June 2008: MANIFESTING CHRIST, FORGIVENESS.

PART #24

THE STAFF AND SWORD MINISTRY

MAY/JUNE 2008

MANIFESTING CHRIST FORGIVENE S S

by Nancy-TONI Youngbrandt Forgiveness — we all want and Jesus came to die for us that we might receive it. Jesus literally lived and died with a heart of love and forgiveness. Shortly before His death, I--Iis words were all about forgiveness — "FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEYD0. " (Luke 23 :34) The further good news 1s that there is only one sin so bad that He won't forgive (blasphemy of the Holy Spirit) and no wound so deep that His forgiveness won't heal. However, that forgiveness is not just ours to receive but it also ours to practice and live out in our lives as well. Jesus teaches us over and over again that we will be forgiven AS WE forgive others and that we are to do unto others as we would like them to do unto us.

That is the focus of this article -- forgiveness: the importance of forgiving others as Christ has forgiven us. It is not just enough for us to receive Christ's forgiveness but that for us to manifest Christ to others by extending that forgiveness to others in our daily lives.

SOME SCRIPTURES ON THE SUBJECT Perhaps we all know the Scriptures, but a reminder of what Jesus told us is never a bad thing. For example, He told us in Luke 6:37-38:

"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: FORGIVE, AND YE SHALL BE FORGIVEN. Give, and it shall be given unto you: ... For with the strmne measure ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."

And in Matthew 6:12,14-15 Jesus teaches us to pray: "Arid forgive us our debts, as we

forgive our debtors. ... For if ye Jbrgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive miot men their trespasses, neither

will yo ur Father forgive your trespasses. "

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SOME SCRIPTURES ON THE SUBJECT continued The Apostle Paul then continued on Jesus' teaching by telling the Ephesians in chapter 4, verses 31-32 the following:

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away . from you, (along) with all naval ice: And be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake bath forgiven you.

The importance to us personally to forgive is vital to having a close, personal relationship with Jesus Christ and manifesting Him in our very being. After all, in Matthew 5:8 Jesus told us:

"Blessed are the pure in heart: . for they shall see God. " But how can we be pure in heart if we harbor unforgiveness? We can't be! And unforgiveness alone is not just the problem but that it can lead to even more sin and unrighteousness such as anger, strife, malice, hatred and bitterness. All these can grow from a small seed of unforgiveness in our hearts and create even more troubles for us personally.

CONSEQUENCES The thing to remember about unforgiveness is that while we may feel justified in hanging onto our hurt, anger or bitterness because of a wrong suffered, the consequences of that unforgiveness do not necessarily affect the one who was the cause of the injury but rather it hurts us instead.

Unforgiveness is like a two-edged sword — it cuts both ways. Often what we j udge another for, we are guilty of doing as well. The same goes for unforgiveness. What we don't forgive someone for, we are often guilty of ourselves on some level. For this reason Jesus warned us several times:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what measure ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what ineasure ye mete, it shall he measured to you again.

Any' why heholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

And then there's the example of the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:2325. The parable tells us what the consequences will be for us if we do not extend the forgiveness we have received to others. Here is the story of a lord and his servant. The servant owed his lord the huge amount of 10,000 talents which he couldn't pay. To get the

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CONSEQUENCES continued money, the lord had commanded that not only the servant but his wife, children and all that he owed be sold to pay the debt. The servant then fell down before the lord, pleading with him to have patience and that he would pay all that was owed. Touched by his appeal, the lord not only released him but forgave his debt entirely — talk about generosity!

Well, after that the servant then went out and found a man who owed him money, and took him by the throat, demanding to be paid what was owed. And like the servant had been before his lord, this man who owed him money pleaded with the servant for mercy but unlike the lord, the servant would show him no compassion or forgiveness and had the man arrested and put in prison.

Following this, word got out and the servant's fellowservants went to lord and told him all that had happened. Needless to say, the lord was not pleased and call the servant to him and proceeded to tell him the following:

"0 thou wicked servant, Iforgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Slrouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also aurto you, if ye froi;i your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

So you can see God takes forgiveness very seriously indeed. He does not give it entirely without condition. He gives it with the condition that we too will give it as freely as it was received by us. If not, we will then reap the consequences of our sin.

SO WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?? y The consequences to us personally for not forgiving are man and can run deep within us.

One such consequence is seen in 2 Corinthians 2:10-11 where the Apostle Paul wrote:

To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also. for if I forgive any thing, to whom Iforgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: , for we are not ignorant of his devices."

Here we can see that Satan Can get an advantage over us through our lack of forgiveness and none of us needs that kind of trouble for sure.

For us personally, the biggest danger I see in unforgiveness is that bitterness, anger and even hatred can too often get set in our hearts and we then become defiled and unclean spiritually. Through this bitterness, Satan can surely move and have his way in our lives.

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SO WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES? continued Such a warning is clearly seen in Hebrews 12:14-17 where Paul wrote:

"Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest an y root of bitterness springingup trouble you, and therefore man y be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. " Here we can see multiple warnings. One — that if we don't "follow peace with all men, and holiness: then we shall not see the Lord ... and that would be like death itself Secondl y we see that a root of bitterness can spring up to trouble not only us but that others may become defiled in the process. Lastly — the consequences to this condition can even lead to a loss of one's own birthright as sure as Esau sold his. This sin condition would lead us to miss out on our own birthright by keeping us from repenting and getting right with God as He commands.

Another example in Scripture can be seen in I John ] : ] 9 and Romans 3:10-14. In the first Scripture we see what we need to do:

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us front all unrighteousness. " ( 1 John 1:19) In the latter Scripture we see what might happen if we fail to confess our sins and receive God forgiveness and cleansing from all unrighteousness. "... There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth,

there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become un y rof itahle; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness...."

Now you may think that sounds extreme but I see as the ultimate possibility and end result of what unforgiveness can lead to: it separates us from God and we fail to seek after God as we should because inwardly we are aware of our sin which will keep us from truly giving our all to Him; it lead us off His path and we become "unprofitable" as Christians. Our mouth then can spew forth of this filth in our hearts as we defile ourselves with cursing and bitterness .

And lest we delude ourselves into thinking we are ever justified in not forgiving someone,

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SO WHAT ARE THE CONS EQ UENCES? continued I would remind you of what Jesus said in Matthew 18:21-22:

Then came Peter to him (Jesus), and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me .. and I for give him? Ti! seven times?

Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven. " We must never allow ourselves to come to the point where we don't forgive — even if it means asking Jesus for His help to forgive. After all, it is His forgiveness we seek and therefore His forgiveness within us that we extend to others.

EXAMPLES OF TRUE CHRISTIANS When hard trials come upon us, when seemingly unjustified attacks and hurts come against us, it is all too easy to entertain unforgiveness and then bitterness settles in our hearts because we feel it is justified. It can even give us a sort of perverse pleasure in thinking what may come to those who have injured us and enjoy on a carnal level_ This is dangerous and is never justified and should be repented as soon as possible for it to be nipped in the bud because if we're not careful it can grow like a weed with a thick root that will become increasingly harder to get out as time goes on and may even spread to others.

As examples of how a true Christian should deal with the trials and tribulations in their lives I have the Godly wisdom and testimonies of two Christians who endured some of the worst hardships a person could experience and yet saw the freedom and healing power of Christ in their lives through forgiveness. One was a former slave named Booker T. Washington; the other survived being in a concentration camp in Germany during World War II named Corrie Ten Boom.

In Stephen Mansfield's book entitled, Then Darkness Fled - The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington (published by Cumberland House Publishing, Inc., 431 Harding Industrial Drive, Nashville. TN 3721 1). he shared how when "black people walked out of slavery, their bodies shed the bondage but their heart remained imprisoned."

Booker T. knew firsthand the wounds suffered from being enslaved but he also saw God's Hand at work and that for the black people as a race or individually to move on, they must have compassion and forgive even their former slave masters. He knew that compassion "is always the sign of true freedom from the bonds of bitterness." He also knew that the trouble with bitterness "is that it draws enough from fact to seem justified." It also often unwittingly transforms the one with the bitterness into the very image of those at which the bitterness is directed. "Moreover, bitterness anchors the mind in the past

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EXAMPLES OF TRUE CHRISTIANS continued and takes the heart with it. There is no future and no sense of the possible. There is only the incessant churning. Soon it becomes an excuse, a room into which the heart can run to find justification for failure and wrongs of its own. The end comes after the isolation and the rage have run their course. Bitterness is the second sting of the wound, and its fruit is death."

Corrie Ten Boom confirmed this experience by seeing firsthand how different survivors of World War II in Holland responded once the war was over. She wrote in her book, Tramp for the Lord (published by Fleming H. Revell a division of Baker Book House Company, PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287) the following: "Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able to

return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that."

The Holy Spirit brings to mind what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8:

"... Know ye not th at a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ? Purge out therefore the old leaves that ye may be a new lump, as ye are leavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacriced for us.... neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. " In other words, what may start out as a small, seemingly insignificant seed may grow and change you in ways you least expect and have dire consequences down the road. There it is best to pray and purge yourself of even the little things that are sin, as well as the big sins so that the seeds of compassion, truth, love and forgiveness grow within and not the seeds of sin such as malice, anger, wickedness and bitterness.

In Corrie Ten Boom's book she gave to examples she experienced or saw in her own life as she sought to bring Christ and His healing message to those in war-torn Germany as well as all over the world. During World War II she was in a concentration camp called Ravensbruck with her sister, who died in the camp. After the war, Jesus sent Corrie to Germany to preach about the need to confess our sins and that God would surely forgive.

After one meeting in particular, she noticed a man in the audience who looked familiar working his way toward her. She wrote, "One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin.

Betsie, how thin you were!"

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EXAMPLES OF TRUE CHRISTIANS continued As it turns out, this rnan was one of the most cruel guards in Ravensbruck. Now he was standing in front her, complimenting her on a fine message and Corrie said her blood seemed to freeze. This man then spoke to her of Ravensbruck, knowing that she had been there but did not actually remember her specifically and told her that he had been a guard there. He also told her that he had since become a Christian and knew that God had forgiven him for all the cruel things he had done there but would like for her to forgive him as well.

He held out his hand, asking Corrie's forgiveness.

Within herself, Corrie wrestled with the most difficult thing she would ever have to do.

She knew the Scriptures and knew what Jesus would have her do but still she felt a coldness clutching her heart. But she also knew that forgiveness is not an emotion but an act of the will. She went on to say: "the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling."

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out

to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

"I forgive you, brother!" I cried, "With all my heart."

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I have never known God's love so intensely as I did then.

But even so, I realized it was no my love. I tried and did not have the power.

It was the power of the Holy Spirit recorded in Romans 5:5., `The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

So you see, even if you are having a hard time really forgiving those who have done you

harm, then Jesus can and will help you with that too!! He is truly our everything if we let Him be our everything.

The other testimony she shared was of a German lawyer she met who had lost both his legs in the war. He was filled with self-pity, hatred and bitterness. He had once been an active membe r of his church and as a boy had rung the church bell in his hometown village.

Now the horrible injustice of war had taken his legs, and he was bitter against God and man.

One day Corrie decided to talk with this man and jumped right in by telling him, "The only way to get rid of bitterness is to surrender it."

He was skeptical and doubted this woman before him would have knowledge of bitterness, especially since she still had both of her legs.

She then was able to share her own experience with bitterness. You see during the war, when she was living in Holland, a man came to her begging her to help him liberate his wife.

Corrie felt compassion for him and gave him all of her money. She also convinced her

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EXAMPLES OF TRUE CHRISTIANS continued friends to do the same. However, the man was a traitor and only came to her to trap her so she would be arrested. Tragically, not only did he betray her, but her entire family and her friends. They were all sent to prison where three members of her family died. You talk about hatred and bitterness tilling one's heart — Carrie wanted this man to die.

At this point she definitely has the lawyer's attention who is now wondering then what he can do about his bitterness and hatred. Well, instead of listening to what Corrie's opinion was, she directs him to what Jesus and more: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses' [Matt. 6:14-15] If we forgive other people, our hearts are made fit to receive forgiveness.... When we repent, God forgives us and cleanses us. That is what I did, believing that if I confessed my sin God would be faithful and just to cleanse my sin and forgive me from all unrighteousness" She then went on tell this man Jesus filled her with such a love for this man that after the war, when this man who had betrayed her and her family was sentenced to death, she

corresponded with him and God used her to show him the way of salvation before he was executed. Praise the Lord!

Well, needless to say, the lawyer did as Corrie suggested and gave up his bitterness and hatred through forgiveness and he was able to at last get on with his life. Instead of living in the cubicle of a camp just waiting to die, a year later she being greeted at the train station by this very same man who was actually driving a car specially fixed up for him.

After she got in the car, she then had the opportunity to ask him how he was doing. He replied: "Fine. I must tell you at the very beginning that I have surrendered my bitterness to God. I repented and the Lord did j ust as you said. He forgave me and filled my heart with His love. Now I am working in the refugee camp and am praising God that He can use even a legless man if he is surrendered."

Following this wonderful news, he then had a question for Corrie, and that was if her bitterness or hatred ever returned and if so, what to do about it.

Well, Corrie did indeed admit that she did have problem from time to time. There were ti mes when it would hit her and she would pray as before. She would bring it to the Lord and He would take it and fill her heart with love but then the next night it would happen all over again. She got quite discouraged about this until she remembered Ephesians 6:10-?0 where Paul describes the armor of God.' She told the lawyer, "He said that even after

you have come to a standstill, still stand your ground. I was at a standstill, so

I decided to stand my ground and the bitterness and resentment fell away before me.

"Corrie ten Boom without the Lord Jesus cannot be victorious. I need the Lord every moment. And I have learned that I am absolutely dependent on Him. Because of this He has made me rich." (Unquote) s^ S ^ $xs , ^^ 4 ^,