Eph 4:26-27 “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” NIV
The devil can’t do anything unless we are giving him a foothold. The devil knows he is defeated (see last week’s message). He wants to know if we know. Once he knows that we know, the battle is over, unless we let him have a foothold in our life. One of these footholds is unforgiveness. Eph 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” NIV The reason to live in forgiveness is because God has forgiven us through Jesus Christ. Once forgiven by Christ, we can’t live but in forgiveness. How could we do otherwise? We were forgiven a humongous debt! The small pennies others owe use through petty grievances are but dust compared to what we were forgiven. If we don’t have forgiveness operating, the devil has an advantage on us and will make our life miserable. Unforgiveness freezes us. To walk in forgiveness helps us to be immunized against Satan’s attacks. Col 2:12-13 “Having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.” NIV We are alive because of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Let us continue to lead that victorious life in Christ and share that great news of forgiveness with others. What about those hurting us? Should we take revenge? No, instead let us reach out to them and astonish them with forgiveness. Doors will open and many will come to Christ that way. Halleujah! Let me share with you a story illustrating the power of forgiveness: On December 21, 1974, Chris Carrier was in the fifth grade and walking home from school in North Miami Beach, Florida. An older man spotted Chris and tricked him into going into his motor home. The man stabbed Chris with an ice pick and drove him to a desolate spot where he shot the 10-year-old boy in the head from behind. For six days, Chris lay unconscious. He awoke the day after Christmas and was rescued by a farmer. He never regained sight in his left eye. Chris became a Christian and in 1996 he was a youth pastor at Granada Presbyterian Church in North Miami. Chris then heard that the older man who had attacked him, David McAllister, was in a nursing home. When Chris went to visit, and McAllister began to cry when he realized that this young man was the boy he had abandoned. “When he was asked what he did,” Carrier said, “he sort of gasped and said, ‘I left him there,’ and began to cry. He said he was sorry, and I told him I forgave him and that from now on there would be nothing like anger or revenge between us, nothing except a new friendship.” (By Peter Kennedy, Copyright 2001, Devotional E-Mail DEVOTIONS IN MATTHEW pkennedy@devotional.com) Rom 8:6 “Now the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit] is death [death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter]. But the mind of the [Holy] Spirit is life and [soul] peace [both now and forever].” AMP If we live in unforgiveness, we live in the mind of the flesh and spread death around us (not a very pretty picture is it). How? By not living God’s Word and not letting God reign in our heart. However if we live in forgiveness, we have the mind of the Holy Spirit and we will live and spread life and peace, as we are letting God take charge of our life. Do you live in the peace of forgiveness?
In His love,
Rob Chaffart
Answers2Prayer Ministries, www.Answers2Prayer.org