If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14–15

"Forgiveness is like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one."
- NT Wright

Grace received becomes grace extended.

The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.
Luke 15:28-32

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people - even eating with them! So Jesus told them this story…
Luke 15:1-3

Bottom Line

Grace is the only way into God's kingdom celebration, but it must be received and released.

Barriers to Grace

1. Self-righteousness
2. Resentment
3. Fairness

"Competitive comparison is the main way elder brothers achieve a sense of their own significance."
-Tim Keller

"Forgiveness means absorbing the debt and letting the offender go free. You can only do it if you first have a kind of death, a death to your right to payback, a death to your need to seek revenge."
- Tim Keller

"Joy and resentment cannot coexist."
- Henri Nouwen

Grace isn't earned, it's given.

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
Luke 5:31

"Celebration belongs to God’s kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them."
- Henri Nouwen

Reflection

Get Honest

Pray: God, show me where I’m holding onto something that’s blocking your grace - either flowing to me or through me.

‍Spend some time listening and paying attention to whatever he brings to mind.

Let Go

Picture yourself taking what he brings to mind and releasing it to God. Surrender control. Receive grace. 

Pray: God, I give this to you. Help me let go of what I cannot carry - and receive what only you can give.

Action Steps

1. Continue your time of prayer and reflection with God from today, asking him to bring to mind anything that’s blocking you from receiving or extending God’s grace. 
2. Practice letting go of whatever he brings to mind. 
3. Engage a resource to go deeper:
   
   • Praxis Podcast - Series on Forgiveness
     
   • The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
   • Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen