God's Design:
In the beginning God designed relationships in perfect love. God intended man and woman to experience the joys of perfect love just as the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) did.
God created family like this:
- To be our primary place to learn
- To love and to be loved
- To belong and be accepted
- To be valued and cherished
- To teach us how to give and receive in relationships
- To thrive in difficult experiences
- To relate to different personalities
Foundations:
We love from the places we receive love. You can love to the degree you've been loved.
If you were designed in the image of God (which you were!) then you are designed to be a relater.
Does you life line up perfectly from how God designed it? If not, let's fix it.
-Psalm 49:3 - "My mouth will speak words of wisdom, the utterance of my heart will give understanding."
Unforgiveness and Bitterness:
Bitterness is not just a feeling of depression or the result of every wound or hurt I receive. I choose to keep that hurt alive in me by my unwillingness to forgive.
We may even need to ask for forgiveness for not being forgiving.
How we approach life is how we grow our roots and nourish them.
The fruit we produce depends on the roots we have established.
If your tree is growing with roots of resentment, anger, grudges, hate, bitterness, disappointments, broken relationships, etc. Then your fruits will be rebellion, stubbornness, wrong thought patterns, mistrust, questioning motives, etc.
When the fruit falls off we nurture the roots and build the tree up again. It's your choice what kind of roots you will have.
When the conditions are right and you set your heart toward the purposes of God, no one can stop you. Only you can prevent it from happening. We prepare the soil by inviting God to come. He wants to be our Father. He wants to call us His children. He doesn't want us to live as slaves to the things that destroy us.
Removing Roots:
Definition of forgiveness: "The pardon of an offender, by which his is considered and treated not guilty."
One of the most powerful weapon of the enemy is unforgiveness.
Forgiveness is NOT a feeling. Forgiveness IS releasing a debt.
What is a debt? A hurt creates a debt, we feel something is owed to us. Therefore, someone has to cover that hurt (debt). In order to forgive we have to decide to let go of that hurt even though that person hasn't asked for forgiveness.
Jesus is the One who taught us to forgive, who paid the debt, who can set us free!
How to live a lifestyle of forgiveness:
- Recognize- that you are bitter
- Repent- from your sin of unforgiveness
- Release- forgive the person
- Receive- receive forgiveness and commit to God not to pick it up again.
- Renounce- cut off the enemy's weapon of unforgiveness
- Replace- thank God for changing your grumbling heart to gratitude
- Remember- God has forgiven you from all your debts
*teaching by Gayle Keapproth
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