In this episode of the Parenting Pathway Podcast, pastors Dave Carl and Nathan Kocurek discuss the challenging nature of forgiveness. Listen as they ask the following questions and discuss what’s standing in the way of accepting forgiveness from God.
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- Why does forgiveness seem so simple at the conceptual level, but so hard to give and accept on a physical level? What do the Scriptures tell us about the extent of God’s interest and willingness to forgive us?
- How does shame impact your acceptance of forgiveness? We know that forgiveness is from God, and shame is from Satan. Why are we so willing to live in shame over the sins God has already forgiven?
- God’s desire is to be close to us, connected to us, and integrated into our lives, but if we are living in the shame of sin, then we are allowing a separation between us and God. Why is self-condemnation so pervasive when access to forgiveness is so close?
- Our self-imposed separation from Christ can have an impact on ourselves and our parenting. To model for our kids what a relationship with God looks like, we need to be pursuing that relationship ourselves. As parents, we need to surrender and embrace forgiveness before we can invite our kids to receive it also. Wouldn’t you want to give your kids the gift of a lifelong relationship with a loving and forgiving God?
We must believe that we are valuable and important to God. We are His workmanship.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
These are lifelong questions to grapple with. We see a perfect example in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). In this story, we see that the father represents the love of Christ, and the prodigal son represents the sin that exists in all of us. When the son returns to his father, the son asks for forgiveness. The loving father grants him forgiveness and celebrates his return. But the second son is also an important character to our discussion of forgiveness. He is unable to forgive his brother for leaving, or his father for forgiving his brother. In his unwillingness to forgive, the prodigal son’s brother has created a wall of separation between himself and his “heavenly” father.
We desire to be the loving and forgiving father in this illustration to our children, but unless we are willing to dwell in God’s forgiveness, we are unable to truly show our children what forgiveness looks like.