“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you,” Lewis B. Smedes said.
People we know slightly may criticize us and stir us to ask What’s wrong with me?, but people we know intimately hold more potential to hurt us — think of the song “Only Love Can Break a Heart.”
“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend,” William Blake said.
Dr. Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good, says that to forgive is to let go of bad feelings or the desire for revenge after you’ve been harmed. He says that most of the reasons to forgive are for your own welfare. “When you’re remembering a hurt or a wound that you haven’t resolved in your mind and heart, that remembrance triggers stress chemicals. It triggers physical distress. When you remember it often, you are stressing your body on a chronic basis. That has a physical cost.”
Luskin says forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean reconciling with the person who hurt you, but reconciling is important in the relationships you want to keep — marriages, families, business relationships, friendships, and between siblings.
During a recent Faith Temple (Taylors, SC) Tuesday Morning Bible Study, Pastor Raymond D. Burrows talked about Mark 11:25-26: “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (ESV). Verse 26 adds, “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
(Dr. John Oakes says verse 26 was probably added by a scribe copying the best manuscripts he had but that verse 26 is not in earlier manuscripts. Verse 25, however, tells us what we need to know about forgiveness.)
Pastor Burrows indicated that God is not “out to get us,” but if we do not forgive someone, we stop the process by which we receive God’s forgiveness. We shut off the Divine flow and clog up the spiritual pipeline. Someone said that God designed us to forgive. You may never forget an offense, but Jesus helps you forgive and heal.
Gordon MacDonald, in Restoring Your Spiritual Passion, writes, “One memory that burns deep within is that of a plane flight on which I was headed toward a meeting that would determine a major decision in my ministry. I knew I was in desperate need of a spiritual passion that would provide wisdom and submission to God’s purposes. But the passion was missing because I was steeped in resentment toward a colleague.
“For days I had tried everything to rid myself of vindictive thoughts toward that person. But, try as I might, I would even wake in the night, thinking of ways to subtly get back at him. I wanted to embarrass him for what he had done, to damage his credibility before his peers. My resentment was beginning to dominate me, and on that plane trip I came to a realization of how bad things really were. …
“As the plane entered the landing pattern, I found myself crying silently to God for power both to forgive and to experience liberation from my poisoned spirit. Suddenly it was as if an invisible knife cut a hole in my chest, and I literally felt a thick substance oozing from within. Moments later I felt as if I’d been flushed out. I’d lost negative spiritual weight, the kind I needed to lose: I was free. I fairly bounced off that plane and soon entered a meeting that did in fact change the entire direction of my life.”
Craig B. Larson says, “Spiritual passion cannot coexist with resentments. The Scriptures are clear. The unforgiving spirit saps the energy that causes Christian growth and effectiveness.”
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”
(Colossians 3:12-13).
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