Church thoughts to chew on for November 1st, 2009: Learning To Forgive

Posted By Hup | November 1, 2009

thoughtstochewon I’m trying something new today with the blog after I thought of an idea that I wanted to try out. As most of you hopefully already know, Stephanie and I are dedicated Christians and we’re always looking to live a life that gives praise to God in as many ways as possible. We’re by no means perfect (no human being is), but we have placed the Bible, the life of Jesus and our relationship with God at the center of our relationship, which has only allowed us to become an even more awesome couple over time. I won’t take up too much time at this point with all of the details, but if you would like more info on what being a Christian is really like you can email either of us anytime — we’re always available to chat with you, no problem. I digress…

Anyways, I wanted to open with all of this information because the idea that I had today is a way that will hopefully help me better communicate some of the great things that Stephanie and I get out of our church service each week to all of you who might not have had the chance to go to church this week (or who don’t go at all). My fairly simple, yet highly effective idea was to take notes on my Blackberry during church today instead of writing all of them on the sheet that is given out each week. I thought that I would try this out because it allows me to email myself all of my notes that I jot down during the service so that I can have them somewhere other than on a piece of paper that I don’t ever end up looking at again after I leave the church for the week. Then, what I’ll do each week is post some of these notes so that first, I can think about all of them again and second, so that you can check them out if you’d like to see what we focused on for any particular Sunday. So, here are the notes that I took during this week’s service and if you’re in the bay area and would like to check out our church on an upcoming Sunday, just leave us a comment or send us an email and we’ll figure out how to get you there.

Anyways, the theme of this week’s message as Learning To Forgive and here are the notes that I took for the week — if you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll get back with you asap.

- we can’t love enough (people are built self-serving), so we must kill our natural motives and let God love through us

- we must be prepared to to give reasons to those who ask about why we have the hope that we do.

- if you’re keeping a record of wrongs, then you’re not actually forgiving

- we must trust the word of God more than we trust our emotions

- wherever God guides, he will provide — He will give us the energy and courage to forgive

- forget about the past. Forgive and press on towards the goal of living a life for God

- forgive as the Lord forgave you (he made the ultimate sacrifice by dying on the cross)

- forgiveness is given, trust is earned

- forgiveness is the intentional act of giving grace (”they don’t deserve it” < this is the point) forgiveness is not reconciliation

- forgiveness is letting go of our resentments

- 4 ways to forgive

* deal with it immediately
* determine to go first
* remove revenge from your vocabulary
* do good to those who you forgive

I hope that this gives you a good sense of what we discuss each week at our church and if you have any comments or questions about any of the notes in the list, please let me know!

Filed Under thoughts to chew on, you gotta have faith