Transcription
Would you pray with me, please? Lord, we just want to thank You right now for Your goodness and Your grace and Your mercy, uh, in our lives. And I just pray right now that Your Holy Spirit would come upon each one of our hearts, Lord, and You would begin to bring revelation to our hearts, Father, of what You've entrusted to us through the gift of Jesus Christ and through what He did at the cross, Father. That it would begin to sink in that You have entrusted us to be Your ambassadors of that great, great mercy and love on the earth. And I pray for a special capacity, um, from Your Holy Spirit, uh, to rid ourselves today of anything and all things that would hinder that in our own lives. In Jesus' name, amen.
So today, I welcome you to the Freedom Session. And this particular session is on mercy. And I love this teaching. Probably, if any of the teachings that I have personally learned, I have received an immense amount of personal freedom in my life through this teaching. And we're going to be discussing quite a few things today. But amongst the gift, the massive gift of mercy that Jesus gave us on the cross, we're going to be talking about bitter root judgments and how they hinder the grace and the mercy of God in our life and through our lives. And we're going to be talking about judgments. And judgments are a little bit tricky because sometimes the things that we judge appear and are in our minds, in our lens, true. But judgments also are dangerous if we take the place of judge that only rightfully belongs to God. So we're gonna talk about those two things, uh, as it relates to mercy and as it relates to our destiny on the earth to be the manifested grace, uh, and picture of God's love.
So let's start by looking at this truth: In the kingdom of God, we see that His ways lead to abundant life. No one is exempt from this truth. God's ways stand sovereign over all the earth. They cannot be thwarted, and we cannot take a shortcut around them. Have you ever tried? It's like, let's see, I know this is true, but I'd rather do it a different way. We must learn and submit ourselves to the ways of God. God's ways are demonstrated clearly in the life of Jesus. We see God's ways and God's kingdom purpose is most profoundly demonstrated through Jesus Christ. Jesus says again and again, "If you have seen Me, then you've seen the Father." In light of this, Jesus' obedience to the ways of God and dying on the cross demonstrates clearly the way of the kingdom. His way is mercy, and His way is forgiveness. His heart, His redemption and restoration. And through Jesus' victory on the cross, we yield our lives to Him. As we yield our lives to Him, we carry Christ's authority into situations as His ambassadors of truth and mercy on the earth. The word tells us, "Mercy triumphs over judgment." "What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. What you forgive on earth will be forgiven in heaven." "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me," Jesus says. "Therefore, you go make disciples." It is so critical that believers begin to see that we have the opportunity to demonstrate His grace in a redemptive way on the earth. If we think about those profound truths that what we bind on earth is bound in heaven, what we loose on earth is loosed in heaven, and when we think about what we forgive here, the Lord forgives in heaven. It's a powerful, powerful picture of how much grace and trust and authority God has given us, His people. And the enemy is more afraid of Christ in you and me than we are of him and his demonic forces. He knows he's a defeated foe, sometimes more than we know he's. And remember that he's a defeated foe. However, he works tirelessly to pull us away from the way of God's kingdom and does all he can to get us to align with that kingdom of darkness so that right there, our alignment, he can begin to have legal access to steal, to kill, to destroy, and to bring about destruction in our lives. See, at the cross, He, He defeated the devil, and He no longer has access to us in Christ unless he can get us to align and realign and come back into alignment with Him and His ways.
Throughout scripture, we see that Satan is the accuser of the brethren. He loves to lie, to condemn, to judge, and to keep us from the grace of God. Often times, without knowing it, when we encounter sin, our own sin, the sin of others, when we encounter the sin, we make a choice to either join Jesus and deal with it through the way of the kingdom of God, or we choose to deal with it through the kingdom of darkness. Let's look at a brief comparison of the two.
In the kingdom of light, the kingdom operates in love, in truth, in forgiveness, in mercy, in grace, in blessing and restoration and life. That's good news. All of those ways lead to nothing but life, and as we walk in it, we reproduce life over and over and over again. And I love this, that Jesus bought this with His blood, and it cannot, it cannot be reversed unless we begin to align with the way of the kingdom of darkness.
And in the kingdom of darkness, this is how the kingdom of darkness operates. It's full of hate. He hates us because we're God's beloved children. He lies. He constantly lies to us about who we are, about who God is, about who others are. He operates in constant accusation, judgment, condemnation, and cursing, and it brings about destruction and death. When Jesus bore the burden of sin, He did so for many reasons, but one of them was to remove from us the burden of being the judge.
As we look back into these two kingdoms, the kingdom of light, the kingdom of darkness, we don't want to partake in any part of the kingdom of darkness. We don't want to agree with hating someone. We don't want to agree with lies about ourselves or anyone else. We don't want to accuse them, or judge them, or condemn them, or curse them. We want to operate over and over again in love. We want to remember the truth about who we are, about who others are, about what God is doing in any circumstance in our life. We want to forgive quickly. We want to show the same mercy that God has shown us. We want to give grace and bless continually because what we'll watch it do in our own life and the lives of others is we'll watch it bring restoration and life. Who doesn't want life?
So when Jesus took on this, the sin of the world, we, I want us to really take this in. He did not just take on the sin and the effects of our own sin. Sometimes we're good at remembering that, "Okay, Jesus took my sin, and I'm rid of that burden." But He also took on all sin, and that includes the sin that is done to us by other people. This is good news because then we don't have to become the judge of that. Jesus not only took the burden of the sins we committed, He took the burden of the sin that is done to us in every way. Jesus made a way for us to be set free from the burden of sin and restored to us the blessing of walking under the blessing of grace. When we understand this, we can be set free to align with the kingdom of God and stay free from how sin, our own and others', entangles us, hurts us, and separates us from God. As we align with God's ways, we are set free not only from entanglement but also into all that God has destined us to be as His carriers of grace.
One place the enemy entangles believers the most is through offense. I just want you to stop for a minute and think about that. How, how long ago was it that you were a little bit offended? It doesn't take long for us to get back there, right? Um, but in this offense, we get to choose how long we stay there. And the enemy is happy for us to sit in the offensive sin. He's happy for it to take an hour, a day, a year, a lifetime. And I, that's not, that's no joke. He would love for us to sit in the offensive sin. Sin is, be, sin is becoming caught in offense. It's one thing to be offended. Sin is offensive, but it's one thing, it's one thing for us to recognize sin, be offended, and move into that process of the kingdom of light, or it's another to sit in offense, and then we become caught in sin. That is why Jesus took it upon Himself. We will encounter sin. It will offend us. And right there is where we will decide what our response will be. We will walk the way of grace gifted to us by God through Jesus, or we will be entangled in the enemy's snare and walk the way of Satan. Clearly stated, God's ways lead to life. Satan's ways lead to death. Choose life.
When we are offended, we choose forgiveness or unforgiveness. Those are, that's our next step. We're gonna, in our house, we call it the red flag. When we become offended, it's like, there it is. We're gonna make our choice. And remember, you're choosing between life and death. We pretend there's offense, but really, offense, like that, you sit on something that divides. But there really is no fence. We are choosing forgiveness or unforgiveness. Forgiveness releases an empowerment of the Spirit to work in the situation. And unforgiveness leaves a bitter root that often defiles us and lives on through us to defile many. Hebrews 12 warns us by saying, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." Bitter roots can be simply defined as festering anger. Think about that. When we choose unforgiveness, I wish that it would just kind of stay there, like, "Oh well, I don't forgive you." But that's not what happens. The enemy takes as much as he can take. And so I like that definition of a bitter root. It's just festering anger. And what happens when something festers? Typically, when an infection festers, it becomes, I mean, when something festers, it becomes infected. When anger hurts, stays, it becomes rooted in our hearts through unforgiveness. Think of roots. They go down deep. They stay hidden and begin to anchor and fuel whatever they are attached to in order to, in order to eventually produce fruit. It may first only manifest privately in your thought life. Eventually, though, it will begin to produce fruit. These are just a few signs of the fruits of a bitter root. I want you to listen to these and think about it: negative comments, gossip, slander. Slander can even mature into all-out cursing of a person or of yourself who causes pain. Signs of bitter roots may be rehearsing an event over and over and over again in your mind. Has that ever happened to you? Something happens, and you know, a year later, a month later, you're just reliving that event over and over again. We don't want to do that. The Lord didn't want that event of sin to happen to you in the first place, and so He certainly doesn't want us to replay it over and over and over again. Another sign might be speaking to others in a less than honoring way about a person. Maybe figuring out ways we can avoid somebody who hurt us. All this God hates. Jesus died to set us free from the burden of it.
When bitter roots mature, we begin to also make judgments. So, very, very seldom in your life does a pain happen, do we encounter sin against us that we don't attach a judgment to someone or something. This can be judgments against yourself. This can be judgments against others. Judgments against God. A judgment can be defined as an authoritative opinion, a formal decision given by court. We are tempted when we are hurt or encountering sin to put ourselves in the place of judge. God is the judge, and we are commanded in scripture not to judge. If these bitter roots take place in our hearts, we move into judging someone. Scripture tells us in Galatians, "Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." According to the word of God, we will reap what we have sown. I don't know about you, but when I stand before Jesus, I do not want to be reaping judgment. I want to be reaping mercy. And honestly, I don't want to be reaping judgment on this earth from others. There's plenty of sin. There's plenty of ways I'm going to miss the mark. That's what sin is defined as, missing the mark. And I want to give grace to others in the same measure that I want to receive that grace. It also tells us that we become what we judge, and that if we judge someone, we ourselves will be judged in that same place and in that way in our own life.
Look with me at the following two scriptures as we hear God's warning about judging. Actually, there's three. Matthew 7:1-2: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Wow. Romans 2: "Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, do the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do the very same thing. In sinning, then, we know that God and His justice will punish anyone who does such things. Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God's judgment when you do the same things? Don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can't you see that His kindness is intended to turn you from your sin and lead you to repentance? But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself for a day of anger is coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done."
I want us to think about that scripture for a minute. He's saying that where we, and when we step into that place of judge, when we sow, we give ourselves so much leeway to do. When we've really been wronged, your spirit knows when you've been wronged, but it is so crucial that we leave that place of judge rightfully alone to God, and we don't, we don't step in it. We really don't want the burden of it. I mean, one day, He's saying, the righteous judgment of God is going to come on all sin, and we want, and we were bought the freedom to stay out of that burden and to stay into a place to live in that place of getting to give love and give grace and give mercy, and it really is freedom. It really is.
Luke 6:36-38 says, "Stop judging others, and you too will not be judged. Stop criticizing others, and it will all come back on you. If you forgive others, you will be forgiven. If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use in giving, large or small, it will be used to measure what is given back to you." So again, I reiterate, we want, we want to sow mercy. We want to show forgiveness.
Bitter roots and judgments eventually produce ungodly strongholds. Again, we would love for them to just stay at, "Oh, I don't forgive," or, "Oh, I judge that person privately." But truly, these things build upon each other to produce strongholds in our lives, and we don't even realize the impact. They're ugly, and they're, they're exactly what they are named. They are strongholds that hold us back from fulfilling our destiny on the earth as grace givers. As a result of unforgiveness, these strongholds produce a dominating thought pattern that rules how we think. It begins to affect how we see things and people, how we respond, and eventually determines our behavior. And this is where we begin to see these destructive behaviors as they are repeated become the areas we are held in bondage through our own sin. So here we encounter someone's sin, we encounter a wrong done to us, but eventually, if we walk out bitter roots and we walk out judgments, we will find ourselves sinning from the very place where we maybe once were innocent. We, we have a way through Christ, the way of the kingdom of heaven, the way of the cross, forgiveness and blessing and mercy and grace. We have a way to be free of that.
When we are affected by someone else's sin, it is important that we do not move into sin ourselves. When we are angry and hurt, and think about that, I mean, something inside of us, that justice, peace of God that's in us, we know when we encounter sin, and something in us rises up, it says, "No, this is not okay." And honestly, it's not okay. Sin was not just ignored. It was not, God did not just look away. It cost Him something to cover sin. And what we want to do is follow that pattern. You will be hurt. You will be angered by someone's sin, but the Bible speaks repetitively that we are going, that we are to go to our brother in love if he is caught in sin, and that we are called to stand up for truth and not condone sin. At the same time, John 16:8-9 reminds us, "It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict the world of sin and to convince of righteousness and of the coming judgment." It is not our place to take the Holy Spirit's job. Have you ever wanted to, like, when you're wronged and someone sins against you, like, "Oh, I'm gonna tell them!" I mean, seriously? Or I'm gonna make sure they find a way to know either how much they hurt me or how wrong they've been. And scripture, it tells us we're free of that burden. The Holy Spirit is so good at His job. He doesn't need our help. He just, He needs us to love. He needs us to produce the environment where He can come and do what He does well, which is convict people of their sin, or us of our sin, and of righteousness.
It is the believer's job to love with Christ's love, to speak the truth in love from a heart of wanting restoration and redemption. And I want us to be careful here because sometimes we can, um, call speaking the truth in love, um, we can call it speaking the truth in love, but really, it's really in our heart motive. We want to go show them how wrong they are. And one will produce life, and one will produce death because of the heart motive. But it is our job to speak the truth in love and to stay in the place of forgiveness and blessing, so there is the greatest chance for restoration and redemption.
2 Corinthians 5:20 states, "We are Christ's ambassadors, as if He were making His appeal through us. Therefore, let us, let us live from His empowerment and love so that we can demonstrate well His heart here on the earth." The following steps provide a framework for how we can live this out in our daily lives.
So we call this the grace cycle. And in the grace cycle, we see a pattern where we become offended by sin. And I've stated, and we'll reiterate, sin is offensive. Your spirit man, it knows when it's been sinned against, either by yourself or by someone else. I mean, this is a good thing. Um, and I don't want us to, um, condemn ourselves when we feel the reality or the weight of sin. You will feel offended, but there's a difference in feeling offended and in walking in offense. And so right there is where we have this choice. When we become offended or hurt by sin, then we have to make that choice. And if we're going to choose the kingdom of God, and we're going to become, it's going to become a place in us where life can be produced, we're going to choose the very first step of forgiveness.
And if we are struggling to forgive, I want us to really look at one of the things that causes us to be, you know, to really struggle or be hindered from forgiving. Um, a lot of times when we're hurt by someone's sin, we really, truly, deep down in our gut, we want them to make it right. We want the offender to make it right. And even if we sin and we're offended with ourselves, that we've said, we somehow put the burden on ourselves to make it right. And we see at the cross that Jesus actually took that burden because of what He took. Because He took sin, He took that off, that burden off of any human from being able to heal or redeem sin, and He put it on Himself because He was the perfect sacrifice. And so we have one healer, and this is really important to understand. We have one healer, and His name is Jesus Christ. And any sin that we commit, or any sin that comes against us, the only antidote, the only place of healing that comes for that sin is Jesus Himself, because He has the authority to come over and redeem and restore from the effects of sin.
So what we really need when we are offended or we're hurt by sin is we really need to encounter Jesus with our pain. And it's funny, we'll go to a thousand different things trying to get that thing healed, and we'll, and we'll look a thousand different places, and we'll manipulate and control and try to make sure that that person, you know, does whatever they need to do to make it right. And even if they come and apologize, I'm not saying apologizing is not important, it's crucial, but even if someone apologizes for the sin, I want us to really pay attention to this. If they apologize for the sin they've done, the justice piece in us may be satisfied. You know, it's like, finally, that wrong is admitted, and there is a level of freedom that comes from that. But does, does someone's apology truly heal? It doesn't. It doesn't take away the, the effects of sin. And so we, we find ourselves again in that need of that encountering the one true healer, Jesus Christ.
And so when we encounter Him, He comes and He does what He has the authority to do. He comes in, He heals us, He washes us clean of the effects of that sin, and He speaks truth over us and reminds us of all that He wants to say and is saying into our heart, into that situation, to bring about restoration.
In this grace cycle, we really also want to pay attention to remember I said we need to forgive, but we also need to go in and make sure that we break any judgments that have come out of that painful situation. So I would say 99.9% of the time when someone offends us or hurts us or sins against us, we have somewhere in our heart some judgment about who they are. So I wanted to find the difference between holding a standard of righteousness and calling truth truth, and saying this wasn't right, this behavior was not okay. We are actually called to do that in love so that people don't walk in perpetual sin. But there's a difference in calling sin sin and saying a behavior is wrong, and moving into a judgment where we say, "Okay, that is who you are in my mind. That's who you've become." So let's say someone lies perpetually. So there's a difference in saying, "You struggle with the behavior of lying incessantly in your life," versus saying with our mouth, "You are a liar." There's a difference in saying, "You are behaving and acting in a really selfish way," and saying, "You are selfish." One aligns with truth and calls up a standard of righteousness, which is what we're, we are righteous standard bearers on the earth. And one moves directly into agreement with the kingdom of darkness and what he wants to speak and do over someone's life. You see the difference there?
So we want to go in anytime we're hurt, and we want to break these judgments. We want to confess, "Lord, this person hurt me in this way, or I heard, I offended myself in this way, and I've judged myself or another person. I've judged them as this." And we want to break that judgment. We want to get out of alignment with the kingdom of darkness over their life. We want to go up in that place. This is, this right here, this alignment piece, and this, the blessing piece I'm about to go into, is where we really take our rightful place as the children of God. This is where Jesus left us an assignment, and it right here is where we begin to not just, um, not just halt the enemy from taking more ground, but we actually take ground from the enemy. Here is when we align with heaven, and we're going to go up and we're going to say, "Heaven, I'm in this scenario. I just encountered my own sin or the sin of someone else against me, and it's a mess." And we've broken, now we've forgiven, and we've broken judgments, and now we want to go up and say, "God, what, how do You see this? Who do You see this person to be? How do You see this situation?" And as we get revelation from heaven as to who they were designed to be, who you yourself were designed to be, then we can begin to see the enemy's work and how he's come against that in their life or in your life. And we just get our spirits in alignment and say, "Okay." Or even in a situation, you know, the enemy orchestrates situations all the time, and God's not scared of him. He is quite certain that the best thing the enemy can throw can be the very best stepping stool for the kingdom of God to be manifest, right? And so we have to get our eyes fixed on the One in any circumstance and say, "Okay, Lord, I'm aligning with You. What are You doing? What does it look like?"
And then I love this last part because of the authority God has given the believer to bless. And we see in Mark 11 where Jesus comes by a fig tree, and Jesus curses the fig tree, and He says, "Cursed are you! You will never bear fruit again." That's interesting because that's not usually what you see Jesus doing. Usually, you see Him bringing life, speaking life. But here He's making a point to the disciples. And so He curses the fig tree, and the next day they're walking back by the fig tree, and they find that the fig tree is withered at its roots, and that it will never be able to bear fruit again. Peter, I love Peter. "Jesus, Master, what You said happened," basically is what he says. "This thing is withered at its roots." And Jesus, "Yes, yes. And I say to you," He says, "You can say to this mountain, 'Move.' You can, anything you ask in My name, it will happen." And here we see this unspeakable authority in Christ that we have as believers, that we get to go up and align and see what God is doing and see who He's said this person is, or who we are, or what's happening in this situation, and we get to bless in that authority of Christ within us. We get to bless the situation, or we will choose to curse. And what I want you to know is that Christ is alive in you. He doesn't stop being alive in you when you curse something with your mouth. So we want to put a literal muzzle on this thing. When we are, when we are offended and hurt by people's sin, we don't want to operate in that anger. We do not want to operate in that unforgiveness and begin to produce the authoritative fruit of cursing. When we curse someone, it has power, and we want to never be a part of aligning with the enemy that way, and we want to always speak life and always speak blessing.
So I'd like us to take just a minute and personalize this grace cycle that we just looked at. So, Holy Spirit, we just invite You to come right now upon each one of us. And we invite You to reveal any bitter root, any place, God, that we are harboring anger, any place, Lord Jesus, that we have made judgments on anyone. And I want you just to, to go up. It may not take you long. And think about one person or one situation that we are really struggling to walk in the fullness of our identity in Christ, that we're really struggling to walk with that redemptive, restorative heart, and we may be bound still, stuck in the offense or the hurt or judgments. And I want us to go and just walk through this cycle. And I want you to feel the nearness of Christ here. I want you to remember that He said all sin will be judged on that day. The, the, the sin and offense that has happened, that's occurred, He doesn't look away. He's not ignoring it. He's not ignoring the pain in your heart. He cares. He also cares about the pain in that person's heart from where that sin came from. Hurt people tend to hurt people. And so He, and His goodness, is able to care for both. But right now, I want you to focus on His care and concern for your heart. And I want you to really be able to specify the offense, not just the actions, but what, what truly hurt your heart about that situation. And then, if, if you're able, by your will and your choice, I want you to choose to forgive that offense. It is a command in scripture. And so we, when we step into that willful choice to forgive, we are literally aligning with the kingdom where all of heaven can come in grace and power upon our life by that single act, that single act of our will to forgive.
And after you've forgiven, and I want you to go up and I literally want you to gather from your own heart and mind the pain from that experience. Once you've been able to gather that up, whether it's betrayal or fear or mistrust, or I want you to gather the effects in your heart of that sin and that pain. I want you to go up and I just want you to give it to Jesus. And as He takes it from you, I believe that He's going to show you where He was when that was happening, when that occurred, or all the times it reoccurred. And I believe that He wants to show you what He was saying to you in that time, if you had been able to hear Him. So I want you to listen for a minute. What was Jesus saying? What would He say if it's when you were little? I want you to ask Him, "What would You say to that little girl or little boy?" If it's now, I want you to ask Him what He's, what He's speaking, what truth, what encouragement, what comfort He would speak. And then I want you to come and I want you to ask Him what He wants to give you in exchange for all that bitterness, all that resentment, all that hurt. What's the gift? What's the exchange He wants to make? There's something of the kingdom where all that that's of the kingdom of darkness resided, and it's gone now because of the gift of forgiveness and the obedient step you took. He has gifts from the kingdom He wants to replace that with. I just want you to take a deep breath and breathe that in, that gift.
And out of that overflow, we're going to go. We're going to break any judgments we have. Maybe it's against yourself. Maybe it's against another person that caused the pain or that sinned. And we're just going to say, "Lord Jesus, I confess that I've judged this person as," and I want you to be specific. And in Jesus' name, I renounce that judgment and all the effects of that judgment on my life, on their life. We're going to go and we're going to ask, "Okay, Lord, we're going to align with You right now. Who do You see this person to be? How do You see this situation from heaven?" As He gives you His revelation of who you are, who they are, or who this situation and how He sees from His perspective what's happening, and we're going to choose right now to bless. And I want you to know that through this encountering of people's sin, sometimes you do see things that they need to be blessed with. And the enemy will try to stop you, and he's like, "Oh, you're going to bless them out of that judgment?" Are you going to know? When you bless from a pure heart, you bless them to be truth-tellers, or you bless them to be, to be considerate of others. Whatever you bless them with, you're doing that out of a heart of love so that they're restored to the rightfully who God made them to be. So don't be afraid to bless.
And in the privacy of your own home, I want you to, I want you to speak this blessing out because there's power, creative power, as we voice these blessings. We literally create atmospheres and we speak into, like God tells us to speak to the mountain. We speak into this situation and leave room for the Holy Spirit to come and back our blessing, back our authoritative words that we carry because of Christ. So, Lord, in this place, we just want to thank You, humbly thank You, God, that You have given Your people, Your church, Your bride, the authority in Christ through us to redeem and restore and bless and call forth destinies other than what we see in the natural in these situations. And Father, we thank You that You come in right now and have the power to redeem our own hearts and restore and heal our own hearts from the effects of sin. And Father, we call forth right now, in, in this moment, Lord, the blessing of heaven that we can be from this day forward, in this specific situation and in any situation that we encounter, we can be Your demonstrative grace and mercy on the earth. We can be those who literally call forth with our mouth the blessing that You have intended in heaven, that it may be on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen.