Integrity- People of God

As an act of our will it is our choice and we must choose to forgive and to obey God

As a decision of our will we choose to ask God for the forgiveness we need and by faith receive the forgiveness. Faith to receive from God is the same as when we received salvation.  By faith we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth that Jesus came and died for us that we could be save. We take these same steps of faith to receive by faith the forgiveness we need. In our heart we believe God’s word to be true and with our mouth we confess as an act of our will that we forgive as we were forgiven.  

We can uproot the anger and bitterness; it is done with the word of God and as an act of our will our decision to choose to obey God. The Bible says Satan will come because the Word of God has gone forth and he will try to destroy the seeds of the word that were sown in our heart and spirit. God’s Word is sure and He tells us of the devices of the enemy.  God would not have us to be ignorant but for us to know the truth. God tells us what to look for and to know that life is coming to test our convictions and to see if we really believe the word of God.  This world system will try to take away all we have been taught and will try and steal the truth from us.  We must not be taken by surprises but be prepared to stand on the promises. 

Romans 10:9-10 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. NIV

 Once we make as a choice of our will and the decision to forgive and to let those injustices, the Holy Spirit and the power of God that is in us strengthens us to walk it out.  Letting go is a choice of our will that is not to say the enemy will not try and bring those thoughts and concerns back to us but we can meet the enemy with the truth of God’s word and say, “Jesus paid for that and God has given me forgiveness for them.” Every time the enemy tries to bring up the past, remind him of your future eternally with God and his future in hell for eternity.  

Our actions and choices reveal our heart. Every time we take an action, we are making choices of our will either consciously or by default we are declaring where we have placed our hope. It is mankind’s ability to choose, their will that makes them different from all of God’s other creations in the earth.  The choices we make lead us to take action and these actions will determine where we are in life.

Ephesians 4:31-32 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. NIV

 James 4:2 b…Yet you have not, because you ask not.

There are times that we hurt with such intensity that all we want to do is think about the hurt and what was done and we may not want to let it go. The intense pain of the situation may make us feel we have every right to stay angry.  If we choose to hold on to hut and hate over time minds may become use to living in bitterness and it is like digging a trench the longer you dig the deeper it gets and the harder, it is to climb out.  Some people will spend a life time nursing old wounds and will live and die with that same hate. Everyone has a choice and can choose to forgive and be released from that bondage.

God has given His Word on the matter and He told to forgive because we have been forgiven.  God’s ways are not man’s ways.  God has a higher and have a greater purpose and we may not be able to see or understand the whys of life but we can know God loves us and He is faithful. We can trust His heart of love to work things out for our good and His glory in the end.

Jesus is our Lord and He would not ask us to do anything that we could not do through His grace. We may feel as though we cannot forgive but it is our decision and choose to do so. We may need to cry out and ask God to give us the forgiveness we need for that person or situation and as an act of the will we say, “I choose to forgive them.”  The act of faith may not always be easy but God has promised to give us the strength we need to forgive others and ourselves. 

The Bible says to obey is better than giving a sacrifice, better than doing all that work you do at church and service in the community. We need to ask God to give us the forgiveness we need.  We should pray and ask God to give us the strength to forgive and acknowledge Jesus as the person who will help us in this situation. Jesus is the one that bled and died for all humanity. God tells us to cast our case upon Him. we can bring this un-forgiveness on Him and bring those persons who have spitefully used and abused us, to Him in prayer and ask God to give us the forgiveness we need. Sometimes we have to act out of obedience even when we do not feel like it. 

1 Samuel 15:22-23a  So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. ²³ For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry… NKJV

Matthew 7: 7-8 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

 We should take time to cast our cares upon Jesus because He cares for us. We should take time to cast away and get rid of the hate and bitterness that we have upon the Lord. When people allow their pride and self-focus to lead their actions it is difficult for them to submit to God’s word and humble themselves before God.  It is when we humble ourselves before God, trust and obey His word that we are able cast our burden upon Him.  

We need to destroy all those things we have compiled, in our mind or in writing written, concerning the wrongs that were done to us and have lain before the Lord. This as an act of our can be a symbolic act of casting all our cares upon Jesus. We need to destroy these things so that the enemy will not use them against us and have these as reminders to us and to try to have us relive these situations by having us re-read or revisit our hurts over and over again. 

Now we must purge these things by giving them to God to rightly judge. As we go through this process of forgiving, we do not want to give old feels a doorway to come back with those same old hurts. If we destroy the things written, we cannot be tempted to go back or let them be used as a reminder.

Psalm 55:22      Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. NKJV

1 Peter 5:6-7 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, ⁷ casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. NKJV

God is faithful to give us the forgiveness we needed and we must focus on His word and His love for us. We have confessed the truth and by casting our cares upon Jesus as an act of our will are metaphorically up-rooting the anger, bitterness and casting our cares on Jesus.  Through this act of our will we are to letting go of the poison that was inside.  Jesus bore all these problems on the cross He paid the cost for all sin, and now He will take our concerns and give us His forgiveness. We can trust God who knows how to judge justly. We can only see part of the story but God sees it all the total picture. 

 I Peter 5: 7 Casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you.

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. NIV

We are to stand against the attacks of the enemy when those feelings and thoughts are brought back to our remembrance. We must declare out position and say, I have forgiven this and Jesus bore this sin in His body on the cross and has given me the forgiveness I need for this situation.  We stand on His promise because He is faithful to forgive and cleans us from all unrighteousness.

When the enemy tries to rise up and bring those thoughts of hurt, anger and bitterness back to our minds, we must remind him God has given us forgiveness.  We can speak out in a LOUD VOICE: “OH BUT JESUS DIED FOR THEM AND FOR THAT SIN AND HE GAVE ME THE FORGIVENESS I NEED FOR THEM”.  Even when our flesh screams for revenge we must scream back with praises to God and for who He is.  We should give praise to the Lord God Almighty for what He is doing.  God inhabits the praises of His people and our praise brings glory to God. Darkness cannot stand in the presence of light and the enemy must flee. 

We should recognize and understand the strategy of the enemy which is to try and bring that pain and hurt back to us but we can choose not to receive that lie.  Again, we must choose as an act of our will to praise God even if we do not feel like it or feel we have total forgiveness. It is a process and with most processes they take time.

God gave us a plan and method of stopping the enemy. Submit to God and resist the devil. It is one step process, when we submit to God, we are resisting the enemy and where God is the enemy must flee. We are to make this choice with our will and to decide to come to God and not be anxious, upset by doing this we are deciding to not allow the enemy come back and take what God has given. Every time these thoughts of hurt come to our remembrance we are to let those very thoughts be a signal to our mind to start praising and worshipping God and giving Him glory for what He has done. The enemy will soon stop reminding us of that hurt or the wrong because he does not want us to give praises to God.

The Bible tells us not to give place to the evil thoughts in our mind but to think on whatever is pure, just, praise worthy or of a good report, keep these things in our mind and thoughts. 

Philippians 4:8-9 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things arejust, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. ⁹ The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you NKJV

The enemy came and attacked Jesus with the same way he did with Adam and Eve, with questions of doubt.  He will always try and get people to question God’s love for them and their identity in God. The diffidence between Adam and Eve and Jesus is Jesus spoke God’s word of truth to answer every lie Satan brought to Him.  Satan was defeated by the word of God. Adam and Eve were saying things God did not say and using their own intellect and perceptions, the same trap many of people get caught in today.  

Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” NKJV

Matthew 4:7 Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

Eve added to God’s word saying they were not to touch the fruit, but God only said not to eat it, and Satan used that small thing to cause her to debut God.  Jesus said only what was written, not giving His thoughts or interpretation but only what the Bible said.  Sometime it is important to stand on the word of God, not what we think it says or our interpretation but state only what the Bible states because God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours.  We may not understand God’s plans but we can trust His love and His word to be true. 

The Bible tells us people will receive the word of God in different ways once they have heard the truth of the Gospel. Some people hear the word and their heart is like hard like that of Pharaoh who heart was hardened when he heard God’s word. Some people cannot receive the seed of God’s word because of the hardiness of their heart the seed could not penetrate and the enemy would come immediately to distract and take the word from them.

Others may hear the word of God and receive it with joy. They start operating in the little knowledge they have but they do not take time to get rooted into the word of God. When trouble in life comes at them and crisis of loss of jobs, homes and when affliction or persecution comes, they become offended and allow the concerns of what they are going through chokes the word out of their heart. Because they do not have a deep root in the word of God when the heat of persecution comes, they fall way.  

Then there are those whose hearts are open to the word of God. They seek God and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to them the word of His truth so that they may grow.  They grow in the knowledge of God by receiving the sincere milk of God’s word to grow by. When life comes to test their faith, they are not taken by surprise because they have the word of God in them to stand on. They believe in the word of God which tells them to stand and see the salvation of the Lord.

 Mark 4: 15 -17, 20 Some people are like seed along the path, Where the Word is sown, As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the Word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, they quickly fall away. NIV

²⁰  But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.” NKJV

When we set others free, we ourselves are set free because we are no longer chained to that horrible situation once we have released it, we are free to move on.

Forgiveness sets us free from the past and from the terrible and horrendous things.  In un-forgiveness we are shackled and in bondage to that person or situation being constantly reminded of the past. We keep reliving that same problem repeatedly and that problem or situation is always with us in our thoughts and mind. Our spirit can get so entangled that every time we think about the situation, we will get angry and upset.  Once we decide to set that person free by forgiving them, we also set ourselves free from torment. We are then free to live and to move on with our lives.  When we hold on to the anger, resentment and bitterness it destroys our body with sickness because the body was not designed to carry the poison of hate inside.

Just as God made provision to deliver us from sin, He provided a way to set us free from the poison of hate. He instructs us to cast all of our cares upon Him. Jesus came to destroy death, destruction and the poisonous venom that was spewed out on mankind and in the world because of sin. In His Body Jesus took on the sins of the world and with His Stripes He gave us healing. The peace and forgiveness we need He has supplied. This is the key to forgiveness. We must force our flesh and pride to lineup and submit to our will, which is to obey God’s Word and not let our feelings rule over us.

God will pay the just and the unjust. That is why He tells us to forgive because Jesus paid the price for all sin and God will judge all men according to what they did with His word and their faith in the completed work of Christ.  Our actions reveal our “will” whither by a conscious decision or by our unconscious floundering our choices are made known. 

We can choose to have faith in God and believe that we can trust His word because He is a faithful God.

Psalm 37: 1 Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the worker of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. KJV

I John 2: 2 And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Isaiah 53: 4-5 Surely He has borne our grief, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

We must understand that forgiveness does not mean the guilty will get by with the wrong they have done. 

Forgiveness says we trust God to handle the matter and we will allow Him to judge justly. We must believe God will avenge us and forgiveness does not mean the wicked will go unpunished or our enemies will get away without consequence. Forgiveness only releases us; it does not mean God has turned a blind eye to the situation and it has gone unnoticed. It just shows our trust in God is a righteous Judge.  God alone knows the whole situation and knows the beginning and the end. He will judge but according to His complete knowledge and His ways are not man’s ways.  Our responsibility to have faith in God and as an act of our will ask Him for the forgiveness we need. It is God who will take vengeance for the wrong done. It is not our job to make people pay for what they did, but we are to pray and seek God’s face for them and for ourselves.  We must let God settle our claims. If we try and settle the matter, we may do too much or too little and only God can handle it as the perfect judge.

Romans 12:9Dearly beloved, avenge not yourself, and neither give place to wrath: for it is written VENGEANCE is MINE I WILL REPAY SAITH THE LORD.

Isaiah 55: 8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 33:22 For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us.

This is not a sure cure for forgiveness it is a process that will help us move into that direction. Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness with the Word of God, saying “It is written…” and he left Him for a season. So, we should not be surprised if Satan come and try to attack us with those old feelings of anger and un-forgiveness trying to get us to go back to our old thoughts to try and try to enslave our minds. The enemy wants to try and get a strong hold in our heart and minds so to get us back to those old ways of thinking and hating.  

Satan uses the same tricks he used on Adam and Eva and it is the process Jesus went through in the wilderness.  Satan came three times testing Jesus tempting Him to try to get Him to fall. The same evil tactics are used today testing will come sometimes in separate occasions to see if we will lose heart but if we stand on God’s word, we will have victory, if we do not faint.  We can choose to think on the things that are good, just and pure. We can choose to stand on the written word of God just as Jesus did when He spoke aloud God’s word. God has given us the forgiveness and peace we need for those situations. We should praise God with songs, hymns or music and the world says that will silent the hand of the enemy.

Psalm 8:2 Through the praise of children and infants  you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger. NIV

Philippians 4: 4-5   Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.  

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