Loving the most difficult

Welcome to treasures in the storm. My name is Cindy Schmidler and today we have a special edition on forgiveness. This is a passage that we don’t want to avoid. We want to grab hold of it. Why? Because it’s best for us for our lives. It brings us to the point where we can have a calm, confident, um joyful outlook as we work through this. But not easy. It’s not easy to do. So we’re gonna pray. We’re gonna look at what God says about this and then we’re gonna get after that. Why? Because we want to be light and free and happy, don’t we? And so let me pray for us, get your bibles, get your pen and paper because God is so trustworthy. He is going to speak to us and that’s what we want. We want that more than anything. And so father, we come together my audience and myself today and we are asking you for a great feeding. We need a feeding father. We want to live in abundance today in that light. Freedom you want to give us today? The thief wants to kill still destroy Lord, but we’re not gonna let him. We’re going to grab a hold of what you are asking of us today. So help us God to bow our heads and submit to what you are asking of us. Lord. Why? Because you want what’s best for us. We know you want what’s best for us. Help us God when we don’t believe You. Help us to trust you. I pray for my audience today. Any who are really struggling, you need to be bathed in your ointment of oil of hope and help God an encouragement Lord please bring it to them today as we work through this passage together and we trust you Lord, we thank you that you have already answered this prayer as you tell us in scripture, it’s in jesus name that I pray So welcome today. We’re going to be in the book of Luke. So if you want to go there Luke, Chapter six starting at verse 27 and I don’t know about you but it’s usually the people that are closest to me that can hurt me. And so the closer they are, the easier it is for me to be hurt by them. And so I think of my husband and my son and my brother and my parents were alive. It would be my parents, those people are the closest my good friends, my dearest friends, those would be the people that could hurt me the most. And then from there it goes out because I can have the person at the grocery store can hurt my feelings too. They’re not exempt. It’s just the ones closest are the ones that I struggle with because we bear our souls to them, especially our spouse. And so today if you’re struggling with one of those situations, my heart goes out to you because it’s hard. I know how hard it is. And so we’re just gonna bow our heads gonna let God put his appointment of oil of hope and help into that thing. That thing that we’re struggling with. So let’s start with the scriptures luke chapter six starting at verse 27. But to you who are listening, this is red letter meaning jesus very words. But to you who are listening, I say love your enemies do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Okay, we’ll just stop right there because that has just blown me over like a tsunami. I don’t know about you, but that’s how I feel about that. So I’m called to love my enemies. How how in the world can I love my enemy And usually an enemy can end up being your very own spouse or your child or your parent or your sister or your brother. Why? Because they’ve hurt you so bad. And then you have enemies that are far out there that you have to deal with too. So let’s go on find out. So we’re commanded God has commanded us through jesus to do this, we’re supposed to bless those who curse us. So when somebody seeks revenge, not revenge, but who is after you to get you to maybe they’re jealous of you or or they just want what you have maybe something like that when they’re after you and they mistreat you because they can’t Those are the people that were supposed to blow up. So let’s go and see how do we do that verse 29. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other. Also if someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you, wow! It is some really difficult scripture here, but it’s also a command of God, isn’t it? So if somebody takes advantage of me, I’m to give them my coat to let them let them. And I think about this being that this is all for the cause of God, for the kingdom. And so one way I deal with this is of course you have to go to the Lord because there’s no way that you or I humanly possible could do this. But God through us will do it. And so for me, when somebody has stung me so bad that it just went deep into my soul, into my heart and I’m feeling the weight of that pain, I start preaching to myself, God, you are with me, You are in this. You have good purpose. And you say in James consider it pure gold when you suffer trials of many kinds because God is working in that he is growing you up sometimes. I just don’t want to grow up though, I don’t want to face that. And so I have to preach to myself then. And so I tell myself, Lord, you are in this thing. These people who have said these bad things about me that are not true. They’re not even true. I think of joseph in his life and how horrible his brothers were to him. And yet he was able to say and be kind to them in the end saying, brothers don’t worry about this because God was in it. And I’m like, how can that be That? The way through this? The way through such hurt like this is to put God in the center and seek his purpose. I call it the 5000 ft view. Get yourself up above the circumstances be looking up right. I look to the mountains. The scripture says in some 121, I looked to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from maker of Heaven and Earth, he who watches over me will not let my foot slipped. He who watches over you. My dear audience will not let your foot slip. And so we’ve got to take ourselves out. Our feelings have to come off and we have to take ourselves out of the pain because the pain of it, the misery how we feel will we’ll get us caught up. We will fall into what’s called Self pity. And my friends Self pity is of the devil. And so we want none of that near our tent. Do we want none of that near us. And so we preach to ourselves. God, you haven’t left me and you will do good. You take care of my integrity. I don’t take care I could never take care of my integrity. But you will you will take care of it. So that’s one way we go in and we let him take care of it instead of us taking care of it. So then it goes on verse 35. But love your enemies do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Okay, lend to them without expecting anything back. And and not my friends. When I’m talking about, my friends were talking about my enemies. And so I should be willing to lend to my enemies and don’t expect it in return. I think how often I will lend to somebody expecting a favor in return. You know, I’m gonna go and bring you this. And I, in my heart I may I may not say it, but in my heart I really expect something back. And God says, don’t do that. Don’t do that. I have given you everything for enjoyment. I take care of all of your food. Don’t expect things in return. And I think expectations are what get us in trouble. But if we don’t expect we live freer, we live lighter. And so if I could give you a word today, it would be. do not expect things when you go to do good to somebody who’s harmed you. Like the scripture says we’re thinking of them as an enemy. Don’t expect that they will do anything back. And bitterness, bitterness is a sin that comes by holding on to resentment, holding onto something that God has never intended. You. You expect something, you you become resentment about something because you have wanted, whether it be a nice thing done back to you or you expect somebody to be kind to. You just think it’s the way to be and you expect them if we stop that expectation and we go to do and I find in my life the what helps me the most from bitterness. That sin that’s really not against that person, that I’m bitter too. It’s really a sin against God. Often that person doesn’t even know that I’m bitter. They don’t even know they’re just living life. They don’t even know that they’ve hurt me. It’s between me and God and we don’t ever want to be, have anything between us and God. And so we need to work, Uh, getting rid of that unforgiveness. Getting rid of that bitterness because God has called us to forgive 24\/7, it’s not an option. It’s something that he has as believers. He has called us to that and we want to be about that, we want to have a heart already there, that’s why these scriptures are so important. If we can get this deep in our soul, this truth to know that God wants us to love our enemies, even our enemies, He wants us to do good to them. He wants us to lend to them. That means he really wants us to lend to everybody because that would include everybody in it, wouldn’t it? When you talk about enemies and so he wants us to have that heart. So let’s position ourselves to have that spirit in us of forgiveness. Already done. And I have a good friend who says, I don’t the minute it comes on me, the minute that pain of somebody just sending an arrow on me to hurt me that minute that I feel it is when I go to God right away, Lord, take this off of me, put forgiveness in me because he’s got to do it for you put it in me, helped me not to think about this, helped me to have what we call charitable judgments. That’s thinking the best about everybody helped me to think the best about this person, though they have hurt me now and I know that violation, it feels we feel violated, don’t we? And I’ve had and you we all go through this. We all get into situations where this has happened to us and sometimes we have to work a lot harder at that forgiveness, especially when it’s somebody close or you’re hurting You’ve been maybe you’ve lost a parent and you’re just grieving and so anything that happens to you is an offense because you’re hurting anyway. That’s when we go to the Lord and we get the people around us who love us that we trust those that love jesus, that will pray for us and will help us through this hard thing. It’s not that you don’t share, you want to share so you can get it out out of you and then you ask them to pray to help you, help you to get where you need to and you’ll be amazed at how God will take care of that for me. I have to go do good to them, meaning it may be a conversation that I’m going to have with them, they don’t know that I’m upset about what they just did to me And I just go to them and I have conversation and that releases me from the jaws of destruction that want to take me over. And it brings me to that spacious table with choice foods on it as job 36 talks about. And so that’s all I get those jaws of the stress off of me and get to that table. My friend says, I’ve got to get it off of me right away because then the minute I don’t, it starts eating at me and it becomes bigger and bigger and you know so many people and so do I who lived that way. They live in that misery of bitterness. You my friend, you do not want that. You do not want that. Now, that doesn’t mean that there are times that you don’t need to go to a person we know from the scriptures for eight First Peter 4 8 says, Love covers a multitude of sense. So let me say that again. Love covers a multitude of sins. Many will sin against you. And you need not go to them. Maybe even your husband has sinned against you. And it’s not a sin that you need to go to them. We do not need to take everything to them. We don’t need to solve every problem. But there are times where God says, look, I need you to stand up. This problem has to be solved and you need to communicate because I don’t want anybody sitting against me and you don’t want people to sin against God. It’s not about you, it’s about sinning against God. So we want to trust when he asks us to let Love cover a multitude of sins that we do that we let that love cover that those sins that may cause us heartache. And what I do in those situations, if it’s something that I’ve taken to the Lord to cover, take it to the Lord cover, take it to the Lord cover and it’s not happening, then I think God wants me to deal with it. And I need to go deal with it. First Corinthians 9 24 is a good example how to uh, as the scripture says, beat your body into submission, it says in a race, all the runners run in a race, but not you you run in order to get the prize. You run, you beat your body into submission to run to get that prize. You’re not just haphazardly running. You are in training and that’s what you want to be when you need to fight off. Uh, this feeling of um negativity about somebody, this this unforgiveness, this bitterness. We need to ask God to take it away from us and then we need to beat our bodies into submission to keep going. Ask as he has called us to anger, disappointment being treated unfairly. All of these are examples of things that God would not have us have in our heart. And it doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna be angry. I’m not saying that I’m saying is it has to be dealt with so that your countenance is one of joyfulness, because the Lord says, I want you to be joyful always, and I want you to rejoice again. I say rejoice. He says in the scriptures, and so he wants us to be rejoicing and we want that to we want that in our hearts. And so we need to take that off and put on the good. And I always asked the father to bring his healing balm into my wounds when those wounds are bad, Please God put that in. We put that. I picture him sapping me in those wounds And then we’re gonna look at Luke 6 46. And this is such a good example of what happens when you do as God tells you forgive and you get bitterness off of you, you get cleaned off by the Lord. Then this is what you’re like. And so here it is luke Chapter six. Many of you have heard this as Children and a song luke 6 46. Why do you call me red letters? Why do you call me Lord Lord and do not do what I say. As for everyone who comes to me and here’s my words and puts them into practice. I will show you what they are like. So here we go, jesus very own words when he tells you to love your enemies to bless those who curse you. Those are his words. And he wants you to put that into practice. Why? Because that’s where your victory comes. That’s where your light hearted your joy comes. It comes out of putting it into practice. So you’re not like James, like a man looking in the mirror who forgets what he looks like and walks away. That’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about. You look into that mirror and you deal with that thing just how God would have you do it. And then when you do that, this is what you are verse 48. They they’re like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on the rock when the flood came, the torrent struck that house, but could not shake it because it was well built. That’s what you are. You’re a well built house. So when the storms of life come, they don’t shake you. Why? Because you built your house on that solid foundation on that rock, because you put into practice the things he has asked of you. And then verse 49, but the one who hears these words and does not put them into practice, he is like a man who built his house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and it’s destruction was complete. So you smashed to smithereens is what happens to us when we live on our own feelings when we live on our flesh and how we I think, you know, we’ve been wronged and we have an attitude about that, that that’s when our house, our self destruct and we don’t want that. We want to be a solid foundation. We want to be one firm going through life confidently because he is taking care of us. And he has asked us, I think what a sweet aroma we are to the father when we do this. And I think of so many, I mean so many times in my life when people have hurt me and I didn’t go to them because because I’m letting charitable judgments, I’m thinking the best of that person that they don’t realize what they’ve done. And I let it go and I let God bathed me in his appointment of oil of gladness to get me through. And it’s it feels so wonderful to have that experience just me and him, him taking care of me and I want that for you today. Dear audience. I want you to be able to put these words that he has given us into practice so we can have a solid foundation that we can be firm in the things that he’s called us to and I hope you will share these scriptures with your friends who are struggling. And it’s not that we don’t listen to our friends and all the heartache that they may be going through because that’s compassion. We want to do that. But then after we have listened and after we have felt their pain, then we step in. We can’t leave it there we step in because otherwise what kind of friend are we? We want to be the kind of friend that when they get to heaven, they were glad we were there friend, don’t you. And so I’m going to pray for us and these hard things today, I’m gonna pray for you audience and then I want you to take this. I want you to go to the Lord with anything he might be talking to you about and I want you to take it to him and let him bathe you in that healing that only he can give you maybe today is gonna be a new day and I built a broken relationship brought strong together again. So Lord, we do come before you Lord, this is so difficult that you would ask us to love your enemies yet Lord, you jesus while you were on the cross, use all those people put you up there. That misery and the your open body flowing blood, your nails in your hand. All those people that did that Lord you said forgive them father for they know not what they do. Lord God, could we have that attitude with those who have wronged us and help us to share this with others Lord. So that we can live in that light. Joyful freedom that you have for us. Got And it’s hard Lord, we can’t do it on our own. So will you do it for us Lord, will you help us with this? We trust you God. We trust you with everything in us in jesus name. Thank you so much for joining me today. Mm hmm. Hello, my name is Cindy Schmirler and I have something very special that I want to share with you today. This is a book that I’ve written called tragedy turned upside down. This is a book full of hope and help if you need some strength today, I call it God vitamins If you need some real uh inoculation of the Lord and faith and belief in your life. This book is for you. My readers have said they devour it, they sit in one sitting to finish it. They have laughed, they have cried. Most of them have taken notes on it because there’s so many good foundational truths in it that you will want to write down and keep for the storms of your life. Mostly you’re gonna take this book and you’ll want to share it with others that are struggling to. So at your earliest convenience, I’d say pick it up, read it, you will be blessed, blessed blessed when you read this and share it with those that are struggling right now. Maybe even if they’re not struggling, somebody who needs to know, maybe they don’t have faith and you want them to have faith, you want them to know who jesus is. This book is for you those words that you you just can’t bring to say to a friend or relative. This book is full of all the things that you had hoped to say to them. So pick it up at your earliest convenience