Baesics: The DevotionalSample

"Bad Blood"

One of the craziest stories in the Bible is a story about two brothers called Cain and Abel. It’s actually the first story about life after sin entered the world, and it ends up with one of the brothers going crazy and killing the other one!

Although we probably haven’t been through anything as intense as that, if you have been living on this earth for more than a week, you will have most definitely either wronged someone or been wronged by someone. It’s just part of human life, that we make mistakes and offend people, whether intentionally or not. This offense that goes both ways can either become a seed that can grows into un-forgiveness and resentment, or it can be dealt with at an early stage and forgotten. The Bible teaches us to “forgive others as the Lord forgave you,” and today we will be looking at how we can do that practically.

Bad blood can come to the surface both in friendships and relationships, but the tools to dealing with it are the same. The starting point is to recognise that our friend / girlfriend / boyfriend is not God! You may be thinking ‘well, obviously,’ but it’s so easy to unintentionally put other people on such a pedestal that when they make a mistake and offend us we immediately get resentful, as we have unintentionally expected them to behave like God! If we remember that all humans are fallen sinners, who will make mistakes, regardless of how much we’re growing to be like Christ, we will have grace for mistakes and be able to forgive freely.

Often, without even realising it, we set up standards of forgiveness in our relationships and start to think along the line of ‘I will be willing to forgive them until they do this.’ In these cases, some things become unforgivable to us; we put limits on our forgiveness. But it’s crucial that at all times we remember the cross, and the forgiveness that Jesus has extended to us. C. S. Lewis said that “We can forgive the inexcusable in others because Christ forgave the inexcusable in us.” 

When we remember how much Christ has forgiven us, we can extend forgiveness to those that wrong us. I’m not saying that we need to stay with our girlfriend / boyfriend however they act, but if we do not allow forgiveness to flow through us, we will harbour resentment and un-forgiveness, both of which will hold us back from moving forward to where God is calling us to go.

The world will encourage us to seek revenge when people wrong us. But the world will begin to take notice if we follow the words of Jesus, and turn the other cheek. It’s a countercultural lifestyle, and one that our friends will be attracted to!

FEARLESS DEVOTIONAL EP2B from Hillsong Church London on Vimeo.