Forgiveness (part 2)

Hey Everyone!
     Well, it's finally officially here! Most of all of you are finally done with Finals and all the testing! Time to enjoy the summer!! Time for the endless amounts of Grad parties and ceremonies and cleaning to prep for all that, and then the cleaning afterwords... yeah I guess you guys still have another month or so before you truly get your break ;) lol. But Congrats to all you guys that made it!!

Now, on to business.
Last week was the first post I did on Forgiveness, specifically dealing with why we need to continually ask forgiveness. I want to just quickly apologize for any confusion about that, I did not mean to indicate that Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient once and for all. By no means whatsoever!!! I was simply saying that as Christians when we realize we have sinned there should be a conviction from the holy spirit, and then going to God in repentance and turning away from that sin.


I love reading your comments and any different thoughts you guys have on the subject, so please keep it up and let me know what you're thinking! (also, just a quick note for the G+ users, if you wouldn't mind posting your comments here on the blog itself as well so others can read and benefit from the discussions, that would be totally awesome! Thank you )

Now, today I want to cover Forgiveness and it's relationship with us and God. 

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There once was a young man that often enjoyed going to hang out with his friends. One night his friends were having a party and going to his father the young man asked if he could go.

"Yes, you may go," said his father. "But be sure to be home by 11."

The young man agreed to this and went out, but as the night went on he lost track of time and ended up staying much much later than he originally had planned.. 

At breakfast the next morning, the young man and father were sitting together at the table.. neither saying a word. Both knowing the son had disobeyed and broke the rule laid down.

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What's going to happen now? What should happen? 

This is a good example of what happens when we disobey God's law. What happened here? The relationship has been hurt. The trust and enjoyment that the son had has suffered.

When you sin, you are not sinning yourself out of a relationship with God. But you have sinned into a situation where the blessing and the enjoyment of the relationship has been marred!

Upon realizing he's disobeyed, and feeling truly sorry for this, the son needs to make it known he is sorry. After he is sorry, there needs to be a consequence for his actions. And after this there is forgiveness and then moving on. Putting it behind and forgetting about it. This then is the Biblical order of how our relationship with God works.

Some of you may be sitting there going "Hold up Ryan! If we are forgiven then there are no consequences!" No! That's not the facts at all!
The fact of forgiveness does not mitigate the existence of consequence. And the existence of consequence does not eradicate the Reality of Forgiveness.

When you become a Christian, sin is not eradicated from your life. It no longer reigns or rules in you. But it remains. It is the final punishment for sin that has been gotten rid of!

When we sin we do not ruin the relationship, we have removed God's blessing from it though. This is seen countless times in the Old Testament as the Israelites repeatedly would turn away from God, and then come back with repentant hearts, and then turn away and kept going in circles as such.

He never abandoned them and said "THAT'S IT!! I'm done!! you've pushed me to the limit!" No, he turned away, and gave them the consequences of what they did, and when they came back he forgave them and then moved on. But what did he do in all that? He waited for them to come to him in repentance.

So what then should we take from this? When we realize we have sinned, we need to come back to God and tell him we're sorry. Forgiveness is not ours (in our possession) until we have sought it out with repentance.

We need to seek, and ask for it and he has promised us it will be ours. 

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Matthew 7:7 (NIV)

Now, believe it or not, I actually had a few more pages for this post XD But after previewing it I realized it was time to shut it down. I'll finish up next week with how all this applies to us and our physical relationships.

God Bless!

  Ryan