Passion For Jesus Conference Sunday Morning Session
Jesus chooses the weak ones, not “professional Christians.” Whether you are connected to God or not, you can hear your Father. He can speak to you through the things you love. Through relationships in the Church, we can be hurt. However, we need to forgive people. God ties everything into the communities that we live in. In Matthew 6, after Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer to the disciples, He declares to them “for if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you don’t, He will not forgive you.” There are consequences that come when we do not forgive. We cannot a broken situation, hinder our eternal position. There are places that we do not go because some person is there that we have not forgiven. We need to let go.
How many people have suffered because of your act of rebellion? Jonah had a sense of unforgiveness towards the people of Nineveh. When Jonah ran from God’s direction, the people in the boat suffered because of his disobedience. Hosea who was instructed by God to marry the prostitute, Gomer, had to forgive her continually as she cheated on him. We hurt more when those close to us hurt us, but when we forgive, we create an environment for love.
Some of us live out negative words spoken about us and cannot forgive those who said it. The result is that we cannot move on. Forgiving others does not mean that we do not remember it, but it does mean that we do not hang on to the unforgiveness anymore. Biblical forgiveness means that we confess that there is a wound and choose to let it go. When you live in unforgiveness, you cannot move under the anointing.
Forgiveness means trusting God to do the judgment. It is showing mercy to the person who hurt us. It is confronting the issue. We have to deal with the issue and not hide it in the closet. Unforgiveness will cause us to hold everyone hostage. It will affect how we read the Word. We would read the word and get offended. As a result of past hurts, we associate certain relationships with pain. But God wants to give us sweet things.
It hurts most when it comes from someone that we trust. Some of us are still at the maturity level that we were hurt at. We are still at that level because we have not forgiven. Time is too short for us to hold people hostage. Why lose our eternity over someone who has hurt us? We have to let go.
