Bear With & Forgive One Another (Colossians 3:12-17)

·44 min·4 clips

A pastor confesses that people make his job amazing and difficult, setting up a sermon on bearing with and forgiving one another.

The episode is part of a sermon series called 'One Another' exploring biblical teachings on community relationships. The pastor begins by acknowledging that people are both a source of joy and frustration in life and ministry. He introduces the day's focus on Colossians 3:13, which commands bearing with and forgiving one another. For bearing with, he explains it involves patience with annoyances, immaturity, and differences, such as preferences in music or parenting styles. He uses a family road trip analogy to illustrate this necessity on the Christian journey. The pastor then shifts to forgiveness, citing C.S. Lewis's quote about its difficulty and Jesus's parable from Matthew 18 about a servant forgiven a massive debt who refuses to forgive a smaller one. He defines forgiveness as a decision to cancel another's debt, not a feeling, and clarifies what it is not, such as minimizing, forgetting, or immediately trusting. Four steps are offered to help forgive when it's hard: be clear on what forgiveness is, admit the hurt, consider how you've been forgiven by God, and choose forgiveness with God's help. The sermon concludes with application questions about experiencing God's forgiveness and forgiving others, emphasizing that imperatives to forgive flow from the indicative of God's forgiveness. The pastor prays for the congregation to embrace forgiveness and reconciliation.

As heard by us

A sharp sermon on mercy, debt, and forgiving others from the heart.

This sermon begins with a blunt truth about conflict: people can be both the best part of life and the hardest part of it. From there, it ties that tension to the church's digital detox and the One Another series, moving steadily from love and encouragement into forgiveness.

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Why you'd press play

If grudges have been doing unpaid labor in your chest, this sermon goes straight at them.

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Play clips from this episode More from Sojourn Church (Perry, GA)