Blessed is anyone who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed those who hear them, if they treasure the content, because the Time is near.
Now write down all that you see of present happenings and what is still to come.
Forgiveness in one sense means being absolved of our sins. However real forgiveness means more than just the forgiveness of our wrong actions. Divine forgiveness involves illumination. Our ignorance becomes not just temporarily absolved but transformed. Speaking on divine forgiveness Sri Chinmoy says:
“Our human mind may call it forgiveness, but God is not thinking about our inner and outer misdeeds. He just wants us to raise our consciousness so that we will increase our receptivity and oneness with Him.”
A better attitude is to focus on doing the right thing. True we have made a mistake, but if we have done the wrong thing there is no reason why can’t change our behaviour and do the right thing. We should not dwell on the past, but look forward and concentrate on the right path of action
To be sincere in our forgiveness of others we should not even remember the incident. Sometimes forgiveness can be conditional, we shall tell somebody we have forgiven them, but maybe later we will bring it up to use it against them. This is not real forgiveness. Only when we do not think about the experience have we really forgiven others.
How do we give things over to the Lord and leave them there? This has been our topic of discussion for the last two months. We briefly talked about the four essential steps to doing this: 1) recognizing and acknowledging the negative thoughts that we have just experienced; 2) confessing and repenting of them; 3) giving all that God has shown us about them over to Him; and, finally, 4) jumping into God's Word and replacing the lies with the truth.
In last month's article, we explored in depth the first essential step, which is to recognize, acknowledge and experience the ungodly thoughts and emotions that we have just experienced. This month, we want to explore the second step in dealing with our sin, which is to confess and repent of all that the Holy Spirit has shown us and, in addition, unconditionally forgive anyone who has wronged us.
Confession is simply "owning" our negative thoughts and emotions and acknowledging that what we have thought or done, either ignorantly or knowingly, has quenched God's Spirit in us. Because it's sin, we must, therefore, confess "ownership" of it.
Repenting is simply choosing to turn around from following what our negative thoughts and emotions are telling us and, instead, choosing to follow whatever God has shown us. Repenting means we are to stop looking at and pointing to the other person and begin looking at and pointing to ourselves.
This critical step of confession and repentance is our own responsibility. As 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, [then] He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This is the step, however, that many of us have left out when we have given things over to the Lord. Certainly, we've given our hurts to God, but most of the time, we've forgotten to admit our own part in the problem. And this is why so many of the things we've surrendered to the Lord often do come back. If we don't do our part of confessing and repenting of our sin and self, God is hindered from doing His-taking our sins away "as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12)."
Confessing Ownership of Our Sin and Self
Now, if we have caught the negative thought when it first came in and we have not entertained it or mulled it over, then we have not sinned (not quenched His Spirit) and we can skip this step of confession and repentance. Once we give that negative thought to God, we can again walk by faith. If, however, we have held on to that self-centered thought for a while, mulled it over and entertained it, then we do need to confess it as sin because it has already quenched God's Spirit. We need to confess "ownership" of it and then simply change our mind about following it.
Something else important to emphasize is that we are not responsible to change our own negative feelings. We, unfortunately, cannot do that. Our only responsibility is to put in charge the Person who can change our feelings, and that's God. And, we do this by confessing we own the emotions and then, by faith, choosing to repent of them. After that, it becomes God's responsibility to change our feelings by aligning them with our faith choices. And, you will see that He is always faithful to do this in His timing
Two Parts to Forgiveness
Thus, there are really two parts to forgiveness: first, our relationship to God; and second, our relationship to the other person. The first reason we must unconditionally forgive is because God commands it in Scripture. Mark 11:25-26 teaches, "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have anything against any: that your Father also, Who is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father, Who is in heaven, forgive your trespasses." In other words, we forgive, because God has forgiven us. The second reason we are to forgive is to reconcile with the one who has sinned against us. When we choose to unconditionally forgive that other person, we will be clean before the Lord and, not only will our relationship with Him be reconciled, but He also promises to give us His unconditional Love for the others involved.
Conclusion
The only way we can genuinely love those that have betrayed, hurt or wronged us, is by unconditionally forgiving them (or releasing them to God) as the above pastor did and becoming an open vessel for God's Love. If we don't do this, Scripture tells us exactly what will happen - the enemy will get an advantage in us. (2 Corinthians 2:11) Now if that other person comes to us and asks forgiveness, then our relationship with him has a good chance of being healed and it's possible (but not always the case) that we can end up even closer than before. If, however, that other person never comes to ask forgiveness and never repents, then there will be a breach in our relationship and only God's wise and strict Love can operate.
However, the Bible exhorts us to still love him, still be an open vessel for God's Love and still give ourselves over to him. Luke 6:27 even goes so far as to say that we must "Love [agapao] our enemies." Now this does not mean that we should put ourselves in harm's way again, but simply love them from a distance with God's wise, strict and merciful Love. (See The Way of Agape, page 45-46). Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can extend that same unconditional Love and forgiveness to others.
So you are just not forgiven like that. When you don't I want to say that you must be sorry for your sin and truly repent, that is your way of forgivness. Not every person in this world is forgiven. There are steps that you need to take in order to maintain and build a relationship with God. And why woud you want to use jesus after all, he went through so much for us and just for us to be forgiven, why would you want to use that? We have become ignorant and we don't see things of the past so we should minimize the amount of sin that we do and truly repent to God and thy lord jesus.
In conclusion forgivness of sins is to truly repent ie. be sorry for your sin, for you will face judgment day and still go to hell. Take time and be sorry for anything that you do, this really is your one true way to heaven at times.
