He Forgives All of Our Sins

In one paragraph

This service centered on Psalm 103 and the Holy Spirit's work in moving people from head knowledge of God's truth to actually walking in freedom. Pastor Don introduced Jan Hicks, a lay counselor and close friend of the church, to give her testimony as a living example of that healing. The morning was as much demonstration as it was teaching. Pastor Don opened from Psalm 103, pressing on the...

Read together

1. Psalm 103:1 Read aloud to open worship: 'bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name'
2. Psalm 103:2 Read aloud: 'let all that I am praise the Lord, may I never forget the good things he does for me'
3. Psalm 103:3 Read aloud: 'he forgives all my sins and he heals all my diseases'
4. Psalm 103:4-5 Read aloud: 'he redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies, he fills my life with good things'
5. Psalm 103:22 Read aloud as closing doxology of the psalm: 'praise the Lord, everything he has created, let all that I am praise the Lord'
6. Galatians 5:1 Quoted near the close: 'it is for freedom that Christ died and he set us free, therefore do not return to the yoke of slavery'

Talk about it

1. Pastor Don talked about the difference between having knowledge in your head and actually walking in the Spirit so that others can see a change in you. Where do you find that gap hardest to close in your own life?
2. Psalm 103 says God forgives all our sins, not some of them. Jan said she heard people in counseling say 'the Lord can't forgive this sin, because I can't forgive it.' Have you ever struggled to accept that the forgiveness is complete? What made it hard to believe?
3. Jan described years of coping through drugs, alcohol and one relationship after another, looking for something to fill what she called 'that void and that hole' in her life. What are the coping strategies people around us reach for, and what does it look like when someone moves from coping to the freedom Pastor Don described?
4. Jan said that even after she was dramatically delivered from addiction and gave her life to Christ, she still lived with shame, guilt, unforgiveness and bitterness, and called it 'great religion' without real relationship. What is the difference between those two things, and how do you know which one you are living in at a given moment?
5. Pastor Don closed by quoting that Christ set us free so we would not return to the yoke of slavery. What does returning to that yoke look like in everyday life, and what has helped you or someone you know stay out of it?