April 19, 2017 WWJWMTD by Steve the son of John

The ‘F’ Words of the Bible

#1 in the 3 Part Series,’Talking about sin’

So often a Christian thinks that it is their sin that is holding them back, but this is not always the case. Jesus was critical of His disciples for so many other flaws in their character—sin did not seem to come up often.

We need to keep sin in God’s perspective—It is forgiven! When we see our sin outside of what took place on Calvary then we open up ourselves to self-inflicting hurt and discouragement by allowing so many destructive character traits to rule in our lives.

When un-forgiveness reigns in our lives we become judgmental (a quality Jesus was always addressing in the Gospels) and unproductive by not doing ‘good works’. When we think we are so bad, “How could God love us; how could He forgive us?” we cannot respond to what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives.

God wants us to enter into the ‘forgiveness process’, the ‘making everything right process’ and the ‘drop the hammer on what Satan has done to us process’. We will not do this if we think ‘all is our fault’ or ‘there is not much God can do’ to change who we are.

Jesus had to affirm His love and forgiveness to Peter have His resurrection. Peter was considering giving up but Jesus said, “I have prayed for your Peter that your faith would not fail you.” It was Peter’s lack of faith not his sin (the denial of Christ) that was Christ’s concern.

Once again, it is our faith, or lack of, that God is addressing in our lives. When we give up, when we do not respond to God, when we do not act upon what God wants from us—this is the greater fault in our lives—not our sin.

God will not remember our sins when we find forgiveness from them, but God is going to judge us (White Throne Judgment) based on what we did or did not do with Him and for Him. Let’s be righteous by doing works of ‘faith and forget’, and I do say forget, about what God has forgiven.

WWJWMTD

What would Jesus want me to do?

Dr. Steven J. Wentland www.wwjwmtd.com

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