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Psalm 103:1-14

The Mt Everest of forgiveness

No one has ever climbed Mount Everest without prior mountaineering experience. A lot of preparation, training and cost goes into attempting to mount her summit.

Forgiveness can be like climbing Mt Everest

It is the same with forgiveness. Perhaps you have deep wounds, been treated incredibly unjustly and had unspeakable evil committed against you. The idea of forgiving these things looks impossible, just like climbing Mt Everest.

At this stage in our series I’ve been encouraging you to appreciate the importance of forgiveness. Without it you will carry the burden of guilt, you will be unable to quench the anger you feel nor will you be able to fulfill God’s law to love Him and love people. I’ve tried to help you value your forgiveness by demonstrating that forgiveness is expensive for God and for you and that it involves absorbing a person’s debt.

Today I want to help you see that in some ways forgiveness is impossible. Well, impossible without God’s help. We are going to explore the idea that forgiveness is not about forgetting. That forgiving is the best way of ensuring justice and of overcoming evil without becoming evil ourselves. Lastly, we are going to tackle the incredibly challenging expectation Christ has for us; that we love our enemies.

All of these things will seem impossible unless we ask God to help us want to forgive. We need to ask God to help us begin to forgive small things first so that we can become more confident of forgiving the bigger hurts and debts in our lives after which Mt Everest won’t seem so impossible.                  the Rev

03 Forgive (It’s expensive)

Bible Reading: Ps 32:1-2 and Psalm 103:1-14

Exercises

• Discuss how God forgives using some of the concepts from Ps 32:1-2 & Ps 103:1-14

• Discuss the difference between forgetting and promising not to remember.

• From 1 Peter 2:18-25 and Rom 12:9-21 discuss what makes it hard to forgive.

• Discuss the importance of forgiving in relation to loving your enemies, Luke 6:27-38

• In what way will you develop an attitude of forgiveness towards your enemies.

Prayer: Dear Lord, forgive me for the times when I’ve not forgiven because I thought it was impossible, when in reality I just didn’t want to forgive. Make me more willing to forgive, give me a generous spirit which has compassion and mercy rather than seeking personal justice or revenge. May people see your forgiveness working through my forgiveness towards those who have sinned against me.  Amen.  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it