Hope Today 034 - Can You Forgive?

A weekly program of word and music featuring an eclectic mix of Christian music and teaching by Pastor Tom Cullen and Brian Evans.  Mac Wigfield starts the program with southern gospel classics.

Produced at Straight Path Studio in Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada.

Christian Artists featured are:

Gaither Vocal Band

Anchormen

Liberty

David Vaters

Glen Soderholm

Sarah Pearson

The Hoppers

Infinitely More

Sojourn Music

Doug Oldham

Rich Mullens

Thank you for listening to HOPE TODAY. This is a program developed at Light & Life Programming, a registered charity. We are listener supported. If you would like to help with this ministry, donations can be made through our website at www.lightnlife.ca.

Transcript

Brian 0:13

It's time once again for Hope Today, a program to encourage personal joy and faith. Stay tuned over this next hour, as Pastor Tom Cullen will be answering the question, Can you forgive? The answers during this program of Hope Today. Mac Wigfield comes first to get us started with some wonderful gospel music.

Mac 3:33

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can identify with that. If you are not stick around, we have something to say to you this morning as well. Greatly blessed and highly favored. If you listen carefully, you heard him mentioned perfectly forgiven child of God, right? That's us. But we are forgiven forever. And to that we can say, along with the anchorment, Amen. How do you know that? Let's let liberty begin the story, shall we?

Tom 10:34

Indeed, through faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we are forgiven. And in turn, we are called to forgive others. Stay with us on hope today, and we'll explore the whole idea together. Here is David Vader's way. I didn't like him very much. I remember seeing him at the meeting and feeling very angry. He had bested me in an argument, and his views prevailed. I hadn't seen him for some time, and I had forgotten my feelings toward him. But then he came into the room attending the same meeting I happened to be at, and as soon as I saw him, I could feel my blood pressure rise. I distinctly remember that I longed to see him fail. I remember praying, Oh Lord, let all that he plans come crashing down around his head. Make him be humiliated. Make him fail. Realizing that maybe that was too much to ask, I modified the prayer. Oh Lord! Make him make a fool of himself! Make him spill his coffee! Yes, Lord, I'd love to see that. Make his right hand in which he's holding his coffee. Go into his father so that his coffee is built all down his front. Lord, you told me that revenge belongs to you. Let me see it. And I wanted to see him fail. The word of God says in the book of Ephesians, forgive each other. Just as in Christ. In the book of Colossians, we read, forgive one another. If any of you have a grievance against someone, forgive. As the Lord forgave you. I said, Oh God, make him spill his coffee. I want to see my enemy fail. Oh Lord, forgive my unforgiving heart.

Tom 15:32

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Tom 18:07

But the book of Proverbs, chapter 25, verse 21, says, If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink. And we say, impossible! No one can do this. Who can actually help their enemy? It's unreasonable! It's impossible! Unless. Unless it's something that God has done for you and for me. Has there been a time when God has been kind to us when we did not deserve it? And we say, well, maybe. But we were never God's enemies. And scripture comes back and says, Yes, yes, you were. We read in Romans chapter 5, verse 10, that at one time we were enemies of God. It means that our attitude towards God was one in which we wanted him defeated. We say, well, not I. Why did I ever feel that way? I may have been indifferent toward God, but never his enemy. And our hearts are so dark. Rebellious toward God that we call the very enemies of God Himself. We have rebelled against God. We have crucified God. And yet, when we were God's enemies, Romans chapter 5, verse 10 continues. We were reconciled to him through the death of his son. Oh, the amazing love of our God. That while we were still sinners, he would come in the person of Jesus Christ, and he would die for us so that we could know forgiveness. Now, through faith in his crucifixion and resurrection, we no longer are called enemies of God. We're called children of God. We're given a new spirit, a new heart. His very spirit. His very heart, his very life. He has indeed reached out and slaked our thirst for forgiveness. He has satisfied our souls with the bread of life, who is Jesus Christ, that we may hunger no longer. He has given us joy and peace and hope and rest. And he did it. Not after we got ourselves all cleaned up and made friends with him. No, he did it while we were his enemies. So Sarah Pearson sings, Grace greater than our sin.

Brian 22:17

How often do we allow difficult circumstances to dictate a very temporal worldview or a short-sighted and sometimes selfish focus on life? Charlotte Elliot of Brighton, England, was an embittered woman. Her health was broken and her disability had hardened her. She muttered, If God loved me, he would not have treated me this way. In May of 1822, Dr. Cesar Milan, a Swiss minister, visited the Elliot family in hopes to help Charlotte. Over dinner, Charlotte lost her temper and railed against God and family in a violent outburst. Her embarrassed family left the room, leaving her alone with Dr. Milan. Dr. Milan said, You are tired of yourself, aren't you? As they talked, Charlotte softened. What is your cure? she asked. His answer, he explained, was the faith she was trying to despise. You should give yourself to God just as you are now, with your fightings and fears, your hates and loves, your pride and shame, he encouraged her. You mean come to God just as I am right now? she asked. Charlotte did come just as she was. She went on to write over 150 poems. But the one that garnered over 1,000 letters of appreciation from around the world became the closing hymn at most of the Billy Graham evangelistic crusades. Listen now to the Hoppers in their rendition of Just As I Am.

Tom 27:02

One day he took out a chainsaw and sawed their house exactly in half. He nailed up planks to cover the raw sides and moved one of the halves behind a stand of scruffy pine trees on the same acre of ground. There the two, husband and wife, lived out the rest of their days in separate half-houses. And we're astonished that someone would go to such extremes rather than seek reconciliation. But if we're honest, we know that the same scenario is played out to differing degrees in our lives. We have an argument with someone, and we make sure we never attend the same meetings, we aren't in the lunchroom at the same time, and we certainly don't socialize together. The resentment builds up, and people take sides. Friendships, families, even churches end up splitting. Where does this all come from? It comes from a desire within for the other person to suffer as you have suffered, and a desire to be vindicated, to be seen as right, to be justified. Can you understand how incongruous those feelings are for someone who's been forgiven everything through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Jesus says to us Christians not to forgive another who has wronged you. Like a man who's been forgiven an enormous debt of ten thousand bags of gold, but who is unable to forgive a man who owed him a hundred silver coins. If we've been forgiven everything through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then we in turn are called to forgive anything. So infinitely more sings the truth with time to leave this place. It happened while I was still a young pastor in the summer of 1998. Constable Bill Hancocks was tragically stabbed to death while on duty. Himself, a young man with a young family, our culture screamed out a collective, no, this should not have happened. The talk radio programs were filled with person after person who called for retribution, a renewed call for the death penalty for the guilty. Everyone said that the people responsible for this horrible death should pay for what they had done. Except for one voice. A voice who had the most right to desire retribution. The voice of Constable Bill Hancocks' mother. On the day the police made the arrest of the two suspects, we read this astounding statement on the cover of a Toronto newspaper: "Mom - on son's murder: We have to forgive." And inside, an article by Michelle Mandell - An interview with Ann Hancocks. There we read a description of this amazing woman. There was no anger. There was none of the fury you would expect. None of the rage at this senseless, vicious murder. The reason for this lack of rage? Mrs. Hancocks is quoted as saying: "I have such a strong Christian background that gives me an extra little bonus to carry on. I think, in Christian love, we have to forgive." She added, "Knowing how odd that must sound to some." Odd?! Isn't it true? Christian forgiveness always seems a little odd in a world that seems to thrive on revenge that is so delicious and thinks that forgiveness is so tame. If we have experienced the forgiveness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, then it follows that we can be, we must be, a people who forgive.

Tom 38:55

Can you forgive your enemy? Jesus forgave his enemies on the cross, saying, Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. I would suggest that we cannot forgive like Jesus without having tasted his forgiveness in our hearts. So we're looking at the world through the eyes of love with Doug Oldham. I've said that there's something in us that longs for revenge, and that something is not the Spirit of our Lord. It is sin. And so it's right to ask, if we aren't able to forgive, have we really tasted the forgiveness of Jesus Christ? Like a mime busking on a street corner, many of us are so good at miming this Christian life. We've seen it practiced and modeled. We've been to mime practice. We can follow all the right steps and do all the right things and bow our heads at all the right times. And it may be sometime, since we've had a genuine encounter with a living Christ who wants to do fresh things in you, with you, and through you. That you might be genuinely touched by his forgiveness at the core of your being, so that you in turn can forgive and minister to your enemy. Now don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting that forgiveness is easy. It's not, it's difficult. But it's not impossible. It is possible as we come to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ and experience his real forgiveness so that in turn we're able to forgive and minister to those who hurt us. Rich Mullen sings Sometimes Bystep.

Brian 44:00

What a great time this has been with you on Hope Today. We trust that you have been encouraged by the wonderful message that God's forgiveness is readily available to all, just as we are. We would love to hear from you. You can reach us by email to listener at hope today-lp.ca. Once again, that is listener at hope today-lp.ca. Hope today is produced at Straight Path Studios. We look forward to being with you and your friends next time for another program of joy. Until then, keep looking up. Jesus is coming again.