Determined Forgiveness
Whatever hurt or pain you may have encountered in life, God’s answer to wholeness and healing is in forgiveness. Today’s blog will dive in deep, discussing why it is so important to forgive and how we can approach life with an attitude of determined forgiveness.
So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.’ Colossians 3:12-14 MSG
Forgiveness is a hard topic to discuss because it forces us to look inside and to consider areas of our lives that, let’s be honest, we would rather hide away. Areas of hurt, areas of disappointment, areas of pain. I have decided to title this post determined forgiveness because I have discovered that to extend forgiveness and walk in forgiveness really takes some grit. It takes guts, it takes strength and it takes determination. I don’t know about you, but there haven’t been too many times in my life where I have been really excited to forgive someone…it’s challenging…
However, regardless of how challenging it may feel to forgive, the benefits of extending forgiveness are amazing- undoubtedly worthwhile!
Forgiveness brings freedom to our lives while unforgiveness brings resentment.
Forgiveness brings great joy to our lives while unforgiveness brings bitterness.
Forgiveness brings life to our lives while unforgiveness slowly brings decay.
In this blog we are going to look at 3 keys I believe will help you and encourage you to forgive even when you don’t want to. 3 keys that will hopefully inspire and empower you to walk in forgiveness even when you really don’t feel like it.
1. Determine that you will forgive because God has forgiven you.
There is something so powerful about determining the way you are going to live, about making a decision about where you stand on an issue. Setting your sails as it were. It doesn’t mean that you will always get it right, but it means you will always get back up and keep going in the direction you have set.
We do this in lots of ways. I have decided, for example, to follow Jesus. I might not get it right all the time, I might have good days and bad days but that is where I stand. That is where I have determined my position will be. I have determined to be a generous person. Some weeks I might do better at being generous than others, but that’s my position.
There is something powerful about making deliberate decisions about how you are going to navigate life. These things don’t just happen by accident! You don’t wake up one morning and suddenly have great habits! It happens through determined decisions.
Our first key today is to make that decision when it comes to forgiveness! To determine that you are going to be a person who walks in forgiveness. This is where I want my default position to be when I encounter hurt, when I encounter pain, when someone offends me, when someone cuts me off in traffic, when someone treats me unjustly…my default position is not going to be one that holds onto bitterness or becomes resentful or holds a grudge or carries offences. No, I have already decided, I have predetermined that my position is to walk in forgiveness. My position is to extend mercy, extend grace. I might do better at this some days than others, but this is my determined choice about how I will respond to hurt in my life.
Why do I make this my position? Why do I choose to walk in forgiveness? The answer is simple really:
I forgive because God has forgiven me.
Sometimes we struggle to forgive others because we struggle to believe that God has really forgiven us. The truth is He has. You aren’t on some kind of plan to pay off sins or earn forgiveness. You aren’t on some kind of spiritual community service program where you are tasked with serving God in order to earn or gain His love or acceptance. No, if you have asked Jesus to forgive you, you have been forgiven. Full Stop. End of Story. We can extend forgiveness more easily when we understand how God has forgiven us, and we can determine to live a life of forgiveness when we remind ourselves daily that we have been forgiven.
2. Determine that you will forgive and forget.
Sometimes we try to forgive and move past an offence or a circumstance that hurt us, but we can’t because we get stuck reliving the story. We think about it, replay it in our minds, go over and over what happened and how it happened and who said what…before we know it we feel like we are right back in that moment.
It’s like peeling the scab off a wound- all the healing that has taken place gets undone. Emotions and feelings that we thought we had moved past come rushing back as we relive the story again and again and suddenly we feel the pain again as if the event had only just happened.
If we are truly going to walk in the freedom that forgiveness brings. We need to determine in our heart to stop retelling the stories. To stop replaying the scenes in our minds, to stop reliving the conversations.
There are 2 definitions for the word forget. Let’s have a look at them together.
1. Fail to remember. To inadvertently neglect to do, bring, or mention something.
I forgot to bring the washing in. I forgot that persons name.
2. Deliberately cease to think of.
When someone says ‘forget about it’.
The first definition of the word is something I do all the time, without even trying. The second definition, however, is a deliberate action- a choice I make that I am no longer going to think on these things, I’m no longer going to dwell on them. I am going to choose not to remember them, not to relive them, not to replay them in my mind anymore.
Do you know that this is what God does for us? He chooses not to remember our sins after we have received His forgiveness.
‘I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’ Isaiah 43:25
God isn’t forgetful in the first definition of the word- He doesn’t forget about your sin like you would forget to bring an umbrella. He forgets as an act of the will. In that He chooses to deliberately no longer think of and remember our sins. He wants to empower us to be able to do the same in our lives. Forgive and Forget, stop retelling the stories.
3. Determine to extend forgiveness even if you think you can’t.
Forgiveness is not a feeling, forgiveness is a choice.
The times you will have to choose to forgive even when you don’t want to are going to far outweigh the times you feel like extending forgiveness. Forgive anyway.
I want to close this post by sharing with you one of the greatest stories of forgiveness I have ever heard, a story from the life of Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie was a Dutch watchmaker who was arrested along with all her family for hiding and assisting Jewish people during World War 2. She and her sister Betsy were sent to a concentration camp where they were treated horrifically, barely fed and forced to work long hard labour. Corrie watched her sister become sick, grow weak and eventually die in the camp, just 2 weeks before Corrie was released. About a week after this every other woman in the camp was sent to the gas chambers.
Can you imagine coming out of that- the trauma, the pain, the grief that you would be carrying? Corrie returned to The Netherlands after the war and set up a rehabilitation center for concentration-camp survivors. She also began to speak about her experiences, and the love and forgiveness of God.
One night, after speaking at a church in Munich, she saw a tall man at the back of the building moving forwards to speak with her. She instantly recognised him as a guard from the camp where she and her sister had been held and instantly felt gripped by fear, grief, anger and hatred.
She writes the following about the experience:
‘It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the shame of walking past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’ And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than taking that hand. He explained how he had been a guard at a concentration camp, had been tortured by the things that he had seen and done and finally found peace, forgiveness and restoration in Jesus Christ, but wanted to ask her personally, as a former prisioner, for forgiveness.
And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it—I knew that. I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had built a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. A current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.’ 1
Corrie reflected on this experience and later said that she was still learning to forgive. I don’t know about you, but if Corrie Ten Boon, after experiences like that, says that she is still learning to forgive…I know I’m still learning how to forgive! We are all still learning how to forgive.
Let’s start by determining that we will live from a place of determined forgiveness today.
-Jess
This blog is based on a message I recently had the privilege to preach in my home church. The original message can be viewed here.