Practicing True Forgiveness
Matthew 6:12 (TPT), “Forgive us the wrongs we have done as we ourselves release forgiveness to those who have wronged us.”
Matthew 6:12, (NIV)“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.”
Joel 2:13, “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.”
James 5:16, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Matthew 4:17, “From that time on Jesus began to preach,“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Pray this Prayer Daily
I declare that as I am forgiven by heavenly father so also I forgive those who have hurt me for as far as the East is from the West in accordance to the grace given me, I now forgive. I do not judge as the world judge and neither do I condemn as the world condemns but I release _________________________ who has hurt and abused me into God’s ever loving arms. May he/she find peace and joy in their hearts forever more. (Luke 6:37).
Peace and Rest and How to Get Some
(In Four Parts)
August 30, 2020
PART 1: The Problem with Self‑Awareness - “Come to Me...” Matthew 11:28.
1. God intends for us to live a well‑rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. And that’s when we tend to fall back into self‑examination.
2. Problem: Self‑awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self‑awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives.
a. Matthew 14:28-31, “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” 29 “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
b. Self‑awareness is not sin.
c. It’s produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances.
d. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him.
3. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ‑awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
a. Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ
to remain in your life without facing it.
b. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide
your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth.
c. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see
yourself as separate from Him.
d. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very
simple one— “Come to Me....”
PART 2: Developing Christ‑Awareness - “...and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28.
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Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re‑establish your rest.
a. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest.
b. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something we should allow to remain.
c. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self‑awareness will
disappear. Then He will be your all in all.
d. Beware of allowing your self‑awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will
awaken self‑pity, and self‑pity is satanic.
e. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ‑awareness, and He will steady you until your
completeness in Him is absolute.
2. A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of
Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is.
A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” It is I who moved away, not God.
A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
3 f we try overcome our self‑awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, it will only serve to strengthen our self‑awareness tremendously.
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Jesus says, “Come to Me...d I will give you rest,” that is, Christ‑awareness will take the place of self‑awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest.
PART 3: The Purpose of Prayer
Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. It’s against our human nature.
We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that.
What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer.
When I was born again, the life of the Son of God is born in me, and prayer is the method by which I nourish that life. Jesus always separated himself from the disciples to pray - to talk to his Father. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished.
Jesus said, “Ask, and you will receive¼” (John 16:24). We complain before God, but we actually ask Him for very few things. (James 4:2‑3, “You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”)
Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Our Lord said, “¼unless you¼become as little children¼” (Matthew 18:3).
Ask and God will do. Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work.
The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself.
Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems, but as long as we think we are self‑sufficient, we do not need to ask God for anything.
To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, Prayer changes me and then things can change.
God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things.
Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature. In other words, the miracle happens IN ME!
Part 4: Usefulness or Relationship - The ultimate Self-Awareness.
“Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you,
but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20
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The trap we fall into as Christians is to rejoice that God has used us. (The ultimate Self-Awareness!)
Yet we will never be able to measure fully what God will do through us if we do not have a right-standing relationship with Jesus Christ.
If we keep our relationship right with Him, then regardless of our circumstances or whoever we encounter each day, He will continue to pour “rivers of living water” through us. (John 7:38)
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Once we have a right relationship with God (righteousness), remember that whatever our circumstances may be, we have been placed in them by God.
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God uses the reaction of your life to our circumstances to fulfill His purpose, as long as we continue to “walk in the light as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7).
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It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him.
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Our Lord’s full focus and attention is to our relationship with Him - something of greater value to the Father than anything we think we can for Him. (Hebrews 2:10
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Acts 5:14-16, “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns ..around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.”
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Mr. Raymond Greene
Guest Speaker
August 23, 2020
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Treat Hardship as Discipline
August 16, 2020
REVIEW:
• Two weeks ago, we learned that God is in the clouds - especially in the clouds of our
lives.
• When we’re confused and don’t know which way to turn, God is still with us.
• Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because
of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
• Deuteronomy 31:8, “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will
never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
• Hebrews 13:5, “... God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
• John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Last Week:
• Psalm 23:4, “Yeah, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death...”
• We learned what it means to go with God through Adversity.
• God is Faithful in the Valley – All of Psalm 23 is happening in the valley.
• Jesus told us in John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world.”
• So, as Oswalt Chambers said, “God does not give us overcoming life— He gives us life
as we overcome.
SO WHAT IS GOD DOING IN THE HARD TIMES OF OUR LIVES?
1. Hebrews 12: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of
witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily
entangles.
a. Hebrews 11:4, “By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did.”
b. Hebrews 11:5, “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not
experience death.”
c. Hebrews 11:7, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy
fear built an ark to save his family.”
d. Hebrews 11:8, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later
receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know
where he was going.”
e. Hebrews 11:17, “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a
sacrifice.”
f. Hebrews 11:20, “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.”
g. Hebrews 11:21, “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s
sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.”
h. Hebrews 11:22, “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the
exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial
of his bones.”
i. Hebrews 11: 23, “By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was
born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of
the king’s edict.”
j. Hebrews 11:24, “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as
the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the
people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”
k. Hebrews 11:29, “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land;
l. Hebrews 11:30, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched
around them for seven days.”
m. Hebrews 11:31, “ By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies,
was not killed with those who were disobedient.”
n. Hebrews 11:32, “I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and
Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith
conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who
shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the
edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became
powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.”
2. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on
Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow
weary and lose heart.
3. 4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your
blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that
addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
4. 7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what
children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone
undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.
9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them
for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They
disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our
good, in order that we may share in his holiness.
5. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces
a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
6. 12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 “Make level paths for
your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.