| Whatsoever
Things Are True
by Dan Coburn Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church pastordan@mtida.net “That can’t be me can it”? If you seek out counsel about Letting Go of your Hurt, you will get all manner of psycho-babble; some helpful, some not. Men - it’s OK to read this, if no one is looking. It is impossible to escape hurt. All of us have been cut by this knife. Imagine if they left visible scars. Anyway, for some of us these wrongs, real or imagined, have become our identity. “I am a victim of” - abuse; a cheating spouse; a dishonest man or organization that robbed me of my life savings; an unfair boss. We must let it go. We all agree, but what makes this so difficult? How might I go about it? 1) Recognize bitterness. Nugget: Holding onto hurts always results in bitterness. It is a deceitful sin resulting in a desire for revenge. “I want them to feel what I feel”. Yet Heb. 12:15 says: “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;” Two things about roots. First, one of their jobs is to send out taps, to grow or spread. Second, they are underground going undetected, and will effect Every aspect of your life. Let’s turn the Spiritual Switch. We love to quote Eph. 4:30 which says: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” But remember that the Bible wasn’t written in chapter and verse. These were later added for reference purposes. The next two verses read: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” So if you read these together, how exactly does one go about grieving the Holy Spirit? By not doing what vs 31 says. As we sit in our self made prison, licking our festering wounds, we soon find that it has exacted a huge toll in every part of our being. What about you? Have you ever used a wrong as an excuse for acting unbiblically to others? After all, it’s only natural. Everyone else does it. God calls you to be Supernatural, and the fact that most act that way is a great reason to make a conscious effort to be different. Point 2) Appropriate God’s Forgiveness of you, as in vs 32. “even as” = to the degree that, or in the same way as - Jesus has forgiven you. “But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8. Are you waiting for your enemies - old and new - to tune up? God didn’t wait for you to tune up. God Bless. |
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