The Little Boat - a story of salvation

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Back in my Sundayschool days I was told a story that sticks in my mind to this very day. It is a story about a boy and his boat. That Sunday so many years ago, I remember the preacher came downstairs to the Sundayschool area to tell this story. You may have heard it told before as it is an analogy of salvation.

The Boy and his Little Boat                                               
There once was a boy who made his own little toy wooden boat. Day in and day out he worked on it carefully and lovingly carving it to be just the little boat he had imagined. He painted it a beautiful brown taking extra care with the various colors for trimming, and set it on the window sill to dry. The next day the little boy took his little boat out to sail it on the river. He admired it, how beautiful it was!,  and he watched it floating on the water. The boat began to drift farthur and farther away from shore and soon it was out of his reach. His precious boat was gone and this made him very sad. Would he ever see the little boat again? The little boat was always on his mind. Every day as he walked along he wondered if this would be the day he would find his little boat on the shore. He knew he would do whatever it would take to get it back home again.   One day while walking down the street, to his surprise and delight, he noticed his  little boat in the storeshop window. He went in to ask the storekeeper about the boat. Though the little boy had made the boat, the storekeeper insisted he would have to pay the full price for the boat if he wanted to take it home. The boy realized it would take everything he had, his every last penny. Was he willing to pay the price? Yes! The boy ran home and got all his money, every last cent, and paid the storekeeper the full price for the boat. The boy was overjoyed and said to his little boat - "You are mine, twice over. - First I made you and now I bought you though it cost me everything I had. You are forever mine."
The End.

We can plainly see that in this story, you and I are the little brown boat. God created each of us with his own special care - just the way He wanted us to be.
We set sail in our journey called life, and each of us have drifted through sin and have become lost from our Creator - our loving Heavenly Father. Each of us need to be saved and that is what Jesus did on the cross. He gave up His all - His everything to buy us back ( that is to redeem us ) to Himself. Now we are His "Twice Over" if we accept Him into our heart as Savior and Lord.

Ephesians 2:8
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Prayer to receive Christ as Saviour:
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, ( lost just like the little boat). Thank-you that you gave yourself to redeem me back to the Father in Heaven. I believe you died for my sins on the cross and rose from the dead. Help me now to repent of my sin, I turn from it. Cleanse me from sin. I ask youto come into my heart and my life and be my Saviour and Lord of my life. Thank- you Jesus for saving me. Amen

Grace To Forgive Others

2 Corinthians 12: 8-9 For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Forgiving the person or persons who hurt us deeply is hard work - it is a process and takes time. I say this from personal experience. Some time ago I wrote a blog post discussing forgiveness  - link to the post here - http://sharingthefaith-northernsparrow.blogspot.ca/2012/06/forgiveness.html

If you are like me and have been working forgiveness through your mind and focusing on getting it to completion, you will agree that as much as you want forgiveness toward that person to be complete, you feel inadequate in getting it done and in the depths of your heart you wonder if there is more "forgiving" to do in order to feel that completeness in your heart.

Since I have been in process of forgiving for a few years now, and I really want it to be complete, God has been gracious to me and revealed to me that I need His grace to do the rest of the work in my heart. I have come a long way but I am weak - He is my strength and He assures me that I can leave it to Him to complete the work of forgiving my offender in my heart and I cannot reach that point without His intervention of grace in my heart. With His grace He covers my weakness with His strength. Then in Him and through Him I am made complete. 

In my mind I see giving forgiveness as giving a gift to a person. I want to give the gift ( with my whole heart I want to give this person this gift) but the gift is not ready to give until it is wrapped in beautiful gift wrap. Grace is that gift wrap which provides completeness to the gift that I am giving that is I am extending forgiveness.

After the Lord had revealed this lesson in grace to me, He affirmed it to me again through the teaching of one of my radio Bible teachers. I praise the Lord for this! The radio Bible teacher said that sometimes the sin done against us by our friend (or whoever the offender might be ) is so huge that forgiveness is not humanly possible. The pain from a deep hurt can resemble post traumatic stress disorder with similiar symptoms ( nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, sadness, fear, loneliness). It is at such a time that we need Jesus to help us and He will! Jesus experienced extreme betrayal and from the cross and in Luke 23: 34 it says Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. When the pain is so huge, Jesus comes and takes over and carries the pain for us. He does the work of forgiveness through me in a miraculous way. Every time the pain surfaces and reoccurs in our heart we must turn to the Lord in prayer again and again and leave ourpain and hurt with the Lord.  His grace is sufficient for me.
1 Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
It is so important to be able to forgive completely since to live with these burdens of pain and hurt in our hearts are dangerous to our own health. Jesus wants to take all of our burdens and anxieties and replace it with His peace. He is the Healer of our broken hearts. In Luke 4:18 Jesus says - he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
Lets remember to constantly bring our cares to the Lord in prayer.
Phillipians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

What a friend we have in Jesus!

Forgiveness - What it is and what it is not...

Proverbs 15:13 A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.

The topic of forgiveness probably raises more questions than answers. There are two sides to the coin of forgiveness. That is, on one side we need to be forgiven of the wrongs that we have done and on the other side is that we need to forgive those who have done wrong to us. Jesus commanded us to forgive as He has forgiven us.
 Matthew 6: 14-15 says For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

 In this study I want to focus on forgiving others.

What is forgiveness really and what does it look like?

 If we were to honestly share about life, we would probably all say that we have been able to forgive many people for small offenses and hurts over the years and we do not even think about those issues any more. BUT most likely many of us also have had one or more big things that have happened to us, some one has seriously hurt, betrayed and offended us, a "dealbreaker" type of offense, and that is the where the question of forgiveness becomes the issue. As much as we would like to be able to live life again as if this event had never happened, we cannot and because we know we will never be able to entirely get beyond it, we feel like forgiveness is incomplete.

Sometimes when you watch the news and some terrible tragic event has occured, you will hear the victim's family say - "we want justice". It is within all of us to want justice to happen - " do the crime, do the time" is how we feel. But we also know that in many cases, even though a criminal is put behind bars for life, the hearts of the victims and the victim's family remain broken and in the case where a death has occured, the life of that loved one is gone and cannot be restored no matter how many years the criminal spends behind bars. Even with a verbal apology or a financial settlement, the heart remains sad and broken. So what is the answer?

 Part of the answer is that God, the character of God demands justice. As human beings, we are created in the image of God and that is part of why we want justice. Even a small child knows when "it's not fair!" So God is a God of justice and we can see what that justice required in that Jesus the only begotten Son of God ( the second part of the Trinity ) had to die to pay for our sin in order to redeem us to the Father. God required that kind of a sacrifice. We see it in Hebrews 9: 22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

I have heard many sermons preached on forgiveness and I believe that it has helped me to get a better understanding of what forgiveness looks like.

First of all, it does not mean that we forget. Even God doesn't forget - He simply chooses not to remember. To place the expectation on yourself that when you forget, then you will have forgiven is just not going to work. If a life changing betrayal and offense has occured, forgetting is not about to happen.

Secondly, Time will not heal the wound that has been created. To just think that we can stuff our problems in the closet or under the rug is not going to work. I saw this happen to a friend who was abused as a child. Years later when she got the courage to confront the man who abused her, he denied all wrong doing. Nothing was done to solve the brokenness and the whole issue got stuffed away again. We wonder what the final outcome of such will be when God's books are finally opened. Sometimes we may also think that if we busy our minds with all sorts of pleasures and do fun stuff and just not think about the problem any more, that somehow that equals forgiveness. I can tell you that also does not work either.

Thirdly, forgiveness does not mean that we are okay with what happened or that we are no longer sad or heartbroken about what happened. Nor does it mean that we are willing to allow the person who hurt us to hurt us again. It is okay to put up some boundaries and defenses in order to protect ourselves from such an offense happening again. In the old Testament in the story of Joseph, we see how he tested his brothers to see if they had changed and if they were truly repentant before he would allow his heart to be touched by them again.

Fourthly, Forgiveness also does not mean that there should be no legal consequences for criminal actions. God has put the authorities in place for the purpose of punishing criminals. The problem is that what God counts as a sin and wrong doing is often not seen as a criminal offense in the justice system of our country. An example would be drunkenness, abortion or the breaking of the marriage covenant through an affair etc.

Fifth, there is no point in waiting for the person who offended you come to make things right - to start treating you better or to apologize in such a way that it seems sincere enough that you feel better. The offender is not capable of realizing the degree of hurt that he/she has afflicted on you. The offense or betrayal that has occured is bigger than words. It will take consistant heartfelt restoration work on the part of the offender for you to ever begin to trust again and to start feeling better. We know from the story of Zacchaeus that he offered to pay back 4 times what he had stolen from people. In Luke 19:8 Zacchaeus says - if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

If something life changing has occured, only God's Hand can heal.
I believe forgiveness is a decision that I make. A decision that I personally will not punish the person who betrayed or offended me nor will I pay him/her back for what was done. I will leave all that to God. Vengance is mine says the Lord, I will repay. I decide that I will allow God to be in control of the justice part of what has happened. I come to the realization that it is not my place to do what God says is His part to play. I decide that I will choose to treat that person with kindness knowing that it is to God that account must be given. God is the only One who truely knows all the details of the situation. He is a God of holiness and righteousness and He alone knows what is just, right and fair. With my limited understanding, I am not able to determine the appropriate consequences to make a just and fair call. To get to this place in one's heart after a serious hurt has occured is a process and it takes time to work these thoughts through our minds and get God's perspective on the situation. It is very freeing to realize that God will deal with the persons who hurt us. God will do it in His own time. We do not know if it will happen here on the earth or if it will have eternal consequences but we leave that determination entirely in God's control. We must entrust ourselves to Him and believe that He is faithful to do what His Word declares.
Romans 12: 18-20 is a very important passage to remember:
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

Once we have come to the realization, that God will do the justice part, then we can begin to focus on HEALING. The Lord Jesus is the healer of our broken hearts. Psalm 147:3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He will fill the emptyness with His love and care. The more we are hurting and reaching out to Him, the more He is reaching down to meet our needs. In His love, He is longing to be involved in our healing. Daily, moment by moment, we can keep bringing our brokenness before Him and the healing we experience in this way is a direct miracle from the Hand of God! In Luke 4:18, Jesus says The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised

It seems to me that many times the Christian community and churches will put a huge focus on restoring the person who has commited the offense and will leave the victims to suffer and get through their brokenness more or less on their own. Somehow they think that if the offender ( whether it be through alcholism, drugs, sexual problems, money issues etc) they think that if the offender just doesn't offend again, then the problems have been dealt with. I do not agree with this. The hurts that have occured to the victims and other family members is huge and much more compassion needs to be displayed towards the victims and family members.

There is so much more that could be written regarding forgiveness. If anyone reading this has a good insight to add or a comment, please feel free to leave your comments. May God's healing touch be real in your life as you experience the healing touch of the Master's Hand! For further study on forgiveness, I recommend contacting James MacDonald from Walk in the Word ministries.

Overview of the Ten Commandments

A scribe came to Jesus and asked Him a question-- "Which is the first commandment of all?" So Jesus gives him the answer:
Mark 12:29-32 ...
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he

Love God wth all our heart, soul, mind and strength - put God first in everything and second - love others.
The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses are the basic instructions for living found in the Bible. We are not saved by keeping them. We are saved through faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross where He died in our place. But the Ten Commandments are still very important because they clearly and simply show us what God expects from a person who says that he belongs to the LORD. I would like to go through the commands and see what we can learn for our everyday lives.

So Jesus says we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. As we look at the Ten Commandments we will see these exact two points over and over again within every one of the Commandments:
So what are the Ten Commandments and where are they found in the Bible. They are written for us in Exodus 20.

Commandment 1
There is only One God - There is no other
Exodus 20: 2-3 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me

Commandment 2
Worship only God - God requires our complete devotion and loyalty that is 100%. We cannot be divided in our loyalty. We cannot love both God and the world at the same time. Loyalty demands obedience.
Exodus 20: 4-6 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Commandment 3
Keep God's Name holy and with honor. If we are claiming the Name of Christ and say that we are Christians and we still live in sinful lifestyles, we are not giving the Name of the LORD the honor that He deserves nor are we keeping it holy. Also we are not to use the Name of the LORD as a swear word to just to express surprise or horror. We are to honor the Name of the LORD keeping it only for Him.
Exodus 20: 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain

Commandment 4
Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Since the Lord Jesus Christ rose on the first day of the week, that is on Sunday, we now have Sunday as our Sabbath Day. It is a day to rest, and to focus on our Lord with more intensity, to be with our family, and to refrain from doing unnecessary work. We are not to work nor are we to have others working in our businesses on a Sunday. Things that are needed like preparing food or providing medical help or other physical supports for people must obviously continue to be done even in our Sabbath.
Exodus 20: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Commandment 5
Honor your parents - your Father and Mother Children show honor and respect to parents by obeying them, doing what the parent asks, and not talking back or lying etc. As adults we still need to honor and respect our parents which then looks more like a solid friendship with our parents and we take care of them as they become elderly.
Exodus 20: 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Commandment 6
Never kill another person. This includes things such as abortion and euthanasia or mercy killing. God is the giver of all life and only He is the One allowed to end a life. God does not allow murder.
Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.

Commandment 7
Do not commit adultery - This is a big one in our day and age. Christians are not obeying Christ in this matter. Men and women while being married are getting involved with another person, affairs and sex outside of marriage. Pornography and lust are also included in this commandment. God will judge those who take part in sexual immorality.
Exodus 20: 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Commandment 8
Do not steal - this speaks very clearly. We are not to take what belongs to another person. This even includes stuff that no one will ever notice such as pens or paper in the office.
Exodus 20: 15 Thou shalt not steal.

Commandment 9
Do not tell lies. Lies are used to cover up. The Lord says that everything will be revealed. There is nothing hidden that will stay hidden no matter how much lying is done to cover it up.
Exodus 20: 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Commandment 10
Do not want or desire anything belongs to another person. This includes many different things - job, possessions, house, car, money, fields, a woman, or a man,
God gives us all that we need and we are contented with His goodness to us.
Exodus 20 : 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

So we can clearly see that if we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will have fulfilled all of the Ten Commandments of God. If we are living with the love of Christ in our hearts we will not be lying to people or about others, we will not be living in immorality, or taking what belongs to others, we will not be killing other people. So we can see that God's way is truely the right and only way to live a good life.
God has given us these instructions in the Bible in order to help us to live a good life. God's Word helps us to have a more enjoyable and fullfilling life.