I Can’t Forgive Myself– Lies of the Enemy #5– Purity 1017

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of a springtime scene of a field of flowers under blue skies comes to us from Megan Seguin, uh, who shared this scene on social media a couple of days ago during her family's family vacation's road trip stop at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Well, it's Friday, and I know this is the second time we are sharing from Megan's vacation this week, but I thought this was a good visual encouragement to stop and smell the roses as we head into the weekend. I know these are tulips, I think, but that also goes to show that we, we make the best of what we got and don't need everything to be perfect to experience peace and joy. When you walk in the Spirit, our peace and joy is not dependent on positive circumstances, and the fruit of the Spirit can grow in our lives even dark times when we are walking with the Lord and resting in his presence. But walking in the spirit is an intentional choice that we need to make every day. Every— have you ever wondered, uh, why some Christians are grouchy, depressed, angry, fearful, or joyless? It's because they have either forgotten what the Lord has done for them, don't know who they are in Christ, or have deviated from the Lord's path for them, and their behavior or their thoughts. And sometimes that deviation that leads to sadness, depression, anxiety, or anger is a combination of pride and the subtle influences of the spiritual forces of darkness, who Scripture attests can oppress even Christians with the fiery darts of the wicked one. That's why we have to walk in the Spirit and put on the whole armor of God, which includes girding our waist with truth and denying the lies of the enemy. And so today we continue our current series, which is an examination of some of the common lies the enemy tells us to cause us to doubt our faith or to choose not to follow the Lord with the way we live our lives. So today's big lie is lie number 5: I can't forgive myself. For those who tuned in yesterday, you may think we already covered this with I can't be forgiven. However, there is a subtle distinction between these two lies that is direct directly addressed in the Steps to Freedom in Christ and just happened to be discussed in last night's meeting of Deeper Walk International School of Prayer Ministry, uh, cohort that I am currently being trained in. Uh, this section, uh, this section's course of study is spiritual warfare, and part of last night's discussion addressed the stronghold of unforgiveness and how the enemy could use it as legal permission to torment Christians. The Lord commands us to forgive right in, right in and after the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6, where Jesus said, Matthew 6:12, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And in Matthew 6:14 and 15, uh, if you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. Here, the Lord's Prayer indicates that our forgiveness is a foregone conclusion for the Christian, and his instruction after it indicates that our failure to forgive could possibly separate us from the Lord. If you don't forgive others, you may be a false convert, you may not be a Christian, or you may be prideful, uh, the sin of Satan, and, uh, the, the, uh, and afflicted by demons. And Jesus's parable of the ungrateful servant When the master discovers how the ungrateful servant has had his fellow servant thrown in the prison over a small debt when he himself was forgiven of a much larger debt, the master makes him pay for it. And Jesus tells us in Matthew 18:34-35, and his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father also will do to you if if each of you from his, from his heart does not forgive his brother in his trespasses. Some have taught that the torturers could represent demonic oppression that comes from the foothold of unforgiveness. So what does that got to do with I can't forgive myself? Possibly a great deal. When we say we can't forgive ourselves, we are subtly saying that we are greater than God. We and/or the spiritual forces of darkness are torturing ourselves by denying the forgiveness that God has given us when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. We are in essence begrudgingly agreeing with our positional forgiveness—I know God forgives me—but we are denying the benefits and effects of God's forgiveness to work in our lives because of pride or by believing the lie that we can't forgive ourselves. Somehow our pain, guilt, or shame trumps the power of God in our lives. In reality, it doesn't. It can't. We are forgiven of everything when we put our faith in Jesus. But in practice, we are allowing our pride, ignorance, or believing the enemy's condemning lies to keep us from accepting God's forgiveness fully. To experience the joy and peace of the forgiveness we have in Christ. Step 3 of the Steps to Freedom in Christ: Bitterness vs. Forgiveness addresses this by directing us to forgive myself. The teaching in that step states, often we hold things against ourselves as well, punishing ourselves for wrong choices we've made in the past. Write myself at the bottom of your list if you need to forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself is accepting the truth that God has already forgiven you in Christ. If God forgives you, you can forgive yourself. So don't believe the lie that I can't forgive myself. If you need to break the bondage, break that bondage, pray the following prayer. And you would pray this: Dear Heavenly Father, I choose to forgive myself for whatever sins you did or failed to do because it made me feel you know, shamed, less than, worthless, or inferior, dirty, rejected, whatever. And then you pray, Lord Jesus, I choose not to hold on to my resentment against myself. I relinquish my right to condemn myself and ask you to heal my damaged emotions. Thank you for setting me free from the bondage of my bitterness. I now ask you to bless me with the peace of your forgiveness. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. And that's a modified, uh, modified version of the Step 3 prayer, uh, to address forgiving myself. Okay, so if you believed that lie that I can't forgive myself and prayed that prayer, you are agreeing with what the Lord has already done in your life. And to continue to experience the peace and joy of your forgiveness in Christ, you simply have to remember the truth of what the Lord has done for you. Truth overcomes the lies of the enemy, but we have to choose to believe the truth and keep on believing the truth and to live according to the Lord's wisdom to make the truth a manifest reality in our lives. When we walk in the Spirit, we stand in the truth, we overcome the lies of the enemy, and experience the abundant life that God wants us to live. For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple apologetics, uh, I offer apologist Frank Turek's website cross-examine.org, as I will do continually because, you know, I have limited time. And Frank's stuff is great if you want to, you know, be built up in your faith and just know that your, your faith as a Christian is something reasonable, um, based on logic and the truth of God's word. So we move along to today's Bible verse, which comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is 2 Peter 3:8, and it says, but you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: a day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. Today's verse points to God's timeless nature and indicates that we should cultivate the fruit of patience as we grow as Christians. I am sharing a link to an article I found this morning on a on this passage of scripture from, uh, the Christian Truth Center. Now I am brand new to this site, so I would be discerning and determining what they teach, as we should always be. But I was impressed with the following quote in the article enough to share it. Heck, they claim to be non-denominational, non-religious, and non-money-making, focusing only on Jesus Christ. So I don't mind pointing in their direction with the disclaimer that this This is not an endorsement as they are brand new to me due to a Google search. Uh, anyway, the wisdom they shared, uh, about this verse is that God is neither slow nor fast in accordance to humanity. This verse reveals that God is not slow in keeping his promise as humanity understands slowness, neither is he fast as humanity understands fastness, but he comes at his right time. Context bears this out. Um, that's end quote, by the way. Context bears this out. So I shared like one set, you know, a couple sentences. Um, so the rest of it looked like a good disposition, you know, exposition of scripture. So, you know, if you want to check that link out, go ahead. Anyway, uh, context bears this out because 2 Peter 3:9 says the Lord isn't really being slow about his promise as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. So, as the context reveals, Jesus hasn't returned because God wants people to come to repentance. When Christ comes back, he will come to rule and reign, and Revelation indicates that will be a bloody affair, blood up to the bridles. Yikes. Um, so we should be content to wait on the Lord, uh, in the end times and in our personal individual lives. If we believe that God is sovereign and is working all things together for good, we should endeavor to patiently endure through the trials of our lives, knowing that God is in control. So trust in the Lord for today and tomorrow, and know that he can be trusted for the next thousand years as well. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org, where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God, and, uh, we are in the conclusion of the book, and we're moving along in the conclusion, um, and, and I guess he addresses a couple questions in the conclusion. And today's question is, or, or first point, uh, let's see, he says, let's, let us take up these questions in the order of mention. And here we go. The question is God's sovereignty and the believer's growth in grace. So if you want to see how he concludes with that by addressing that, you know, God's sovereignty and our, our belief, you know, our growth in grace, go to mtforchrist.org to see what A.W. Pink has to say about that. You'll find that resource at the end of today's blog post, along with encouragements to join our Victory Over the Darkness, Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ series of discipleship classes that are available via the podcast or the M.t. for Christ 247 YouTube channel. In fact, there's playlists for our classes. Probably YouTube is the more convenient way to locate those, as I posted those quite a while ago, um, you know, on the podcast. Anyway, uh, if you, if you decide to start, you know, listen to my teachings, uh, that are based on Dr. Neil Anderson's work and the word of God and want to dive deeper, you can contact me at mtforchrist247@gmail.com to receive the class materials and share your progress if you want to be encouraged. So, um, yeah, so we encourage you to check those out because we found the teachings to be transformational. Um, you know, it's all about who you are in Christ. It's about the truth of the spiritual forces of darkness and how you can experience your freedom From Spiritual and Personal Conflicts Through the Steps to Freedom in Christ. So, um, as always, we, we encourage people to check out the links, uh, post. If you go to our website, there's one there. I think there's like 2 posts that are under links, and there's a bunch of links that, that point to different places on the web where we are, where we share our blog. And I think there's a link, there's a link for the documentary for Freedom in for The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, and I think there's a link for The Steps to Freedom in Christ, or you can just click on the label for Steps to Freedom in Christ and you'll definitely find one there if you need to go through the steps. You know, those things are all based on the Bible, so it's not surprising that we encourage Bible study. Our recipe for the path of Christian discipleship is to rise early, Do some gratitude. Thank the Lord for all that he's done for you. Reminding yourself, you know, remind yourself who you are in Christ, possibly by going through the Who I Am in Christ list that's provided by Freedom in Christ Ministries, and by praying and by studying the word. You know, you can do a chapter a day or as much as you want, the Bible in a year. You know, these spiritual practices build up our faith and renew our mind through the word of God. And so we encourage Bible study and a spiritual daily practice to help you walk in the spirit. Um, you know, how do you walk in the spirit? Well, you do these disciplines of our faith, and, um, and while you go about your day, remember that God is the creator and that he's moving all things together for good. So he's in control. This gives you peace and joy, and your life becomes an adventure as you recognize God's handiwork all around you and in your life specifically. And as always, like I said, we encourage Bible study. So what— how will we do that on the, on the podcast? Well, we share our topical Bible study that we do once a week with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti. You can find those on the podcast and YouTube channel under Bible Study with the Sincottis. And there's, you know, studies going all the way back to 2021 when we started the podcast and, uh, whatnot. So if you want to see what it's like for Christians to gather around and have an informal topical Bible study, we invite you to check that out. It's Friday, thank God, um, but I gotta work tomorrow, so it's not really Friday for me. In the grand scheme. But I can rejoice because other people are rejoicing, uh, that the end of the workday means 2 days off. Um, and that's another thing— we, we share the joy of people. Um, if you have bitterness in your life, you might not be able to share joy, and that might come from unforgiveness. So you can check out step 3 of the Steps to Freedom in Christ to forgive people, get rid of that bitterness. Anyway, uh, let's pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for all that you have done for us. Uh, Lord, the way you've come into our lives, showed us the truth of Jesus Christ, and encouraged us to follow the path of Christian discipleship that just happens to lead to peace and joy and all the other fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives. Lord, we just pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message, Lord, that you would come alongside them in their prayer request and that you would bless them in their walk. Lord, um, and we pray for you to go before us. We know you're sovereign and, and you're setting things up. And so we just ask that you would help us as we walk through it by showing us the things you want us to see and moving us in the ways that you want us to go, Lord, because all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom and share the joy and peace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ everywhere we go. With words and actions. Um, you know, we thank you, Lord. We love you, Lord. We praise you, Lord. We pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.