FORGIVENESS

Children take up the traits of their parents. It is the same on the spiritual life. We can act like God. Develop Christ likeness. How I treat people, do I say please, thank you, show appreciation to people who made my life better.

God is love, forgives, truth, compassionate, slow to anger etc.  Is that you? When people hurt you, forgive and bless them. To be God’s disciple we have to love just as Christ loves us. You do not measure in anything but love and God will take care of everything. The Christian trade mark has to be love. Luke 15:17. All it takes you a sinner or backslider is to go down on your knees and say father forgive me for I have sinned. In verse 19, the older son was just being jealous and religious, jealous of his brother’s favor before his father. Many get jealous when the Lord blesses and favors people. You have got to be careful that they don’t steal your blessings. It is the devil who wants to see us crying all the time and not God.

An unforgiving person always boasts and complaints. Complaining about what they don’t have and what some body never did for them. The elder brother even refused to call his brother-brother.  

Forgiveness is not a feeling but a decision. You can choose to be offended or not to be. The best day of my life is today. I know what it is to be hurt, assaulted and abused but thank God I also what it is to experience healing. God has healed me of my past. I am free.

        The Bible says in Luke 15:7,10 that there is joy in heaven, the angels of God jubilate and celebrate when a single sinner repents and takes his place in the family of God’s children. This joy in heaven is partly because when one gives their life to Jesus, there is a restoration of God’s image and reign and dominion  in that life. Now, at times we talk down on sinners but do you realize the value of a sinner. Every sinner is a potential joy-causer in heaven. If a sinner who repents can cause attention in heaven and God throws a feast because of that single sinner, will this not show you the value God attaches on every sinner?. Romans 5:8 says But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In fact Jesus Himself and He has not come for the righteous but He has come to call sinners to righteousness. If a sinner can dispatch Jesus from heaven to the earth, do you dare talk low on them?

         Do you know that Jesus always went after the sinners so He can bring them back into God’s family? Let’s take a look at the greatest teacher and soul winner who ever lived-Jesus. Through the parable of the prodigal son, He showed how a sinner is starving, suffering and desiring to come back to his father without anyone preaching to them. Just by coming back to himself, he can make a life-changing decision. See what happened in Luke 15:17-20. “And when he came to himself, he said....I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, And am no more worth yo be called thy son;make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father....”

        Can you imagine the prodigal son, only by coming to himself, he came back home to his father. The sinner is this hungry and desirous to come back to his father’s house. The problem with many of us is “will my father receive me?”. The story gives the father’s reaction”...but when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran  and fell on his neck, and kissed him. This is how ready the father is to receive any runaway child who comes back home.

        The son is desirous to come while the father is ready to receive. Wao!!!! You too can come back home today and the father will gladly receive you.

                TINA.