Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to Walk the Walk. This week's podcast is on page 12. If you're following along in the journal Jesus Helped Me Do Better my personal faith and reflection journal, if you're following along again, we're on page 12. And this week we're going to talk about what does Jesus' love and forgiveness mean to you, and have you ever really truly experienced one or both of these? I hope you have.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Asking for forgiveness isn't just about saying forgive me, lord. I know sometimes some of us will do a pre-forgiveness like forgive me, lord, for what I'm about to say. Yeah, I think I've even done that a couple of times myself. But that's just part of the process of asking for forgiveness. The other part of it is asking God to give you the strength that you need If you're asking him to forgive you of a sin that you've been involved in. Sometimes people love those sins and, you know, ask for forgiveness when they feel a little bit guilty and they know in their mind I love this too much to give it up. But now that I've done it, I'm going to ask for forgiveness and we'll see how things go. Sometimes people just do that just to make themselves feel a little bit better, but we need to ask God for his strength, because we want to change. We don't want to fall back into that again. At least that's what we're supposed to do. I want to change from the inside out. I don't want to just change and be like, well, you know, I ask God to forgive me and, you know, wipe my hands clean and I'm done. Once we ask for forgiveness, jesus does his part, and his part is that he forgives us as soon as we ask. But again, we have to do our part, and that's truly wanting to change.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Remember, you are saved because of him, not of how fast you confess every mistake. Some people say well, what if I sin and then I die and I don't get a chance to ask God to forgive me of my sin? Well, listen, god knows your heart, he knows who you've been. If you've been somebody that you know has been faithful and you are faithful you know it's not going to be. He died for every sin, but the last one you didn't get to confess and then off to hell you go. That's not how it works. So remember again, we are saved because of him and not how fast you confess your mistakes. And the beauty of all this is because Jesus is perfect. We too are perfect. These are for all of us who has accepted him as our Lord and Savior.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Let me explain to you in my mind how I think this, how it's going to happen when we stand before God. Because if you're a sinner excuse me if you are saved and not as well, you are a sinner. So I guess that's correct. You are a sinner, but you're a saved sinner. I don't know if I've ever said it like that before, but if you're a saved sinner and you've accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, when you go to heaven you stand before God, but you will not stand alone. Jesus will stand with you, and in my mind I'm thinking you know what? Jesus will probably stand between me and God. So when God's looking at me, he's looking at Jesus, and when Jesus talks to God on my behalf, he's going to say look, she's saved and she tried to live her life according to the way that we wanted her to.

Speaker 1: 4:00

If you've read my book Christianity Made Simple, it explains that process. It's not a long, tedious explanation, but it does give you a quick explanation about who God is, who Jesus is and who the Holy Spirit is and the whole thing between God and Jesus is that God listens to what Jesus has to say about us. That's for those of us who have accepted him as our Lord and Savior, forgiveness is about God choosing to remove the penalty of our sin because Jesus paid the price. Remember forgiveness is free to us, but not free to Jesus. It cost him his life. Even though we broke his heart, he chose to heal ours. I can't imagine that.

Speaker 1: 4:56

In Romans 8.1, it says there is now no condemnation, which is same thing as saying guilt. For those who are in Christ Jesus. It means for those who've accepted him as their Lord and Savior, we're no longer judged guilty by God, not sentenced to death, not disqualified from God's love. Jesus's love is without conditions. Think about this you don't put conditions on your family members. You don't say Listen, if you quit smoking, I will love you more. You don't say to your small children Now, if you stop sucking your thumb, I will love you more. We don't put conditions on love. At least we shouldn't. I hope you're not doing that. God does the same thing for us. He knows we are sinners and he knows that you know. How many times does it say that he will forgive us for the same sin 70 times 7? I don't think. That's an exact like 490. Okay, chuck, we're at 400. Chuck, we're at 401. No, that just shows an infinite amount of time.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Now I don't think God likes the idea that, oh, you know what, I'm going to go out today and I'll do this and I'll do that, but I know when I'm done I'll just ask for forgiveness and carry on. Kind of wipe your hands. That's not how this works. God knows your heart, he knows when you're playing around, he knows when you know what. You're not being serious about this. You need to take it seriously. And it doesn't matter, god loves you, no matter how good you are or how bad you are. He loves you because of who he is and not because of who you are.

Speaker 1: 6:49

I can't even imagine God's got this love for everybody. You know, my next book that I'm writing is going to be called Jesus Loves you, but I Don't and I know that's like a shocker title is going to be called Jesus Loves you, but I Don't, and I know that's like a shocker title. Actually, that's the point of it. But Jesus Loves you, but I Don't. I don't know if there's going to be like a byline. Yeah, I'm trying, but whatever, I do not know if it's possible for us to have the kind of love Jesus has.

Speaker 1: 7:18

There are some people I don't even like. There's days when I don't even like, there's days when I don't even like myself. I can imagine how other people feel about me. I can imagine there are days when other people just don't like me and probably I deserve it. But we want to have Jesus's heart. We want to love like he does.

Speaker 1: 7:40

But, like I say in the book that I'm writing, I may not love and I may not even like some people, but because I love Jesus and he loves me, I get credit for loving others. If I do what Christ wants me to do for others, even though I may not want to, even though I don't love that person, he says good job, my faithful servant. You've done it. You didn't want to, but you still did it and I hope that's what God will hear about me. Tina, I know you fed those homeless people and I know you didn't like some of them and I know that, matter of fact, there are some of them. You just downright could not stand. But you know what. You did it because I asked you to do it.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Jesus loves us because of who he is and not because of who we are. Because if it was only conditional on who we are and what we did, I don't know, I don't know how many of us could say we know he loves us. In Romans 5.8, it says but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, christ died for us. We were still sinners. Christ died for us.

Speaker 1: 9:07

It's so hard to fathom the fact that he was being nailed to the cross, a very painful, painful death, knowing that people were out there spitting on him and cursing him and smacking him and whipped him. He still died. He still did it for them, for me, for you. You know, every time we sin, it's almost like taking the whip and hitting his back again. And we all do it as hard as some of us say I don't want to, but I do. Well, that's our spirit fighting against our flesh. What is it, paul, that said I do the very things I don't want to do? Don't we all say that the things I don't want to do, I still do them? Well, that's your flesh fighting against your spirit. It feels good. I enjoy it. What's it going to hurt? It's not that bad. Well, listen, I have a good reason. I mean, we try to come up with all these reasons and explanations for our sin, but there really isn't any good explanation for it. He died for us while we were still sinners. He proved his love, though, with his life, with his blood and with his death. He gave all of that up for me and for you.

Speaker 1: 10:46

And you may be in the middle of your sin and thinking what is wrong with me? Why can't I do this? Maybe, just maybe, when you ask for forgiveness, you add a little tagline on there that says Give me the strength that I need to turn completely away from this sin. I don't want to ask for forgiveness for this same sin anymore. Jesus, give me the strength to stop and to show the love of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Father, thank you for meeting us here today. Thank you for your never-ending love. You have set us free. You have gotten us through every struggle because of your grace. Help us to walk closer to you. Help us to trust you, not a little bit, not sometimes, but a hundred percent of the time. Help me to lean on you, especially when I'm weak, and that happens a lot. Remind us that, no matter what we've done. You love us, you offer a forgiveness. You extend your hand out to me and you encourage me to grab your hand. You offer us forgiveness. Help me to accept that and, even as important as that, father, help me to forgive those who have sinned or hurt me as well, because there's nothing worse than what you did on the cross for me and still said Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do. Wow, I don't know, jesus, that sounds pretty rough, but you did it and you did it for me. Thank you so much, father, for being here. Thank you for loving me, for giving me and giving me grace. In Jesus' name, I pray Amen.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Next week's podcast. First of all, I just want you to know that we will not be following this journal page by page, so we may go from front to back to the middle, back to the front and whatever, but next week's going to come from page 20. Repentance is more than just feeling bad for your mistakes. It's about making a change. Can you think of a time when you truly turned away from something and moved toward God? How did that impact you? So that's what we're going to talk about next week.

Speaker 1: 13:40

So I hope you come back and join me. Please try to go ahead and fill out these journal questions and hopefully, maybe, when you come back, maybe what we say in the podcast will help you to be able to answer some of the questions as well. If you feel stuck, return again next week. Again, you can get your Jesus, help Me Do Better on Amazon. It's on there now, and so go on there and get your journal. I think they're $8.99 plus shipping and you can start anytime. You can go back and listen to these podcasts. If you're stuck on a certain page and if we've done it, you can go back and hopefully we can kind of get you through it, because sometimes I know I look at these questions and I think, hmm, and then when I start really thinking or listening to somebody else talk, it starts to make me give me some ideas as well. So thank you so much for joining me and I will talk to you next week.