[Sermon Notes]

Title: “Forgiveness” (Discipleship 3)

Text: Matthew 7:7-10

10. Forms of Forgiveness
20. Food for Tomorrow

[7] “Ask, and it will be given to you by God. Seek, and you will find, and it will be given to you. Knock on the door, and it will be opened to you. [8] For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds; and to everyone who knocks it will be opened. [9] What man among you, when his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone, [10] or when he asks him for fish, will give him a snake? (Matthew 7:7-10)

[Sermon manuscript]

Title: “Forgiveness” (Discipleship 3)

1. What & Who are you thankful for this week?

11. United Family Retreat

“I cannot fill your cup. But I can empty mine.”

“Happiness is the result of adopting God's view over ours, as ours”

“Uncertainty of tomorrow reveals our need for the God of tomorrow for today.”

12. “Inviting Life with the Gospel” Life Study Seminar

“Happy Life” -> “Life of Invitation with the Gospel” -> “Life of Life”

Ensure that “biblical division of labor” occurs in Life Studies

“We speak by our fruits”

4 pillars of house church (spirit resembling biblical values)

- 4 pillars (spirit) (soul-saving discipleship / watching and learning principle / biblical ministry sharing / servant leadership)

- 3 Pillars: Ranch, Life Study, Sunday Unity Worship

- Leadership of the Senior Pastor: The three pillars must be balanced and in motion. To do this, he or she must provide leadership that keeps the spirit of the four pillars permeating each of the three pillars.

- Obedience training, service training, prayer training

- Eternal reward: Pursue faithfulness (loyalty), not success. Thus, we build the kingdom of God.

2. Review last Sunday's message

Love is related to will (choice). Believers make a lot of choices, but they are not using their will for the essential things they should be choosing as believers. (Sotomayor)

The Trinitarian God is the one who always chooses, with the highest passion and will, “to be God.” So God is love. The Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, loves and listens to each other.

For a Christian to live as a disciple of Jesus is to aspire to “what I am growing to be” and to use the will to choose what to choose and to discard what to discard. And the church, the community of Christ's disciples, is also to grow in Christ as it seeks to answer the question, “What does God want the church to look like?”

Love is involved in the choice to grow as a believer. Love unites faith and hope. God always has a river-like flow in the life of the believer that leads the believer to grow. It is the life of a disciple who chooses to commit his life to the flow of God's leading.

10. the food of forgiveness

11. the food we need

In today's passage from Matthew 7, a child asks for bread, and no parent gives him a stone. Imagine a child who is satisfied with the bread his parents give him.

Disciples are those who seek “the food of truth.” Disciples' lives are characterized by sharing not only physical food, but “food of truth” that honors the human dignity of the other person.

12. Flowing

After I graduated from college, I served as a missionary organizer. I was able to dedicate myself as a staff member after completing a training called DTS (Discipleship Training School). One of the characteristics of this organization is “Flowing”. Flowing is a discipline where the believer listens to God's voice through the Holy Spirit. When a believer sees the need of someone in their circle or realizes the voice of God, they share some of their resources (money, gifts) with that person. Most of them were poor, so it was not a lot of money, but by sharing with each other, they not only met each other's needs, but were blessed with a deep appreciation of God's love and the love of the community.

13. Love involves the use of our will.

With the “desire for us to be us” and the “desire for me to be me,” what are the willful choices a disciple must make?

First is forgiveness. The believer must continue to practice the discipline of forgiveness.

Second is holiness.

14. forgiveness

Forgiveness is central to the life of Jesus and the essence of a gracious and merciful God.

Forgiveness is a holy way of restoring the dignity of human beings that God desires.

Forgiveness is a holy way to restore the human dignity that God desires, because it is a mutual exchange of life and truth.

14-1. Why we need to practice forgiveness

Nevertheless, it is not truly easy for a believer to live a life of forgiveness or to ask someone for forgiveness.

This is because people want to defend and protect their own dignity.

The prayer that Jesus taught is a prayer for daily bread, followed by a prayer of forgiveness. Just as the hungry son asks his father for bread and receives it and is filled, so the prayer of forgiveness and a life of forgiveness is meant to receive the gift of human dignity as a gift from God.

15. Training to step out of our comfort zone

Forgiveness is a discipline because it pushes both the forgiver and the forgiven out of their comfort zone.

Forgiveness displays the “helplessness of God,” and so does the believer's forgiveness.

Helplessness is the recognition that I cannot live without someone's words of forgiveness, nor can I fulfill my mission of being myself without the healing of those I have hurt.

“Neither the forgiver nor the forgiven possesses the power to let go of the past and face the future alone; both realize that their own pasts, stained with so much darkness and hurt, now need to be healed, and only then can they live more fully with each other and with the other's help.”

16. “Please like me”

Receiving the gift of true humanity through forgiveness goes hand in hand with Jesus' command to love one another.

May we be a loving WorshipFrontier community that acknowledges and welcomes each other's presence and confesses that through the other we can grow into beings of true dignity.