FORGIVENESS

Have you been hurt or rejected by another person? Does your heart feel cold and hard when you remember what they have done? The inability to forgive is a terrible cancer. It eats at your spiritual health and ultimately destroys your relationship with God. Because God has given man a free will to choose or reject Him, you also have a free will to either forgive or not to forgive.

“Do not judge,” Jesus instructs, “and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). Isn’t the inability to forgive really judgment of that person? Your hurt and your pain does not give you a license to judge that person. It does not give you a license to be angry and hate.

When you are devastated by someone's action, you have a choice what to do with the hurt and the bitterness. If you allow that hurt to define who you are, that pain can immobilize you. You are in bondage to your pain. The Holy Spirit invites us to acknowledge our pain so we might forgive. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” Paul writes (2 Corinthians 3:17). God does not want you in bondage to your hurt. If you know the Lord, you have the freedom and the power to forgive.

Recently parents of a murdered girl spoke of forgiving her murderer. They talked freely about letting the anger go, and wanting to be free of the burden of being victims. They wanted to move forward and not “go to prison with him”. They knew they needed to let go of their pain, and surrender the burden of wanting to get even. They had the freedom to choose either bitterness or forgiveness. With Christ's power they were able to forgive.

Are you tired of your hurt, and your pain? Let it go, and He “will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you, and will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).