One of the best (& hardest) gifts to give yourself is Forgiveness.

We always feel justified in hanging onto our negative emotions & thoughts, don’t we? When others hurt us, we want to retaliate. God says DON’T. Not only for our well-being, but also for our relationship with HIM!

When we hold onto anger and resentment, it turns into bitterness and poisons other relationships in our lives. It also bars us from God’s grace!

The Lord’s prayer says,

Forgive us our debts, AS WE forgive our debtors.

Jesus gave us another similar warning in Matthew 18:

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!

“Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.

“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

“His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

The free-est I’ve ever felt was the weeks after attending the Focus Leadership Institute, when we did an exercise in forgiving any and everyone who’d ever hurt us in our pasts. After releasing my hurts and anger (ones I didn’t even know I’d carried for years!), I felt lighter, free-er, happier, and more at peace than I ever had in my whole life.

An excellent, concise, & simple way to work through past hurts is using Neil T. Anderson’s Steps to Freedom in Christ booklet*. This is the very resource I worked through at Focus that changed my life, and truthfully I may want to go through it again!

FINDING HIS FORGIVENESS

Once you’ve forgiven your offenders, the next simple step is this: Ask your heavenly Father to forgive you! Ask for His grace to forgive others in your life and to live that way — then ask Him to bring to mind any offenses you’ve committed against Him, especially those you may have never repented of (or are still walking in).

I don’t believe He expects our perfection, but if we sin or are actively living a sinful life, He wants us to come to Him and ASK for His pardon. We’ll never experience true freedom, a life close to God & full of the Spirit, without requesting and receiving His forgiveness!

Beth Moore says to make nightly repentance a daily habit (or instantaneous repentance, even better!). Keep short accounts with God and men, as Louis Palau said. It’s the only way to live fully free.

xoxo,
Summer

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