Gods Heart of the Nations

Reconciliation:

What is reconciliation?

- bring together something that was once destroyed. (come back together again)

- sort out things

- changing out "enemy" into friends.

- make something right; peace.

- The act of settling or restoring differences.

- most often, reconciliation means the restoring of a relationship.

- it is a settling or resolving of differences between friends; family; etc.

Different types:

-financial

-relational

-personal

-spiritual

- we are Christ's ambassador's, we need to represent God to the nations.

- we're not taking God to Zambia, he's already there we just need to reveal him.

Ambassador:

1: represent Jesus' nation

2: Image of Christ

3: speaks on behalf of Jesus

4: walk like Jesus walks

Trinity:

-perfect unity

-perfect love

-mutual trust

-harmony

-honor

-diversity/unity

-communication

-they were celebrating one another

-respect

(Rev. 21:22)

Gods original intentions for cultures

-the expressions of the nation help us to understand who God is. (Acts 17:26)

-no single culture can contain his glory (Rev. 21:24-26, ps. 86:9, ps. 22:27-28, Rev. 5:9-10)

-each nation needs each others nation because each nation has a special gift from God.

WE ARE ALL EQUAL

The Process of Reconciliation:

1: Revelation- we need to understand and have a revelation.

2: conviction- true conviction doesn't come w/o revelation.

3: confession- stating the truth

4: repentance- turning from unloving to loving actions, but always being specific.

5: forgiveness- the ability to release to pardon freely.

6: reconciliation- expressing and receiving forgiveness, and pursuing intimate fellowship with previous enemies.

7: restitution- show with more than just words that you are sorry.

What went wrong?

as our journey towards reconciliation continues we need to understand what has led to the prejudices and beliefs that lie in our individual lives and take responsibility for theses things.

however, our need for reconciliation and forgiveness doesn't all stem from wrong choices we have made due to our prejudices and wrong beliefs.

-often things happen to us that are out of our control and cause wounds and pain in our lives. This may be an act, performance by someone to intentionally hurt us, or perhaps the hurt has been caused intentionally.

but where do we learn our prejudice from?

Prejudice: a pre-conceived idea. w/o experiencing it first hand.

8 things/or/ people we got it from.

1: adam. (rom. 5:12-21) all come short off the glory of God

2: continent

3: nation (bad thoughts the nation sends out and you conform to it)

4: culture/ ethnic group (things you were taught)

5: forefathers (passed on good and bad things to you. eg: racism, habits, raising techniques, religion. etc)

6: Family (tight unit)

7: life experiences

8: faith and religion

It's not just sin that influences you. it's all the xperiences through these 8 things that shape what you think and how you act.

These things happen, but it's God's word that stays true. These are the roots of the tree. It one is poisoned you'll have poisoned fruit. Once you change the root belief the fruit will change as well.

What kind of fruits are people picking up from you?

8 things you need to know:

1: the call. we all have been called to be involved in reconciliation. it's mandatory.

2: commitment and relationships. reconciliation is built upon the foundation of committed relationships. It involves conflict resolution.

3: Intentional. is the purposeful, positive and planned activity that facilitates reconciliation. It requires perseverance.

4: sincerity. is the willingness to be vulnerable, including self-disclosure of feelings, attitudes, differences, and perceptions, with the goal of resolution and building trust. It involves trust and transparent. (People will only open up as far as you do.)

5: sensitivity. is the intentional acquisition of knowledge in order to relate empathetically to any diverse situation, person, place or organization. It involves knowledge and understanding.

6: sacrifice. the willingness to relinquish and establish status or position to genuinely adopt a lesser position in order to facilitate diverse relationships. Reconciliation will cost.

7: empowerment. the use of repentance and forgiveness to create complete freedom in diverse relationships. It involves repentance and forgiveness.

8: interdependence. recognizes differences, but realizes that each offers something that the other need, resulting in equality in the relationship. Reconciliation involves equality.

Forgiveness

1: forgiveness is a command. to the degree that we are willing to forgive is tot he degree you'll receive the Lord and His forgiveness.

2: unforgiveness locks you up.

-matt. 18:23-35

- we seek to be forgiven but want to hold onto the offense.

- unforgiveness gives satan a chance to slip into your life.

3: unforgiveness blocks the promises that God has for us.

- mark 11:25

- God instructs us to forgive before we pray.

- in order to move in faith our hearts must be tight towards others.

4: unforgiveness manifests in 3 areas of our lives.

1. physical and mental illnesses

2. it opens to a root of demonic strongholds in your life

3. it always effects both parties. you're tired with a "rope" with the other person that there is no forgiveness with. Forgiveness is first for you, so you can be free. The moment you let go of that "rope" unforgiveness, it opens a door for God to convict that other party.

My Story

A couple weeks back we had a speaker, peter, that was suppose to speak on Father Heart of God, but failed to do so. Many people on our team felt there was nothing good about that week and so did i until this we had Wilson Gueda come and speak to us about reconciliation. During peter's week he had us right a letter to God about our parents, whether is was good or bad, but he never did anything about that letter after we wrote it. I Got really angry because while writing that letter God brought up so many feelings about my past with my parents that i thought i had taken care of and forgiven them for, but in reality i really don't believe i had. So, when Wilson got here and explained what reconciliation was i instantly knew that that week was going to be very tough, and really... i didn't want to deal with it. In the middle of the week some girls were talking in class about some things they were facing and i started crying when the first girl was talking. I thought weird, i'm crying, but i usually cry sometimes when others cry. not sure why. Then Wilson said is there anyone else that would like to share and another girl started talking and i started to cry uncontrollably and i realized that i wasn't crying because they were crying, i was crying because i was so tired of holding in all my feelings and emotions about what my parents had done and i had never dealt with it. I knew i had two options, 1: get up and go out of class and deal with it on my own because i knew i wouldn't stop crying. 2: tell Wilson about it and the whole class hear what i had to say. As i was feeling like i needed to get up and leave the room wilson came over and placed his hands on my knees and said, "my dear i believe there is something you need to share." right when he said that i completely lost it and cried for a while. I was finally able to calm down a little to share and when i did Wilson made me sit in a chair in the middle of the room and look one of the leaders in the eye and pretend they were my parents and name specifically all the things they had done that i needed to forgive them for. After i did this i couldn't do anything but cry and hard and loud cry. I couldn't believe that all of that had come up. Things i didn't even think would effect me much effected me soo much and it just came spilling out. In the end i forgave them and so much peace overcame me and my body. Yes there is still hurt and yes i won't really forget what happened, but i can have peace about it. It doesn't mean that feelings aren't going to come up ever again, cause they probably will. But i dealt with such a big part of my life that day that so badly needed to be dealt with. This is my story, and it's a great one:)