📖 You have to forgive

I. You only have to forgive if you have been forgiven.

Forgiving is hard. Especially when the person you are forgiving doesn't seem remorseful about how they treated you. And sometimes they aren't repentant at all.

But the good news is that all the Lord asks you to do is reflect what he has done for you. Colossians 3:13 tells us:

“…Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.”

So, you only have to forgive to the degree that the Lord Jesus Christ has forgiven you. If you don’t want the Lord to fully forgive you, then you should feel no need to fully forgive others. If you want to face the penalty of your unforgiven sins, so be it.

But, if you have trusted in Christ and therefore had your sins forgiven, then you are to treat others the same way the Lord treats you.

And considering that a perfect, righteous, and just God has made a way for your sins to be forgiven, it’s a pretty sweet deal to follow his lead when it comes to forgiveness.

This by no means means that forgiving others will be easy, but it is possible.

After all, the God who calls you to forgive is the same God who has graciously forgiven you.

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II. How we view God’s commands is a sign of whether and how well we know God.

1 John 5:3 says:

“For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden.”

This means that not only do followers of Jesus seek to keep his commands, but they also view God’s commands as good and not burdensome. They see them not as punitive restrictions, but as roads that lead to life.

This does not mean we will always want to follow them, nor does it mean we will like all of them from our limited human perspective. But it does mean we trust the Lord enough to know that he has good reasons for giving us the commands he does.

If you don’t know God, or even despise the thought of the God of the Bible, you will see his commands as a burden.

But if you know the love of our good Father, you’ll submit to his commands, knowing that they lead to life.

John Stott on what God said and did:

“The Christian good news is not simply a declaration that God has said something. It also affirms that God has done something. God has taken the initiative in both these ways because this is what we need.

It isn’t just that we are ignorant but also that we are sinful. This is why it isn’t enough for God simply to reveal himself to us and dispel our ignorance. He must also take action to save us from our sins.”

If you can’t do anything to save yourself (and you cannot), then you can’t do anything to lose your salvation. We are saved by grace and kept by grace.

We are not saved by grace and kept by works; otherwise, God himself would need our help to redeem us, and God does not need your help.

God knew who he was saving when he saved you. Therefore, we repent of our sins, knowing he is faithful and just to purify us from all unrighteousness. And he is not faithful and just sometimes, but always.

What Great Leaders Do by Andy Stanley

A book for leaders about leading people and organizations.

Overall, this is a very strong, informative, and practically helpful book on leadership. I'd recommend it no matter what field or type of organization you might lead. The principles in the book are applicable to all situations.

The book (for me) started out strong and started to fade a little by the end. It's a leadership book, so it's not meant to be a page-turner, necessarily, but by the end I was just trying to finish it.

Also, Andy Stanley is a pastor of a (very large) church, but I didn't love the frequent references to his church as an organization. Yes, churches are organizations, but there are unique aspects of churches that corporate language falls short of describing well.

This book was written to organizational leaders in general (not specifically church leaders), so I get it to a degree, but it implies that churches don’t function much differently than any other organization, when in reality, they do.

Overall, it's a helpful and thought-provoking leadership book. If you're a leader, you'll find it helpful.

8/10

A lot of people think that as long as they are "good enough," they will go to heaven.

But being good enough won't get you there because it doesn't address the bigger issue.

Click here to read why you were never good enough.

P.S. The haters were right…