SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/26/2017 10:57 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to
Philemon 1-7
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Philemon 1-7
Message of the verses: “1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved brother and fellow worker, 2 and to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints; 6 and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ’s sake. 7 For I have come to have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.”
What Paul is writing about in this short letter to his
friend in the Lord is all about forgiveness, something that our society that we
live in knows little about as in most cases we are always looking out for
number one, and we don’t care how that happens.
Forgiveness is foreign in our society as it is looked upon as being weak;
however Christians must forgive for after all Christ has forgiven us for
everything, past, present and future.
John MacArthur writes that if we fail to forgive there will be four
unpleasant results. “First, failure to
forgive will imprison believers in their past.
Unforgiveness keeps the pain alive.
Unforgiveness keeps the sore open; it never allows the wound to
heal. Dwelling on the wrong done feeds
anger and resentment and robs one of all the joy of living. Forgiveness, on the other hand, opens the
prison doors and sets the believer free from the past.
“Second, Unforgiveness produces bitterness. The longer believers dwell on offenses committed against them, the more bitter they become. Bitterness is not just a sin; it is an infection. The writer of Hebrews warns, ‘See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled’ (Heb. 12:15).”
“Third, Unforgiveness gives Satan an open door. Paul warns believers in Ephesians 4:26-27, ‘Be
angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not
give the devil an opportunity.’ To the
Corinthians he wrote, ‘Whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed
what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in
the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for
we are not ignorant of his schemes’ (2 Cor. 2:10-11). It is no exaggeration to say that most of the
ground Satan gains in our lives is due to Unforgiveness.
“Fourth, Unforgiveness
hinders fellowship with God. Our Lord
solemnly warned, ‘If you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you. But if you
do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions’ (Matt.
6:14-15). As noted in the introduction,
that passage speaks not of the completed, past forgiveness of salvation, but of
ongoing relational forgiveness between believers and the Father. It is a serious matter nonetheless to know
that one cannot be right with God if he is unforgiving of others. Forgiveness restores the believer to the
place of maximum blessing from God. It
restores the purity and joy of fellowship with God.”
There is some more things we want to look at in this
introduction that we will do in our next SD.
6/26/2017 11:21 PM
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