Forgiveness

Just before Easter in 2009, Fred Winters, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois, was shot and killed during a Sunday morning service by a disturbed young man. The tragedy shocked the church and the pastor’s family, but it did not destroy their faith. The next week the newly-widowed Cindy Winters was interviewed on a national news broadcast. When asked about her husband’s killer she said, “I do not have any hatred or even hard feelings toward him. We have been praying for him.

Someone asked an elderly Christian lady, “Does the devil ever trouble you about your past sins?” She answered, “Yes.” When the inquirer asked what she did then, she replied, “Oh, I just tell him to go east.”

“What do you do if he comes back?”

“I tell him to go west.”

“And when he comes back from the west, what do you do then?”

She said, “I just keep him going from the east to the west.”

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12

In 1818, Ignaz Philip Semmelweis was born into a world of dying women. The finest hospitals lost one out of six mothers to the scourge of “childbed fever.” A doctor’s daily routine began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers without ever pausing to wash his hands. Dr. Semmelweis was the first man in history to associate such examinations with the resultant infection and death.

There was a king who had suffered much from his rebellious subjects. But one day they surrendered their arms, threw themselves at his feet, and begged for mercy. He pardoned them all. One of his friends said to him, “Did you not say that every rebel should die?”

“Yes,” replied the king, “but I see no rebels here.”

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast baptist College

A Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, “Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?”

There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up. “Sin,” he said.

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

A young boy in Korea was a houseboy for some American soldiers. Sometimes they thought it was funny to play harmless jokes on him. They would tease him. They would tie his shoe strings together. They would lock him out of the house.

Eventually they realized that their practical jokes were not viewed as funny by the boy so they apologized. He said, “That’s okay, I will stop spitting in your soup now.”

Source: The Outlaws of Success, Scott McKain

Dr. John R. Rice, a great evangelist now with the Lord, was asked to conduct a revival meeting at a Baptist church in Woodbine, Texas. Divisions and strife had broken the heart of the pastor until he had resigned and left. The county missionary, hoping to see the church revived and God’s work made prosperous, asked Dr. Rice to come and preach the revival services. He found the whole community divided. One or more deacons had had fist fights in the quarrel that had reached nearly every home. Many had taken a vow never to return to the little church.

Corrie Ten Boom and her family resisted the Nazis by hiding Jews in their home. They were ultimately discovered and sent to a concentration camp. Corrie barely survived until the end of the war; her family members died in captivity. Seared by this terrible trial by fire, Corrie’s faith in God also survived, and she spent much of her time in the post-war years traveling in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, sharing her faith in Christ.

President Lincoln had an early political rival named Edwin Stanton. He called Lincoln the original gorilla. When Lincoln was elected President he chose Stanton to be his secretary of war because he believed he was the best man for the job. At Lincoln’s funeral Stanton said, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.”

President Lincoln had learned not to take insults personally.

Elizabeth Barrett’s father disapproved of her marriage to Robert browning so strongly that he never forgave her. She wrote letters to her father seeking reconciliation, but he returned them unopened. Had he opened them, and read the beautiful language she used, he may have forgiven her. The Bible is God’s letter to give us reconciliation, yet many people never read it.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, Hugh Chisholm

“In one of my assignments as a young infantry officer, I was sent to the 48th Infantry near Frankfort, Germany. In those days our prize weapon was a huge 280-mm atomic cannon. Guarded by infantry platoons, these guns were hauled around the forests on trucks to keep the Soviets from guessing their location.

One day Captain Tom Miller assigned my platoon to guard a 280. I alerted my men, loaded my .45 caliber pistol and jumped into my jeep. I had not gone far when I realized that my .45 was gone.

Dale Carnegie visited Yellowstone Park where he saw a grizzly bear. The huge animal was in the center of a clearing, feeding on some discarded camp food. For several minutes he feasted alone—no other creature dared draw near. After a few moments a skunk walked through the meadow toward the food and took his place next to the grizzly. The bear didn’t object and Carnegie knew why—It would cost the bear too much to get even.

You may be able to get even with your enemies, but it does not pay. Why don't you forgive instead?

A frontier preacher was preaching against hatred, he asked all those who had overcome the sin of hatred to stand. He was shocked when one older man rose to his feet. The preacher asked him this could be and he said, “All the skunks who done me dirt, all them scoundrels I hated—they're all dead.”

Source: Bible in Pocket, Gun in Hand, Ross Pahres

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

Not long before she died Marghanita Laski, a well-known secular humanist and novelist, told an interviewer: “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.”

Source: What's So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

A duck hunter was with a friend in the wide-open land of southeastern Georgia. Far away on the horizon he noticed a cloud of smoke. Soon he could hear crackling as the wind shifted. He realized the terrible truth; a brushfire was advancing, so fast they couldn’t outrun it. Rifling through his pockets, he soon found what he was looking for—a book of matches. He lit a small fire around the two of them. Soon they were standing in a circle of blackened earth, waiting for the fire to come. They didn’t have to wait long. They covered their mouths with handkerchiefs and braced themselves.

Judd Lewis (1867-1945) worked for forty-five years at the Houston Post newspaper. He wrote a column of humor and poetry under the name, “Uncle Judd.” He was a man of great compassion who helped find a proper home for two hundred twenty-one homeless children. No doubt, each of them had issues of forgiveness to work through, so it is not surprising that one of Lewis’s most memorable pieces involved the fine art of forgetting wrongs suffered. His poem is titled “Forget It”

A twelve year old accidentally killed one of his family’s geese by throwing a stone. Figuring his parents wouldn’t notice one of twenty-four gone he buried it. His sister saw his crime and said, “I saw what you did, and if you don’t wash the dishes for me, I’ll tell mom.” The boy did the dishes for days. One day, the boy said, “You do them.” His sister said, “I’ll tell mom.” The boy replied, “I already told her and she forgave me – I’m free again.”

Source: Unknown

Two little boys had quarreled. But the next morning, Johnny took his cap and headed for Bobby’s house again. Surprised, an older member of the family said teasingly, “What! Going to play with him again? I thought you quarreled only last evening and were never going to have anything more to do with each other. Funny memory you have.”

Johnny looked a little sheepish, dug his toe into the carpet for a moment, then flashed a satisfied smile as he hurried away. “Oh, Bobby and me’s good forgetters.”

Source: Unknown

A little boy was sitting on a park bench in obvious pain. A man walking by asked him what was wrong. The young boy said, "I'm sitting on a bumble bee." The man urgently asked, "Then why don't you get up?" The boy replied, "Because I figure I'm hurting him more than he is hurting me!"

How many of us handle forgiveness like this little boy? We endure pain for the sadistic satisfaction of believing we are hurting our offender more than he is hurting us. When we get off the bench of unforgiveness both parties can begin to realize relief from their pain.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident. "Don't you remember it?" her friend asked. "No," came Barton's reply, "I distinctly remember forgetting it."

Source: Unknown