Forgiveness. It's probably the
toughest lesson that I have ever had to learn. It went against
the grain of everything inside me.
I did not take on the lessons of forgiveness willingly. I
did it, quite simply, out of self-preservation.
Resentment was eating me alive and ruining my life.
Also, I claimed to be a Christian but I knew that my resentment
wasn't pleasing to God. Jesus said that we must
forgive others. He didn't make it optional. His Word
states quite clearly that if we do not forgive people for
their wrongs against us, then we will not be forgiven for
our wrongs against them.
"Matthew 6:15: But if you do not forgive men
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses."
Betrayal by friends or family was the worst.
Scorching pain seared my heart.
Next the anger rushed in. Fury! How dare they do that to me!
And I wanted to hurt them just as viciously as they
had hurt me. Eventually, the pain, anger and disillusionment hardened into
bitterness.
Jesus understood the deadly effects that unforgiveness
would have on us. He knew that my bitterness hurt no one
but myself. It took away my joy in living. It made me
ungrateful. It blinded me to all the good around me. It
ate away at me physically and mentally.
So one of the reasons that Jesus insisted that I learn to
forgive was to spare me from the inevitable
results of my resentment.
But I didn't want to forgive! I wanted to get even. Nevertheless, I recognized that I had to
attempt to forgive simply because Jesus gave me no option.
My first halting steps in that direction went something
like this, "Okay, God. You said 'vengeance is mine;
I will repay.' So I will really work at letting my
resentment go--and I'm going to hold you to your promise
to repay that person for me."
That was a rather comforting thought for a while. So I
began to turn my unforgiveness over to God, only because I
figured He would be a lot better at dealing out the
paybacks than I could ever be.
But then one day another thought crossed my mind. "If
I hold God to his promise to pay them back, then that
means that other people whom I have hurt can hold God to
his promise to pay me back."
Aha!
I was beginning to get an inkling of how this forgiveness
business really works. Now I prayed, "God, I don't
want the justice due me for all the people I've hurt by
my selfishness and thoughtlessness. And there have been
times when I have deliberately wounded people. I don't
want you to pay me back as I deserve. I want mercy. I
want to be forgiven."
Then Jesus' words really started to make sense to me. It
was logical and right that if I wanted mercy and
forgiveness for the wrongs I'd done to other people, then
I had to grant the people who had wronged me mercy and
forgiveness.
My new prayer lacked grace, but it was honest: "God,
please don't give them what they deserve. Because I
certainly don't want what I deserve!"
But how do you forgive someone when the bitterness still festers?
I turned back to the Bible for answers. Jesus never told
us to do anything without telling us how to do it. In
this case I found the same instructions in three places
in the New Testament: Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:28 and Romans
12:14: "Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you."
So I started praying for those people that my heart still
really wanted to see fried to cinders. Through gritted
teeth I prayed that God would bless them, that he would
heal them, that he would help them financially, that he
would bless their marriages and families.... Everything
that I wanted for myself, I prayed for them. And I felt
as though I were lying through my eye teeth to God.
Nevertheless, that is what He said to do, so I continued
to do it. And a really strange thing began to happen.
After several days of praying that way, I began to
realize that I really did want God to bless them. I began
to see some of the things in their lives that caused them
to act hatefully toward me. I saw insecurity,
defensiveness, fear, their own bitterness and
unhappiness, low self-esteem--problems that I, too, had
battled for much of my life. I truly began to feel
compassion for them, and my prayers for their well-being
became genuine.
Very gradually, I noticed a change occurring in
me. Gentleness, understanding, compassion--and yes,
mercy, began to seep into my heart and my outlook on life. As St. Paul put it, the Fruits of the Spirit began to
develop in me. As I had tried to obey Christ, His Spirit
began working in me almost imperceptibly, day by day
transforming my very character.
And then one day, I ran across the verses in the Bible again that say that whatever we forgive on earth will be forgiven in Heaven, and whatever we don't forgive will not be forgiven in Heaven. I realized that I don't have the power to
forgive any sin EXCEPT the ones that have been committed against me personally. And if I will ask God not to hold a single person who has hurt me accountable for those actions, then I could wipe their slates clean on my account.
The revelation almost took my breath away. What awesome power God has given us -- the power to eternally forgive sins !!!!!
From that day on, I can now pray, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" without a trace of guilt about any lingering feelings of unforgiveness on my part. Because when God answers my prayer to forgive them, then any lingering feelings of unforgiveness I may feel are just that.... fickle feelings.
It has taken several years of practicing forgiveness for it to really
become an integral part of who I am. But the rewards are greater
than I could have imagined.
I no longer have to go through agonizing weeks of praying
through gritted teeth when someone hurts me now.
Misunderstandings and hurt are a normal part of life.
Almost automatically I simply turn it over to Jesus and
let it go.
I listened to a tape on forgiveness several years ago that had a profound impact on me. It
said:
"Because I will need forgiveness tomorrow,
I choose to forgive today."
