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Thursday, June 25, 2015

Forgive and Be Forgiven


“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37, NIV).

Have you ever been hurt? I have. Does your heart feel bitterness and hardens when you remember what someone has done? Mine has felt that way. Have you been unable to forgive? I have been there, too. But through the years I have learned that the inability to forgive is like a terrible cancer. It eats at your spiritual health and ultimately destroys your relationship with God. Because God has given us a free will to either choose or reject Him, we also have a free will to either forgive or not to forgive.

Today's verse reveals that if we don't judge, we will not be judged. If we don't condemn, we will not be condemned. If we forgive, we will be forgiven. Isn’t the inability to forgive really judgment of that person? Our hurt and our pain does not give us a right to judge that person. It does not give us a right to allow anger and resentment to consume our hearts. In fact Jesus explains in Luke 6:35-36 that we are to “love our enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” We are to love those that hurt us. We are to extend goodness. We can't harbor bitterness. It will only breed more hurt and devastation within our own lives. We forgive without expecting anything in return. Those we forgive may not receive our forgiveness. But we are to be merciful anyway. Just as Jesus forgives us, we forgive others.

When we are devastated by someone's action, we have a choice what to do with the hurt and the pain. If we allow that hurt to define who we are, that pain can immobilize us. We are in bondage to bitterness. It direct our lives, and consumes our waking and sleeping moments. Jesus wants us to be free of the anger of unforgiveness. The Holy Spirit invites us to forgive so that we might be free from its bondage. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” Paul writes (2 Corinthians 3:17). God does not want us in bondage to our hurt and pain.

It is exhausting holding on to the pain of unforgiveness. Grabbing on to the bars of our emotional prison, we shake and demand our jailer to release us. The truth is we have jailed ourselves. We keep asking God to release the pain, and all along we have had the key to open the door. All along we have had the freedom and the power to forgive. Are we ready to be released from our bondage of resentment, bitterness, anger, hurt, frustration, and all the terrible feelings that choke the spiritual life from us? If we choose to take the key and open the door, His love and power will move us toward freedom. Experiencing His forgiveness for the sin of our unforgiving heart, the truth of “forgive and you will be forgiven” will transform our heart and mind. We, who have been set free, will truly be free.

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