Posts Tagged "forgive"
My Name is Gossip
“But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.” (1Pe 4:15 KJV)
Many years ago the Moody Church News carried a humorous story about a woman in a small town who was known for being a gossip. One day on vacation she visited the offices of The Chicago Daily News. She was wearing a white dress and inadvertently leaned against a wall where a freshly printed copy of the front page was hanging. It was a hot, humid day, and some of the print came off on the back of her white dress. Later as she walked down the street to meet her husband, she noticed that people walking behind her were snickering. When she reached the place where her husband was waiting, she asked him if there was anything on her back that shouldn’t be there. As she turned around, he read the large black reversed letters: sweN yliaD (Daily News). Realizing the appropriateness of the words, he said, “No, dear, nothing’s on your back that doesn’t belong there.”
I am more deadly than the screaming shell of the cannon. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts, and wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is Gossip. ~Morgan Blake~
I have wished a million times I had not “passed on pertinent information” (gossip) that was told to me by a friend I trusted. Even if it had been true, I know now that I should have not passed on. I was not part of the problem or the solution… I should have kept my mouth shut! God forgave me, friends did, too, but the damaged caused has never been corrected.
Read MoreJesus Says You Should Forgive because God has Forgiven You
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.“ (Matt 6:12 KJV)
Seventy times seven
There never can be an end to your forgiving because there never can be an end to your need of God’s forgiveness. Be ungracious to someone…and the next minute you will find yourself having to say, “Pardon me,” to someone else, and feeling small. Watch the way it goes. Much more, refuse to forgive someone; very soon you will find yourself needing God’s forgiveness and unable to get it.
Even as I had pity on you
How great His mercy to us. We cannot compute our debt. If we lived more in the mood of thankfulness, we should be so conscious of our canceled ten-thousand-talent debt that we should delight in forgetting the hundred pence our neighbor owes us. When our salvation becomes commonplace to us, our hearts will become hard.
From our hearts
Every hurt that comes is an opportunity to be like Christ. But the opportunity comes disguised; all we see, for the pain, is the injustice of it. Don’t use part of the Atonement only. Let Jesus carry your hurts as well as your sins. [Study Matt 18:21-35]
Tremendous Power in United Fellowship
“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.“ (Matt 18:19 KJV)
Your prayer on earth rings a bell in heaven; rather, it pushes a button that releases power from heaven. Something happens every time you pray-unless a barrier between you and your brother blocks the current. Fellowship is just that important. If the circuit is cut, the circuit of Christ…your brother…you, you had better get to work at once on a repair job.
Prayer is a personal contact. It involves a strange three-cornered personal relationship which is: Jesus is with me if I am with my brother or my sister. When we get together He too is with us in a peculiar sense. Our relationship with Christ cannot be a self-centered, ingrown affair.
How sorely God’s cause needs prevailing, united prayer. How foolish, then, for us to let trifling differences separate us and hinder the flow of the Spirit in our prayers. The “agreement” that defeats the devil is no superficial, casual lip-asking; it is the outgoing of the depths of hearts that know only one desire…”as the hart panteth after the water brooks.” [Study Matt18:18-20; Acts 12:5-17]
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