The Thing About Forgiveness

Parenting Pathway Stonebriar Community Church Frisco, TexasIn 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.

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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?
  4. 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.

To hear more from Pastors Dave and Nathan on this topic, listen to: The Singular Purpose of Christianity

The Singular Purpose of Christianity

Authors

  • Dave Carl

    Dave Carl is the Family Ministries Pastor at Stonebriar Community Church and is responsible for the ministry focusing on children birth through high school graduation and the parents who love them. With a ministry philosophy based on Luke 10:27, his primary focus is to give parents the skills to raise kids who truly love Jesus and want to serve others. Dave has a passion for ministering to families in crisis in our community. He has spent several years pouring into fathers and husbands and helping them learn that they need community, were designed to guard and protect, and that they really can be the spiritual leaders of their family.

    Dave and his wife of 30 plus years, Cathy, have two adult children and one in college and grandparents to three amazing children. They are completely in love with these new member of their family. Dave is an avid woodworker and loves to write. He sees all stories in the form of pictures, and he would love to connect with you!

  • Nathan Kocurek

    Emerging from the depths of the late 1970s, Nathan Kocurek spent his formative years under the influence of Hall & Oates, Duran Duran, and other notables while listening to KRBE in Houston on the clock radio beside his bed. Nathan was influenced to love Jesus by the example of his young single mom, and he grew up with a love for God but an incomplete understanding of discipleship. As a result, as a teenager, he indulged in a relentless and, at times, reckless pursuit of social and athletic achievements, seeking to assuage an innermost feeling of emptiness that he could not escape. Finally, by God’s grace, the Spirit of the Lord made it clear to him that none but Jesus could satisfy what he was lacking. The answer had been there all along. Later, Nathan married the girl of his dreams and they ran off to California, had two sons, and returned to Texas where they adopted their sweet daughter. Having served as a Student Minister at two previous churches over the past 18 years, Nathan and his wife, Marie, are now thrilled to follow the calling of Christ at Stonebriar Community Church.

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