Jesus Took The Initiative — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

Wonder if you’ve heard the name Doctor Tony Campolo. He’s well known in the Christian circles, a Baptist minister and a very popular speaker and author. Now, Tony Campolo has preached and spoken to thousands of people around the world. He tells the story what happened one Sunday in New Jersey where he was preaching. And as he stood in this church, Patty looked down at the congregation, and he saw an angry looking woman staring up at him.

Then he looked to the other side, and there was another woman looking the same. In fact, they were identical.

And Tony asked the deacon about these two women. Yes, he, he said they’re twin sisters, but they’re sitting on opposite sides of the church. Tony said, have they had a disagreement? Yes, they certainly have. Well, how long has this been going on?

23 years was the answer. Well, it’s a good thing, I guess Tony Campolo said they don’t live together, but the deacon said, Yeah, but you don’t understand. They do live together. They lived in the same home, and they never spoken to each other after 23 years of falling out.

Tony Campolo never did actually get to speak to these two ladies after the church service. How can you forgive somebody if that somebody doesn’t ask for forgiveness?

And then Tony says, if I’d spoken to the other woman, which I didn’t, but if I had of, he probably would have heard, I’m willing to forgive my sister, but she’s never asked for forgiveness. Now it’s a very sad situation. Here are two sisters living together, sharing life, but have not spoken for 23 years.

Each of these sisters waited for the other to take the initiative.

And this is where we look at Jesus, you know, for the great example, and I’m talking about forgiveness. Jesus actually took the initiative. He didn’t wait for us to come to Him because the Bible tells me that while we were in our sin, He came to us and he offered reconciliation. He offered us forgiveness. He didn’t wait for us to come to Him, and that’s why part of the Lord’s prayer that you might know, it says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

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And then right at the end of that prayer Jesus has these words: If you forgive others their trespasses, so will God forgive you, your trespass. But if you refuse to forgive another, neither will you be forgiven.

It’s true we live and work with people. Things go wrong sometimes, and we need to come to grips with this fact that we must assume responsibility for what goes wrong. It’s quite rare, I guess, for a leader to admit his or her mistakes. We’ve simply got a problem here taking responsibility for our own actions. It was John Wayne in that classic movie 1949 called She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and in his voice he growled, Never apologise and never explain, he said.

Now usually people respect you more if you acknowledge any failure or mistakes.

But what if you did nothing wrong, you know, I’m not responsible for what you say. But have another look here at Jesus. Jesus hung on this rough wooden cross. Jesus, it would appear, was a criminal. That’s what criminals suffered, if you had done something wrong, you were crucified, and He took the punishment. He became the guilty one.

But here He was, He hadn’t done anything wrong. Jesus, the perfect Son of God who’d never sinned, nailed to a cross. It just didn’t make any sense.

So read the gospel stories yourself and you’ll see how it’s spelt out there, because as Jesus was on that cross, He took on Himself my sin and my guilt. He made Himself the guilty one. The Bible says By His stripes we are healed. So if there’s to be reconciliation in like the two families, the two sisters there, we have to make the first move. It’s not easy, but we can ask God for His help and His Holy Spirit can actually help us to do that.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we do acknowledge today that sometimes it’s not easy to take that initiative, to take the first step to go to somebody to try and sort a problem out. Lord, thank you that you took the great initiative in sending Jesus to take my place, to take my sin, and I am grateful, Lord, and I offer this prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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