LEARNING HOW TO BE SAFE (2 OF 2)

Today is the penultimate lesson in our series “Safe People” and we are going to cover the second part of chapter 12. Today’s topics are:

· Inviting the truth about yourself.
· Enter into Forgiveness.
· Giving Back.

In our series we have often talked about the importance of truth, and so I’ll give it only a light covering today. I want to spend more time on forgiveness and giving back as two less well covered topics.

Inviting Truth

What does, “inviting truth”, mean to you? (Open for discussion) The book says (on p180) that if we ask two questions of our safe people on a regular basis, we will start to receive the truth about ourselves. These are:

1. What do I do that pushes you away from me?
2. What do I do that draws you toward me?

I want to start looking at these questions by asking ourselves what does scripture say about this. Let us take a look at Jn 8:31-32:

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." NASU

A well-known and well-used verse! Let us unpack this and we will see the relevance to our subject of inviting truth. Let me read you the Amplified Bible version for some clarity.

So Jesus said to those Jews who had believed in Him, if you abide in My word [hold fast to My teachings and live in accordance with them], you are truly My disciples. And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free. AMP

Jesus here is speaking to the Jews who had been following Him around, and had believed in what He was teaching. Notice it doesn’t say, “that believed in Him”, so he wasn’t speaking to disciples, but he was speaking to followers. He then tells them, and by inference anybody who hears this instruction, how to be saved. I know that you may not have heard it put this way, but that is what it says. Let me explain it.

Jesus says in v 32, “If you abide in me” (AMP), some versions use “continue in Me”, and others say, “hold to My teaching”. This is immediately followed by the words “then you are my disciples”, which we might understand as “believers”. The key here is to understand the word translated as “abide”, it is “meno”, meaning to “stay in” or “dwell in”. We often hear this spiritual concept put as “being in Christ”, it is specifically used this way in 1 Jn 2:27 which says:

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. NASU

Jesus goes on to tell us that once we “abide in Him” we will know the truth, and it will free us. The freedom He is talking about is the freedom from the guilt of sin, and its eternal consequence, meaning we are saved.

The relevance to us is this. If we are “in Him” we can go to other believers and we can go to the Lord for the truth with a lot of confidence. We know that believers who we feel safe with will attempt to speak the truth in love, and that God will always do that.

Enter Into Forgiveness

The book doesn’t really explain this succinctly; so let me ask you, what does the phrase “enter into forgiveness” mean to you. (Discuss) To me it says something like “adopt a lifestyle of forgiveness”. This further implies being always ready and able to give forgiveness, and accept it too. Forgiveness means so many different things to different people, what does it mean to you? (Discuss)

I think it is important to get the appropriate grounding in this subject before we ever go on to applying it in our lives. Let’s begin by distinguishing between human or worldly, and divine forgiveness. Would anybody like to offer a beginning point of differentiation between the two?

Most of us understand that human forgiveness, at its best, is the total cancellation of some form of debt. There are some characteristics of human forgiveness which we can identify:

· Repentance of the offender is not necessary.
· Some form of debt is cancelled.
· The consequences of the offense continue.
· Punishment for the offense usually still occurs.
· The guilt of the offender continues in their Soul.
· All concerned parties remember the offense.

Now let us look at the same things from the perspective of divine forgiveness:

· Repentance: - is present.
· Debt: - all sin debt is cancelled forever.
· Consequences: - Earthly consequences continue, spiritual consequences are eliminated.
· Punishment: - God gives up His right to punish us.
· Guilt: - is erased by God from His memory, although we may choose to hang on to it.
· Memory: - While we might hold on to and continue to remember the offense, God doesn’t.

We can see that there are some important differences in forgiveness between what we can do in our own power and what God does. I am reminded of those two verses from Isaiah, if you like to write in or highlight your Bible, these two are worth noting and always remembering. Is 55:8-9:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. NASU

So it is with forgiveness, God’s ways are higher than ours, and this is a bad news good news thing for us. The bad news is that we can forgive others but it has limitations, the good news is that with God’s help we can forgive others without limitations. Let me ask you two very significant questions:

· When do you know you’ve forgiven somebody?
· When do you know you have been forgiven?

(Discuss first) The answers to these two questions can be found in our list of “divine forgiveness characteristics”.

· You know you have forgiven somebody when you don’t remember his or her offense.
· You know you have been forgiven when you feel no guilt about your offense.

I will be the first to say that these two “states of mind” are difficult to achieve. In fact they are impossible to achieve without God. My point here is simple; if you need to be forgiven, or if you need to forgive another person, go to God first with the issue. If a person will not forgive you, that becomes their problem, but you can go to God, who will forgive you. If you need to forgive another person, go to God, He will give you the power to forgive.

Let us now turn to the why question. Why do I have to forgive? Does anybody have some thoughts on this? (Discuss) One answer is that we ought to do it because of fear. Let’s look at these verses, Mt 6:14-15:

"For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” NASU

It is Jesus that says this in His “Sermon on the Mount” right after He gives us the model prayer that we call “The Lord’s Prayer”. So we could forgive others because we are afraid that if we don’t, then we will not be forgiven. While the words of Jesus recorded here are true, if we focus on the fear, we will miss the point of what He is saying. This is it! When any of us choose to not forgive, we have placed ourselves above God. God forgives every offense, every debt, every sin, and If we don’t, we are saying we have more power than Him. So, can we expect God to forgive us, when we placing ourselves above Him? No, we are as arrogant as the devil when we are unforgiving.

The real reason that God strongly insists that we are forgiving is simple. When we are unforgiving we carry around the hurts and resentments that are attached to an offense. As we live our lives and start to accumulate these hurts and resentments, they start to form something I like to describe as a “cancer of the Soul”. As this “cancer of the Soul” grows, it puts down a root, scripture calls this the root of bitterness, so lets look at this for a moment, turn to Heb 12:15:

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. NASU

This scripture can be applied to any root of bitterness, but for today let us look at it in the context of forgiveness. Forgiveness, for us as believers, is a work of God’s grace. When we don’t tap into His grace in being forgiving, which our verse calls “coming short”; the risk is that a root of bitterness springs up in our Soul. The verse then says something very profound, “by it many are defiled”. What might this mean? (Discuss)

I want to answer this by recognizing that we all know somebody who is unforgiving. What are they like? They are poison to us and our relationships with others. They infect the people around them with the spiritual disease of gracelessness. They are truly bitter people and they try to make everybody around them the same way, so as to affirm their unforgiving heart. These are people who need to be avoided; they are unsafe.

Unforgiveness produces bitter roots, forgiveness produces fruit. This is why I said earlier that we must adopt a lifestyle of forgiveness. It is a personal choice we can all make.

Now I want to turn to some things that are said in sermons, and Christian literature, about forgiveness that are not healthy teachings.

The first is the idea of forgiving oneself. The Bible does just not support this. I have heard this so many times that I wonder if I have got this right, but I have. This goes back to the same issue we discussed earlier, about placing oneself above or in place of God. This is a well meant, but false teaching and needs to be challenged every time somebody says it. Ask this question, “If we can forgive ourselves, what need do we have for God?”

The second error is saying that forgiveness is a process, it is not, it is a choice, a decision made in a moment of time. Now, I do have some sympathy for this error, because we sometimes have to go through a process to get to the point of a forgiveness decision. Each person’s process is going to be different and I don’t have time today to cover this adequately, but I’ll speak to a few common processes. Sometimes we have to deal with our own unconfessed sins, our guilt, other times we might have to pray for a softening of our hearts, and on other occasions we might need to see the truth of a situation differently.

The last error is where we are advised to “just do it”, just forgive and move on. This is not good advice. Even when we are living a lifestyle of forgiveness we cannot automatically “just do it”. There are always going to be some offenses that we need to process and consult with God and our safe people about. Sometimes a rush to forgive minimizes the pain and even hides it away in our Soul; this will lead to it coming up again. It is far better to go to God or safe friends with the pain, share it with them, and try to sense what God might want you know about the situation. One of the biggest single problems about a rush to forgive is that we gloss over or ignore our part in a situation.

Okay, that is where I want to stop on this subject, but I’m open to any questions that might be unasked.

Giving Back

Our scriptures are full of encouragement to give back and serve others. Personally I believe that it is when we recognize what we have been given, and adopt an attitude of gratefulness, that we are able to give back.

I only want to say one thing more about this topic, and I’m going to connect it with forgiveness. In the gospel of Luke, chapter 7, Jesus has been invited to dinner with a prominent Pharisee named Simon. A woman, described as a sinner, comes in and weeping, pours expensive perfume on Jesus feet, and wipes his feet with her hair. Simon criticizes Jesus’ response, and after speaking a parable he says something to Simon. We find it in Lk 7:44-48:

Turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. "You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. " You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. "For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." NASU

This woman is giving back. She understood the extent of her forgiveness, and was giving back everything she could. I say this; her sins were many, so are mine and so are yours. I am choosing to accept the immense forgiveness of God, I am choosing to be grateful and I choose to give back and serve the Lord. For me, it means teaching, for others it can be many different things.

I hope you can see that giving back, as our sinful woman did, is an outside expression of our internal spiritual condition.

That is it for this week. Next week will be our last lesson and we will look at dealing with our current unsafe relationships, and also listen to each other about how this series has changed our thinking and behaviors.