Forgiveness can be really hard. Especially when you’ve truly been grievously and unfairly wronged. Especially when the perp is unrepentant and their bad behavior continues. But it’s so important, because our unforgiveness keeps us in prison, not the other person.

It’s a process, not a single event. It can be a long process, one that we keep going back to – forgiving again and again – layer after layer – going deeper and deeper.

One exercise that can significantly help us along in this process is re-profiling the person. No single person is wholly evil – only Satan and his demons have that distinction. So there is something good about the person. Rack your brain and find those things. If you just can’t, ask the Holy Spirit; he’ll tell you. Then write it down.

Re-profiling is not pretending they didn’t wrong you. Along with any good qualities you can find, re-profiling can include the deceptions they’re living in, and the pain in their lives that’s deceived them to act they way they do.

The goal here is to write down how God sees the other person, which is not necessarily how they are behaving, but how he made them to be. So then when we fall into bitterness, we go back and read our re-profile of them. Read it out loud – let your ears hear your mouth say it. It’s powerful.

Then you start thinking of the other person in terms of how God made them, versus what they’ve done. Because they are not the evil they did to you. Wrapping our mind and heart around that last sentence is the essence of forgiveness.

Re-profiling makes this much easier, and it’s very freeing. Try it! Let us know how it goes in the comments, or send us an email.

When someone has seriously wronged us, it’s really easy to put them in the Bad Guy Chair while we sit in the Good Guy Chair. They go together – if we put them in the Bad Guy Chair, we are putting ourselves in the Good Guy Chair. And if we put ourselves in the Good Guy Chair, we’re holding them in the Bad Guy Chair.

Getting us to climb up into the Good Guy Chair and stay there is one of Satan’s greatest deceptions. Nothing will get our spiritual growth stuck faster than sitting in the Good Guy Chair. Because the Good Guy Chair has another name – the Victim Chair. And unforgiveness holds us in it.

Here’s the deception: We don’t think of ourselves as being unforgiving. We may have even overtly “forgiven” the other person. But secretly in our hearts, we haven’t. We still consider them the Bad Guy. Our unforgiveness holds them in the Bad Guy Chair, which holds us in the Victim Chair, which arrests our spiritual growth right there. It condemns us to a life of bitterness and victimization. Who wants that?

The catch is, the only way out of the Victim Chair is to release the other person from the Bad Guy Chair. But wait! You don’t know what they did to me! It was really, really bad!!! Yes it was. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiveness doesn’t mean minimizing it to seem less bad than it really was.

Yes, they did something horrible to you. Hold them accountable for it with whatever (godly) means are at your disposal. Press charges if it’s a criminal act. Confront them (speaking the truth in love). Set (godly) boundaries so they can’t hurt you again. Holding them accountable helps them out of the deception that caused them to do that thing to you in the first place. It also protects future victims from becoming victims.

But here’s the point: They themselves are not that horrible thing they did to you. It came out of their own pain and their own deceptions that they are living under, which you probably have no idea about. That does not justify what they did, and they are accountable for it. But coming to the realization that they are not the thing they did to you is the essence of true forgiveness.

Is this ringing a bell? Have you gone through the process of forgiveness? Is this something you’re working through? Tell us in the comments or shoot us an email. We’d love to hear from you.

What’s the one thing that will block our development and maturity more than anything else? God cares about relationships, and having unresolved relationship issues in this one area stagnates our Christian growth more than virtually anything else. Even the world recognizes this issue – as Bitterness. In the Kingdom of God, the Bible has another name for it – Unforgiveness.

Forgiving others is a two-part process.

First, we have to acknowledge that they actually sinned against us. Often, especially in our family of origin, we excuse and rationalize it instead. “Dad really worked hard” or “he never beat me unless I deserved it.” Forgiveness is not pretending it never happened or pretending that what was done to us wasn’t wrong. Even if we’ve convinced ourselves otherwise, our spirit knows wrong was done to us, and harbors judgement against the other person – even if we’re not aware of it. So by pretending it didn’t happen or wasn’t wrong, we actually condemn ourselves to live in the prison of unforgiveness. So the first step is recognizing the evil the person did to us, being honest about it without minimizing it.

The second step is deciding to believe the person is not the evil they did to us. Hurt people hurt people. They have their own story and their own pain and lived under their own deception that lead them to do evil to us. When we come to the point where we accept that they are not the evil they did to us, when we let them out of the “bad guy” chair, we come to the point where, in our hearts, they don’t owe us anything. That’s forgiveness – in our heart we’ve dropped the debt they owe us because of what they did. We can still hate what they did, but we no longer hold anything against them for it.

Not holding anything against someone who’s sinned against us does not mean they aren’t responsible for their actions. We can still put up healthy boundaries, especially if the person is unrepentant and hasn’t changed. But those boundaries are there because of their unhealthy behavior, not because we vindictively are holding something against them or are trying to punish them for the past.

I have an friend we’ll call “Damien” whose wife left him. There was no abuse or anything like that, she just decided she didn’t want to stay in the marriage anymore. While getting prayer ministry, he saw a vision in his mind of Jesus hanging on the cross. The Lord asked him very matter-of-factly, with no condemnation, “Have I hung here long enough to pay you back for what she did to you? Or do I need to hand here longer?” Damien broke down. He answered in his heart, “No, Lord, it’s enough. You’ve done enough.” From that moment on, even though his wife had not repented, Damien forgave her.

Damien tells me that, to this day, whenever he starts to get bitter, he goes back to that moment. Even though he had to place some boundaries in his dealings with her after that because of her continued bad behavior, Damien does not hold anything against her. That’s living in forgiveness. In fact, Damien prays blessing over her without any begrudging feelings in his spirit. That’s the litmus test of true forgiveness.

How about you? Is there someone you need to forgive? Have you experienced the incredible freedom that forgiveness brings? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us a message by clicking here. We’d love to hear your story and pray for you.