Your Personal Grow-Pray-Study (GPS) Guide

Photo by Felix Koutchinski on Unsplash

In this week's Red Letter Challenge (Week 3) sermon, Pastor Travis shared the 12 STEPS OF FORGIVENESS that has been adapted from the 12 Steps of AA:

1. I admit that I am powerless when it comes to forgiving those who have hurt me or betrayed me; my life has become unmanageable.
2. I believe that following the words of Jesus and pursuing Him can restore me to sanity.
3. I want to turn my will and my life over to the care of Christ Jesus.
4. I am making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admit to God, to myself, and to others, the exact nature of my wrongs- my inability to see the perpetrator in the way that God sees the perpetrator.
6. I am ready for God to remove all my defects of character- the bitterness and hatred that fester within.
7. I humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings- my failures to forgive and to love as Christ loves.
8. I am making a list of all persons I have harmed, and I am willing to make amends with them all- all the people I projected my hurts upon, or took my anger out on, out of bitterness.
9. I am making direct amends with such people wherever possible, except, when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I am continuing to take a personal inventory, and when I am wrong, I will promptly admit it- continually feeling, evaluating, transforming, and forgiving.
11. I seek, through prayer and worship, to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. In having a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will carry this message to others who struggle to forgive, and will practice these principles in all my affairs.

“If God is known for grace, how can we, His followers, be known for judgement, the exact opposite?”
- Zach Zehnder, The Red Letter Challenge