a debt collector

You desire to collect the debt owed you by some offender

But Unconsciously you try to collect the debt from every relationship

in your life.

When you feel you’re owed you make everybody pay.

There are three major misconceptions about forgiveness that keep people from

forgiving those who have offended them.

Three Myths of Forgiveness

1. Forgive and forget.

The myth states that to truly forgive someone you must

forget the offense.

To forget the offense is to open ourselves up to be hurt again.

2. Forgive and I let them off the hook

The myth states that if I forgive them they will not be punished

for what they did.

To forgive the offender allows God to deal with them.

That truth came out prominently in William Young’s book The Shack.

It’s not until Mackenzie can forgive the man you killed

his daughter that God brings resolution to the situation.

3. Forgive and we are reconciled

The myth states that if you truly forgive the offense between

you and the offending party things go back to how it

was before the offense.

An offense deters, damages or even destroys a relationship.

Forgiveness opens the door to rebuilding a relationship,

But doesn’t require that you must.

Forgiveness is about canceling the debt that is owed you.

Someone sins against you,

If the sin is egregious enough they will never be able to make things

right.

Or maybe they could care less about what they did to You.

They wouldn’t pay back what was owed even if they could.

The relational debt owed you is greater than the offender can pay back.

The offender can’t make things right.

The only way you are going to be able to clear your books, to

settle your accounts is by canceling what is owed you.

Forgiveness is the process of canceling debts.

You have truly forgiven someone when you no longer want to hurt them for

hurting you.

Forgiveness means no pay backs.

Forgiveness means you no longer hold the debt against them.

Let’s read Jesus parable about forgiveness.

Matthew 18:21-35 (MSG)

At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, "Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?" Jesus replied, "Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.

23 "The kingdom of God is like a king who decided to square accounts with his servants. As he got under way, one servant was brought before him who had run up a debt of a hundred thousand dollars. He couldn't pay up, so the king ordered the man, along with his wife, children, and goods, to be auctioned off at the slave market. "The poor wretch threw himself at the king's feet and begged, 'Give me a chance and I'll pay it all back.' Touched by his plea, the king let him off, erasing the debt.

28 "The servant was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him ten dollars. He seized him by the throat and demanded, 'Pay up. Now!' "The poor wretch threw himself down and begged, 'Give me a chance and I'll pay it all back.' But he wouldn't do it. He had him arrested and put in jail until the debt was paid.

31 When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king. "The king summoned the man and said, 'You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt when you begged me for mercy. Shouldn't you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?' The king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire debt.

35 And that's exactly what my Father in heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn't forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy."

In general people find it easier to forgive someone when they ask to be forgiven.

That’s not always the case,

Forgiveness is never easy, its always costly.

It just seems easier to forgive someone who is really

repentant and asks for your forgiveness for what they

have done to you.

In Jesus parable he tells us to forgive unconditionally those who ask to be forgiven.

IF we don’t we are going to experience even greater problems.

This fact also applies to the person who never asks to be forgiven,

For the consequences of not forgiving are very similar.

To live like you were dying you need to keep short accounts.

1. IF YOU REFUSE TO FORGIVE, YOU IMPRISON YOURSELF

Matthew 18:33-34 (NLT)

Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

When you refuse to forgive, you chain yourself to the other person.

You become emotionally tied to the offending party.

You carry them and their offense with you every where you go.

You become overly concerned to the point of obsession that they make

things right.

You can’t get what was done to you out of your head.

Such a presence and thoughts create feelings of resentment, bitterness,

anger, and even hatred.

Once those feelings take root in your soul they have all kinds of negative effects on all your other relationships.

Animosity and hostility and a certain unpleasantness

become the fruit of a refusal to forgive,

that acts like a cancer in all your other

relationships.

The most insidious ways this situation plays itself out is unconsciously trying to

make the situation right in every other relationship.

It’s like you are always trying to bring resolution to the pain the

offense caused by working it out with people who have no idea

what your problem is.

You’re trying to collect your debt from those who don’t owe you.

Relationship after relationship gets tainted,

And you become more and more isolated.

So for your own soul’s sake keep short accounts.

Give the forgiveness you’ve been denying others and set yourself free.

Forgiveness isn’t easy.

It’s a process that is not quick or clean.

Giving forgiveness is not natural to us.

In our culture we approve of smacking back someone whose smacked us.

Revenge, making them pay for what they did,

Is often applauded.

So where do you learn how to forgive?

Where do you get “the want to” to forgive from?

Where do you get the emotional power to cancel someone’s debt to

you?

The answer is from God.

You can’t give what you don’t have.

In order to live like you were dying you have to recognize that God

has forgiven you.

To live like you were dying you need to know that you are forgiven.

2. FAITH IN JESUS MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR GOD TO CANCEL YOUR DEBTS

In Jesus parable the King calls to account his servant who owes him a huge debt.

The King forgives the debt,

please note the King forgives but he doesn’t forget what he has done

for his servant.

Sin has fallen out of the vocabulary of modern society.

To avoid getting labeled has a hell fire and brimstone preacher,

We don’t hear a lot about sin from the pulpit.

Preachers pointing out sin makes us feel bad

and we want to feel good.

Sin is both a state of being, and attitude, and an action.

The state of being is one of estrangement from right relationships.

The attitude is that “life is all about me”

The action is deterring or damaging or destroying the relationships in our

lives.

I want to focus on the action of sin.

In the Bible there are many instructions on how to live your life.

When we transgress one of those instructions we sin.

The result of sin is a damaged relationship.

Sin messes up our relationship with God.

With others, with the earth and with our self.

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Roman believers writes,

The wages of sin is death.

The prophet Ezekiel writes:

Ezekiel 18:20 (MSG)

The soul that sins is the soul that dies.

If there is enough humility in your soul you might realize that nobody is perfect.

So pride might convince you that you’ve only sinned a little so its really no

big deal.

But that’s not what the scripture teaches.

James 2:10 (NIV)

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

Doesn’t matter if you commit a small sin or a big sin,

You’re a sinner.

And if you are still not convinced, just look at the relationships you

have with others—are they all good, or have there been some

bad ones, ones that ended poorly, ones that hurt,

ones you’d like to do over?

The presence of a damaged or destroyed relationship in your

life is evidence of being a sinner.

And if you are still not convinced that you are a sinner,

That fact alone indicates that you are.

Pride can be a sin

Then on the other side of the scale of human experience

Those feelings of guilt.

Those feelings of shame.

Those feelings of being junk.

Those feelings of hopelessness

Can all find their source in sin.

Sin is already extracting its wages of death from you.

Now the good news of the gospel is that God has provided a solution to our sin

problem.

1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

Accept the fact that you are a sinner

Believe that Jesus died for your sins

Commit yourself to following the resurrected Christ

And the scripture says

1 John 1:9 (MSG)

…if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing.

As we abide in Christ, God the Father cancels our sin debt.

We stand forgiven.

You are no longer accountable because Jesus took account for you on

the cross.

You are forgiven.

Just like the King in the parable,

God is merciful and extends grace to those who call on the name of

Jesus to be saved.

Your offenses are forgiven.

Your debt is cancelled.

Our elders sang—Oh the bliss of this glorious thought,

My sin not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,

And it is well with my soul.

They sang—would you be free of your burden of sin?

There’s power in the blood.

They sang—there is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins

And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

They sang –Once I was bound by sin’s galling fetters,

Chained like a slave I struggled in vain

But I received a glorious freedom.

When Jesus broke my fetters in twain.

Our elders had a more than a cursory view of the destruction of sin.

To be forgiven was and still is a tremendous thing.

Forgiveness sets you free to become the person God created you to be.

Forgiveness sets you free to do the things that God created you to do.

Forgiveness sets you free to build righteous relationships

Forgiveness sets you free to live your life to the full

Forgiveness makes it possible to live like you were dying.

All your sins can be forgiven

Your debt can be cancelled because of Calvary.

To be empowered to forgive you must yourself know what it means to

be forgiven.

You must be convinced that your sin debt was unpayable.

But God cancelled you debt.

If we don’t forgive we imprison ourselves.

But forgiving doesn’t come naturally.

We need to experience being forgiven.

Through faith in Jesus being forgiven is the great grace gift of

the Father.

Once having experienced being forgiven you now have the power to give away

what you have received to others.

To live like you were dying you must

3. RELEASE OTHERS FROM THEIR DEBTS TO YOU

Ephesians 4:32 (MSG)

Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

How different Jesus parable would have ended if the servant who was forgiven his

huge debt, would have shown the same mercy to the one who owed him.

I think there are two different intentions we can have when to comes to forgiveness

We can forgive with the intent to reconcile

Or we can forgive with the intent of getting free.

Jesus gave us some very clear instructions on forgiving others with the intent to

reconcile.

Matthew 18:15-17 (MSG)

"If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you've made a friend. If he won't listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won't listen, tell the church. If he won't listen to the church, you'll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God's forgiving love.

Here’s the steps

Go to the offending party

Put your cards on the table and tell them how they hurt you.

They may own their actions and ask your forgiveness.

And off you go rebuilding trust into your relationship

If they refuse to acknowledge their actions you need to bring along

someone who can verify your view point.

Hopefully the person you confront will see the error of their

ways, ask for forgiveness and you’ll be off to rebuilding

trust into your relationship.

If they still refuse to own their behavior then you get more people

involved, their faith community.

If the judgment of faith community on the situation can’t persuade

this person to repent then I think you need to move to

forgiveness with the intention of getting free.

We often find ourselves in situations where the offending party will not admit they

have done wrong.

It’s possible that you may no longer be able to confront them because

of distance or death or even because of being so traumatized

you never want to see the person again.

Then you need to forgive with the intent of getting free.

Here I would suggest you write up an account.

You list the offense or offenses on a sheet of paper.

You list the pain that was inflicted.

You list the costs Past, Present and Future.

You write out your anger.

You may even want to write out how this person could compensate

you.

Or what penalty should be extracted from them.

Put it all on paper.

Let someone else read it over and ask for their affirmation of

the situation.

Then ask God to give you the grace to forgive,

To cancel the debt.

That opens the door to the process of forgiveness.

Once you feel that you can forgive,

Burn the account.

Or if you want to get real radical

Prick your finger and put a drop of blood on the account,

and then every time you wonder if you have truly

forgiven this individual and are free of them

remind yourself that what they did is under the

blood.

The idea is to cancel the debt so you can get on with living your life free from the

person who offended you.

Free from the need to be a debt collector.

Free to be a lover.

To live like you were dying you forgive those who have sinned against you.

You have been empowered to forgive because you have been forgiven.

Life is too short to hold grudges.

Release the debts owed you.

Today we discussed how a lack of forgiveness can emotionally chain us to the

offending party,

we learned that we can be forgiven no matter what we have done if we

seek that forgiveness from God through faith in Jesus Christ,

and we now know that we can forgive others by giving

away what we received

This week in your home groups you will be finishing up this message as you

discuss this topic of forgiveness.

BACK

Live Like You Were Dying – Part 4

Give The Forgiveness I’ve Been Denying

When its all said and done the only thing that really matter is the quality of the relationships you have.

Receiving and giving forgiveness is essential in our relationships.

Hebrews 12:15 (MSG)

Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time.

A lack of forgiveness can turn you into a debt collector

Three Myths of Forgiveness

1. Forgive and forget.

2. Forgive and I let them off the hook

3. Forgive and we are reconciled

Forgiveness is about canceling the debt that is owed you.

Matthew 18:21-35 (MSG)

At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, "Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?" Jesus replied, "Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.

35 And that's exactly what my Father in heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn't forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy."

To live like you were dying you need to keep short accounts.

1. IF YOU REFUSE TO FORGIVE, YOU IMPRISON YOURSELF

Matthew 18:33-34 (NLT)

Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

To live like you were dying you need to know that you are forgiven.

2. FAITH IN JESUS MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR GOD TO CANCEL YOUR DEBTS

Sin is both a state of being, and attitude, and an action.

The result of sin is a damaged relationship.

Ezekiel 18:20 (MSG)

The soul that sins is the soul that dies.

If there is enough humility in your soul you might realize that nobody is perfect.

So pride might convince you that you’ve only sinned a little so its really no big deal.

James 2:10 (NIV)

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

The presence of a damaged or destroyed relationship in your life is evidence of being a

sinner.

If you are still not convinced that you are a sinner, that fact alone indicates that you are.

Pride can be a sin

Then on the other side of the scale of human experience

Those feelings of guilt; shame; of being junk; feelings of hopelessness, can all find their

source in sin.

1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

Accept the fact that you are a sinner

Believe that Jesus died for your sins

Commit yourself to following the resurrected Christ

1 John 1:9 (MSG)

…if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing.

As we abide in Christ, God the Father cancels our sin debt.

Forgiveness sets you free to become the person God created you to be.

Forgiveness sets you free to do the things that God created you to do.

Forgiveness sets you free to build righteous relationships

Forgiveness sets you free to live your life to the full

Forgiveness makes it possible to live like you were dying.

To live like you were dying you must

3. RELEASE OTHERS FROM THEIR DEBTS TO YOU

Ephesians 4:32 (MSG)

Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

We can forgive with the intent to reconcile or we can forgive with the intent of getting free.

Matthew 18:15-17 (MSG)

We often find ourselves in situations where the offending party will not admit they have done wrong.

You list the offense or offenses on a sheet of paper.

You write out your anger.

You may even want to write out how this person could compensate you.

Let someone else read it over and ask for their affirmation of the situation.

Then ask God to give you the grace to forgive, to cancel the debt.

Once you feel that you can forgive, burn the account.

The idea is to cancel the debt so you can get on with living your life free from the person who offended you.