FORGIVENESS

Matthew 5:7 says “Happy are those who are merciful to others,” Everyone have experienced broken relationships. In our pain and our woundedness we can build walls to keep the pain out, to keep ourselves from being hurt again. When we do that we end up locking ourselves in a prison and locking other people out. To rebuild relationships you have to tear down the walls.

The choice that you and I are going to have to make is this:
To evaluate all of my relationships, offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me, and make amends for harm that I have done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.

Matthew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sin, your Father will not forgive you.”
C. S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
So how do you become a forgiver? How do you let go of the layers and layers and layers of resentment and bitterness and anger that sometimes sit in our soul? There are two ways that I know and neither of them is very easy.

The first is to nail it to the Cross.
Take the wound, take the unforgiveness, take the bitterness and you nail it figuratively to the cross of Jesus Christ, the one who paid your debt, the one who made the unpayable debt finally settled and forgiven. Because he paid for my debt I can take whatever debt you owe me and I can take that debt that you owe me and I can nail it to his cross.

The second step: start right now, start today. You and I begin with a grateful heart. “God, I tell you again how grateful I am for the love you have given me. For the way you have poured your mercy out. For the fact that you took a debt that I couldn’t pay you. I thank you. Because of that I am willing to forgive.”

Take a minute of quietness a piece of paper and write on there the name or names of the unforgiven in your life. And please don’t try to tell me that there’s no one. I don’t believe you. You can be in denial if you want to. That’s between you and God.

Let us pray,
Jesus, thank you for going into the depths of my soul and seeing what is there and not being frightened away. Thank you for your mercy. Now God, help us today in this moment, to release that guy, that woman, those people. True, they don’t deserve it. But remind us again of the debt that we could not pay and how Jesus paid it for us.
This week may we experience the true freedom that comes from nailing to your cross the wound, the unforgiveness, the bitterness. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

Don’t forget to destroy and throw away your paper.