Gospel

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Sabbath 6/13/15 Daytona Beach SDB Church Pastor Wray sermon “The Landmine of Unforgiveness” Ephes. 4:25-32
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Think about your response when someone hurt you last time. Perhaps you took no action or you retaliated. You do damage to yourself when you have unforgiveness. Failure to forgive is a form of self-punishment. Unforgiveness is a landmine to the believers. We are to be kind and forgive others like God forgave us. This is not easy or simple for us to do. When someone does an offense to you, forgiveness can be difficult. The devil will have us get angry and want to kill someone. We must avoid the landmine and do as Jesus said to do.

Ephes. 4:26: In your anger, do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry. To understand unforgiveness, we need to understand what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is when you give up your resentfulness to those who did you wrong. You give up any desire to get even with them. We need to give up any resentfulness about the wrong done to us and don’t retaliate. It must come from the heart and it is more than just saying words.
Unforgiveness is a mindset to do the opposite of forgiveness. It is to seek revenge and have bitterness, wrath toward the person who did us wrong. Unforgiveness can make us physically ill sometimes. The unforgiving heart clings to the past and refuses to forgive like God in Christ forgave us. Bitterness takes root in the person’s heart. People choose to be unforgiving and it is a deliberate decision. We have taken on a form of self-bondage. There are terrible effects of unforgiveness. It will stop you from being the person God wants you to be and it is deliberate disobedience to the Word of God.

Jesus said if you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you either. Jesus said we must always forgive others. God wants to answer our prayers but we must forgive others first. Our worship of God himself will be effected. All aspects of our lives get effected by unforgiveness and resentfulness. Our relationship will be poisoned because people don’t want to be around bitter people.

1) Take responsibility for our actions. Confess it to God
2) Lay our anger down.
3) Pray for the other person. If they know we were angry with them then ask for their forgiveness.
4) Refuse to re-hash the same old issues. Don’t let bitterness sink back in again.
5) We need to demonstrate our forgiveness for this person.

We will know we have forgiven them when we are once again concerned about the wellbeing of the person who wronged us.
God will handle the situation and this person will stand in judgment before God anyway. Let our unforgiveness go so it doesn’t destroy us. Let us walk in peace, joy and victory thru the Grace that God gives each of us!

AMEN

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