Forgiveness That Changes Everything

It's said that unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping

that it affects the other person.

I want to turn quickly and read from Matthew 18.

I know I've talked about forgiveness in the past and I

want to talk a little bit this morning about the fruit of our

forgiveness. And that's what Ben and Receiva

are walking in is the fruit of their forgiveness.

And it's, it's a beautiful thing when those relationships are

reconciled and and we get to walk in that unconditional love.

So Matthew 18 verse, I'm going to start in verse 21.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times

shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?

Up to seven times. Jesus answered, I tell you not 7

times, but 77 times. Therefore the Kingdom of heaven

is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his

servants. As he began the settlement, a

man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him.

Since he was not able to pay the master order that he and his

wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the

debt. Now that amount that he owed was

not something he could ever repay in his lifetime.

And it's also interesting how our our debts affect there's a

ripple effect to his wife and children.

Continuing verse 26, the servant fell on his knees before him.

Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything.

The servants master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let

him go. But when the servant went out,

he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100

denarii, which is not very much. He grabbed him and began to

choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he

demanded. His fellow servant fell to his

knees and begged him, Be patient with me, and I will pay you

back. But he refused, and said he went

off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the

debt. When the other servants saw what

had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told

their master everything that had happened.

Then the master called the servant in.

You, wicked servant, he said. I cancelled all that debt of

yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have mercy on your

fellow servant just as I had on you?

In anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be

tortured until he should pay back all he owed.

This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless

you forgive your brother. From your heart.

Wow, from your heart. Sometimes forgiveness is just

words, but how do we get it from our heart?

I think it requires Holy Spirit. So just a couple of points I

want to make on on forgiveness though, is to remember that the

one that gets the most out of forgiveness is the one doing the

forgiving. We might think and withholding

forgiveness from another that we are punishing them, but the one

suffering the most is ourselves. It's said that unforgiveness is

like drinking poison and hoping that it affects the other

person. Even our secular psychology

talks about the harm that unforgiveness can do to our

physical bodies. It can cause depression.

It can cause anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, all of

those things. But when we choose to forgive,

it frees our hearts as well, and it restores the standard of

holiness that's in US and through us.

So I would say that one thing that's the fruit of forgiveness

is peace. Peace in our hearts, peace in

our minds, peace in our relationships.

We heard a testimony of a married couple.

You know, forgiveness in a marriage is critical.

You're doing life together every day.

And we aren't perfect. Sometimes we mess up, but

responding in forgiveness. It's a must in a marriage

relationship, but it's also a must in the in the family in the

body of Christ. A little earlier in the chapter

18 of Matthew, chapter 18, Jesus lays that kind of a three-step

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

pattern for approaching someone that's sinned against us or

offended us. You know, go to them, take

someone with you or take it before the church.

And how many times is it just easier to go tell somebody and

say, come with me or to tell everybody versus just going to

them one-on-one? And what a beautiful thing.

If we can go to our brothers and sisters in Christ and reconcile

with them at a heart level. That's what that's that's what

God always has wanted. And that brings peace in the

body. It brings unity in the body.

Those are all fruits of forgiveness.

I want to read a story. If I can find where it went to,

here it is. For time's sake, I'm going to

read it. And it's not my story.

It's actually a Heidi Baker's story.

And As for those of you that don't know where, she's been a

missionary in Mozambique for many years.

And so she writes, I found Louise on the streets.

He was sick and full of anger because he had been burned in

his house, which was a cardboard box, by people who had

previously been his friends. They had poured gasoline on it,

tied him to the cardboard, and lit it on fire, leaving him to

die. He was terribly burned and has

spent many months in a dilapidated local hospital.

He was unhappy and bitter about being treated so horribly.

His misery brought him to a place of great brokenness, so

Heidi writes. When I met Louise, I held him in

my arms and told him about Jesus's passionate love.

I invited him to come home and live with us.

At the time, Louise was not very merciful or forgiving.

He made his living by hitting, stealing and knifing people.

But I kept telling Louis about this man named Jesus who had

given up his home and riches and walked the streets, the one who

left heaven and came to earth to find him.

Eventually, Louis said I must know this man.

One day Louise came to me and said that he wanted to go to the

streets with me so he could tell the guys who tried to kill him

that he forgave them. I watched Louise pour out

extravagant mercy on many in the streets of Maputo, and I watched

the favor of God increase in his broken little life favor,

another fruit of forgiveness. One of our churches at the time

was an unconventional congregation.

We met in a brothel to reach prostitutes we worship.

Jesus prayed and simply loved the resident prostitute girls.

However, we weren't seeing a lot of breakthrough in the girls

escaping the cycle of their destructive lifestyles.

Some of these girls were as young as 1011 and 12 years old,

and they were selling their bodies on the street for a

bottle of Coke. I was desperate for Jesus to set

them free while I was on a 40 day fast.

I cried out to God to change the situation.

Shortly after this, the girls fell on their knees during

worship and started screaming. We cannot sell ourselves

anymore. I started weeping for joy and

asked Jesus what I should do next.

I knew that I could not move the girls into the same center as

the boys and I need to find a church where the pastor would

not fall into temptation. I needed a pastor whose

heartbeat matched Jesus in holiness and purity and who was

free from judgment. After crying out to God, I

looked up and saw Luis praying and worshipping God

wholeheartedly in the dirt. He hadn't finished the pastor's

Bible school because he could not read or write, but he was a

man full of mercy and compassion.

Lewis was worshipping with his hands lifted up, adoring the

Lord. I asked him if he would care, if

he would like to care for these girls as a pastor.

He fell apart sobbing, asking if God could give him the privilege

and the honor of such a beautiful task.

Kneeling down, he looked up at me and asked, Could God have

such great love to use a man like me?

He had great humility and great love, and he moved to a small

base and began to pastor the girls.

His life was one of love, mercy, and radical forgiveness, and he

chose to walk in ultimate justice, where forgiving and

releasing is the standard of righteousness rather than

bitterness and revenge. Sometimes it takes more strength

and courage to forgive than it does to remain bitter and

revengeful. But what a beautiful thing that

this man chose to forgive. And the result of that, the Lord

began to open doors for him because the Lord saw his.

He forgave from the heart and the Lord saw his heart.

Sometimes we wonder, Lord, why aren't you opening the next

door? Where?

What's the next thing for me? You know, I'm not hearing your

voice. And sometimes we need to go

back. And what's the last thing he

told us to do? And sometimes it's we need to

forgive. And as Louise forgave, the Lord

used him mightily to minister to these broken little girls.

What an honor. What a beautiful thing.

I also want to share another story and this one, it's pretty

crazy, but you can actually there's a book in the library

bookstore called Breaking the Veil of Silence.

And this there's it's 15 short stories of different people and

this gal's story is in there. So in 2013, I went to Cuba and I

was asked to speak at a conference call, Breaking the

Veil of Silence. And most of you know my story.

I have a beautiful testimony of how God brought me out of just a

place of brokenness as a result of an abortion decision when I

was a teenager. And so I was there sharing my my

testimony as how the Lord broke me free from the shame of

sharing it all the anger, the unforgiveness, the unresolved

grief, all those things. And so I shared it.

And Leanne Goth, it was she hadn't was the one that invited

me in for the conference. She goes, I'd like you to pray

with this gal. And her name is Daime.

I'm not breaking confidentiality.

It's in the book. Anyway, so Daime, she brought

her up to me and I put out my hands to grab her hands to pray

for her. And she pulled back and shook

her head and walked away. And Leanne was like, what

happened? And I said I have no idea.

So the next day she came up to me with a translator to tell me

she was sorry but she did not want me to pray with her.

And we really, none of us really knew her story.

And that was in March of 2013. I went back the end of the year

over the New Year's, so December, January, and I did a 2

morning session on teaching the women of Cuba how to minister to

women that had an abortion in Cuba.

Abortion is like their preferred form of birth control and

they've almost all had, well I can't say all but a large

majority has had an abortion and most of them have had multiple.

It was part of the Russian culture that had come into Cuba.

So I do the first morning and at the end of the the morning Daime

comes up to my translator which I was shocked she was there too.

She came up to my translator and said, I want to share a

testimony tomorrow morning. And I thought.

We all were like, and I went back and talked to Leanne about

it. We're like.

Well, what's this going to be? We had no clue.

Oh, my goodness. So she got up and she shared

that next morning how when she was a little girl, her mother

would speak of abortions like they were her heroic acts.

And so at age 18, Daime found herself pregnant.

And her boyfriend didn't want her to abort it because they

were going to get married. And and her mother at that point

also told her that maybe she should have the baby, but she

chose to have an an abortion. And four months later, they got

married. And about six months later,

she's discovered she's pregnant. And she doesn't, she doesn't

want to have a baby yet. In her mind, it's like the

economy is bad in Cuba. This wouldn't be a good thing to

do. And so she was trying to keep it

a secret that her husband obviously knew that at about 16

weeks, she began to beat her stomach and throw herself

against the counter and against the wall.

And, and she, she hurt herself to the point where she collapsed

on the floor and passed out. And she woke up there.

And three days later, she lost the baby.

But she did not tell anyone what she had done.

And so everybody was blaming her husband and, and her mother, and

she just didn't say anything about what had really happened.

Well, six months later, she's pregnant again.

She has a little girl and the little girl isn't gaining weight

and she starts to beat herself up.

This is all my fault. You know, I, I'm a bad mom.

It's because I had these abortions and there's a curse

over me. And, and those are, I mean,

that's what she was saying. Well, two years later, they have

a little boy and I think around a year they discovered that his,

his cranium hadn't closed properly and needed surgery.

So once again, she falls into this thing of, oh, I'm a bad mom

and this is all my fault and everything.

And over the next three years, she has three more abortions.

That's five. And after those, she gets

gloriously saved. She meets Jesus and her family

is doing well and she finds herself pregnant again.

And she feels like this is this is God, though.

This is God saying that he he sees me and so they had the

baby. No health problems with this

one. And she says, OK, three

children's enough. I'm going to make sure I don't

have any more. And in the process of that, she

discovers she's pregnant again. And she talks to her husband

that that she's not sure she can go through another pregnancy.

And between them and her doctor, they have a 6th abortion.

And this one was hard because she knew how it was a sin

against God. She she was saved and six months

later she's pregnant again. And she has a little boy.

She said she began to hate her fertility.

She's going to hate herself. So they have this fourth child,

the little boy, and at three months old he won't eat.

She has to force feed him. And by the time he's about 15

months old, it's clear that he's not developing.

Normally he he doesn't talk at all.

He's completely silent. He sits on the floor and rocks

and if they don't play music, he beats his head against the wall.

And this is the point where I came to Cuba and I'm sharing

about what God's done in my life and, and healing me.

And she's pretty honest that she was mad at me.

But she said about she came and heard me.

And then when she went back home, she said three months,

next three months was, she said, just awful.

She said she couldn't eat. She didn't take care of herself.

She didn't do her nails, which in Cuba, it's kind of a big deal

to do your nails. Her marriage was continuing to

fall apart. They would just argue.

And her husband got to the point where he only came home to

change his clothes and sleep. And she said one night, she

cried out to God. And she said, God, I need help.

And she said all of a sudden, he started bringing back to her

some things I had shared about forgiveness.

And she thought I've got to go in and forgive my husband.

So she went in two in the morning and woke him up and

began to just tell him how sorry she was and asked for his

forgiveness. She said they talked about each

of the abortions. She confessed to him how she had

caused the one and he began to share his heart of how he had

been hurt and felt about each one.

And she said, I didn't even think he cared.

And so as they began to just share and forgive each other and

reconcile, she said it was she said, I she goes the I've been

telling myself my husband was a bad person, but my husband's a

good person. So that next morning they're in

the kitchen and in walks this little boy that they were

concerned he was autistic and had because he hadn't spoke.

And he walks in and he goes Mama, Dada.

And throughout that day he spoke the names of all the rest of his

siblings, she said. She said that day, she said he's

a normal child in every way except he's a little cross eyed.

Forgiveness changed the atmosphere of that home, and it

unlocked healing in that little boy.

I also have to think about how she was so silent about this the

the truth for so long and how it also her little boy was so

silent he was locked up as well. In Psalm 32 it says when I kept

silent my bones wasted away. She was wasting away.

But forgiveness broke things open in their home and in their

life. Have one more quick story and

then we'll move into some ministry time and most of you

have probably heard this before. This is a story Pastor Dave

shared before. But there was a gal here for

prayer in the altars one night and she was blind in one eye.

She had been, her husband had beat her and in one of time he

hit her and she lost the sight in her eye.

And Pastor Dave tells the story much more dramatically than I

can. You know, he says she he blessed

it and he cursed it and all these things and nothing

happened. So he sent her over to be prayed

for by somebody else. And they, they said, well, they

asked her what happened. And they said, well, have you

forgiven him? And she said, oh, yeah, I did

that years ago. You know, he got saved and he's

with the Lord today. And the person prayed with her,

said let's forgive him again. And as they prayed and she

released him again, her eye began to see.

We just don't know. We just don't know.

And one of the things I want to challenge you with this week is

sometimes we've taken an offence with someone and we just move on

with life. But maybe just ask the Lord, is

there anybody I need to forgive? Is there anybody?

And I, like I've said in the past when I've shared on this,

that doesn't mean you have to go to them and have a long

conversation. They might have forgotten as

well, or maybe they they don't even know they hurt you.

But we can forgive from our hearts without ever going to

them. Hey, thanks for watching.

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