LEARNING DAILY

 

Colossians 3:12-17, Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on the tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another; even as Christ forgave you, so you must also do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were also called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

 

I hope you understand and not be disappointed in today’s blog. Volumes of literature have been written on forgiveness and thankfulness. My writing today will not be comprehensive on either subject; at best it will get you to consider what each means to your life. I am always amazed at how the topics I write on are pointed right at me, making me face God’s Word so I must apply it to my situation and my circumstances for the day.

 

 Biblical forgiveness is God’s promise to not hold our sins against us. That promise only occurs when we confess our sins to Him and repent by accepting that Jesus Christ took our place on a cross for every sin we have committed, commit, and will commit. Why is this? God loves each one of us and loves us so much and wants no one to spend eternity in hell. The choice is ours to accept Him as Savior or not. God loving us and His plan of salvation through Jesus Christ is the blueprint for each of us to forgive others. I am not sure anything describes the depth of God’s love for us than His plan of salvation.

 

You and I are to forgive others in the same way God forgives us! You know as well as I do that this can be quite difficult. Does anything else describe our depth of love for another person than our ability to forgive them for what they did to hurt us? When God forgives, He sends our sins to the “sea of forgetfulness” (Micah 7:19). What does that mean? That is reference to God no longer remembering our wrongs when we truly ask for forgiveness and repent – when we stop doing these things. He does not continue to remind us of our wrong doing; the devil might because he hates us and wants us to remain a prisoner to your sinfulness. God does not make our sin known to anyone else or resent us for what He has forgiven us of. I have noticed that the holy Spirit continues to work on me when I have sinned, to confess it and ask for God’s forgiveness. It is necessary to stay on the narrow way!

 

Do you notice a pattern for us to follow? We need to forgive the person who has offended us and then treat the person as though there was never any sin committed against us. In other words, don’t keep reminding that person of what was done. We do not need to tell anyone else about what happened – stop the gossip. Don’t dwell on the sin! Erase it from your memory! If you, keep thinking about it, division can result between you and him/her.

 

Paul tells us to bind this forgiveness together in the bond of love. We do this because we are a new creation in Jesus Christ! Because of this we have the ability to forgive others as God has forgiven us.

 

I’m still a work in progress!

 

I did not get to being thankful! I’ll do that in the next page of the blog.

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB.