Forgive

Life is full of let downs. You cannot avoid it. What is the
most human response to let down. Revenge? Hatred? Anger? What is your deepest
feeling when it comes to someone letting you down? It’s easy to hate someone,
but it’s harder to TRULY forgive someone. It involves you telling someone, “you
have wronged me and I’m going to work through forgiving you” Can we truly in
our right mind forgive someone. Some people say you can through your on power.
I wonder what might happen if we allowed God to control our emotions and truly
be Christ like. I mean he forgave Peter, John, and his followers for letting
him down in the Garden. He forgave Peter after Peter denied him. He forgave
Paul for killing his people. He forgave Israel time and time again. He forgave
you. Col 3:13 “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against
another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must
forgive” not only are we to forgive one another, but we are to forgive as
Christ forgave us.
Which is tougher, forgiving someone or forgiving
them as Christ Forgave us? Most would say forgiving them as Christ Forgave us.
There Correct in that, but we have to forgive someone before we can forgive
like Christ.
Forgiving like Christ means that you will
hold nothing against them, you will not have a malice thought about them, and
you will have compassion toward your brother and sisters, and most of all you
will love them despite whatever they have done toward you. Can you do that? Is that
the impossible question?
21Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven
times, but seventy times seven. (Matt 18:21-22)
Seriously Jesus, Seven
Times Seventy times? That’s impossible Jesus; I can’t do that math without a
calculator.
You know God has forgiving
us much more. More than that. Every time we screw up, he says I forgive you. He
had to send his son to the cross, and after I nailed him to the cross, after I spit
in his face time and time again he continually says I forgive you. That’s not
fair! I should have to pay more dearly for my stupidity! I’m not tough enough
to be this stupid! God so evident in his grace continually says “For grace you
have been saved not through your works Jason, through my son are you forgiven”
I don’t understand this God
thing, I don’t know why he loves me and cherishes me and seeks after me time
and time again! He does and he absolutely loves me and you! What more could God
do through me if I allowed him to work in my life…I could love and cherish
people! I could have the same compassion he had towards people.
My final question is which
is harder “Him to forgive us or Us to forgive one another”
Will we do whatever it
takes to make it right?