In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul talks about the importance of ridding yourself of bitterness and instead being kind and forgiving towards others. He says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind of one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32). The word “forgiveness” literally means “to let go” or “to send away.” It refers to a cancellation of debt. In essence, when somebody does you wrong, they are in your debt. So, forgiveness is your willingness to simply write off that debt. Now, there is not a more difficult decision to make in life than to decide to forgive someone. But Paul is making it clear that God took the biggest debt ever incurred, which are the sins of everyone who has ever lived, and let Jesus Christ pay for them and cancel them. Therefore, we must understand that we should be forgiving people because we are forgiven people.
One of the most widespread criticisms of Christians is that we are judgmental. We are told that we sit in the judge’s seat far too often, pointing fingers at those we deem unworthy. But if you think about it, as human beings we’ve all sat in both seats. We’ve sat in the seat of the judge, and we’...
One of the reasons why we have so little influence with those outside the church is because we are experts at condemning those who are on the outside while cutting slack for those who are on the inside. When people outside the church see us do this, it is no wonder that our light has become a fli...
There are two words in our vocabulary that carry very negative connotations: conflict and confrontation. Now, with few exceptions, most of us don’t like conflict. But we are going to learn from Jesus that neither conflict nor confrontation has to be negative. God can use conflict as an opportunit...
