Pastor Jim Hammond | June 13, 2021

Recap:
Just how much has God forgiven your sins? Is it as much as you forgive those around you? Pastor Jim addressed these questions this past weekend as he continued his series, Christ Occupied > Self Occupied. Many times, we focus in on receiving our healing or other blessings we want to receive from God and we don’t realize that the most important thing is understanding how completely God has forgiven us.

Dive Deeper:
God has forgiven you completely. Your job isn’t to earn that forgiveness. Your job is to receive it. How do you receive it? You focus your mental capacities more on the fact that Jesus died for you than on anything you have done that could potentially earn God’s forgiveness.

If you don’t understand how freely you have been forgiven, you will have trouble receiving other promises from God. Your inheritance from heaven is much more than eternity with Jesus. Your inheritance starts now, because you have been freely forgiven of sins. Your forgiveness is free to you, but remember how much it cost God. God gave His only Son, Jesus, and Jesus paid for your forgiveness with His life.

Hearing how much you are forgiven and letting that truly absorb into your thoughts will free you to receive more from God. Blessings from God are not something you earn. They have been freely given in Jesus. He already paid the price; you just have to receive.

God has forgiven you fully. Receive it. Then, because you understand how freely God has forgiven you, give that same forgiveness to others.

Read More:
Hebrews 8:12 KJV
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

Matthew 6:9-13 KJV
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 ESV
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

2 Corinthians 8:9 Amp.
For you are becoming progressively acquainted with and recognizing more strongly and clearly the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (His kindness, His gracious generosity, His undeserved favor and spiritual blessing), [in] that though He was [so very] rich, yet for your sakes He became [so very] poor, in order that by His poverty you might become enriched (abundantly supplied).

Ephesians 1:18 Amp.
By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),

Luke 5:17 Amp.
One of those days, as He was teaching, there were Pharisees and teachers of the Law sitting by, who had come from every village and town of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was [present] with Him to heal them.

2 Peter 1:2 Amp.
May grace (God’s favor) and peace (which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts) be multiplied to you in [the full, personal, precise, and correct] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
 
2 Peter 1:5-9 Amp.
For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence), and in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), and in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love. For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). For whoever lacks these qualities is blind, [spiritually] shortsighted, seeing only what is near to him, and has become oblivious [to the fact] that he was cleansed from his old sins. … So I intend always to remind you about these things, although indeed you know them and are firm in the truth that [you] now [hold].

2 Peter 1:12 Amp.
So I intend always to remind you about these things, although indeed you know them and are firm in the truth that [you] now [hold].

Discussion Questions:
1. How many times have you found yourself so busy behaving to earn forgiveness that you didn’t stop and take time to receive God’s forgiveness?

2. Have you ever believed that God hasn’t forgiven you because you’re withholding forgiveness from others?

3. Have you ever withheld forgiveness from someone else? How does understanding how freely we have been forgiven help us forgive others just as freely?

4. Why is forgiveness from God and our forgiveness of others so vital?

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