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ACCOMPLISHING FORGIVENESS


The primary need for forgiveness springs from the law. Until forgiveness is effected in the heart, the law of sowing and reaping must roll on to its inevitable conclusion.

Prayer deliverance ministers should not stop short; we are to bring the client to an understanding that forgiveness is the foundation on which this entire ministry stands.
Without forgiveness there simply is no healing.

This lesson makes the necessity of forgiveness clear. You will learn how resentments become lodged in the heart and, once entrenched, require a work of God's grace to remove.

The main stumbling blocks to forgiveness are misconceptions of what it means to forgive. Forgiveness is simply giving up the right to be angry with someone who has hurt or offended you. Further it allows God to be the judge and the jury. Forgiveness does not condone the offense, nor do you have to forget, or put yourself in a position to be hurt again.


We are commanded to forgive:

Forgiveness is not an option. Matthew 6:1-15, 18:21-35; Mark 11:25-2 6

Forgiveness comes easy when we catch our resentments quickly, and we are determined to walk cleanly in Jesus. 1 John 1:19; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13

Forgiveness is very difficult when resentments are allowed to lodge in the heart. Hebrews 3:12-15; Proverbs 26: 21-26


Resentments go deep into the heart:
They can get stuck there when we are too young to understand our anger, or to know how to pray or express forgiveness.

Sometimes we are not aware when we are angry.

We tend to rationalize our ability to handle the situation.

We refuse to forgive immediately.


What happens to these resentments?

They are often forgotten, suppressed, and hidden in the heart.


How to recognize if resentments are hidden in our hearts:

If you know of or remember a specific hurt from a particular person - what emotion emerges at the thought or sight of them? Does your heart leap for joy, or do you get angry, or feel pain deep inside. Do you get sick to your stomach or experience abdominal pain?

Do you want to fellowship, or would you rather avoid him/her?

When the person comes into your mind, do you still rehearse "speeches" you'd like to deliver?

Do you imagine things that you would like to say or do to get even, and then have to repent?

The presence of any of these negative symptoms says the work of forgiveness is not complete in your heart. There is resentment still lodged there.

Sometimes pain, anger, judgment and unforgiveness are lodged so deeply that we cannot remember resentment. There may be some symptoms that will help you to recognize if any are still down there.

o Are you losing power?
o Are prayers not being answered as before?
o Are you finding it harder to come into God's presence?

o Are you afflicted somewhere in your body? Are you experiencing new aches and pains, or possibly fevers that don't respond quickly to antibiotics? Proverbs 6:12-19 Says that if man holds perversity in his heart and spreads strife, calamity will come suddenly, he will be broken, and there will be no healing. God does hate certain things!

o Do periods of despondency return quickly after joyful times?

o Is your sleep or rest disturbed with troubled dreams, or heavy, but unrefreshing sleep?


Although there may be other factors contributing to the symptoms, these things taken together are a fairly clear indication that unforgiveness has lodged itself in the heart.


The role of the Prayer Deliverance Minister is to help the client discover who and what needs to be forgiven through the leading of the Hoiy Spirit.

What if we don't feel the anger that we are supposed to have suppressed?

What if we have said the words "I forgive" but don't feel as though we really have, does it count?

What if after we have spoken the words of forgiveness, our anger continues to burn within us?

What if I can't make myself feel the forgiveness; does that make the process hopeless?

The Lord asks us to choose to forgive, in obedience to Him; when we do, He can then help us to handle our emotions rightly.

The process of leading the client to forgiveness:

Pray the Gethsemane Prayer. When Jesus prayed in the garden at Gethsemane He identified with every one of us. He became our sin. II Corinthians 5:21

To identify our own sins, and know that our righteousness is as filthy rags Isaiah 64:6 makes it become a little easier to forgive those who have sinned against us. It is only when we feel like a total victim that we find it hard to forgive. Be as quick to forgive others as we would like them to forgive us when we sin against them. Help your client

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus drank the cup of our sins. He reaped in His own body all the consequences of each and every sin committed in the past, present and future. He felt the full penalty of every murder, rape, perversion, lie and betrayal... He bore this in His body to the extent that it caused His capillaries to burst. But that was just the physical part of what He was doing.

Emotionally and spiritually, He became more and more removed from the Father as He took more and more of humanity into Himself. He had never experienced separation from the Father. In the fullness of taking all our sin into himself, He then qualified to startd in our place.
He was, for the first time, sin, and the Father could not look upon Him. In the depth
of His separation, He cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?" His agony was not just physical, but spiritual and emotional as well. He was fully identified with mankind and thus, for the first time, fully separated from God the Father.

Legally, because He was God and had the power to do so, Jesus transcended time and space and became us-every person in the past, present, and future. He took into His body all the sins we had ever committed or would commit. If He had not done that, the cross would have had little effect. He had to become "as we are" in order to take the pun-ishment which the Law prescribed. The God of the Universe suffered that intense agony and pain out of His intense love for His creatures.


It is this prayer in which He became us is an integral part of the work of the cross. It was the act of becoming us that nearly killed Him in the Garden.

This work fulfilled the legal requirement of the law that sin must result in death. God is a legal God and He fulfilled His own law.

By accepting His substitutionary death as my own, I can then set in motion that same law of reaping and reap for myself His righteousness. That makes me a very grateful person. If the one for whom we are praying can really grasp the meaning of this act of Jesus, he or she can see hope for him/herself and can begin to believe that the reaping of destruction will end. If I, as a prayer partner, really KNOW this in my heart, I can convincingly communicate my confidence in the Lord's substitutionary death and the effectiveness of
it. I base my confidence on God's own legality.

As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting some-one to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and Gods pain, and I am devastated- because thefr pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other. This removes the "good guy/bad guy" syndrome. We cannot elevate ourselves because we KNOW the cost of sin. We have felt it. Jesus is our model--He felt it.

This type of identification and repentance is what we teach and help others to do. This identification with the other is most effective in bringing about deep repentance and pow-erful forgiveness. It works because God is a righteous God and He does not nullify His own law. He fulfills it!

HEAPING COALS OF FIRE ON THE HEAD

"BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY,
GIVE HIM A DRINK,
FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL REAP BURNING COALS UPON HIS HEAD.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Romans12:2O-21


When missionaries taught those scriptures, the natives in certain portions of the world thought they had been given permission to dump buckets of coals on the heads of their sleeping enemies!
And perhaps we don't understand much better. When Proverbs 25:21-22 was written-and when Paul quoted it in his letter to the Romans, housewives of the day had no gas or electric ranges or even wood stoves, for that matter. The cooking was done on small fires set between two bricks about six inches apart on the floor, or in an alcove. The only fuel likely to be available would have been a few sticks and dry leaves-and dried cow chips! Imagine cooking for your family on
dried cow dung!!


Starting those fires was also difficult. There were no matches; one had to strike flint against stone, or literally rub two slicks together, over tinder. Few people had the necessary tinder or the time. So a village fire tender would be appointed. All night he would keep a small fire going. Toward morning, he would build it up, and then let it burn down to coals. Next he would scrape the coals into a metal brazier, place a wood block on his head, and with pads to protect his hands he would carefully lift the brazier and set it on the wood block. Then he would go from house to house. With metal tongs, he would place some of the hot coals
between the bricks to that all the housewives
could have fire for their families.


The familiar sight of the fire tender making his rounds with the coals heaped on his head gave rise to a common turn of phrase-that if you give kindness or do good to an evil man,
you will turn him into one who spreads the warmth of love wherever he goes.
You will "heap coals of fire on his head."


So Paul wanted Christians to learn to overcome evil with good--not merely to withstand it, but to make use of every enmity and persecution in order to transform enemies into
God's loving servants, even as had happened to himself! Saul of Tarsus had held Stephen's coat when he was being stoned to death, and Stephen's blessing arid forgiveness of those
who were killing him began the Lord's transformation of Saul, the zealous persecutor of the church,
into Paul, its greatest apostle.


We all need to learn how to heap burning
coals of fire on our enemies' heads.

FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION

Malachi 4:5, 6 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse."

Matthew 7:1, 2 "Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you."

Hebrews 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."

Deuteronomy 5:16 "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you
that it may go well with you

Galatians 6:7 "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."

Romans 2:1 "Therefore you are without excuse, every man of you who passes judgement, for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things."

I John 4:19, 20 "We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."

Proverbs 20:20 "He who curses his father or his mother, his lamp will go out in time of darkness."

Matthew 6:22, 23 "The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"

Matthew 5:29 "And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."

Matthew 6:14, 15 "For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father Will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."

II Corinthians "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ,
5:18-20 and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors

for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf ofChrist
be reconciled to God."

II Corinthians 2:5-11 "But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree to all of you. Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest somehow such a one be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. But whom you forgive
anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes."

I John 1:6-10 "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us."

Ephesians 4:31-32 "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."

Ephesians 1:7-8 "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us..."

Acts 10:43 "Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His Name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins."

Acts 2:38 "And Peter said to them, 'Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."'

Matthew 12:31 "Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but
(Mark 3:28-29) blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven."
(Luke 12:10)

Luke 11:39-41 "But the Lord said to him, 'Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup
and of the platter, but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness.
You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give that which is within as charity, and then
all things are clean for you."'

Luke 6:45 "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man Out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his
mouth speaks from that which fills his heart."

FORGIVENESS:

Ephesians 1 :7-8a "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us.

Psalm 130:4 "But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared."

I John 1:9-10 "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us."

Acts 5:30-31 "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus...
He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance.. .and forgiveness of sins.

Mark 11:25-26 "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neighbor will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions."

Matthew 6:14-15 "For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive you your transgressions."

Luke 17:3-4 "Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' forgive him."

Ephesia.ns 4:31-32 "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."

Colossians 3:12-13 "And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the LORD forgave you, so also should you."


Isaiah 55:7 "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

Psalm 103:3-4 "Who pardons all your iniquities; Who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from the pit; Who crowns you with loving kindness and compassion."

Click on the praying couple for prayer to forgive
click the back button or on the swordsman for more lessons

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Site Last Updated Monday June 6 2011