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We are in the beginning stages of an incredible move of God, and our job right now is to prepare ourselves for mind-blowing miracles.

We are a church that is positioned and ready for the incredible revival that is upon us. We’ve already witnessed the gifts of the spirit at work Sunday after Sunday. And this is only going to increase and intensify into mighty miracles of God.

Azusa Street Revival

Each week during this series, I’ve been sharing a true story from the Azusa street revival to help stir up your faith.

This incredible revival started in 1906 in Los Angeles, California. Amazing miracles were released every single day for three and a half years.

There was a woman who came into the meeting one day who could hardly breathe and looked like a skeleton. She only lived about two miles from Azusa and but it took her about three hours to walk there.

She literally took one baby step at a time, placing the staff in front of her, then scooting her feet up to it and repeating the slow, tedious process until she reached the revival meeting.

She came in and looked around as if she were studying the room. At some point, her eyes met a woman named Laura and she said, “That’s the woman I want to pray for me.”

Sister Laura walked over to her and said, “What can I do for you?” The next words the lady spoke were almost haunting. “I won’t live through the night if God doesn’t heal me; I’ll die. Doctors say my lungs are ate up with cancer, and I can hardly breathe. I’ve been losing weight for about a year.”

This dear, feeble, elderly woman weighed about sixty-five pounds, standing at 5-feet 6-inches tall. She was nothing but bones.

Sister Laura laid hands on her and prayed for her. Immediately, she was able to breathe normally.

After the prayer

In the next three hours, she gained a remarkable forty pounds while at the meeting, yet she ate nothing and only breathed in the tangible glory of God. She said, “My lungs are not hurting; I can breathe like when I was young!”

Soon after, this lady visited her doctor. When she entered the office, he asked her to fill out the forms for first-time patients – he did not recognize her. When she told him who she was, he could not believe she was the same person.

After running tests and checking her out, he told her that her insides were just like new – lungs and all. In amazement, he told her, “There is no way you could have gained that much weight since the last time I saw you. It is impossible!”

After he found out the healing took place at Asuza, the doctor started going with her to the services. In a few months, he was no longer practicing traditional medicine because he founded “Wings of Healing” where he experienced miracles galore!

I share these stories with you because, in 1910, it was prophesied that in about a hundred years there would be another revival like Azusa Street. Only this time it would not be in one place. It would be all over the world. 

This revival will not be with just one person or just pastors. It will be with everybody in the Body of Christ. This time the revival will not end until the Lord returns.

Who wants to be a part of these amazing miracles of God? Because if you come here to NoLimits, you don’t have a choice but to be part of it. 

Series Core Scripture

So, today we are going to do our last little bit of cleanup to get ourselves ready to receive. Let’s start by taking another look at our core scripture for this series.

Mark 11:22-25 NLT – Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.

In this short lesson from Jesus, He gives us four things that determine our ability to receive miracles from God:

1. Have faith in God.
2. Speak your faith.
3. Remove the doubt.
4. Forgive others.

Part 1 Recap

In the first week of this series, we talked about faith. We found out that faith is confidence in God’s Word. And the way we build this confidence is by hearing the Word of God over and over and over.

Faith is why we praise God even when we don’t feel like it. Faith is why we give even when it’s inconvenient. Faith is why we trust God even when we don’t understand.

Faith. It’s what enables you to stay at peace in the gap between when you release your faith and see the result. Because you know the result is coming, just like you know your Amazon order is coming when you press buy now.

Part 2 Recap

In part two, we talked about speaking faith. And in order to see the results of what we speak, we must really believe what we are speaking.

Most of us start speaking faith by reciting scripture that we hope is true. And this is a great place to start! But to see the results of it, you need to be speaking something that you really believe.

And this unwavering belief only comes from hearing God’s Word. Faith doesn’t come because of what you heard last year. It comes because you keep hearing and hearing the Word of God.

Part 3 Recap

In part three, we talked about removing doubt. We tend to step out in faith to believe God for a miracle and then immediately get overcome with doubt.

We remember the last time we prayed and it didn’t work. Or we wonder if healing is even God’s will.

Doubt is the biggest culprit to why we do not see miracles and God’s promises in our lives. God always answers your prayer, but many times you negate your own prayer with doubt.

Once again, most doubt is overcome by hearing the Word of God over and over. But when doubt is caused by circumstances, you’ll also need to include prayer and fasting.

For example, if you pray for someone to be healed and they end up dying, that circumstance is going to make you think, “This doesn’t work.” If you’ve been sick for years, your circumstance is going to make you think, “God doesn’t want to heal me.”

You overcome this kind of doubt with prayer and fasting. The reason it works like this is that prayer moves us closer to God and away from our circumstances. 

Fasting helps us remember that our body does not get the last word. God does. So when that symptom shows up again, you laugh because you know God’s Word prevails over sickness.

If you’ve been in church for long, you already know how important it is to hear the Word of God.  You already know you should be praying regularly. Fasting… well, you know about it.

Live Godly, or live distracted?

To see the promises of God come alive in your life is really simple. You spend time with God instead of with the world.

Instead of watching reality TV, turn on a message that will feed your spirit. Instead of opening Facebook, open your Bible.

Easy stuff y’all. We just have to do it. And it’s not that you’re earning anything. All of this is just how we become more aware of God and less controlled by the world.

Satan knows this is simple for us. That’s why he works so hard to distract you. The question is, are you going to resist the devil?

Or are you going to give in to the distractions and live life without the promises of God?

That’s not a very fun discussion. So, let’s move on to the message for today. We’ve talked about faith, speaking faith, and removing doubt. Now it’s time to talk about forgiveness.

Isn’t that so much better than what we were just talking about? Well, hang with me, because this message is going to help you.

Forgiveness unleashes miracles.

When it comes to the lack of seeing miracles and seeing God’s promises in our lives, the main culprit is doubt which we talked about last week. But it’s not the only culprit. Sometimes, it’s unforgiveness.

Over and over in the Bible, you will find that forgiveness is a big deal to God. That’s why He sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die – so that you could be forgiven.

But He also wants you to live in a constant state of forgiveness towards others. Why? Because we get an opportunity almost every day to forgive others.

People are just mean. They give you weird looks. They gossip about you. They even assume things about you that aren’t even true. Even your spouse will do these things!

Progression of Unforgiveness

Most of the time, we are able to forgive within a few hours, or at least a few days. But sometimes we hold grudges for a looong time.

So I want to walk you through the progression that gets us to a place of long-term unforgiveness. Because this is the kind of stuff that Jesus was talking about.

We don’t just need to forgive the small stuff. We need to forgive the big stuff. Here’s how it all starts:

1. Distance

Every conflict, whether it be between you and a friend, or you and a church you used to go to, or you and your liberal relative, begins with something that creates distance.

Not all distance is created by conflict. Sometimes it’s created by neglect. You don’t invest time into a relationship so it creates distance.

But this is where it all starts. Something creates distance so you shut the other person out.

Things are still calm. Nobody’s throwing fists yet. You just separate yourselves from each other.

The separation still hurts, though. So here’s what you do next:

2. Walls

You build some walls to protect yourself. Some of you ladies build more than a wall. You build a castle with a moat around it filled with crocodiles and the drawbridge is always pulled up.

We build these walls to keep the bad people out. The problem is, it also keeps the good people out.

And many times, you even keep God out. You become so protective of your heart and emotions that no one can touch you again. No one, not even God.

If we don’t deal with it at this point, here’s what happens next:

3. Escalation

The problem grows. It becomes much bigger than it really is. It’s no longer about what he said to you yesterday, it’s about everything he’s done wrong for the past twenty years.

This is part of the process where your tongue gets out of control. You start saying things that you wouldn’t normally say. You become mean and look for anything you can say to hurt the other person.

At this point is when it becomes most dangerous because the enemy gets involved.

4. Lies

You start to believe lies. You believe that they meant to hurt you. You start to paint this terrible picture of the other person that is full of lies.

This happens all the time! You think the pastor is out to get your money because he’s encouraging you to give. You think your spouse is cheating on you because they didn’t want to have sex last night.

You think you are going to get fired because your boss corrected you. You think God is mad at you because you are dealing with some kind of sickness or challenge in your life.

On and on and on. The enemy feeds us these lies and we latch on to them like ultimate truth. 

And we won’t even let the other person tell us the truth, because they are probably lying just to get me to calm down.

At this point, you find yourself in the last stage of conflict. This is the place that many people struggle to escape:

5. Hostility

The saddest part about this stage is that you don’t even remember how the conflict originally started. The only reason you got here is because you believed the lies the enemy planted in your mind.

And usually, you won’t listen to anyone else. People come in and try to help you see the truth and you dismiss them because they don’t know the full situation. They don’t know how bad they hurt you.

When you get to a place of hostility, it’s no longer about you and the other person. It’s about what is going on in your soul. You’ve allowed yourself to get messed up.

You don’t need them to apologize to move past this. You need to ask God to make you clean.

It doesn’t matter who started it. The only thing you are responsible for is you.

Can you see now why forgiveness is a requirement to walk in the promises of God and experience miracles?

When you’re in a place of unforgiveness, there’s no way you walk by faith. You’ve given Satan too much control.

Progression of Salvation

The reason I wanted to take you through this progression of unforgiveness is because you went through this same progression leading up to your relationship with Jesus. Take a look:

Ephesians 2:12-14 NLT – In those days you were living apart from Christ. … You lived in this world without God and without hope.

Distance. Distance from God. That’s where we all started.

Ephesians 2:12-14 NLT – But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.

We caused the problem. Yet Jesus is the one who brought us back to God. Marinate on that for a minute. It’s not fair. We didn’t deserve it. Yet Jesus did it anyway.

Ephesians 2:12-14 NLT – For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.

You built the wall. You escalated your hostility towards God through your own behaviors.

You believed lie upon lie. You thought that God was punishing you. You thought He didn’t love you. You thought it was His fault.

And what did Jesus do? He broke down the wall of hostility. He set you free. He restored your relationship with God.

Forgive everyone

Jesus is our example of forgiveness. We are to forgive everyone. Especially those that don’t deserve it. Let me show you:

Ephesians 4:31-32 NLT – Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

This is our assignment. Get rid of it. Get rid of all the unforgiveness and everything that comes with it. And don’t just do that, but be kind to each other.

Sometimes we believe that it’s okay to forgive someone and continue to have a wall up. Well, you’re wrong. You’re missing part of the equation. Don’t just forgive them. Be kind to them.

And I know, it seems impossible. And it is impossible, without faith. 

That’s why this verse says to forgive one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you. In Jesus Christ is where you obtain the power to forgive.

Let me put it to you this way. You will not succeed in forgiving others until you first fully realize the forgiveness that’s been given to you in Christ.

How to Forgive Others

So let me make this practical for you. There are three simple steps you need to take to get to a place of forgiveness. And it all starts with:

1. Receive God’s forgiveness.

You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve already done that. What’s the next step?”

But can I propose that many Christians know about God’s forgiveness but they have yet to receive God’s forgiveness?

The reason I know this is because I hear from people all the time who think they don’t deserve anything from God because of their past. Or they think they deserve the sickness or hardship they are dealing with because of their past.

When you truly receive God’s forgiveness, you don’t think like that anymore. You don’t give any power to your past because, well, Jesus done wiped it away. Why would I continue to think about it?

And when I mess up again, Jesus already provided forgiveness for that too. My job is simply to receive forgiveness, turn back toward God, and move on. No regrets. Repent and move forward.

Now that I’ve explained it, have you really received God’s forgiveness? Because God is trying to hand you the gift. You just have to reach out and take it.

Paul’s perspective on forgiveness

The Apostle Paul understood this. This is a guy that hated Christians so much that he had them killed. That was his mission in life before God got a hold of him.

If I were Paul, I’d have a hard time receiving forgiveness for killing God’s people. But Paul didn’t waste time in regret because he had a full revelation of what it meant to receive God’s forgiveness. Take a look:

1 Timothy 1:15-16 NLT – This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all. But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.

If God can fully forgive Paul for leading the execution of Christians, He can forgive you. And God is eager for you to receive His forgiveness. Let me show you in God’s own words:

Isaiah 1:18 NLT – “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord . “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”

This is God’s invitation to you. He says, “Come. Let’s settle this once and for all.” Quit trying to earn it. Quit trying to do enough right things to cancel out the wrong things.

Just receive the forgiveness that God has given you in Christ.

So this is the first reason that many people struggle to forgive others: they haven’t yet received God’s forgiveness.

If you spend your entire life trying to earn God’s forgiveness, then you will expect everyone else to earn yours. But when you receive the gift of forgiveness from God like you did today, you’ll be able to offer that same gift to others.

And that’s why the second step is:

2. Freely give what you received.

Now that you’ve fully received forgiveness from God even though you didn’t deserve it, you have the capacity to give forgiveness even when they don’t deserve it.

God doesn’t expect you to forgive on your own. He set the example for you. He gave you the gift of forgiveness and in the gift is the power you need to forgive others.

That’s why Jesus gives us this command:

Matthew 10:8 NLT – Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received!

God does not expect us to give anything that we have not received from Him already. He gives forgiveness to you, so you can give forgiveness to others.

And since we’re in a series about miracles, I don’t want to pass over what this verse just said. He gives you healing freely so you can give healing to others.

We can’t go out and heal the sick until we’ve received healing ourselves.

God is not withholding healing from you. He is not using sickness to teach you something. It is not His plan for you to have some kind of physical ailment.

God wants you well. He wants you healed. God wants you whole. Healing is for you. It is God’s gift to you. He’s holding it out waiting for you to take the gift that belongs to you.

God freely gives healing. He freely gives forgiveness. He freely provides for all of your needs. He does it because He loves you. 

And He also loves everyone around you. That’s why we have to freely give to others what He has given us.

2 Corinthians 5:18 NLT – And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.

It is our task, it is our mission, to give to others what God has given us.

Don’t miss this. God works through people. If you’ve been trying to receive healing by yourself, it may not be working because God wants us to receive His promises through each other.

We Don’t Work Alone

That’s going to have to soak for a minute.

God’s design is not a solo faith journey. He’s not looking for super Christians who believe for everything they need by themselves. No. He designed it so that we receive His promises through each other.

And here we are, at a place where we struggle to come to the altar because we think we should just handle it ourselves when we get home.

We don’t even ask each other for prayer anymore, which is a direct violation of Scripture by the way. Take a look:

James 5:14 NLT – Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. 

What are you supposed to do when you are sick? Come to church, tell everybody you’re fine and go pray by yourself later.

No. You are supposed to call those who you know believe God’s Word and ask them to pray over you and anoint you with oil.

Somehow we’ve gotten caught up in this solo faith journey thing and we need to break out of it. You don’t have to believe by yourself. You don’t have to hide when you’re sick or struggling.

God designed this so that we receive His promises through each other. We can’t do it by ourselves.

For some of you, that just caused a major shift in your thinking. You can thank God for that. But grab ahold of it and don’t let it go.

So, receive God’s forgiveness in its entirety so you can freely forgive others. And once you get to this point, here’s what you do next:

3. Forgive first.

Aren’t you thankful Jesus didn’t wait for us to apologize before He went to the cross? If so, He’d still be waiting. But here’s what really happened:

Romans 5:8 NLT – But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

God forgave us when we didn’t even ask for it. When we had no intention of changing, Jesus gave up His life to save us.

He did this to restore your relationship with God. He also did it as an example. If we are going to forgive like Jesus forgives, we forgive first.

Even when they don’t deserve it, we forgive first. Even when they are the ones who caused the conflict, we forgive first.

And when you forgive first, there’s a promise:

James 3:18 NLT – And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

The word righteousness sounds like a churchy word, so let me explain it to you. This is when you become who you really are.

It’s when you think like God thinks, act like God acts, and are fully living the abundant life God planned for you.

So what this verse is saying is that when you forgive first, when you are the one who initiates peace, you will find yourself living in the promises of God.

A call to Forgive

What I am about to ask you to do next is what will take this message today from a really good idea to something real in your life.

You’ve been moved today by the Word of God and you are ready to act. Throughout the message today, you’ve probably been reminded of people you have been holding a grudge against.

So here’s what you need to do next. Pull out your phone, open the notes app, and write down the person or the people that you’ve decided to forgive today.

This isn’t a time to be embarrassed. This is a time to receive freedom. So go ahead, pull out your phone, and write those names down.

Sometime this afternoon, pick up the phone and call every person on that list.

It doesn’t have to be a long conversation. Just call them and say something like, “I was wrong in holding a grudge against you. I just want you to know that I love you and no longer hold anything against you.”

Trust me, the conversation won’t be long. They won’t know what to say, so you’ll just have a moment of awkward silence in which you can interrupt and say, “Thank you for listening. I will talk to you later.”

I know this is going to be hard. You might be upset with me right now for asking you to do this. So you can start by coming up to me after service and practicing your phone call as you forgive me.

Seriously, though. Take a bold and courageous step and make the call this afternoon. Freedom is just going to sweep over you when you do. You’ll probably end up in tears because you feel so free.

And now that we are all resting in a place of forgiveness, we are primed and ready for miracles.