Have you ever been hurt by someone you
love or trust? Has their action surprised you and made you think less of
them? Do you feel disillusionment in
your heart growing? Unchecked, it will
ultimately grow into unforgiveness. And that will rob you of your
joy.
Unforgiveness is a terrible cancer. It
eats at your spiritual health and ultimately destroys your relationship with
God. God has given man a free will to choose or reject Him, and you also have a
free will to 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 do
not give you a license to judge that person. It does not give you a license to
be angry.
When you are devastated by someone's action,
you have a choice what to do with the disillusionment and hurt. If you allow
that hurt to define who you are, unforgiveness (bitterness) will be your banner.
It will immobilize you. You are then in bondage to your pain. The Holy Spirit
invites you to acknowledge your pain so you 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 or your disillusionment over someone else’s
failure. That hurt can become your own failure. If you know the Lord, you have
the freedom and the power to forgive.
Perhaps you feel with all your heart
that your love is 100%. No human being can give their love at 100% as Christ
gave His love. You give your very best, and your very best will not happen if
there is judgment, hurt, and unforgiveness. Your very best is to allow His love
to flow through you, and if it is His love instead of your own, then that stone
in your heart of disillusionment will dissolve.
Are you tired of the hurt
you feel when another person doesn’t live up to Christ’s sacrificial love? Have
you ever considered that your hurt also keeps you from living up to it? Let the
pain go. Let the disillusionment and hurt go. Look to Christ as your perfect
sacrifice because no one else can be that. Realize that no one is perfect. The
Lord “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).
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