Lets all be honest with ourselves, it is so much easier to be mad or hold a grudge against someone then to forgive them.
Forgiveness feels like failure, giving in, giving up, and letting go. It is hard to want to forgive someone when you really despise the things that they do or how they continue to hurt you over and over again. How they let you down or disappointed you. Whatever it may be it is always a lot easier to want to wallow in it and gossip about it with people who feel the same about that person, but is that what we should do, or what we are called to do as brothers and sisters in Christ?
There is a person from my past that I have had a really hard time forgiving for a very long time. They aren’t a part of my life now, we could pass each other on the street and say nothing to each other, but I knew this forgiveness was not hindering our relationship, but hindering my heart.
I have been bitter, thought really ugly things about them, and have gossiped about how much I didn’t like them.
One day I decided that enough is enough. I recognized that not only was I hindering my witness, but that the people around me were disliking this person without even having time to form their own opinion about them and I was hurting their spirit without them even knowing it.
Having to be the bigger person really isn’t fun. To me it makes me feel like I lost some type of fight. Like I failed or gave up, to be quite honest with you I am pretty stubborn and use to love not forgiving someone because I loved that I had that type of “power,” but in reality I wasn’t gaining anything at all from it.
Forgiveness is not something we should do, but something we have to do.
Matthew 6:14-15 says, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
And in Matthew 18: 21-22 it says, “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “Tell you not seven times, but seventy seven times.”
Multiple times in the bible the Father continues to remind us that forgiveness isn’t something suggested, but something that he commands of us as a body of believers.
So you may be reading this and think “how should I work on forgiving someone,” or “Averi that is a lot easier said then done.” I have really spent time with the Lord about it and believe that it is easier then we think. We must trust that he is going to continue to bless us for the choice that we have made to love one another.
So how do we go about forgiving people:
– Say it to their face
– It is better to speak to someone about what is bothering you then to speak about them to someone else, or to hold a grudge and not give them the opportunity to defend themselves.
– Pray over it every day
– This isn’t going to be an easy one day prayer and it all will be fixed, it will be a daily surrendering it to the Lord.
– Work on going out of your way to show them you care
– You may want to be mad at them or avoid them, but in order to heal you must make an effort to love.
– Get counseling with them to resolve deep rooted things that need to be forgiven
– If it is something deep deep from the past or something that is just extremely hurtful, it is never too late to seek help from a professional to show that you still want to try to make it work.
In order to understand that we need to forgive we first have to realize that this person/ these people can’t go back and change what has happened in the past, but we can all make an effort to change our hearts and relationships in the future.
