Do you have someone you need to forgive? Has someone hurt you or angered you causing you pain? Do you hold a grudge against this person or persons? Being angry or allowing you to remain in a hurtful state by someone else’s actions real or perceived only hurts yourself. There are real physical and emotional things that people have done that hurt you. Continuing to hold anger towards them, does it hurt you or them? If someone hurt you, it may have been very wrong wether they admit it or not and they may not even be sorry for what they have done. Forgiving them does not take away their blame, it just clears you from having to judge them and punish them. When you forgive someone you’re turning them over to God who can be counted on to deal with them. “Dear Friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). We are all born with the sin gene or as the Bible calls it our sinful nature. There is not one of us that hasn’t sinned breaking God’s commandments. “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) Death is what each and every one of us deserves for the things we’ve done wrong and the people we have hurt. God came in the form of a man Jesus Christ and took our sins upon Him and died a sinner’s death in our place on a cross. If God is willing to do that for us don’t you think he loves us?
I see the bible as a love letter to us from the Holy Spirit God. The Bible says that God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that it contains; He also created us in his own image. God has left us with an instruction manual called the Bible; everything in the Bible is there to make our lives better. If you will read it and do what it says your life will be better. Easy no, painful yes it can be. God tells us in the Bible to forgive because we are forgiven, He doesn’t tell us this for the benefit of those we’re forgiving but for our own benefit. Ask anyone who has ever truly forgiven someone and they will tell you “it’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.” In one of my favorite passages in the Bible in Luke chapter 6 Jesus is talking about loving your enemies and what He says is so contrary to our normal reaction and so brilliant it astounds me. I try to keep these verses in my heart and in my mind at all times. Jesus said: “But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.”
I’m going to expose myself by telling you this but there are a few things that I do keeping what Jesus said in mind. If I feel hurt by someone (something they do or say or even don’t say), if someone curses me or talks ill of me to others, or hates me there is a few things I do.
1) I will pray for them. Not a prayer for my benefit but a prayer for theirs. I will go before God on their behalf asking My Heavenly father to rain down Blessing upon them and if they haven’t trusted Jesus as Lord I will pray for their salvation.
2) I will buy or make them a gift something nice, something that they would really want. Really consider this person in the gift selection really buy for them I will usually give it anonymously.
I’m telling you Jesus really has something hear like I said it is brilliant. I have never been able to truly pray for someone with their needs in mind, then go out and shop for them, really thinking of them and stay mad with them. It causes you to care deeply for their well being. I hope that some of the things that I’ve said here today help. Forgive! Let it go!
God Bless and Trust in Jesus,
Mike Peek
