Part of this
devotional comes from one I wrote a few weeks ago. My heart hurts for someone
this morning that is struggling to forgive. Whoever you are, I’m praying for
you.
FORGIVE
Have you ever been hurt by someone you love or trust? At
sometime in your life, someone will hurt you or disillusion you. What you do
with that hurt is paramount. Give it to God, and its power to control you ends.
But kept inside your heart it festers and grows. 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, 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.
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).
You shall
no longer be in bondage to your pain. Your heart will be free, and who the Lord
sets free, is free indeed.
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