Ben Stuart's talk from a few weeks ago is really powerful. It's called "Overcoming Bitterness."
A few main points I got from it:
- A proper understanding of God's sovereignty gives you the power to forgive.
- Forgiveness is making the decision to not hurt them
- The reason why you're so bitter at someone in your past who hurt you is because they had a power over you and you don't like the fact that an evil person did that bad thing which has power over your life.
- You keep telling me you got past it but you didn't, your bitterness there is ruining your story now.
- That very act you meant for evil, God meant for good.
- The person who hurt you doesn't run your story, God does.
- I have the resources to forgive you because you don't run my story, God does.
- When I get power, I use it to love. I don't use it to hurt people, that's crazy.
- The powerful God forgives and I can forgive that person.
- You can forgive when you realize you have a loving and sovereign God.
- Forgiveness you can do alone, reconciliation takes two.
- Reconciliation comes when two people can speak grace and love.
- Reconciliation happens when you speak truth, "Your hurt me." "Yes I did." And then you extend grace and I'm sorry and I'm not retaliating. You come to them with grace and truth to reconcile.
- Living a life of grace and truth and I can forgive you because of the Sovereign God working in my life.
There's only so much you can do to repair a relationship. In AA, they say "clean up your side of the street." That's all we can do sometimes. Like it says in the bullet list, it only takes you to forgive someone. But I know that it has to be honest to let this go. If it's not, it's pointless.
I definitely learned a lot.
Thanks Ben..
God bless,
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