Chapter 2 (cont.) “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

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BLESSED:

Eight Steps to Emotional, Relational, Spiritual Wholeness:

The Healing Power of the Beatitudes

Chapter 2 (cont.)

“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

Forgiveness

Have you carefully looked at Mark 11:25? 25  “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Or Matthew 6:14

14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

This says that we are the ones who have been offended. We are the VICTIMS, and our Father in heaven forgives us when we forgive those who have abused us. Now wait. This is not the way it works. It is the other way around. We ask others to forgive us when we have hurt them and then Jesus sees us doing this and offers us forgiveness after that. Right? Nope. That is not what the verse says.

Now we know that God forgives us when we earnestly ask Him. (I John 1:9 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.) Then what is this about God forgiving us when we forgive others? God forgives us, but are we in a place inside ourselves to accept it if we have not forgiven others?

We are sitting in a cage ….with the door wide open. It is a cage of our own making. No one else put us there, and we can leave any time. Easy to say—leave it at any time, but without God’s intervention almost impossible to do.

We leave the cage by forgiving those who are holding us psychologically bound. We dwell on all the pain and anger and resentment. We dwell on those who are the perpetrators of these emotions. And that is what forms the cage and that is what keeps us inside of the cage.

We, the forgiver, recognize we have been hurt. Then in embracing the pain we turn it over to God. This helps us face the truth about our own pain, and gets rid of the excuse to hate, to be bitter. We don’t let THEM consume us anymore. Brokenness weighs us down; forgiveness brings healing.

“The willingness to forgive is a sign of spiritual and emotional maturity. It is one of the great virtues to which we all should aspire. Imagine a world filled with individuals willing both to apologize and to accept an apology. Is there any problem that could not be solved among people who possessed the humility and largeness of spirit and soul to do either -- or both -- when needed?” ― Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

Forgiving others does not excuse them for the wrong they have done. Forgiveness is for the one who has been wronged, the victim, not really for the villain. Surely the villain needs to experience forgiveness, and he needs to face his own guilt and pain in this, but that is his job/problem, not ours. Surely accepting forgiveness is part of the recovery process, but it is his part.

As a very human sidenote remember: the best revenge is to go on and let God do the rest. God promises that he, himself, will bring it about. Romans 12:9 says “My dear brothers, do not punish people who do wrong to you. But let Gods anger punish them.” Another translation (Bible in Worldwide English New Testament), “I myself will punish people. If they have done wrong things, I will do wrong things to them also.” Do not worry about giving God a list of people he has missed. There are no time-limits; there is no deadline in God’s promise, but there is an absolute guarantee in it. If you are lucky, God may even let you watch. But remember do not rejoice in it. God may take this punishment back. Pro 24:17-18: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart exult when he is overthrown; lest Jehovah see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His anger from him”. [Holy Bible Recovery Version]

Regardless of our oh so human reaction: forgiveness must be seen in the way we live or reconciliation will never result. Think of the parable of the forgiven debtor in Matthew 18. The servant is forgiven an enormous sum and then throttles another servant who owes him a paltry amount. It gets pretty scary right about then: if you don’t forgive, God is not going to forgive you. Do we actually live out God’s forgiveness of us? One of the ways we do that is by forgiving those who have sinned against us. And we are to do this 70 times 7! Beware.