It is after all for you

I don’t know about you, but it used to be exceedingly difficult for me to forgive someone that had wronged me. God has not allowed me to win this fleshly war; I did however fight the good fight and engaged in more than one battle. (I held one grudge for over thirty years and another for fifteen, and when I say grudge, I mean grudge. I did not even speak to them one time.) Oddly the other parties never did not ask for my forgiveness and in fact did not fully realize just how badly they had wronged me, and they were not the reason that I ultimately forgave them. It was God constantly reminding me that brought me around. No God did not physically talk to me or appear in a dream, but on more than one occasion I would think about being a Christian and having this issue in my life and knowing that Jesus did not want me to keep the bitterness within my soul, and I could not attain the level of peace that I desired.

It is difficult to forgive someone who thinks they have done nothing for which to be forgiven. Consequently I did not go to them and say, “I forgive you for wronging me”. Instead out of the blue I made contact and began re-establishing contact. I need to emphasize that it was not easy. All of the old issues immediately bubbled up and dominated the early conversations and it brought back many painful memories. We began down a path of rehashing the past and what led to the parting of the ways in the first place and my hard-headed flesh wanted to just tell them to Well it was not nice and I am sure you get the picture. It brought it all back again like it was yesterday and I was on the verge of putting some distance between me and them again and dismissing this entire endeavor as a bad idea, and then God gently reminded me via conscience or whatever that if I wanted peace in my life, then I better get back to the table and work out a deal.

Hmmm What to do??? The only way I was able to succeed with this was to blot the past from my mind (and conversation) entirely and look ahead to the future. I essentially told them that I was not going to discuss past events and if they tried I would disengage. God helped me to blot yesterday out of my mind and concentrate on today and tomorrow. I cannot boast 100% success because satan even to this day still tries his best to remind me of the past injustices, but God reminds me that if I want peace in life I better get busy and forgive and forget.

The long story short is I have been wildly successful with this and I am extremely happy that I made the effort. I now have relationships and I am happy to say that it is genuine and they are good relationships. (It was not so in the beginning, but time and listening to and obeying god heals.)

I believe that forgiveness is not for the other person as much as it is for us. I have gained more than the others and I am delighted that I have done so. Try it, you will like it! Make peace with your adversary! Don’t be like the world, God chose us out of the world and we must make the effort to put distance between us and the world if we want His peace.

John 15:18
If the world hates you, you
Know that it hated Me before it
Hated you.
If you were of the world, the
world would love its own. Yet
because you are not of the world, but
I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.