Tickle Me Elmo was a popular Christmas gift back in the late 90s, and in fact is still popular today. Did you know the Bible talks about being tickled? Yep, in 2 Timothy 4:3 it says: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,” (NASB). In other words, they will find pastors that will confirm what they think, based on what they want. The question is “Is that what God says”?
And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful
Colossians 3:15 Nlt
In terms of forgiveness, what does God say? “Um, Bill, God says a LOT about forgiveness. Are you going to refer to all of the verses in the Bible? I don’t have that kind of time to read all that”. No, I just want to refer to a couple. First of all, how does God forgive us? 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (ESV), and “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12 ESV). So, He forgives us in the truest sense of the word; He forgives and forgets.
In Matthew, we see Peter struggling with the question of how to forgive others. At that time, the Rabbis taught that forgiving someone more than three times was not needed, based on Amos 1:3-13, which starts “3 Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,…”‘. In Matthew 18:22 Jesus says, when Peter asks about how often his brother will sin against him, and how often Peter should forgive him, Jesus says: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven times”.
The implication is that, as fallible humans, we will sin against each other multiple times. And each time we are to forgive them. That’s not easy, especially if what they do triggers something in your past, and you see that person not for who they are but as who caused the original hurt. But I will tell you that if someone forgives me as Jesus forgives us, I will be much more unlikely to further injure that person, because I will see God’s amazing love through their action. And I believe that because they loved me the way God wants them to, especially as a fellow believer, that they will be blessed too.
In summary, pray for discernment in who you listen to when it comes to how you feel, particularly when you are in a place of hurt and pain. The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and can certainly do that from the pulpit. He has certainly killed the relationship between my Christian neighbor and myself, and he will do it to your relationships as well, if you let him. If my pastor always says what I want to hear and not what God says, I need to find a new pastor.