You Don't Have to
Forget to Forgive
One
of the most powerful and heartbreaking MP3 sermons I've ever heard is by Dr.
David Gibbs Jr., called, “The
Essence Of A Christian.” In the sermon he talks about the true story of
a Florida woman in her late 20's. She was in a store parking lot with her
three small children, holding her baby. A car with three punks drove up,
randomly picking her to assault. They threw her baby to the ground and
forced her into the car. She fought desperately, so they broke her arm and
crushed both of her cheekbones forcing her into the car. She was no match
against three monsters! They drove her to a remote location in Florida and
gang raped her, sodomizing and performing every indecent act imaginable on
her for the next 6 hours. They showed no mercy!
Then they decided to murder her, so she
couldn't identify them. They decided to each stab her with a pocket knife,
to share in the culpability of the crime. They took turns stabbing her and
cutting her over one hundreds times, disfiguring her face and savagely
disfiguring her entire body. She was left for dead lying in a 5-foot pool of
her own blood. She agonizingly crawled through the woods with the last of
her fading strength and dropped from exhaustion about 40 feet from a road,
where a passing motorist noticed something in the distance lying on the
ground. She was rescued and made a recovery, if you can call it that.
Thank God, they caught the three thug teenage
males, not men in any respectable sense. The three trash appeared in court
and when the judge asked the jury to deliberate, the jurors said they didn't
need time to deliberate, because they had already decided. The judge told
them they had to deliberate, it was the rules, so they walked out and
immediately came back in... Our verdict is GUILTY! Those three bastards
didn't get the death penalty, because the ungodly federal government and
state of Florida don't allow it. Isn't that sickening? They all received
life in prison. Amen!
The amazing thing is what happened next. After
the court ruling, the victim entered into the courtroom and the newsmedia
and their cameras all focused attention upon the woman. She was asked by a
reporter if she could ever “forgive and forget.” She said, although she
could never forget what they had done to hurt her, having to see her
disfigured face each time she gazes into a mirror, she had already forgiven
them! She said, “I am a born-again Christian and I am commanded to forgive!”
Wow! Grown men in the courtroom among the newsmedia began to cry. Hands were
trembling. One reporter asked, “How can you forget what they did to you?”
She replied, “Although I can never forget what they did to hurt me, I don't
have to forget to forgive!” Wow, what a precious Christian lady!
As a Christian you don't have to forget to
forgive, just so long as you don't ever forget that you're forgiven. I hope
you'll listen to this precious MP3 sermon by Dr. David Gibbs Jr., it is a
life-changing message if you'll let it. The sermon was preached in April of
2004. Again, it is titled, “The
Essence Of A Christian.”
Dr. Gibbs is right, the Holy Bible never tells
us to only forgive someone if they ask for our forgiveness. We're supposed
to forgive everyone, no matter what! The Bible doesn't command for us to
forgive only if the offender stops hurting us. Stephen was the first of the
apostles to be martyred, and as they were in the very act of killing him, he
said in Acts 7:60b, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” As the
soldiers were mocking Jesus, whom they had just nailed to a cross, doing
their job, the Lord cried out in Luke 23:34b, “Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do.” Jesus cried out for the Father to forgive
them, because He already had. Isn't that beautiful? The Lord had already
forgiven them. The first thing that Jesus said to Judas after he betrayed
Him was, “Friend” (Matthew 26:50b). That my dear reader is the
essence of a Christian. THE END
I was reading some articles online while researching the now defunct P. T. L.
(Praise The Lord club), which was once even more popular than today's The
700 Club (both of which were of the Devil). Yet, I read some things that
Tammy Faye Bakker (1942-2007) said about forgiveness that I think are correct and worthy of
repeating. If you have been hurt by someone, or harbor hatred in your hurt
toward those who have attacked or wronged you, then perhaps you might find a
word of help and comfort in the following words by Tammy Faye. She died of
cancer in 2007...
