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Tag: forgiveness

Lord’s Prayer 3: Daily Bread, Forgiven Our Sins

March 21, 2013 /

This is part of an ongoing series on the Cornerstone Confirmation Curriculum we are developing at First Trinity Lutheran Church. (Main Confirmation Page)

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God asks us to trust Him for all our needs. He alone brings forgiveness of sins to us. We respond by forgiving others, even when they don’t deserve it or ask for it.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Read Exodus 16:4-5

  • Underline: the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day
  • Margin: Daily Bread

Read Psalm 145:15-16

  • Underline: you give them their food … You open your hand
  • Margin: God provides.

Read Matthew 5:45

  • Underline: For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
  • Margin: God provides for all people.

Read 1 John 3:17-18

  • Underline: let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
  • Margin: We provide for others.

God calls us to trust Him alone to meet our needs. The phrase “daily bread” represents all the things we need to survive (including food, shelter, clothing, and more). While God physically provided bread daily for His people in Exodus 16, we understand this to mean a daily trusting—God is not forbidding us to plan ahead and prepare for the future, but rather to remember that even our best plans are dependent upon Him. So while we plan ahead, we remember to focus on God as our source of supply, not our own plan. In addition, God provides for all people, not just Christians, but He calls on Christians to also provide for others as we love them “with actions and in truth” according to 1 John 3.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

Read Psalm 51:1-2

  • Underline: Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
  • Margin: God forgives.

Read Matthew 18:21-22

  • Underline: “how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
  • Margin: We forgive because God forgave us.

Read Matthew 6:14-15

  • Underline: but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
  • Margin: To receive is to give.

Jesus paid the ultimate price by dying on the cross so we could be forgiven. He alone is able to forgive our sins, so we ask Him here to do as He promised. However, we also ask Him to help us forgive others. Because God has first forgiven us, we are able—and should be willing—to forgive others. If we are unwilling to forgive others, then God will not forgive us.

Class Documents

 

It’s Not Ok, But I Forgive You

March 1, 2013 /

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“It’s OK.” Or maybe, “It’s fine.” Perhaps you’ve said those words to someone who has hurt you in the past. My personal tendency is to brush off the hurt and make it seem like it’s not a big deal. Sometimes, that’s true. But other times there’s a significant pain that accompanies the hurt.

“It’s OK” and “I forgive you” are completely different statements. “It’s OK” doesn’t even remotely capture the depth of forgiveness. Things aren’t OK, but we forgive anyway. What you did hurt me, but I forgive you anyway.

Jesus showed us the true depth of forgiveness that fateful Friday on the cross:

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34a

Imagine the difference had Jesus chosen a different response:

And Jesus said, “Father, it’s OK, for they know not what they do.” Not Luke 23:34a

Jesus, hanging on the cross between two thieves, chose forgiveness. He had been betrayed by one of His disciples, beaten, whipped, mocked, and made to carry the cross that would kill him—and yet He chose forgiveness.

What the people did to Jesus was not “OK.” The way we continue to choose our own sinful desires and actions over God’s will for our life is not “OK.” Our stubborn refusal to give up the hurts of our past and forgive others because they don’t deserve it is not “OK.”

And yet despite all we do and have done, Jesus brings forgiveness, and the Father grants it—not because we are so great, but because Jesus is so good. He bore the punishment we deserved, allowing us to share in the forgiveness and grace we do not deserve.

So what’s “not OK” in your life today? Give it over to Jesus, and hear again that prayer from the cross: “Father, forgive them.”

Confession and Absolution

January 24, 2013 /

This is part of an ongoing series on the Cornerstone Confirmation Curriculum we are developing at First Trinity Lutheran Church. (Main Confirmation Page)

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Key Theme: We have lived below God’s standard and deserve only death. But Jesus paid the price that we might receive forgiveness instead of punishment.

The Effects of Sin

Read Genesis 3:16-19

  • Underline: pain, pain, cursed, pain, thorns, thistles, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
  • Margin: Sin’s Fruits

Read Ezekiel 37:11

  • Underline: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.
  • Margin: Sin separates us from God

Sin is an everyday reality for us. Literally, sin means “missing the mark.” God has demanded perfection, and we have fallen short. Because God is perfect and holy, He cannot tolerate sin, and therefore cannot tolerate the presence of sinners such as us. The effects of sin are felt physically though pain, suffering, and even death. But there is also a spiritual consequence from sin. It is a separation from God, as if we were “cut off” from Him. Because of our sin, we are unable to have a relationship with God.

The Promise of a Savior

Read Genesis 3:14-15

  • Underline: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
  • Margin: Jesus!

Read Ezekiel 37:12-14

  • Underline: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people.
  • Margin: Jesus brings new life

Read Romans 5:8

  • Underline: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
  • Margin: God acted for us.

God was not content with the status of our relationship. He knew that we could not restore the relationship, because we were sinful through and through. But He knew that He could do it. And so God spoke not only judgment to His people, but also hope. He told them of the savior that would come to act on their behalf. He told them that He Himself would be the one to rescue His people. While we were powerless to do it, God acted for us.

The Forgiveness of Sins

Read 1 John 1:8-9

  • Underline: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
  • Margin: God forgives

Read Psalm 103:12-13

  • Underline: as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
  • Margin: Our sin is gone.

Read Isaiah 1:18

  • Underline: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
  • Margin: God cleanses us.

God decided to make matters into His own hands and restore our relationship with Him. But because God still cannot abide sin, something had to be done. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, lived a perfect and blameless life, but suffered the death that we deserved as sinners. We have lived (and continue to live) as sinners, but receive the life and relationship with God that Jesus deserved. God forgives our sin not because we deserve it, but because Jesus paid the price so we might have the forgiveness.

Class Documents

The History of You

May 13, 2008 /

A few weeks back, I hosted an Internet safety course for parents.  One of the reasons we have be serious about what our kids do with technology and the Internet is that your history never goes away once its online somewhere.  Try as you might, you simply can’t stamp it out.

Darcy sent me a link recently about girls taking nude photos of themselves and forwarding them to their boyfriends.  What happens when those pictures make it on the Internet and everyone at their school starts talking about them?  What are the long-term damages, nevermind the short-term ones?

Thankfully, our history with God is different.

Promise #3: Forgiveness

April 10, 2008 /

Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

No matter how stained we are, how rotten we feel, how bad we’ve screwed up, there is forgiveness in God. For free. Where do you need God’s forgiveness today?

« Promise #4 Promise #2 »

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