Stewardship: Relationships & Preserving Unity

Appreciate everyone that has come along tonight, and hopefully you have an outline. It's a single page tonight, although there's both sides. What I'm going to look at tonight is the side that says relationships, preserving the unity, marriage, and the body of Christ.

And the other side we're going to try to look at on Lord's Day, Lord willing. So we'll start reading, first of all, in the end of Ephesians chapter three, just to pick up a few connecting thoughts that are in preparatory to what we're going to look at tonight. Ephesians chapter three, we have the prayer of the apostle for the saints that they might be strengthened by the Spirit of God.

And it says in verse 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end, amen. Now the next chapter, chapter four, begins the exhortations to us based upon this wonderful reality.

Verse one says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love. Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And that expression, bond of peace, really has the idea of unity in it as well, the uniting bond of peace.

And then there's a sevenfold unity expressed of one body, one spirit, and so on. Up and down to verse 15, it mentions, but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ. Now verse 17 has a therefore in it, and so again, it is picking up an emphasis from here on, we're going to be challenged to change.

We're gonna be challenged to not stay as we are in ourselves, but to be changed, to be compatible with Christ. There's a stark contrast with the life of the Gentiles, verse 17 to verse 19. Blindness, darkness, ignorance, past sensitivity, given over to lasciviousness.

Verse 20 says, but you have not so learned Christ. In other words, you didn't learn that kind of life from him. That's not what he is all about.

If so be you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus that you put off concerning the former conversation or behavior, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which after God, that is according to God, according to the pattern of God himself, is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be ye angry and sin not.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands a thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto a day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake or in Christ has forgiven you.

Amen. So one thing that these verses should confirm to us is that God intends that not only that we should know his love, but that we should reproduce his love in our lives. But if that's going to happen, we're going to have to overcome some things that are the enemies of love.

So this passage is really a challenge to us to change our inner character and our outward behavior. And when I was first involved in the Lord's work and we were involved in a new area, and there were quite a number of people got saved, many of them people in their mid-twenties, early thirties. Sadly, many of them had already been through the mill.

They'd already had broken relationships. Some of them were just living together. Some of them were still hanging on, but wondering how much longer they could hold their marriages together.

And so we were plunged into the new area of necessity of counseling, of helping people with a lot of different marital relational problems. And of course, I didn't feel completely equipped for that kind of thing. And I had to challenge myself, what is going to be my resource? I kept wondering, where's that book in the Bible that's all about marriage relationships? There should be at least a third of the Bible given to such an important foundational relationship of life, but it's not there.

So how do we relate to God giving us the resources that we need for relationships? Well, one of the things that I did discover and found very helpful through the years is to recognize that there's a parallel in relationships and especially Christian relationships with one another. There's a perfect parallel for marriage relationships because as we learned in the beginning of this chapter, we have been brought together as Christians into a unity. There is a union formed.

And we are members one of another. There is parallel language to the marriage relationship. And so that's why Christian relationships are important, significant, and difficult, because it's not just the kind of casual relationships that you can just say, well, too bad, see you later.

No, we're stuck with each other. But if we are going to take God seriously, if we are going to live in the element of His Spirit and His work within us, we're not going to just isolate ourselves, go off on our own. We're going to recognize the challenge.

We have been brought together in a close, long-term relationship, actually eternal, with fellow saints that in one sense is as binding and close as marriage. So there's a perfect parallel. So many aspects of the scriptures which deal with Christian relationships deal equally with family relationships.

And so there's so much in the Word of God that we can draw from. And so I have found this chapter extremely important to emphasize the importance of unity, the importance of the closeness. And we have seen that from the end of chapter three, there is an internal resource, a tremendous resource, the love of Christ.

And the Spirit of God within me and in within you is longing to reproduce in us the love that is in Christ. So when we come into chapter four, I'm just going to just draw attention to these because the time is going to go faster than I'm going to get through the end of the chapter. But just to recognize that the beginning of the chapter, we are challenged to care for one another, to realize that we're all imperfect.

We're all struggling with failures, tendencies that cause problems. And so there's a need for loneliness, meekness. That's being more concerned with someone else's need than mine.

With long-suffering, that's putting up with you and me mutually, forbearing one another in love. And that's all endeavoring, that's all attempting to do something, to keep, to guard, to protect the unity. We don't have to create the unity.

God has created that unity in Christian relationships. And if you happen to be in a marriage relationship, the relationship has been created. Your responsibility now is to guard the closeness, protect the closeness.

In the bond of peace, the longer I live, the more I appreciate peace. The importance of peace in relationships, because when we let conflict, tension, strife, enter into relationships, the unity gets strained. We lose our care for one another.

We lose the will to care. And so that's just background in coming into what I want to really emphasize tonight. Again, when we come down to verse 20, particularly to verse 24, we are taught here that we are actually to learn as disciples.

The word to learn, you have not so learned Christ, and then if you have heard him and been taught by him, is the idea of learning as a disciple to become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And basically, we have not only his example to follow, but we have his inner strength within us. A new man that has been created by the new birth.

We are new creatures in Christ. And it says, verse 24, the new man which after God or according to God, this is getting right back to the idea from Genesis chapter one, created in the image of God. So in one sense, salvation is a restoration to that true image of God, created in righteousness and true holiness.

So verse 25 begins the challenge. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Now it would be a pretty strange body if one part of the body was trying to trick the other part of the body and deceive it, get an advantage over it.

It really just doesn't make sense in a body, does it? But somehow we can think in terms of us and them or me and them in our Christian life or in even a marriage relationship, we can get isolated in our thinking. This is challenging us to always think in terms of we, us. If you've got a problem, it's our problem, not just your problem.

It's we, our members, one of another. And so honesty is a foundational need for permanent, long-term relationships. So I've entitled this Godly Relationships That Are Honest, Controlled, and Kind.

Now, how would you describe your relationship or relationships in your family with fellow Christians? Could you truthfully say they're honest relationships? Do you have sincere motivations in your interactions with fellow Christians? Are you genuine in your motivation, in your interest in them, in the way you relate with one another? The kind of honesty that this is calling us to is not simply what we call brutal frankness, where I've decided to tell you exactly what I think of you and whatever that does to you is of no concern to me. You know, there was a couple I was trying to counsel a few years ago. Sadly, they were already basically in the breaking up stage when I was called in to try to rescue the ship.

But of course, it takes more than any kind of human intervention. It takes God changing hearts. But one of the things this husband said in distancing himself from his wife's anguish about the whole relationship, he says, your feelings are not my concern.

Now, what would you feel like as a wife in a marriage if the person who is supposed to be the one who cares for you above anything else in this life looks at you in the face and says, your feelings are not my concern. That is denying the relationship. That is rejecting the relationship, rejecting the person.

Now, you can say, yeah, that's pretty bad. Well, what about our Christian relationships? We can be just as cold and distant. You know, in one sense, I've read that anger is the number one enemy of love.

In many ways, it is. But in one sense, the true antithesis of love is apathy. If at least you get angry about something, you still care enough to get angry.

If you don't even care anymore what that other person is thinking, doing, behaving, then you have basically closed the door on that relationship. You have become indifferent to that other person. But then the problem that we're confronted with as we look at this is that this, if I am going to be honest, if I'm going to make a choice to live honestly in my marriage, in my Christian relationship, then there's going to be more problems than I have now because I'm going to have to confront issues.

Now, it says, putting away falsehood, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. And then the very next verse says, be ye angry and sin not. And I think there's a reason why that verse follows what just goes before.

Some of us prefer to slide past confrontation rather than deal with issues. It's easier that way. It's easier for the short term.

But just as any marriage knows in the long term, if you do not deal with things that irritate you, that upset you, they're not going to go away. And by the time you actually deal with them, it's like there's a whole history. And it becomes almost impossible to bring it back to that closeness.

In other words, what I'm saying is, conflict is necessary in relationships. But conflict will either cement the relationship or it will drive wedges and create distance. It's how we handle the conflict that makes a difference.

And so we have to start with honesty, but I'm emphasizing it's the honesty of honest intentions, sincere motivation, genuine interest and care, the openness of a transparent soul. That's what we need. Now, how do we deal with anger then? Be angry and sin not.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. The word for wrath there is your provocation. Neither give place to the devil.

So what are we supposed to do when we are angered? Well, there's a number of things I want to touch on in relation to this. And that is that there's really no excuse for using anger to control a relationship. Some people have learned how to control other people with their anger.

Basically, they say, you know, if you don't let me have my way, I'm going to shout and scream and make you wish you had never crossed me. So anger can be a very manipulative tool. But generally speaking, anger is a secondary emotion that results from either fear or frustration or hurt.

It's one of the strange things that we often use anger to cope with fear. One of the typical examples of that is when a little child goes wandering out onto the street after a ball or runs the bicycle out in the middle of the street. And the parent goes after the kid and hauls him in and wallops him.

Very, very angry when in reality it's because you were scared to death. The child was going to get hurt and you don't want them ever to do that again. So sometimes we're afraid of something happening.

And so anger comes out to cope with fear. The downside of it is this. While it's easier to show anger than it is to reveal fear, because it seems like weakness, the other person on the other side, on the receiving end of it, there's an opposite reaction because it's easier to respond sympathetically to fear than it is to anger.

We tend to react defensively when anger is shown. And so there's reaction of anger to anger. And so anger can be very, very self-defeating.

In fact, there's a book written by Gary Smalley, if that's how you pronounce his last name, called Making Love Last Forever. And there's a lot of helpful information in that book for people who struggle significantly with anger. He goes into his own personal history and the fact that he grew up in a home with an alcoholic father and he learned to suppress his anger.

Unresolved anger is a very crippling thing in a person's life. You'll notice when it says in these two verses, be angry and sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. First of all, the emphasis here is upon, you must be controlled.

There can be righteous anger, but it must be controlled. Anger out of control does not fulfill the righteousness of God. And so I've put down on the outline some points that kind of follow the sense of the verse.

The first thing we need to do is to discern the cause of our anger and to be able to come to a conclusion, is this righteous anger or is this selfish, fleshly anger? If it's selfish, fleshly anger, don't show it. Judge it. And then the next thing we need to do is what I call deferring to God.

Realizing that we need God's help to handle things that anger us or we can blow it badly. And so pray to God, cry out to God, acknowledge inwardly to Him, your feelings, just as they are. Tell Him how you feel and then ask for help, for grace, to be able to handle yourself righteously in dealing with what is upsetting you.

And then decide the right course of action. Don't just put it off. Now, I'm sure many people have experienced this where you're too angry in the moment to talk about it, to deal with it.

You might even be afraid that you're going to be out of control. There's no excuse for out of control anger. I don't care what the situation is.

We are to be under control. That goes for disciplining children, arguments with your spouse, dealing with confrontation with a fellow Christian or a neighbor, whoever it is. We are not to let any emotion master us.

It is to be under the control of what is righteous. But neither are we just to put it off, try to forget about it, because just putting it inside and not dealing with it is not going to solve the problem and it's going to fester. Because stored up anger eventually leads to what we have in verse 31, where you have bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, malice.

And I want to spend some time at the end of the meeting dealing with that problem because this is one of the most devastating, destructive influences in any of our lives. And we need to be rid of it as that verse says. But it says, don't let the sun go down upon your wrath.

That is saying deal with issues, deal with things as they come up instead of letting it build and build and build. Now, why does he say neither give place to the devil? Well, very simply, if you have any emotion within you, but we're looking at anger here, what happens is that if you are holding anger, you are giving Satan an opportunity to have a strategic foothold in your life from which he can destroy you and use you to be a destructive force to others. I think sometimes when we read through a book like Ephesians and if you get to chapter six, you'll see the warfare in chapter six and we're supposed to have on the armor of God and to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and so on.

And somehow we think that's some other realm where some kind of spirit realm where we're off fighting Satan. This could be at your dinner table. This could be the Bible reading.

This could be whatever. This is in your daily life, but that warfare is going on that you have in chapter six and it's in and through all of these relationships. And so basically what we have to remember is this, not only is the Lord indwelling us, but the enemy is also right there.

Yeah, he's listening in or one of his agents. Looking for that strategic opportunity to catch you. And if you have anger, you don't deal with the issues.

It's stored up. You're getting resentful, bitter. You've become a tool that he can use very effectively.

So neither give place to the devil is not to allow Satan to gain a strategic advantage from which to destroy you. Now, as we come down through these verses, he says, let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands, the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. So you have these changed kind of motivations of life.

It's quite a change from someone who is always robbing other people, whether literally or figuratively, to someone whose motivation is to be able to give. And this is where you see the grace of God going beyond the issues of law. The law says, don't steal, don't rob another person.

But the grace of God goes further than just respecting the rights of other people. And it puts within us this desire to labor, to work, to serve in order that we might have to give to someone who is in need. And so that's showing the superiority, the greatness of grace.

When we come to verse 29, where it says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. But that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And I put down the heading for this, a change from hurting to healing.

You know, I wonder if sometimes we could, if we actually listen to what we say, the words that we use, are these words building up another person? Or are they cutting down? Are they tearing apart? You know, one of the tragedies that has affected Christian families and assemblies is when parents go home from meeting and ridicule the preaching, ridicule the other believers in front of their own children. You can't guarantee this, but it's almost guaranteed that if you have young people growing up who have a very cynical, critical attitude towards everybody in the assembly, it's very likely that the parents were part of that problem. Again, that's not guaranteed, but it is very, very typical.

And so we don't have to say everything that we think about people. Remember that you might be able to handle an argument where there's hostile words going back and forth, derogatory things being said to each other. There could be someone there, whether it's your children or another believer, who is being corrupted and destroyed.

If we corrupt the appreciation that others have for fellow Christians, that's so easy to do. And, you know, it's a tough thing if you get upset with somebody and you start blaming them for problems in the assembly, you could be completely justified. But it doesn't do you any good to dwell on it.

And it doesn't do anyone else any good for you to feed other Christians with that kind of occupation. And so this emphasis that is given here is this. We are challenged to not allow anything that is corrupt.

That is, the word that is used for corrupt here is what is rotten and worthless. Communication out of our mouth. But that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

What is ministering grace? Ministering grace is encouraging, strengthening, supporting, building up. You know, there's a world of difference of spending an evening together, criticizing, cutting other people down, grumbling about what's not right in the assembly or in the family situation about different members of the family or marriage partners or whatever it is. You go away from that kind of just feeling down.

Feeling blah, discouraged, disheartened. What a difference if when you're together, you spent that time thinking about something of the Lord, encouraging one another with what is of Christ, building up, ministering grace, ministering strength. You see, what we are challenged to in this passage is to recognize that God is at work in every believer's life.

And we are to be part of that work. We can be part of that strengthening resource of the Spirit of God. And I didn't really draw attention to it, but back in verse 15 and 16, where you have speaking the truth in love.

Growing up into Him in all things, maturing, developing in our spiritual life. And then it speaks about Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies according to the effectual working in the measure of every part. Now, that's kind of complicated language, but basically what it is saying is this.

The Lord Jesus as head of the church is ministering to us. He's nourishing us, He's feeding us. And He wants to be able to use every member as part of the supply chain in that nourishment.

You know, very simply, some of us have had times in our life when we've been away from God and we haven't been able to get back to God on our own. We've needed someone else to be able to be a channel through which we can be reached. Think of the experience of King David back in the Old Testament.

A man of God, someone that had such an appreciation of God that so many Psalms are his writings and we appreciate them and enjoy them and get benefit even today. And yet, in that sad chapter of his life, when he sinned with Bathsheba, he did not get back to God on his own. God must have been speaking to him, but he was blocking out the conviction of God within him.

But there was a faithful friend that came and confronted him using a word picture of a shepherd and sheep. He knew how to get through to the heart of one who had been a great shepherd. So that is true today as well, that we can all get cold, out of touch with the Lord, and we need the ministry of one another.

And that is why don't think lightly of the impact of your words, of your communicating one with another. It's either building spiritual strength, building up what is of God, or it is cutting down. That corrupting can be either criticizing that kind of corrupting, or it can also be impurity as chapter five in the first few verses touches on.

That it may minister grace to the hearers. Now notice verse 30. I've already been hinting at what this is really meaning, but in the middle of all of this, it says, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto a day of redemption.

Now, where does that come from? Well, you have to go back to chapter one. And you'll see in chapter one, verse 13 and 14, it mentions about in whom you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest or the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory. So this is drawing from that truth in chapter one, which very simply is that God in saving us gave to us a pledge of his eternal commitment to our blessing.

And that pledge was his Holy Spirit. That's the guarantee. We will never be lost.

We will never be abandoned. We will never be forsaken. We are sealed.

We're his forever. But it's not just that alone. It is that the Holy Spirit is the first fruits of the means by which the inheritance is experienced.

The Holy Spirit working within us. We were born of the Spirit of God. We began our spiritual life in the power of the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God reproduces Christ in our life. He is the one who is the power of the spiritual life. And he's not going to give up until he has us in the presence of God, liberated totally from all the effects of evil.

We are sealed for a day of redemption, of total freedom from sin, of evil, and fitness for the purposes of God for the ages to come. That's the kind of commitment that he has to our well-being and blessing. Why is it here in this passage? It's not just for my benefit, for my strength to keep going on in imperfect Christian relationships.

It is for me to realize that the Holy Spirit of God who has that kind of love, that kind of interest and concern for me personally, he has exactly that same kind of love for you. And he is working to bless you in that same eternal way. And so therefore, my responsibility is to not violate either the unity that we have been brought into together, or the love and care and interest the Spirit of God has in you in making you like Christ.

And so grieving the Holy Spirit of God would be all of these things that have been challenged here and told to put away. Now that brings us to the last couple of verses. And this has been a great, significant, for me personally in my spiritual life.

Within the first year after I was married, I became really resentful towards another Christian in the assembly that I was in. And I thought I was completely justified in being angry. I became very miserable until about a year after we were married, my wife mentioned to somebody that this is not the man that I married.

I had been quite active in the assembly. I stopped taking part. I was on the verge of just leaving the assembly.

And I suppose if I were to ask every one of you here tonight who are in assembly fellowship, if you're completely honest, I'm sure you will admit that there have been moments when you have thought of leaving if you haven't. When it was a struggle to find a reason to keep going to that place where those people are. Well, anyway, it certainly didn't make the first year of marriage any easier because being miserable in one part of your life tends to spill over into other areas of your life as well.

I became bitter, resentful, and it came to the place where I could have justified almost doing almost anything. I finally got so sick of it that I decided that I've got to get this over with. I've got to try to get reconciliation.

I had tried to do what most of us think we should do, just forget about it, just forgive the person, just go on. And that works sometimes. But sometimes it comes back, and it comes back.

And you go through that process again of getting angry, resentful, every time you think of the person. And then you determine again to be kind and to forgive. And you try again, and you try again.

And you think you have to just try a little harder. What I learned is that what I needed to do was not to try harder. I needed to change the way I looked at it.

Now, some of this information that I've got down here, I have gleaned from a book that I read at that time. And to be honest, I haven't read the book for a long, long time, and I couldn't tell you how much of it I've read. How much of this is from the book, and how much is just from my own thoughts and development of it.

I think the book, if I could remember, is the book, The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb. There's a lot of good material in that book as well. But basically, the principles that we need to think about, the primary thing is that we need to bring God into the picture.

There are three things about God that are enough to change our perception of the issue. And those three things about God are that God is just, God is sovereign, and God is good. God is gracious.

So there are three things to remember. The first thing to remember is that whatever it is that happened, whether it's an accumulation of things, or whether it was one thing that just, you can't seem to get over, remember that God was there. God saw it all.

God knows all about it. One of the things I had to come to terms with in my own situation was that my perception, although I was so convinced of, I understood everything completely, I didn't know everything about it. Our perception is limited.

Our perception is limited as to the reasons why it happened. We don't understand all of the issues, all of the things that led up to it. But what we have to recognize is that God was there, and God knows perfectly everything that's involved.

And that person, or those people, are in God's hands. For all issues of judgment. This is actually one of the most important recognitions of our spiritual life.

Romans chapter 12, at the end of the chapter, deals with the very same thing. It actually expands it somewhat, where it says, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but give praise to God. Give praise unto wrath.

And that giving praise unto wrath is not you just giving that person their way and let them have their way and do what they want. No, that giving praise to wrath is like stepping aside and letting God deal with it. Because the next verse goes on to say, vengeance is mine.

I will repay, saith the Lord. If we recognize the justice of God, God is just. And God is capable, you know, if we just put it into our little brains, that God is all eternity.

He is all eternity. To measure out His dealing. To measure out His dealings with people for what they have done.

He also has the present. So God is just. Now, included in this whole issue, I have found a tremendous amount of help from looking at the life of Joseph.

Remember what happened to Joseph? How would you like to be sold by your brothers? As an alternative to being killed by your brothers. That's what he went through. And then sold into slavery.

And then he's seduced by his master's wife. And when he honorably refuses to let himself be involved in that relationship, he's slandered and he ends up in jail. But in Genesis 39, repeated through that passage, is this little expression, but the Lord was with Joseph.

The Lord was there all the time. But even when he's there in prison, and you would be sure that God has forgotten all about Joseph, it says, but the Lord was with Joseph. And if you go through the life of Joseph, one thing that is remarkable, that basically tells his character, is that every time he opens his mouth, God is in his conversation.

Not just casually, but as a significant element of what he's talking about. He lived in the consciousness of God. That's how he handled his brothers.

He says, am I in God's place to take justice into my hands? And I mean, he was second in command in Egypt. If anybody had the opportunity to put things right, Joseph had it. But he acknowledged God.

God is just. And God is sovereign. And if we can grasp that the sovereignty of God is for our eternal benefit.

So basically, the second major point is to remember that God is for you. So if he allows things to happen in our lives that hurt us, and he does, he doesn't prevent hard things from occurring in our life. That's the way we'd like him to handle things, but God is at work in a fallen world.

But he is still sovereign. And in that sovereignty of God, Romans 8, 28 to 30, brings us to this tremendous reality that whatever God allows to touch our lives is bounded by a sovereign purpose, that all things must, in the end, work for our good. Now, that's not just in this life.

That is his eternal purposes of good for us. So remember that that person is in God's hand for judgment. All issues of judgment, remember that you are in God's hand for blessing.

Nobody can destroy you. You are in God's hand, no matter what anyone else thinks or does in their treatment towards you. But the third thing is emphasized in verse 32, when it says, be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you.

And that is this, to remember that you also deserve judgment, but that God has chosen to be gracious to you. I have experienced grace. You have experienced grace.

And it's interesting that the word to forgive here is not the usual word to forgive. The word here to forgive means to act graciously towards, to act graciously towards. And you know, I have a little comment down on the outline that I almost hesitate to say, to have there, because it could be insulting to someone who is struggling with this kind of thing.

But basically the choice is yours. You must realize that if you hang on to your anger, hang on to your resentment, hang on to your bitterness, the corroding destructive effect it will have on your life is your responsibility. Because we do have a choice and we have to take that choice.

But bringing God into the picture is what we really need to do to change our thinking of life as we have experienced it. So there are some significant challenges in this chapter. We have a tremendous resource of our Father, and all that he has brought us into, and of the Lord Jesus, and the love that he has manifested to us.

So may God help each one of us, both in our family relationships, our natural relationships, and assembly life to experience the grace of God. Shall we pray? Our Father, we are deeply grateful that thou has chosen in all of thy goodness and all of thy graciousness to forgive our sins, to take us to thyself in love, companionship, and help. And we pray that we might be able to lean on thee and rely upon the strength of this relationship in order to cope with and overcome the imperfect relationships that we have with one another.

Our Father, we would cry to thee. We know within ourselves that some of us have spent years battling with resentments and anger and unable to overcome except by isolating ourselves away from people. Our Father, we pray that we may learn thy way and be overcomers and be able to be useful vessels of thy grace.

We ask for thy gracious help in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.