Experience the Forgiveness of God: Accept Jesus as Your Savior

Posted on by May 4, 2015avatar
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Jesus on CrossFor the past few months, I have been writing on the most common steps associated with The Grieving Process for adults. Those steps are: Numbness, Denial, Bargaining, Emotions, Forgiveness, and Acceptance.

Today marks the beginning of a series of posts on Forgiveness. For many people, when they hear that word, their thoughts turn to:

  • “Forgive him/her? Never! They don’t deserve to be forgiven!”
  • “Forgive myself? No way will I ever be able to forgive myself for the things I’ve done!”
  • “Ask forgiveness of someone I have hurt? I have never hurt anyone in my whole life!”

Sadly, these people have locked themselves into their own self-made prison. It is a prison that cripples marriages, friendships, and even chokes out a growing relationship with our Lord.

The only key that will unlock the door to this prison is forgiveness.

In the Greek, several words are used in the translation of forgiveness.
These words are: release, separate, to let something alone, to leave.

Sometimes, we need to take a look at the whole picture to get ourselves out of this self-made prison. For this reason, in this step, forgiveness will be covered in 4 different stages.

The picture of the cross reveals the 4 complete stages of forgiveness.

Cross

As you can see, those stages are:

  1. Experience the Forgiveness of God – Accept Jesus as Your Savior
  2. Forgive Others
  3. Forgive Yourself
  4. Ask Forgiveness When you are the Offender

So, I hope you will join me in this series as we take a journey around The Cross. Let’s begin today with Stage 1.

Experience the Forgiveness of God: Accept Jesus as Your Savior

Where did it all began? Why was forgiveness needed? How was this done? These questions can best be answered by briefly describing 3 relational situations that have existed between God and man since the creation of man.

First there was a friendship, then there was a separation, then friendship again. These 3 relationships can give us a picture of sinful man and the events leading up to his “Release” on The Cross at Calvary. My former pastor, the late David Berkheimer, gives the following account of these three relationships.

The Friendship
In the beginning, the world was created perfect and man was made in the image of God for friendship with Him. (Gen. 1:26; 3:8) While fellowshipping with Adam and Eve in The Garden of Eden, God gave them the keys to the whole world and said: “Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. There’s just one thing that you can’t do. Don’t eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for in that day, you shall surely die.” Death meant a spiritual death in which there is a separation between God and man without God’s presence to live in hell through all eternity. (Gen.1:26-28; 2:17)

The Separation
Satan came along and tempted Adam and Eve to eat of The Tree of Good and Evil. As they did, sin entered the world, causing the separation from God, and the perfect environment. (Gen. 3:1-4) Adam’s sin was imputed into every human thereafter, thus making all men to be born with the guilt of Adam and a bent toward sin. (Rom. 1:18; 3:23; 5:12)

Friendship Again
Man was now separated from God with no way in his power to restore the friendship. However, God moved quickly to reestablish the friendship. The first thing He did was kill an animal and “covered” Adam and Eve’s nakedness and shame with the skin from the animal. (Gen. 3:21)

The slaying of the animal was the beginning of the sacrificial system that was practiced throughout the history of Israel. It was a reminder that the penalty for sin is death. However, instead of the sinner being put to death, an animal was put to death denoting that man’s sins were “covered.” (Lev.1:1-4; 6:6-7)

This system allowed men and women to carry on a friendship with God again, but it did not provide a permanent solution to the sin problem. Why? Because God’s character is holy and sinful man are incompatible. God could not just “cover-up” sin. Some type of justice had to be served.

This is where Jesus entered the picture.

JUSTICE: The depth of God’s love for mankind is revealed by the extreme action for justice that He used. He gave His son, Jesus, to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10)

Propitiation means that the wrath of someone who has been unjustly wronged has been satisfied. All God’s righteous wrath for sinful man was poured out on Jesus. It removed God’s anger from man.

To get the full impact of what Jesus did for us, think about The Prodigal Son. When the Prodigal Son came back, his father didn’t make him a servant, he gave him back everything. The older brother didn’t understand that. He didn’t mind him coming home, but he didn’t understand his father giving him back everything.

If the Prodigal Son had received a lower status, the other son would probably have not gotten mad. But the Father didn’t just pardon him, He brought him into fellowship—now you are one of the family.

And that’s the way it is with us. He didn’t just pardon us, He released us, which in essence says two things:

  1. You don’t owe me. My son, Jesus paid your sin debt in full. Justice has been served. It’s just as though you never sinned.
  2. I also restore your full privileges as my child.

This Friendship (Reconcilation) Must be Received
The ball was now back in man’s court. The work was finished; now man must receive this spiritual birth and enter into fellowship with God through his son Jesus.

And that, my friend, is where we make it so hard. Years sometimes pass before one receives God’s Friendship (Reconcilation) and accepts Jesus Christ as their Savior. Why? I guess people have all kinds of excuses like I did.

I had grown up in church, but it wasn’t until I was in my late 20’s that I accepted Jesus as my Savior. But I found, it is really so simple to do.

Listen in to this conversation.

“I want to ask Jesus into my heart,” the little girl told her older sister who had just finished telling her the story of Jesus on The Cross. My heart raced as I sat listening to Crystal, 9 years old, lead her bouncy 5 year old sister, Heather, to the Lord. When the prayer for salvation had been completed, Crystal told her little sister: You know what, Heather? The Angels in Heaven are singing like crazy!”

Many years later, tears still come to my eyes as I recall the memory of watching my two little girls fellowshipping with God.

Crystal and Heather

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior—

Why not in childlike faith ask
Jesus into your heart
and —
Let the angels sing for you!

God’s Plan of Salvation:

  1. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God – Romans 3:23
  2. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house – Acts 16:31
  3. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness – 1 John 1:9

Prayer: “Lord Jesus, I know you love me, because you died on the cross bearing my sins. Thank you, Lord, for revealing to me my lost, sinful condition. I confess that I am a sinner, dead in sin, and cannot save myself. I do now by faith, gladly accept you as my personal Savior, and thank you, Lord, for eternal salvation. Amen.”

Join Hannah and me next week as we keep traveling around The Cross to Forgiving Others. Hold onto your seats; we are in for a ride, howbeit a good ride.

From Childhood to Adult: The Grieving Process

Posted on by April 28, 2015avatar
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Helping Hurting ChildrenFor the past few months, I have been writing on the steps most commonly associated with The Grieving Process for Adults. Those steps include: Numbness, Denial, Bargaining, Emotions, Forgiveness, Acceptance. I recently spent several weeks on Emotions, the bulk of The Grieving Process.

Before going on to the Forgiveness Step, I would like to pause this week and introduce you once again to the book I published in 2013 for children, Helping Hurting Children: A Journey of Healing.

My main purpose in writing this book came out of years of teaching adult classes on grieving at my local church.  I began to see a pattern emerge from women and men who came into the class to grieve through a current loss. I witnessed them come to the realization that, not only did they need healing from a current loss, but they also realized some of their childhood hurts had not been resolved from long years ago. With that discovery, I began to see the importance of building a foundation for children at an early stage in life to help them cope with losses.

As I began researching grief in children in an effort to write the book, I discovered that children are often over-looked during a time of loss and the pain that accompanies it. Why?

In his book, entitled, Recovering from the Losses of Life, by H. Norman Wright, he states 3 possibilities why children are overlooked:

  1. Sometimes adults, unintentionally, get caught up in their own pain and they fail to recognize that their child is also hurting.
  2. Often times, a child’s pain is overlooked because children do not express their pain in ways adults recognize.
  3. “Probably the #1 reason children are overlooked during times of loss is because the primary adult in the child’s life just simple doesn’t know “how to help the child.”

Those three sentences set the wheels of my passion for helping hurting children on fire. I became determined to put into the hands of parents, grandparents, children’s ministers, school officials, lay counselors, and any caring adult a hands-on-tool to implement the fundamental principles needed in helping a child find healing from the emotional scars of losses.

And so, if you would like to join me in this crusade and get involved, click onto Suggestions for Utilizing Children’s Workbook (PDF) to see how you can get involved.

May we all work together to become the catalyst in helping a child grow into adulthood free of hurts from his childhood.

Help Hurting Children

Join me next week where I will continue with the next step in Grieving Process for Adults: Forgiveness.

Balancing the Scales of Negative and Positive Emotions

Posted on by April 20, 2015avatar
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Hannah ScalesBlessed are those who mourn (grieve) for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4.)

That little word grieve has a simple definition, which is to feel or express sorrow. Think about it: without feeling and expressing sorrow, there can be no comfort. So, is it any wonder why Jesus made it a part of His famous Sermon on the Mount?

And that is what my website is all about: helping children and adults walk through the steps most commonly associated with grieving. Those steps are, which come in no particular order are: Numb, Denial, Bargaining, Emotions, Forgiveness, Acceptance.

For the past few weeks, we have tackled the step on Emotions, which is often called the bulk of the grieving process. Perhaps it is often labeled as such because there is so much misunderstanding about emotions, particularly when it comes to negative emotions.

I, for one, went for years holding onto hurts in my life because I was afraid of expressing what was really going on inside of me. After all, I was a Christian, and my thought was “good Christians shouldn’t be feeling what I was feeling.” And oh yes, I certainly didn’t want anyone to know for fear of what they would think of me. I even thought I could hide my feelings from God. Isn’t that a laugh!

These misunderstandings about negative emotions can even bring confusion within the church world. In a post a couple of weeks ago, my guest writer, Lynette Duquette, said it well, and I quote:

Why, when someone comes to us with their sorrow, their anger, their sadness, do we not validate them? “You shouldn’t feel like that” is one of the most hurtful things you can say to someone. They may have every right to feel that way! Are we trying to produce Christian drones who walk around with no feelings? Why? So others will think we have it all together? That is not living an honest life. It is not living in reality. Can our emotions be misdirected? Yes. However negative emotions are our internal warning system that something is wrong. If we want people to come to know Christ, they need to know they can be angry, depressed, hurt, scared, or with any other emotion they might be experiencing at the time. Can God heal them and help them work through it? Absolutely!

I conclude by saying:

  • Feelings are an essential part of living. God gave them to us and they serve as a gauge to tell us when something is right or wrong. But, when feelings are not dealt with properly, they can cause us to react in sinful ways that create more painful consequences in our lives.
  • So, it’s okay what you are feeling. What you do with those feelings is what involves wrong. Learning ways to manage the negative emotions less they go out of control and cause more hurt, is what we must learn to do.

Express Your Positive Feelings

I want to conclude the emotion step on grieving with expressing positive feelings. You know, often when we are going through a hard time, we see nothing but the dark tunnel we are in. That is the way it was as the children of Israel passed through the wilderness on their way to Canaan.

But, often times during their journey, they were instructed to build a memorial as a reminder to them of God’s faithfulness to them on their journey to Canaan.

Despite the hard times we sometimes have, we know that God is with us. Now is a good time to express those positive feelings for what God has done for you. Think of specific scriptures that have touched you or times that God has used certain people to comfort you during difficult times.

This will help you to balance the scales of your negative feelings with your positive feelings.

scales