Forgiveness is a process a lot like grieving. Sometimes, like when the sin against us is horrific or ongoing (or both), we really are grieving a death. Maybe a death of our innocence, or something that was stolen from us. Perhaps the death of something that now will never be. Perhaps the death of a […]
Ok, so say my neighbor Jon borrows my car, and when he brings it back, he says, “Thanks for letting me borrow your car. I got into a little fender-bender, but I got it repaired and re-painted.” He shows where the dent was, and you can’t tell. The body-shop did a great job. He’s repented, […]
Forgiving someone and being healed from the wound they gave us are two different things. Say we go to the gun range together. I’m handling my weapon carelessly and accidentally shoot you in the shoulder. You can forgive me instantly, but a gunshot wound takes three or four months to heal. Suppose I see you […]
Our world is starved for love and intimacy. We are made for love – to give and receive love. In the beginning God walked in the garden with man (and woman) in the cool of the day. It is the Father’s heart to spend time with us and to commune. We don’t have to look […]
Ok, so we’ve got that forgiveness is a process. Maybe the sin against you was really grievous, and the person is unrepentant and still practicing their bad behavior. You’ve been working through the process of forgiveness, layer by layer, going deeper and deeper. I know with me, whenever I thought I’d forgiven the person, something […]
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 […]
I was getting prayer ministry, working through the process of forgiving someone who had done something really bad to me. Really bad. It hurt a lot, worse than anything I’d ever experienced. It was really hard to forgive them because the person was completely unrepentant. While I was learning about true forgiveness, and trying to […]
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 […]
Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. We haven’t forgiven ourselves when we hold something against ourselves. Often, it wasn’t even our fault. For example, children often believe abuse was their fault. Abuse is never the victim’s fault, even if different behavior would have prevented it. Even if we did something stupid to get […]
Forgiving God is a strange concept to a lot of people. Not that God did anything wrong – he never sinned against us. But sometimes we need to forgive people who have never wronged us when we (wrongly) hold something against them. Dropping what we hold against someone (whether they actually wronged us or not) […]