Thursday, August 9, 2007

Forgiveness

Like you, I know that forgiveness is a good thing. A healthy thing. A necessary and commanded thing. I, perhaps like you, know all of that intellectually.

But sometimes experience doesn't line up with knowledge.

Without wanting to get into any of the details, let me just say that there was a person in my life that I needed to forgive. Badly. And the worse part is that it didn't even occur to me that I needed to forgive this person until recently. The LORD brought it to my attention during a time of prayer.

As you may have guessed from my use of the past tense above, I have recently chosen to forgive this individual, and I'm better for it. I almost literally feel as if a weight has been lifted from me - a weight it hardly even realized I was bearing.

Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your sins. Mark 11:25

Hatushili

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will agree with you 100%,BUT!!!
How do you lay down the hurt and never pick it up again?
Pray as much as you want but to see that person makes your blood boil, how do you get past it?

G

Hatushili said...

Thanks for your thoughts, G (we know who you are!).

For my part, there are only two thoughts I can offer:

1) We're all wretched sinners by nature. I am capable, whether I like to admit it or not, of all manner of awful, hurtful sin against others - even those I love.

2) Christ chose to forgive me of not only all I've done, but all I will do.

Neither of these truthes makes forgiveness easy, but in my own life they've definitely helped me work through difficulties with forgiveness.

Hatushili