Forgiveness

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 8th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Lamentations 3:39:

“Why should a living man complain, A man for the punishment of his sins?”

Why do we complain when we have done something wrong and things don’t work out? Then we go to the Book of Micah 7:9:

‘“I will bear the indignation of the Lord, Because I have sinned against Him…”

Just be honest and say sorry. Just ask God to forgive you and stop complaining about the punishment you are receiving because of something you have done wrong. Fix it, just fix it! Many years ago I leased a field from a neighbouring farm and we grew a crop on that farm, and a young man, who was working with me was a great farmer and he would come back to the farm and would complain furiously. “What is wrong?” I would say. He said, “The neighbour that we have hired the land from, his cattle keep going into our crops and are eating our crops because the fence is so poor. So I said, “Well, let’s fix the fence.” He said, “But that is not our responsibility. We have just hired the land, he is supposed to look after his own farm!” And this continued, and of course, the farmer we were leasing the land from, he wasn’t complaining, his cattle were getting fat, until one day I said to the young man, “Go and fix the fence. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t our responsibility. We are losing our crop.” And of course, once we had fixed the fence, the cattle couldn’t go in anymore. 

I want to say to you this morning, that Jesus is more eager to forgive us of our sins than we are to ask Him to forgive us. Remember the story of the rich young ruler? He came to Jesus and said, “I have obeyed all the commandments of the Bible. The Lord said, “There is just one thing you haven’t done. Give your riches to the poor and come and follow after me.” And he couldn’t do it, he would not, he walked away. And as one minister said to me, “Jesus must have been standing there with tears running down His face,” because that man was walking on his way to hell because he would not repent and adjust his ways. I believe that if that young man had said, “Yes Lord, I will give it all away”, the Lord would have probably said, “Now you can keep it’, because He does not want us to be ensnared by the things of this world.

Today, fix it! 

Jesus bless you and goodbye.