Forgiveness - How Love Wins (part 5 of 5)

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”  

Reinhold Niebuhr

In the world you and I live in, there are very, very, very few things that can be stated with absolute certainty; but this is one of them; as long as we live on this side of Heaven we will face conflict.  If you are most of us who dwell on this planet that means that you will be on the “losing side” of that conflict more often than you are on the “winning side”.  As a result you will be susceptible to feelings of anger, anxiety and depression; you will suffer broken relationships, rejections, manipulation and abandonment…. 

Conflict is inevitable, and it hurts, sometimes it hurts so deeply that it rips at your very soul, however in spite of that you were made to have options, you were made to have the ability to choose, while you can not chose to opt out of the trespasses that will be committed against you, you can choose what happens inside you. 

That is what this short series has been about - “choices”; for once you realize that you have options available to you, it is then possible for you to choose which course you want to follow.  Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings hope.

  

I am not so naive to presume that by just telling a person that they need to forgive that anything has actually been accomplished, more often than not, such a statement causes more stress and does more harm than good.  Why?  Because while you may have been taught right from wrong, good from evil, that you were to be forgiving, and fair while you were a child; and while you may have had an awkward and brief conversation about sex; truthfully how many of us when were teenagers did a parent, counselor, trusted friend, guide, sit down with you and say “Let’s have a discussion about your emotions, the meaning and direction of them, how you deal with adversity and how you are going to deal with the inevitable heartbreaks and conflicts of your life.”   You were never taught HOW to forgive; and the church in America which preaches forgiveness, offers no guidance whatsoever, other then to tell you that you must forgive to be forgiven.  Talk about pressure. 

I am going to tell you truthfully and straight up that to find the hope that you once possessed YOU MUST FORGIVE; however I will also acknowledge that it took me years worth of work to forgive those who betrayed, slandered, lied, stole from and abandoned me.  Forgiveness does not happen overnight. But it can happen, if you choose to seek it.  Time does not heal all wounds, it simply covers them up under a layer of dirt, you can not will forgiveness into existence, you can not pray it into existence, you must work at it, and it will be the hardest work you will ever undertake.  If you ever want to have peace and hope, it is what is necessary.  

While I have spent the last five posts writing about forgiveness and why you need to forgive, what I have really been doing is leading you to the next step.  Doing it.  To help you in that endeavor I will turn my attention to sharing with you what I have learned in my struggle to forgive, not why, but HOW - Twelve Imperfect Steps to Forgiveness (more or less).

Forgiveness - How Love Wins (part 4 of 5)

Sometimes it takes a song, a poem, a letter, or a video to reach the coldest of the cold.  Sometimes a song can touch that part of a person's heart where mere words fall deaf.  If you struggle with forgiveness it helps to remind ourselves that which was done for us.  He does not think it too great a price to pay, He does not think it is to late for love to win. 

"Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins." 

1Peter4:8

'This is How Love Wins' by Steven Curtis Chapman

Forgiveness - How Love Wins (part 3 of 5)

“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”  Corrie Ten Boom

Have you ever noticed that those who have committed horrible acts of betrayal eventually come around to saying one thing about those whom they betrayed?  “They just need to forgive and move on…” Of course if they honestly felt like helping the wounded along in the process they would admit to their sin, repent of it, and do whatever is necessary to make amends, but therein lies the rub, the reason for them making the statement is driven more by their own desire to absolve themselves of any responsibility, to pretend that there was no harm, no foul.  However selfish and self-serving the reason for making the statement, they nevertheless are correct, but for the wrong reasons. 

To them and if you were to admit it, to yourself; forgiveness always seems so easy, when we need it and so hard when we need to give it.  So how do we do the impossible, forgive those who are not sorry for the harm they have caused?  How do we forgive when we don't feel like it? 

It begins with a decision, a decision to pursue forgiveness.  How do we translate the decision to forgive into a change of heart?  We forgive by faith, out of obedience. Since forgiveness goes against our nature, we must forgive by faith, whether we feel like it or not. We must trust God to do the work in us that needs to be done so that the forgiveness will be complete.

I believe God honors our commitment to obey Him and our desire to please Him when we choose to forgive. However it does not happen overnight, sometimes the journey to forgiveness may take years, but we must persist in our commitment to honor Him by forgiving those who do not deserve it.  In His time He will complete the work He has begun in us.  We must continue to forgive (our job) by faith, until the work of forgiveness (His job) is done in our hearts.

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”  Philippians 1:6   

Forgiveness is not saying that what the person did against you is okay, it is releasing to God that which is reserved for God.  If as a Christian you accept that God is your heavenly father, how does a father respond when one of his children deliberately hurts another of his children?  He does not overlook it.  He acts with mercy to the injured and with justice to the guilty; always tempered with love.  What someone has done against you is one thing, however if you take the bait of unforgiveness, your decision will cause much more damage then they were ever able to.  

Your father wants you to forgive, because the decision to not forgive is the decision to hate; to hate another created in the same image as you were, to hate someone that God loves.  Every moment you hold on to that hate, it acts like a drug slowly poisoning your soul.  You cannot praise God and curse another made in His image, one is fundamentally opposed against the other.  Hate or love, only one can win.

God commands you to forgive, to give you life, a future, hope.  Forgiveness is an act of faith; it is the ultimate submission of your will to God’s will. To choose to forgive makes your heart more like His.   Forgiveness is how love wins.