This sermon discusses the importance of forgiveness. It uses the metaphor of people carrying heavy packs filled with hurts, grudges, and injuries from others on their backs. It notes that Jesus calls us to take off these packs by forgiving others, just as God forgives us. The sermon references examples like the Amish community forgiving after a school shooting and calls the congregation to consider who they need to forgive on the anniversary of 9/11. It emphasizes that true forgiveness means forgiving limitlessly from the heart, as Christ forgave on the cross.
Drench yourself in grace as you spend a few moments each day in God's Word. Excerpts from Max Lucado's works offer insight & inspiration on topics that are relevant to your life and will help you connect daily with the Savior to experience the fullness of His grace. If you love the writings & teachings of Max Lucado you will enjoy this 21 day reading plan!
What next?! That is the question as we bring our Easter season to a close. For as we gather on this Feast of Pentecost our Scripture focuses on the “what next” in our call to discipleship. So what does that “what’s next?” look like for you? More importantly what doesn’t it look like?
Perhaps a bit of wisdom from a monkey, a fish, and a doorkeeper will shine new light on how to respond to the call to go forth and to be sent as the Father sent his Son…and it just may be easier than you think….
Encouragement for Suffering Women
-Annie Zac Poonen
INDEX
*. This Book And You
1. God is your Father
2. God is your Husband
3. God will save your children
4. God will be with you in death’s valley
5. God’s Name will be glorified when you are persecuted
6. God will deliver you from worldly sorrow
7. God will draw you to Himself through godly sorrow
8. God has a plan even in your physical pain
9. God cares for weeping women
CFC, Christian Fellowship Church, Christian Fellowship Center, Christian Fellowship Centre
Drench yourself in grace as you spend a few moments each day in God's Word. Excerpts from Max Lucado's works offer insight & inspiration on topics that are relevant to your life and will help you connect daily with the Savior to experience the fullness of His grace. If you love the writings & teachings of Max Lucado you will enjoy this 21 day reading plan!
What next?! That is the question as we bring our Easter season to a close. For as we gather on this Feast of Pentecost our Scripture focuses on the “what next” in our call to discipleship. So what does that “what’s next?” look like for you? More importantly what doesn’t it look like?
Perhaps a bit of wisdom from a monkey, a fish, and a doorkeeper will shine new light on how to respond to the call to go forth and to be sent as the Father sent his Son…and it just may be easier than you think….
Encouragement for Suffering Women
-Annie Zac Poonen
INDEX
*. This Book And You
1. God is your Father
2. God is your Husband
3. God will save your children
4. God will be with you in death’s valley
5. God’s Name will be glorified when you are persecuted
6. God will deliver you from worldly sorrow
7. God will draw you to Himself through godly sorrow
8. God has a plan even in your physical pain
9. God cares for weeping women
CFC, Christian Fellowship Church, Christian Fellowship Center, Christian Fellowship Centre
The women of Proverbs 31 Ministries understand what it means to search for encouragement and perspective during the everyday moments in life.
Now you can uncover God’s truth on good days or hard days, in the car pool line or the doctor’s office with devotions designed to meet you where you are.
This 14 day reading plan is built from the NIV Real-Life Devotional Bible for Women by Zondervan.
This is a study of Jesus being empathetic. He could enter into the feelings of others and feel compassion for their suffering and be motivated to heal them. He felt their pain as not other could feel it.
Iniquities And Sicknesses! The Lifting Up Of The Holy One Of Israel Even Jesus Christ! Now The Lord Is That Spirit! The Indestructible Gold! There Came A Time For Joseph! The Opening Of The Prison! God Devises Means That His Banished Be Not Expelled From Him! The Indestructible Gold, Can Never Be Destroyed!
The women of Proverbs 31 Ministries understand what it means to search for encouragement and perspective during the everyday moments in life.
Now you can uncover God’s truth on good days or hard days, in the car pool line or the doctor’s office with devotions designed to meet you where you are.
This 14 day reading plan is built from the NIV Real-Life Devotional Bible for Women by Zondervan.
This is a study of Jesus being empathetic. He could enter into the feelings of others and feel compassion for their suffering and be motivated to heal them. He felt their pain as not other could feel it.
Iniquities And Sicknesses! The Lifting Up Of The Holy One Of Israel Even Jesus Christ! Now The Lord Is That Spirit! The Indestructible Gold! There Came A Time For Joseph! The Opening Of The Prison! God Devises Means That His Banished Be Not Expelled From Him! The Indestructible Gold, Can Never Be Destroyed!
This Sunday we hear the familiar Gospel of the woman who was caught in adultery and about to be stoned. All the while it is a trap being laid for Christ. So how does the work of Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. dealing with gangs in LA shed light on what is this Gospel is all about? Check it out...
This Sunday we hear the familiar Gospel of the woman who was caught in adultery and about to be stoned. Meanwhile the Scribes and the Pharisees, keepers of the Jewish Law, are not very happy with all the attention Jesus is getting, so they a lay trap for him. What does Christ do? Does he focus on the sin or the shame?
The insight to what this Gospel is really all about is broken open by a Jesuit working with the gangs in LA. See what I mean.
With the calendar only providing us 3 full weeks of Advent, how have you been spending your time? What, perhaps have you been seeing…or feeling or doing differently? For Advent calls us to be conscious, awake, alert. Advent calls us to be open to how Christ comes to us every day. Advent calls for our participation by opening our eyes to our own brokenness and that of humanity. For Christ is there…just waiting and wanting our active participation. This week’s Gospel provides us three points which may lead us to a better understanding of what we are called to do moving from this briefest 4th week of Advent into Christmas and the New Year. What are they? Check it out….
Homily: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time A 2017James Knipper
Same pay for those who work a full day versus those who work only an hour? What was Jesus thinking? This is “Good News”?
Like many other parables, on the surface they seem to make no sense. But dig down a bit, and try to think more like my grandsons and you will begin to see and feel the point that Jesus was making…as he describes God’s generous love for all of us.
Check it out…
Find peace and balance through life’s hectic pace with practical and spiritual insight from God’s Word. Life is full of obligations, emotions, and relationships. Some are life-giving, yet sometimes the weight and responsibility of everyday life is heavy to bear. As wives, mothers, friends, and daughters, we need to know we’re not alone. When our days are long, and our nights are restless, it’s easy to think we should be able to handle things on our own. Or that no one struggles like we do. Be encouraged with this 7-day reading plan with insights from Lysa TerKeurst and the women at Proverbs 31 Ministries.
Homily: 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2017James Knipper
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Really? We have to love those that we fear? Those who are different from us? The ones who are strangers?
In the past few weeks there has been much written about the plight of the refugees. Politics aside, as Christians, we are called to live the Gospel…which is much harder than reading or preaching about it. So what does Jesus say in the Beatitudes? And how can Pope Francis, Brian McLaren and Leonardo DaVinci add some light on this hotly debated subject?
Check it out…
Adapted from a Daniel Devilder sermon https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/1-the-jesus-touch-daniel-devilder-sermon-on-miracles-of-jesus-98963?ref=SermonSeriesDetails
Homily: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2018James Knipper
This Sunday we celebrated the gift of love and marriage during the World Day of Marriage. So how does the gift of love and marriage tie into the Gospel of Jesus healing the Leper? Leave it to the wisdom of a group of 4 – 8 year olds to shed light on all of this! How do they do it? And what does that mean to you? Check it out….
Take the Bite Out of Summer. Enjoy less swatting and more of your yard this summer with Forest City Tree Protection\'s unique, environmentally-friendly Mosquito Control Program. All without unpleasant odors or disruption of daily activities
Grande\'s Italian Ristorante located at the NE corner of Mayfield Rd and Belvoir Blvd in South Euclid is now owned and operated by the Stephen and Supria Draviam family. They\'re starting a new Special Sunday Brunch Buffet, with proceeds from this Sun Jan 31st going to help the people of Haiti.
Homily: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Sunday 2024.docxJames Knipper
Countless volumes have been written trying to explain the mystery of three persons in one true God, leaving us to resort to metaphors such as the three-leaf clover to try to comprehend the Divinity. Many of us grew up with the quintessential pyramidal Trinity structure of God at the top and Son and Spirit in opposite corners. But what if we looked at this ‘mystery’ from a different perspective? What if we shifted our language of God as a being towards the concept of God as love? What if we focused more on the relationship within the Trinity versus the persons of the Trinity? What if stopped looking at God as a noun…and instead considered God as a verb? Check it out…
In Jude 17-23 Jude shifts from piling up examples of false teachers from the Old Testament to a series of practical exhortations that flow from apostolic instruction. He preserves for us what may well have been part of the apostolic catechism for the first generation of Christ-followers. In these instructions Jude exhorts the believer to deal with 3 different groups of people: scoffers who are "devoid of the Spirit", believers who have come under the influence of scoffers and believers who are so entrenched in false teaching that they need rescue and pose some real spiritual risk for the rescuer. In all of this Jude emphasizes Jesus' call to rescue straying sheep, leaving the 99 safely behind and pursuing the 1.
The Chakra System in our body - A Portal to Interdimensional Consciousness.pptxBharat Technology
each chakra is studied in greater detail, several steps have been included to
strengthen your personal intention to open each chakra more fully. These are designed
to draw forth the highest benefit for your spiritual growth.
The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian exile.
Lesson 9 - Resisting Temptation Along the Way.pptxCelso Napoleon
Lesson 9 - Resisting Temptation Along the Way
SBs – Sunday Bible School
Adult Bible Lessons 2nd quarter 2024 CPAD
MAGAZINE: THE CAREER THAT IS PROPOSED TO US: The Path of Salvation, Holiness and Perseverance to Reach Heaven
Commentator: Pastor Osiel Gomes
Presentation: Missionary Celso Napoleon
Renewed in Grace
The Good News, newsletter for June 2024 is hereNoHo FUMC
Our monthly newsletter is available to read online. We hope you will join us each Sunday in person for our worship service. Make sure to subscribe and follow us on YouTube and social media.
The PBHP DYC ~ Reflections on The Dhamma (English).pptxOH TEIK BIN
A PowerPoint Presentation based on the Dhamma Reflections for the PBHP DYC for the years 1993 – 2012. To motivate and inspire DYC members to keep on practicing the Dhamma and to do the meritorious deed of Dhammaduta work.
The texts are in English.
For the Video with audio narration, comments and texts in English, please check out the Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF2g_43NEa0
What Should be the Christian View of Anime?Joe Muraguri
We will learn what Anime is and see what a Christian should consider before watching anime movies? We will also learn a little bit of Shintoism religion and hentai (the craze of internet pornography today).
1. “THE CALL TO FORGIVE --- WHAT A COINCIDENCE!”
Matthew 18:21-35
Dr. Charles D. Yoost, Senior Pastor
I see it there. Don’t you? There’s a pack on your back! Oh, with your Sunday clothes
on, it’s not too noticeable. Don’t worry. It’s not obvious. But I can tell: you have a pack on
your back. You’ve got a lot of stuff in that pack. Sometimes it gets pretty heavy, doesn’t it?
Hey, I know. I’m wearing one, too. You know what I keep in mine? I store things there, just
like a squirrel getting ready for winter. When somebody embarrasses me, I jot that down, and
put it in the pack. When I am humiliated, I note carefully who said what, and that goes in the
pack. All my hurt feelings are stored there. Every little injury, each unkind statement, and all
the collected grudges of the years: they’re all in my pack. It’s getting heavy, almost too heavy
to carry. But I’ll make it. Just watch me. I can handle it. I always have. You can handle yours,
too. You have to.
My pack comes in handy. For not only do I use it to collect all the hates and cruelties and
injustices of my life, I also use it to dispense some zingers of my own. When I have a chance,
and I see you in a vulnerable spot, why, I just reach back into my pack very cautiously and get
out one the bits and pieces that have your name on it, one of the things you have done to me. I
take careful aim, and hurl that bit of poison back at you. My pack comes in handy. I never put it
down! I never know when I’m going to need some ammunition, and I wouldn’t want to get
caught off guard. I even sleep with my pack on! Oh, it wasn’t very comfortable at first, but I’ve
gotten used to it. I’d feel strange without it now. One afternoon as I was struggling along under
the weight of my pack, someone stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I gratefully accepted. He
noticed that I didn’t put the pack down, even though there was plenty of room in the back seat.
Obviously, he didn’t realize the importance keeping my pack handy at all times. Some people
just don’t understand.
Like this Jesus fellow. He says to take off your pack and let your shoulders have a rest
and see what it’s like to walk around without that load on your back. He says that there’s more
power in letting go of all that stuff than there is in hanging on to it with one hand and reaching
inside for little bits of ammunition with the other. He says that taking off the pack --- with God’s
help, of course, is the key to understanding the new life that he keeps talking about. It sure
sounds attractive: freedom from the weight of that heavy load; power that brings healing to
2. 2
relationships that have steadily deteriorated through the years. He says all this is a gift from God
--- giving us power and setting us free. I wonder.
What I am talking about, of course, is forgiveness: that basic experience that makes such
a difference to everyone and everything it touches. Forgiveness is the key to the Christian life.
It is the cornerstone in our relationship with God. It is the only way to get the packs off our
backs and begin living the full, free life that God intends for you and for me. The dictionary
defines forgiveness as “giving up resentment against a person or giving up the desire to
punish.” That’s what God has done for us. That’s what God calls us to do for others.
For every American, September 11 will never again be just another day on the calendar,
the day after September 10 and the day before September 12. From those who were grade school
children at the time, to those who are senior adults, all of us can remember where we were and
what we were doing at the hour we learned that terrorists had attacked our country that day in
2001. When we began planning for the fall kick-off, I noted that by coincidence, the big day was
going to fall on Sunday this year, the tenth anniversary of that horrific event. Then I looked at
the lectionary Scriptures for the day. As many of you know, the lectionary is a cycle of Bible
readings, designed to cover the major themes and events and stories of the Bible in three years.
The appointed Scripture for today is Jesus’ parable of the Unforgiving Servant. What a
coincidence, I thought! Then I remembered what I heard my friend and mentor, Joe Harding,
say many times. Joe Harding, the designer of Vision 2000 and many other evangelistic tools for
the United Methodist Church, preached here at Church of the Saviour on several occasions. Joe
used to say, “There is no such thing as a coincidence. What we think of as a coincidence is
really God working incognito.” Then I began to ask myself, what is God saying to us today?
What does God want us to do on September 11, 2011? Does God want us to take the packs off
our backs? Are we ready, are we able to forgive?
When Peter suggests that seven is the appropriate number of times to forgive a brother or
sister, he seems to be demonstrating to Jesus how much he has learned under the Master’s
tutelage. Seven is an important number in biblical numerology. It is the number of
completeness, as in the seven-day week in the Genesis creation account. We often set up criteria
before we are willing to forgive someone: he must say he is sorry. She must be willing to make
amends. But it appears that Peter is willing to forgive without any sign of repentance on the part
of the offender. Thus Peter demonstrates his understanding of a gracious and generous heart by
suggesting the unthinkable: offering forgiveness not once or twice, as might be expected for a
righteous person, but seven times.
Jesus, of course, has more to teach Peter. He begins by saying that though Peter is on the
right track, he is not there yet. “Not seven times,” Jesus says. Seven is a good start, but
complete love is shown by those who forgive without measure. Bible scholars do not agree as to
whether Jesus means “77” or “70 times 7,” but the point is clear: we should be so generous of
heart as to forgive beyond the ability to count. Those who keep score are, in a sense, not really
practicing forgiveness. They are merely collecting offenses, putting them in their packs and
allowing them to accrue until the pack gets so heavy that anyone would see the obvious need to
write the offender off.
To illustrate what he means by forgiveness, Jesus tells a story. In that story a king
forgave a servant who owed a huge debt, an inconceivable amount of money. In these difficult
economic circumstances, what could be better than the news that all our debts are canceled? No
more house payment, no more car payment, no more medical bills, no more credit card debt.
The debts are canceled; the ledger thrown away. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
3. 3
But the servant left that experience where he had received extravagant mercy, for the debt
was larger than ever he could hope to pay, and who should he bump into but a fellow servant
who owed him some money (a small amount by comparison), and grabbed him and ordered him
to pay up! When the poor fellow could not pay, the man had him thrown in prison. When the
king learned this, he called the man whom he had forgiven and had him imprisoned. “I forgave
you all that debt …and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant? “ Then the hard
words of Jesus: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive
your brother or sister from your heart.”
Did you read the fine print? Did you hear that last condition? Grace is offered. God will
forgive. But, in order to receive forgiveness, we must be willing to forgive others. May I remind
you that every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us.” God’s forgiveness of us is linked to our forgiveness of others.
Forgiveness is not a quality that comes easily to most of us. The wounds are too deep.
The pain is too severe. The damage is too extensive. So it is that the way of Jesus comes as a
challenge to us when he asks us to forgive those who have trespassed against us. Now if it was
just anybody saying it, we would have a tendency to ignore them. But when Jesus says it, it has
a different ring to it, for here is a man who practiced what he preached. Not only did he teach
about forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus practiced forgiveness in his own life. The
call to forgive that I want you to think with me about this morning is not a philosopher’s theory
or a social scientist’s formula for successful living. No, the spirit of forgiveness is a viable
lifestyle, demonstrated by Jesus.
A Sunday school teacher asked the class what impressed them the most about Jesus. One
little boy said, “The thing that impresses me most is when Jesus forgave the people from the
cross.” Intrigued, the teacher asked, “Why do you say that?” The boy replied, “Because I could
not have done it.” I’m not sure I could have done it. But Jesus did. And he bids us to follow in
his steps.
Peter Storey, who was our Myers Lecture speaker here at Church of the Saviour several
years ago, was one of the architects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
The world watched as apartheid was dismantled, and forgiveness, rather than vengeance became
the order of the day as that country began a new chapter in its history.
Eighteen years after the fact, a member of the secret police confessed that he had shot a
young man, then went to his home and dragged his father out of the house and shot him, in front
of his wife, and forced her to watch as he and his drunken friends dragged both bodies away. As
he confessed this crime, the horrified court sat in silence as the judge asked the wife and mother,
“What would you like to see done to this man?”
The old woman, who was both a grieving mother and a grieving widow, said softly, “This
man has taken away from me all that I had. But he has not taken away all of my ability to love.
I want him to gather up some of the dirt from where my husband is buried. And I want him to
visit me twice a month.” (1) This woman could have asked for revenge, but instead she chose
the path toward reconciliation.
The day the United States invaded Iraq, confident that the most evil and threatening force
in the world was Saddam Hussein, a worship service was held on the campus of Easter College.
Tony Campolo was the preacher, and during his sermon, he proposed that, rather than drop
bombs on the Iraqis to try to force Hussein from power, the U.S. should send ships to Iraq laden
with medical supplies, food and other items, dump these on the Iraqi people for free, and see