A church for the whole family! 1 Garnett Road East Maitland. Services 9:30 every Sunday.

Everybody is different, some people find eating right easy, others hard. Some people find being generous easy, others hard. We are all different.

But there is one thing that I believe we all find hard to understand and to put into practice. There is one part of our faith, an important part, a resurrected part that we all struggle with but it’s important to understand and put into practice in our lives.

We all struggle with the idea of being forgiven.

John 8:1-11 

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, ² but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. ³ As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

⁴ “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

⁶ They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. ⁷ They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”⁸ Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

⁹ When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. ¹⁰ Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

¹¹ “No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

1. Live differently

We like to comfort ourselves with bumper sticker theology “not perfect, just forgiven” so we can experience God’s forgiveness but not let it change us.

The whole point is forgiveness should change the way you live. You should see yourself differently, not condemned but free.

Sometimes this happens suddenly like scales dropping from our eyes, sometimes is about making a daily choice to put God first, sometimes it is about making a daily choice to not go back to the things that harms us. It all starts in Jesus.

Forgiven people live differently. T

2. Release others from the bonds of your judgement

You know how the judgemental eyes of others have affected your life, how it has felt like a chain. If there is someone in your life you sitting in judgement over it is time to release it into the love of Jesus. Forgiven people life differently. They overflow forgiveness to others.

God doesn’t want you to bind up bind yourself or others with unforgiveness. Forgiving doesn’t mean you have to let them back into your life, especially if they remain in destructive patterns. It doesn’t necessarily mean you tell them. What it does mean is you release a burden that chains both of you down.