Ridgell's Originals

Wednesday nite's HIP at Southern Hills was one of those special times. Those times of praise, preaching, and prayer are some of the best times of spiritual growth for me. Many of you have gone out of your way to comment about what I had to say about forgiveness. For those of you not there, basically we talked about living out gospel by forgiving one another. We talked about forgiving those who hurt us, and how we are guilty of wanting God to forgive us and yet we do not fogive those who sin against us. So we reminded ourselves of the Lord's model prayer, Jesus on the cross, and Stephen when he was stoned (the Stephen in Acts, not me...I wouldn't want anyone to get any ideas). Gary Green was so open in sharing some of his struggles as he led us into a powerful Garden of Prayer. Then we visited about what kind of church we wanted to be based on the the Prodigal Son story: Daddy looking every day for his son to come home and celebrating when he die, or older brother who make sure to drag up his brother's past and was basically unloving and non forgiving.

A couple of you asked questions that prompted this post. The question came up about forgiving people who don't repent. Two things seem relevent here. The first is that we need to remember that our extending forgiveness to someone does not empact their salvation. God is the only one who can grant forgiveness of sins. My forgiving someone who is not sincere, or who does not ask for it, has nothing to do with whether or not they get to heaven. It may, however, have to do with whether I get there. The other observataion is that forgiveness does mean they "got away with anything". That is older brother thinking. There are consequences to sin. The younger brother had lost his inheritance. Forgiveness does not eleminate consequenses.

We forgive others because God forgave us and it models to the world the gospel.