Whenever a topic seems to keep coming up, I think it’s time to share on that topic.
My daughter handed me my nightly reading, ‘forgiveness’, and while I was reading it, I began wondering if there was any unforgiveness in my heart that I had somehow just buried without dealing with. I don’t believe in holding grudges, but there are times that you just can’t help yourself and you hold on to things much longer than you are supposed to, and it starts eating away at you. Even if it’s not eating away it you, you may not be able to move forward into the life God has for you without dealing with these issues.
The following morning I opened my bible to a devotion of Hosea and Gomer where God tells Hosea to go back and reclaim his wife after she had run away. I read the devotion, along with the scripture, and thought I got what I needed from it. Until I got home from work in the evening, and I opened my bible again, to within one page of the devotion from the morning. When I looked at the subject of the devotion from my morning reading, it was entitled ‘Forgiving again’. I’d also had another conversation earlier in the day on the very same subject.
I read somewhere that forgiveness is not for the person who wronged you, its for your benefit. Sadly, sometimes people don’t even know that they have wronged you. We may hold on to grudges or hear things not because of what was said, but based on our frame of reference, or something that had happened in our past, and an innocent comment sends us into a tailspin because of how we perceive it and the meaning we apply to it.
Friends, I know forgiving is difficult. People can be careless with their words and their actions. I’m learning that in order for us to move into the life that God calls us to, there are things we have to let go of. We have to face the hurt and pain, and forgive the other party, even though they may not be sorry.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for loving us. Lord, please forgive us as we forgive those who have hurt us. Please open our eyes and their eyes to the pain that has been caused, and even when we don’t get an apology, help us to forgive because there is freedom in forgiving and being forgiven.