- Before God was a lawyer, he was a lover
- I used to read the Bible religiously but now I read it relationally
- Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people. Free people, free people.
- When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail
- The root of the word forgiveness means to cut, to severe a tie with someone.
The importance not of specialists but of 'one anothering'.
God came to bind the broken hearted and all of us are broken hearted in some way. The church needs to be made up of people able to help one another rather than always needing to refer us to the specialists.
Some basic tools:
To help on another walk in the freedom that Christ has for us:
Two opposing worldviews: 1) Christian head-in-the-sand-ism. Just get on and mission and don't worry about the stuff of the heart. 2) Christian annoying-super-spiritual-ism
We want a quest for the radical middle.
Three things to go through:
1) Ungodly beliefs
2) Heart wounds
3) Deliverance
Everything we need is available to us because of the cross. The cross released the power, broke the power of sin and made freedom possible. Physical, spiritual and emotional healing came at the cross.
But if this is all true, why do I not have it? Why are people walking in captivity of freedom is ours at the cross?
Eph. 2:13-
- He is our peace
- He made peace through the cross
- He went and preached peace
After being it and making it he had to go and also preach this peace for others to receive it.
Ungodly beliefs
Beliefs that do not agree with what God says in his word about himself and about reality.
Experience shapes our view of reality. We are transformed by the renewal of the mind.
Without having ungodly beliefs pointed out we live unaware of it.
Solution:
We need to feed the truth into the lie to restore our thinking and belief. Table / chart of truth vs lies. There are tonnes of lies we believe that we need to walk free from.
Heart Wounds
Sometimes memorising scripture isn't the answer. How do we heal the wounds of the heart? Simply memorising and quoting scripture won't be enough. We need more...
Five things we need to understand in order to forgive:
- The extent to which we have been forgiven. The immense unpayable debt we owe to God has been paid for us.
- The extent we are called to forgive: Corrie Ten Boom.
- Understand what forgiveness isn't.
- Understand how to forgive.
- Understand some lies that keep you from forgiving.
Forgiveness isn't:
- Letting time pass.
- Being a door-mat or enabling an abuser.
- Not dependant on feelings (but it does involve feelings).
- It's not minimising (it wasn't that bad...).
- It's not excusing (he'd/she'd had a terrible background...) they're responsible for their own sin.
How to forgive:
- Acknowledge. Identify the sin. Picture the person in front of you and speak to God the Father.
- Express. Speak to the person as if he's in the room.
- Speak.
- Speak words of forgiveness to the person.
- Allow Jesus to appear and speak to people.
- Get people to picture a box and picture themselves putting their junk in a box and giving it to God.
- Tell God that you give up the right to judge.
- Speak the truth to yourself. Speak truth to yourself (in the third person) as an adult.
- Bless the person. Tell God.
For reconciliation:
Own the part of the problem that's yours and ask them for forgiveness. Often our softness will bring about a softness in them as well.
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