Forgivness

Before I get into a discussion about forgivness, I want to take a moment and thank the Lord for doing something amazing again.  God gave a vision for reaching out to the people of Beaver County at the New Brighton parade this past week and then He accomplished it.  Along the way He used some of us to help out, including Bob, Carol, Doug, Mark (not me, the other Mark), Mike, Missy, Nathaniel, Rob, Sally, and of course Terry.  Thanks to each of you for letting the Lord use your efforts in this.  The mobile prison was an extremely memorable and powerful tool.  I have posted two pictures of the our Celebrate Recovery float (I've removed all faces to "protect the innocent."  Now to last week's discussion...

Principle 6: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.  “Blessed are the merciful…Blessed are the peacemakers.” (Mt 5:7, 9)

Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.  “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)

Before we can do these critical steps, we must first understand & embrace 1-4.

step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own.
step 2 is understanding that God cares about me and He has the power and desire to help me recover.
step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control.
step 4 is following the Holy Spirit as He leads me through a spiritual inventory.

All of your desire for recovery, and all the hard work will be worthless if you decide you are unable to forgive or be forgiven.  No matter how great the offenses we’ve endured or committed…the road to recovery goes thru forgiveness.  There are NO detours!  The #1 principle of Forgiveness is that it feels nothing like fairness.

God’s Forgiveness of us

Ephesians 1:7 says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”  While 1 John 1:9 says, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  If you repent (turn from sin) and put your faith in Jesus Christ, He forgives you.  Why and how can He forgive me and you?  Because Jesus was the sacrifice for our sin, He did it because He loves you.  Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  That’s not fair – that Jesus died for our sin, but God lavishes mercy on us and provides forgiveness to those who believe.  John 20:31 says, “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have eternal life in His name.”  If you have trusted in Christ, you can know that you’ve been forgiven, that you have eternal life.”  So, God will forgive you if you accept in faith, His Son’s sacrificial death and resurrection.  But, know that He will also require that you forgive those who sin against you…

Our forgiveness of others

It’s all about letting go.  Unforgiveness is like tug-of-war with a train…you can’t win.  Even if you moved it a foot, so what!  What would that have accomplished?  You strive, and fight, and exhaust yourself, refusing to give in.  The war will last until you die or decide to let go of the rope!  The Bible has much to say about forgiveness because it’s a BIG DEAL!  Ephesians 4:32 says, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”    Matthew 6:14-15  says, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”  Wow, read that one again.  Now I suggest you read Matthew 18:21-35.  How can we accept God’s forgiveness of our unpayable sin dept, and then refuse to forgive someone else’s sin against us?  God says you cannot.  How often do we want and need God to forgive us?  Once, or every time?  Yeah, every time!  How often does He expect us to forgive those who sin against us?  Once, no, it’s every time.

Our forgiveness of ourselves
Ever feel that your sin and guilt were too great, that you couldn’t be forgiven?  That, my friend is a lie from the pit of Hell.  God forgives lying, cheating, adulterous murderers – and that was King David.  God’s forgiveness is not based upon what evil you’ve done…its based upon the perfect blood of Christ, the sinless Lamb of God.  1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  When God forgives you, the burden of guilt is lifted.  This is not some irresponsible “letting yourself off the hook…”  Rather, that sin was paid for, the debt is settled when we accept Jesus’ payment on our behalf! 

Principle 6: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others. 

AMENDS

INTRODUCTION
Principle 6: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.  “Blessed are the merciful…Blessed are the peacemakers.” (Matthew 5:7, 9)

Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.  “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)

 
Before we can do these critical steps, we must first understand & embrace steps 1-4
step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own.
step 2 is understanding that God has the power and desire to help me recover.
step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control.
step 4 is beginning to let God have control through a spiritual inventory of your life.

Tonight we shift focus from ourselves to the recovery of relationships.  If we have at least started the spiritual inventory, God has been revealing some things to us, things that needs be confessed and changed.  Addictive, compulsive things need to stop.  Healthy, productive things need to start.  People with whom we need to make amends for having hurt them by our actions and words. It’s time to make it right.

AMENDS

As with most other weeks, there is an acrostic for A.M.E.N.D.S.  Also like last week, we’ll talk about that acrostic, but we’re not spending all our time there.  First of all, what does it mean to make amends?  It means compensating for insult or injury, making restitution.  It’s something we seldom talk about unless we’re in court.  We don’t even hear much about it in Church.  We tend to not care how we hurt others, or if we do, we figure asking God to forgive us all that’s necessary.  No need to make restitution, right?  Wrong.  

Let’s start with that acrostic…

Admit the hurt and the harm that you’ve caused to others.  We’ve been dealing with our own hurts, now it’s time to consider how we have hurt or harmed other people.  You see, self-centeredness is a big part of our descent into addiction.  As an addict of anything I don’t really care what I do to anyone else as long as my addiction is satisfied for today.  As one holding resentment toward someone for the harm they’ve done to me, I want to hurt them back and take any opportunity to do so, even if I hurt another person in the process.  Shifting our focus off of us, that is forsaking our addictions and resentments and taking interest in doing what is right for someone else is a BIG part of recovery!

Make a List of people you to whom you need to make amends.  Column 5 on your Spiritual Inventory is a great place to start and add or subtract to it as the Lord leads.  Remember that we do this unless doing so would further hurt them or others.  You need to lean on the Lord’s wisdom for this, not your own.  Also, don’t worry about how you’ll make amends right now, you’re just making the list.

Encourage one another to make the list, prepare to make amends, and actually follow through.  Meet with your sponsor or accountability partner, let them look over the list, give you some feedback, and sign it to keep you accountable.

Not for them to apologize or make amends to you.  Do not try to pass blame on anyone else, especially them!  Don’t expect anything back.  Don’t make excuses or justify the hurtful actions or words you are making amends for.  Instead, go honestly, openly, humbly, and willingly.  Know that they may even get mad at you.

Do this at the best time for them.  It’s not about when you feel like making amends; this is about what’s best for them.  You go out of your way to make things right.

Start living the promises of recovery.  If you do all this just because you have to, if you do it begrudgingly, don’t even bother.  The person you go to will surly recognize your hypocrisy, and even if they don’t, God will.  BUT, if you are truly seeking victory over your hurts and habits, this will make perfect sense.  It will be something you want to do, even if you are apprehensive about it.  The best part is that as you honestly begin to make amends for the harm you have done, you begin to truly care about others again and you are on your way to recovery.

That’s the CR acrostic.  So is it Biblical?  Let’s find out…

What the Bible says about making AMENDS in the Old Testament.

Numbers 5:5-8 (NIV) says, “When a man or woman wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Lord, that person is guilty.”  Not only is our sin against the other person, it is also sin against the Lord.  God told them to confess, and then make restitution in full + 20% and if the person they had wronged was dead or not around, they were to make restitution to their next-of-kin.

Proverbs 14:9 says, “Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright.”  God said that if you sin against another person, then confess and make restitution and if you didn’t obey that, you were a fool.

In 2 Samuel 12:6, the prophet Nathan confronts King David with a problem: some rich guy has stolen some poor guy’s stuff!  David is furious and orders fourfold restitution saying, “he (the thief) shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”  Then the prophet reveals that David is the thief!  Only instead of a lamb, it was a guy’s wife David stole (of course David also made sure the guy was killed in battle, which God rightfully called murder).  Because David did not of himself make confession, and was such a hypocrite on top of that, God makes the recompense, meaning He pays back David for his sin.  God said that “the sword shall never leave your house” (12:10).  Truly there was murder among David’s children after that.  This even though God did forgive David, “the Lord also had put away your sin (12:13b).  In the Old Testament, you either willingly made restitution along with your confession, or God made recompense.  It was better to do it willingly.

What the Bible says about making AMENDS in the New Testament.

Luke 6:31 says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Most of us have heard that, even if we’ve never been to church or read the Bible.  If someone does you wrong, you appreciate a confession and restitution, right?  We usually demand it, don’t we?  If someone hits your car, or even just cuts you off in traffic, we want to make them pay!  Our courts are beyond capacity with all the lawsuits as we demand restitution for wrongs done to us.  Lawyers get rich off of us all convincing us that we have a case and that they can get us money.  But when it comes to our making restitution for the wrongs we’ve done…forget it!

Matthew 5:23-24 says, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you; leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”  We know that verse from reading our CR 12 steps; it goes with step 9.  We usually want to make sure other people ask forgiveness of us before we ever want to consider making amends for the wrongs we’ve committed.  We want it backwards: that person needs to apologize to me, then I’ll think about apologizing!  But if you are coming before God, gathering at CR, at church, for your own prayer time or reading your Bible, “and you remember your brother has something against you…”  It doesn’t say, and you remember you have something against your brother.  This is not about you being offended by someone this is about you having offended someone.  God wants no part of your worship, praise or anything else if you have not made confession and restitution for your anger and insults to others.

Tonight’s open share questions:

1.   How has the guilt of having insulted and hurt someone affected your recovery?
2.   Who have you hurt and have yet to confess and make restitution?
3.   How have you tried to “pay off” your guilt by making some sacrifice to God?

Principle 5 / Step 7 Victory

INTRODUCTION
Principle 5: Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.  “Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.” (Matthew 5:6)
Step 7: We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

 

Before we can do these critical steps, we must first understand & embrace 1-3
1.   step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own
2.   step 2 is understanding that God cares about me and He has the power and desire to help me deal with them
3.   step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control

Tonight we continue to build upon and use the information the Lord revealed to us though our personal/spiritual inventory.  God has revealed many things in the inventory, including things that needs be confessed, addictive and compulsive behaviors that need to stop, as well as healthy and productive things that need to start.  So the question is, are you READY to have some VICTORY?

VICTORY

There is a short video that I’ve seen a few times that illustrates how we tend to keep ourselves from the victory available through Jesus Christ.  The fictional video begins with the guy playing Jesus walking up to a woman carrying a bag of garbage.  He gives her a friendly greeting but she is obviously embarrassed by having the trash with Jesus around.  She tries to hide it, but he asks her what is in the bag.  She stumbles around, trying to find the words; then signs and admits it is her garbage.  The guy playing Jesus smiles and offers to take the trash from her, but she resists.  At first she makes it sound really nice, as in she wouldn’t want Jesus to have to deal with her garbage, she made it, she’ll take care of it.  But Jesus assures her that he would be happy to get rid of it for her, after all that’s what he does.  She continues to resist but reluctantly gives way.  Except that she pulls one nasty container out of the garbage bag and insists that she will take care of that piece.  Jesus, concerned for her, assures her that it is best if he takes it and he even reaches for it.  She pulls away and hangs on tight, she sort of pleads for him to let her keep this nasty piece of garbage.  Then he asks why she wants to keep it.  She has no good reason.  The video ends with her being faced with the choice of giving her garbage over to Jesus or continuing to cling to that garbage.

It’s is a good illustration of what we do with our addictive, compulsive, and dysfunctional behaviors, with the hurts and habits that we know need to go, but yet we keep going back to them.  Jesus truly wants to free us from all of those things.  In fact, He has already done everything necessary to free us; that freedom became available by His sacrificial death, burial and resurrection to life.  The only thing left is for us to accept the truth that Jesus is the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world so that His victory over sin and the grave can be applied to us.  That is what steps 1-3 are all about after all.  I cannot free myself, God not only can, but did through Jesus, and I must accept that and turn my life and will over to Him.

That’s the start.  That is when we are set free from the power of our hurts, habits, addictions, compulsions, and sin.  Then over the rest of our lives, the Holy Spirit of God leads us to live according to that power.  He strengthens us, heals us, gives us a way of escape when temptation comes, teaches us, leads, us, picks us up when we fall, and comforts us.  He doesn’t force us into anything, but he lovingly disciplines us if we start to go astray.  But it is a cooperative effort between God and us.  He’ll do all that and more, above anything we expect, but it starts with the first point in our acronym for tonight…

Voluntarily submit

We need to submit to every change God wants to make in us.  Look, we can’t have different results if we keep doing the same things over and over, right?  If you’ve been playing in the mud, you don’t come clean unless you stop being around things that are muddy.  Now, He might stary in areas of our life that you don’t think have much to do with your issue, but God knows the root of what is happening and He begins to work at the root problems.  Romans 12:1-2 says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”  In order to have victory over your hurts and habits, you can’t just deal with surface issues and problems, you have to change the way you think; you have to use Godly wisdom, not human wisdom.

Identify

This is where you seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit, particularly through reading the Bible, prayer, time with people who are led by the Spirit, and the personal inventory.  God will reveal what He wants to work on first.  You cannot identify where to start unless you are listening to the Holy Spirit and you end up simply trying to recover on your own again.  Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”  You want recovery, God gives each and every step.

Change your mind

Again, how you think needs to be converted from human wisdom, to God’s Wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1-3).  The only way to get the old junk out, is to replace it with God’s Word.  We tend to just replace one bad habit with another, one bad relationship with another, one hurt with another.  Stop the cycle!  The only thing that works for lasting victory is to let God teach you think and act according to His wisdom.  2 Corinthians 5:17  says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”  The power of the old hurts and habits is broken in Christ and you are a new creature in Him.  We just have to learn how to live that way or we tend to go back because that’s all we know.

Turning your character defects over to Christ

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that we’ve all tried to change on our own.  We’ve tried to stop, tried to forgive, tried to tried to replace a hurt or habit with something we thought was better only to end up going back or just adding more hurts and habits to the original one.  We all know the cycle.  Look, that’s no way to live; it’s too hard.  The freeing truth is that you don’t have to fix yourself.  In fact you can’t, because like it or not, you are not God.  Stop relying those old, worn out methods that don’t work.  James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

One day at a time

Hurts and habits not developed overnight, neither is positive change. It takes a daily decision to give your life and will to Christ’s care and control. Those can’t just be words that we say, we need to actually invest time with the Lord, again though reading the Bible, prayer, and time with others who are Spirit-led. Each day, everyday, focusing on Him and not worrying about tomorrow. James 4:14-15 says, “you do not know what will happen tomorrow…you ought to say ‘if the Lord will’s, we shall live and do this or that.’”

Recovery is a process

It is not an immediate fix.  Along the way your decision to turn your life and will over to Christ will be tested.  I often say the step 4 (the personal inventory) is test #1.  How many people come to a 12 step recovery program for months or years, saying they’ve made that decision in step 3, but they’ve never done the inventory.  The truth is, not doing the inventory is evidence that you just want a quick fix and you haven’t turned anything over.  God will lead you to recovery, but you’ve got to learn to trust Him.  He doesn’t ask you to do some great feat of devotion to earn your forgiveness!  He just wants you to take the steps He gives you; like the inventory.  Just baby steps of trust and over time you will see that He is faithful no matter what He leads you to do.  Romans 8:30 says, “Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called, whom He called, these He also justified, and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”  What He starts He will finish.

You must choose to change

It’s up to you, God won’t force you.  Just remember Romans 6:16 which says, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slave whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness.”  You can either let God change you and free you from your hurts and habits, or you can go back to those old hurts and habits.

Tonight’s questions:

1.   As you voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make, how does Romans 12:1-2 help you know that real change is possible?
2.   What are some specific ways you have stopped relying on your willpower and started relying on God’s will for you?
3.   What is humility and what does it have to do with the changes you need to make?