Posted on 01/02/2010 5:26:21 AM PST by freedomyes
Have we remembered that one of the ways of leveling the whole situation is forgiving the enemy? Jesus admonished His children: “Pray for those who persecute you, despitefully use you.” Jesus followed through with His own counsel: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
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Seem’s it is God That Forgives ,Ultimately, Only GOD Can....
I will pray for their souls. How’s that?
Not at all...you are spreading false Gospel!
Each individual must forgive those "who have trespassed against him" if he wants God's forgiveness.
A word on forgiveness, and if I may, an outline of praying for the enemy.
There is a very important ingredient concerning those you forgive..the transgressor must first ask for forgiveness.
Repentance must be sought first.
If you just want to forgive for the sake of your own well being, fine, but the person who wronged you must ask for it...then you are bound to forgive them. They’re only human.
Also, for those of you who tend to be hard on yourselves...you must forgive yourselves as well, or Christ won’t forgive you. You’re only human, and when you repent to God He forgives you and blots out the offense...you should too, and realize that honest repentance brings a kind of resurrection, and you may start anew.
God instructed us through Christ Jesus to love your enemy and pray for them.
Understand that your enemy is a child of God too, and He does not wish to kill their souls in hellfire, but He will, and you should pray, for God’s precious sake, That your enemies get some wits about them and begin to follow the right path.
We are warriors for God and he has many enemies.
Don’t go soft on us...loving your enemy sometimes requires correcting your enemy..that takes real love.
God Bless You All.
In conjunction with this post, please read:
FORGIVE AND FORGET—NOT
http://truthinconviction.us/weblog.php?id=P3380
Anger and unforgiveness devours ones heart and soul. Therefore you forgive others/love your enemies for you own sake...so that your soul is not blemished.
I can't recall any place in scripture that forgiveness of others requires their request for it. If you can, please let me know.
On the other hand, reconciling with another person (i.e. putting aside differences for the sake of a relationship) certainly requires contrition...but this isn't a matter of scripture, just good sense.
Pure baloney!
If you don't take it on yourself to forgive your enemies, that hatred (that's what it is) will dominate your life.
Is forgiveness the same as forgetting? Of course not.
Is forgiveness something that is easy or quick? Of course not!
If someone murders your family, you can either smolder with anger and have your life ruined by the anger OR you can start the process of purging that anger from your heart.
People are gonna hurt you in life...that's the nature of living. Parents are going to hurt you, friends are going to hurt and your enemies are definitely going to hurt you.
But it is up to you to deal with it and get over living a life wherein all your thoughts are dominated by blame (and that's what unforgiveness is).
God is telling us to "get over it and move on"!!!
God is telling us to focus on Him...not spend our lives nursing our wounds.
This can be looked at from a very different perspective than reward and punishment, both Earthly and Heavenly.
To do this, look at the idea of tyrants, victims and suffering. A tyrant is a person who oppresses others, and gains by that oppression. But tyranny is dependent on victims. An important axiom is that a tyrant *cannot* make another person a victim—only they can do that, by seeing themselves as a victim.
A tyrant can injure, be cruel to, oppress, even kill someone, but if they reject victimization, if they shrug it off, if they are indifferent to it, even in being killed, they deny *gain* to the tyrant. And this is where the miraculous happens. Oppressing others who refuse to be victims is exhausting. Resistance radically increases the amount of work and energy the tyrant must use, to the point where they can no longer continue.
This is more so, because tyrants are weak in the first place. They use tyranny to make things easier for them. With resistance, they fold and are undone.
And this brings up the concept of suffering. For most people, suffering in an indulgent art form. If they get a paper cut, instead of just putting on a band-aid, they agonize about the unfairness of paper and the world in general. They focus on why “they are being punished”. They pay far more attention to it than it deserves. Were they instead to just ignore it, it would lose all importance.
Someone once said, if there was just one thing Heaven would wish for people to do, it would be to stop suffering. It is their choice, and it shows a very poor picture of humanity.
And this, in turn, brings up the subjects of sin, reward and punishment. Most people think of sin as just that. If you don’t sin, you will be rewarded. If you do, you will be punished. If not by men, then by Heaven. As such, it just seems to be another form of “luck”, which is also rewarded or withheld by Heaven.
But this is not the only way of looking at it. What we call sin may create its own punishment. For example, if a mother tells her child to not touch a hot stove, it may be a good analogy for sin. If the child obeys, they do not burn their finger. If they disobey, they get burned.
In either case, it was not the mother who rewarded or punished her child. Nor was the hot stove at fault, it just *was*. It was the act of disobedience by the child that resulted in the injury.
So how does all of this relate to an enemy? It means that for your enemy to be a tyrant to you, you must cooperate with them, by being a victim. Unless you do so by just suffering, instead of resisting, all your enemy accomplishes is to exhaust themself.
Their punishment for their “sin” of tyranny is to use themselves up. So by refusing to play along, you do not stand in the way of their punishment. If you suffer and play a victim, you stand in the way of their getting their just desserts.
I do not suggest that this accounts for *all* sins, for indeed, Heaven may, at its discretion, actively punish as well those sins that it finds most repugnant. But this does clear the air of the petty sins of man, the mostly trivial complaints, the paper cuts, that most people focus on to indulgently suffer over.
When we are attacked and injured out of malicious intent and not for some injury we have caused, how do we respond? This is the sin that lingers for years. It is the cause of lawsuits, of hatred, of bitterness and of broken dreams. It causes the injured party to live with failure they can not overcome.
How, indeed, do we respond to malicious, undeserved injury? Add to this the additional pain that the injury is caused by a person who is trusted, even loved, and the effects of the sin drive a stake deep into the heart of the aggrieved. This is the sin Jesus spoke about. it is not the injury that is deserved but that which is undeserved He wishes us to pray about.
The hardest part of dealing with undeserved, deliberate injury, for a Christian, is recognizing and accepting one’s personal innocence. We each know that we do not stand before God in innocence, except for Christ allowing us to hide in Him. Yet this is different. This is undeserved, unremitting harmful assault done to us out of sheer malevolence. This is the nature of terrorism. How do we respond to this kind of evil?
It is one thing to forgive those who have sought forgiveness. That is a simple matter. But what about those who revel in the terror they instill? Howe do we respond to them? Jesus is very specific about this. He asks us to pray for them, He admonishes us not to return evil for evil. He ask His Father to forgive them knowing that they can only be forgiven by God if they seek His forgiveness.
We respond as Christians to those who injure us by “eating the sin.” We pray not only for God to touch the aggravator, we also pray that He will lift us above the torment of our attacker and not allow us to torment in return. This means allowing the world to win in order for Christ to have the final victory. Martyrdom is made of this kind of stuff.
To both of you...BEAUTIFULLY PUT!!! (and healing, too)!
“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
This is a tough one. I will not participate in any attempt by a government to take freedoms away from my family.
I’ll pass.
Did the people who put Jesus on the Cross really know who he was?. That might be why he asked for them to be forgiven.
this demonic obama shadow govt knows exactly what it is doing. it is demonizing america.
they need to be disciplined, not forgiven.
God will see to it that the judgment of condemnation comes upon every one of them.
may God intervene for the sake of his righteous remnant.
thanks by the way for your response.
makes sense
It is impossible to forgive an assault that continues over and over without end. You can pray for the person...but the forgiveness has to come from the almighty. Jesus didn't say he forgave his enemies who put him on the Cross...he asked God to do it. No one ever said if he did or not.
You not only did not read my post with any understanding, you insulted me. Apologize or get reported.
You have two hands and a brain that that God gave you to survive, use them or be devoured. The enemy does not play nice. People have every right to defend themselves and attack evil.
G.Campbell Morgan has a statement Like:
‘God formed Trees and metal and created Man with hands and a Brain.Man formed a cross and nails and hung God from It.’
Can any of Us Comprehend the Goodness of God or the Depravity of Man?
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