Gift of Years 4          Stacy Ikard & Phil Haag

Gift of Years 4 

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                                    Gift of Years 4  - The Text

Week 4  - The Gift of Years – The Text

The Gift of Years 4
Moving from Bitterness to Forgiveness

Which of these statements do you most agree with?

Least agree with?

One should always forgive and forget

Quick forgiveness is cheap grace       

One should always forgive but never forget

Forgiving can dishonor the wronged one

There are some things that simply  can’t be forgiven

Forgiveness is of God

Forgiveness helps the forgiver more than the forgiven    

Forgiveness and revenge can go together                

Forgiveness is a miracle 

Are there different degrees of forgiveness?

Different types of forgiveness?

How might they call for different action?

Forgiving a person who is a constant part of your life

Forgiving Someone for wronging loved ones

Forgiving Abuse

Forgiving your Enemy

Forgiving Yourself

What Does Scripture Say?

 Our Motivation -We forgive because we have been forgiven

Ephesians 4:32    32Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Romans 5:8       8But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

 Our Command Forgiveness is a matter of obedience to God

Matthew 6:14-15  14For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Romans 12:18   18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Evangelical Perspective – Why Do We Forgive?

• The experience of divine forgiveness brings profound healing. It is grounded in a faith-sight of Jesus’s costly sacrifice for our forgiveness. That reminds us that we are sinners in need of mercy like everyone else, yet it also fills the cup of our hearts with his love and affirmation. This makes it possible for us to forgive the perpetrator and then go speak to him or her, seeking justice and reconciliation if possible. Now, however, we do not do it for our sake—but for justice’s sake, for God’s sake, for the perpetrator’s sake, and for future victims’ sake. The motivation is radically changed.”
• “Forgiveness is often (or perhaps usually) granted before it’s felt inside. When you forgive somebody, you’re not saying, “All my anger is gone.” What you’re saying when you forgive is “I’m now going to treat you the way God treated me. I remember your sins no more.”
• “There is always a cost to wrongdoing, and it must fall on someone. Either the wrongdoer bears it or someone else must. This is true even if the wrong is not something that can be measured financially. The cost may be in reputation or relationship or health or something else. To forgive is to deny oneself revenge (Romans 12:17–21), to absorb the cost, to not exact repayment by inflicting on them the things they did to you in order to “even the score.” Therefore forgiveness is always expensive to the forgiver, but the benefits—at the very least within your heart, and at best in the restoration of relationship and a witness to the power of the gospel—outweigh the cost.”

Forgiveness as the Key—Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you
C.S. Lewis

That’s what real forgiveness does.  It bears real fruit.  It transforms those touched by it and makes an impact upon those who witness it. Real forgiveness restores relationships, families and situations.  And it calls forth action.  Forgiveness can even give people a purpose.  That purpose may be as simple as creating a more compassionate heart.  It may be the fulfilment of God’s plan to save his chosen people from starvation. It may be leading the infant church into a world-wide evangelism project.  But whenever it happens, wherever it is fully and authentically given and received, forgiveness sends us in a new direction - open to God’s purpose and work around us.

Forgiveness and the Journey of An Elder -Rolheiser

•       The issue is not one of God’s willingness or unwillingness. The issue is rather with harmony at God’s table. In simple terms, the table of God is open to everyone who is willing to sit down with everyone. God does not have separate tables for those who cannot sit down with each other. Hence, if we cannot forgive another how can we be at God’s table with him? In the end, we can slim down our spiritual vocabulary to very few words, but prominent among those words is the word forgiveness.

•       This is a challenge, perhaps the ultimate challenge for all of us. Life can be brutally unfair sometimes and we ourselves can be sinfully unfaithful at times. It is hard to forgive others and it is perhaps even harder to forgive ourselves. Hence, sometime before we die we need to forgive, forgive those who wounded or failed us, forgive ourselves for our own failures, and then forgive God because life sometimes is unfair. We need to do this so that we do not die as angry, bitter people because that is the final challenge of our lives.

•       Thomas Merton

•       “We do not really know how to forgive until we know what it is to be forgiven. Therefore we should be glad that we can be forgiven by our brothers. It is our forgiveness of one another that makes the love of Jesus for us manifest in our lives, for in forgiving one another we act towards one another as He has acted towards us.”

•       Henri Nouwen

•       Compassion comes out of a deep experience of solidarity, in which one recognizes that the evil, sin and violence which one sees in the world and in the other, are deeply rooted in one’s own heart. Only when you want to confess this and want to rely on the merciful God who can bring good out of evil are you in a position to receive forgiveness and also to give it to other men and women who threaten you with violence.