THREE KINDS OF PEOPLE-the first kind of person

There are three kinds of people I will like to talk about today:

1.THOSE WHO CANNOT FORGET WHAT GOD HAS FORGIVEN

The promises our Lord God made to us in the bible is worthless unless we agree with Him and agree that forgiveness to our lives. Some people might say “but why wouldn’t people be glad to hear and receive that?” This might be for two reasons:

 *  Because they don’t feel forgiven, and therefore they conclude that they must be forgiven. Imagine a girl who has been sexually molested by her dad when she was much older because he was always drunk and had daily outburst of violent temper. One night he turned his life over to God  and stop all the drinking but will the girl, his daughter, ever be able to forgive him and stay with him alone in a room without having remembering what happened in the past? She will be living in a prison called “memory”. What is memory? It’s that faculty that enables all of us to relive yesterday. That means you can hurt everyday of your life if you can’t forget!

In Genesis 41:50 Joseph said “God has made me forget all my trouble”, he wasn’t talking about blocking out any remembrance of the jealousy, the hatred, or the abuse he’d experienced at the hands of his own brothers. No, that’s denial! God’s way, like the three Hebrew children discovered, is not out of the fire but through it.

God can heal the wounds of our past. He does it by anesthetizing the hurt, so that the memory is now surrounded not by pain but peace. Instead of a mausoleum to preserve what we can neither talk about nor get over, it becomes a monument to God’s healing touch, and a milestone on our journey toward wholeness.

**  The second reason some of us can’t forget what God has forgiven, is because we have a wrong concept of God. Every present stands in the place of God until a child can know God for it.                                                                                                                                                  God is a provider, but from whose hand do we first receive? Our parents.  God is a forgiver, but where do we get our first and most enduring concept of how forgiveness works? Our parents!

Now if you were raised by someone who said they forgave you, yet they kept “pulling your file” and constantly reminding you of your mistakes, you were probably given a distorted picture of God.

       Learn to listen to what God says about His love for you. He said “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3). Listen to what he says about His plans for you. “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “

They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 TLB).

     Now listen to what he says about His forgiveness, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isaiah 43:25). Forget your sins for God’s sake, for when you keep bringing them up you bother Him with something awful!

    When you fail, all you need to do is approach God and say, “father, I come in the name o Jesus.” The moment you say that, the Father’s focus moves from you-to-Him and you’re automatically accepted and forgiven. What an arrangement! But you must also forgive yourself! If you don’t then you’re putting yourself above Him, and that’s idolatry! God in His perfection and full knowledge of sins, has said He’ll forgive you, then why should you an imperfect sinner, refuse to forgive yourself-or anybody else? Some people say “nothing goes for nothing in this world” but they forget that the forgiveness we’re being offered is the most precious thing in the universe! It may have cost us nothing but don’t ever forget-it cost God everything!

    Its pride that makes us think we’ve got to pay, at least in part, for our actions. I know there are consequences for our actions, but let us not make the mistake of thinking those consequences are some form of atonement of our sin. No, if you have to pay one penny of your sin debt, that makes you a co-redeemer with Jesus Christ. Nothing insults the cross more than that kind of thinking. When Jesus cried, “it is finished”, He wrote “paid in full” across every sin debt you owed. No more will ever be required, and no less will ever be accepted.