Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Forgiving Me, Forgiving You

"Generous in love-God, give grace! Huge in mercy-wipe out my bad record! Scrub away my guilt; soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down.” (Psalm 51:1-3 MSG)


Forgiving Me

Sin is very real in our lives, but…..

Forgiveness is the best gift you can give yourself.

Forgiveness doesn’t always come easy for me; I often wonder if God grows weary of me coming back and asking for forgiveness over and over, but…..

God is not like that.

We are instructed to keep on asking…keep on seeking…keep on knocking; He doesn’t count the times. Even though God doesn’t encourage us to keep on sinning, there is no limit to the amount of times you may ask forgiveness from Him. By faith we can view ourselves as God views us…as His child; loved, forgiven, and cleansed. When we confess our sins, God with His unconditional love, welcomes us back and genuinely forgives us. We can run into His eager loving arms instead of running away in fear, knowing that He will forgive us! He wants us to know and fully experience His mercy and grace. That’s when we can fully rejoice in our secure relationship with Him, and experience a breakthrough even after many failures. We are dead to sin and alive to God.

As far as sunrise is from sunset, He has separated us from our sins!

“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone, a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and Him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18 MSG)

Forgiving You

How do we forgive when we really don’t feel like it…

God’s Word tells us we must forgive as He forgave us.

How do we forgive someone who is hurtful…

Letting go of grudges can make way for compassion and peace.

Forgiving someone who has hurt us or done us wrong seems like the last thing we would want to do. Betrayal can hurt both emotionally and physically which can cause us to struggle with excusing someone’s behavior. Sometimes we just don’t want to forgive because it may seem like we are forgetting the wrong they have done and we don’t feel like the other persons behavior deserves to be pardoned. But unforgiveness is like a cancer that eats slowly away at us!  If we dwell on hurtful situations and resentment we allow negative feelings to crowd out positive ones and we might find ourselves swallowed up by our own bitterness.

“Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again’, forgive him.” (Luke 17:3-4)

God wants us to be peacemakers; He wants us to show forgiveness and love towards others even when they have done us wrong. He honors our commitment to obey Him and our desire to please Him when we chose to forgive! Once we break the barrier and chose forgiveness, God will set us free from the load we have been carrying, then we can rejoice from the freedom we feel and find peace in our hearts. God is waiting and ready for us to offer forgiveness just as He forgives and gives peace to us.

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”

When we chose to tolerate and forgive others…
 we will find it in our hearts to tolerate and forgive ourselves…

Linking up with Tracy at "My Daily Walk in His Grace"



13 comments:

  1. This is a post we need to review often...Forgiveness is definitely a daily part of our Christian walk and if neglected will cause lots of problems for us...
    I love the picture in your post that says "Forgiveness isn't something we do for others. We do it so we can get well and move on"....wonderful quote....

    I hope you have a wonderful day my friend....

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  2. Denise you did a good job with this post, so many people have such a hard time dealing with forgiving, they rather hold on the the pain and let it eat them up. I use to be this way, but my pastor said something years ago that made sense he said when we don't forgive people we become hostages to them. We are in prision and I made up my mind I will not let anyone hold me captive...I thought about it and I could see the things of my past how I held on to the resentment of someone else. And they have forgotten all about what they had done..now how crazy is that? It's very crazy...and so today I am not perfect at forgiveness but I surely am not carrying around years of junk anymore...I am free from all those who disappointed me..AMEN

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  3. A tender topic for sure Denise. Sometimes forgiving oneself is the hardest of all.

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  4. Forgiving ourselves is such a difficult thing to do. Thanks for this post...great job.

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  5. The past two years have each brought lessons in forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and others. Good post. :)

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  6. Hi Denise - forgiveness is such an important tool and a freeing thing. It frees the ones who have hurt us and it frees us. I don't think I can ever learn enough about forgiveness and its value in my life. Great post and love seeing you on the link-up :)
    God bless
    Tracy

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  7. In needing to forgive someone it has always been a help to me to really begin to pray for that person...God uses that to change our heart and bring true forgiveness.

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  8. I loved the portion from the verse in the Psalms that said: "Scrub away my guilt; soak out my sins in your laundry." Now that is very visable for sure. Forgiveness is a must. Toward others and then to forgive ourselves.

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  9. Denise,

    Offering forgiveness is such a hard thing to do but forgiveness frees us from that yoke of bondage. Awesome post today Denise, and blessings to you.

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  10. Forgiveness is an incredible gift from our Father! And when we bestow that gift on others, it not only can encourage them, it frees our heart from pain so we can move forward in all areas of our life. I have learned that unforgiveness keeps us chained to the past, but when we release it to God and forgive the offender, trusting God in the situation, we gain peace of heart!

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  11. Dear Denise,

    This is a wonderful reminder on the critical importance in forgiving. I appreciated the reminder that unforgiveness is like cancer and that when we forgive God lifts the burden we've been carrying.

    Something that has helped me with forgiveness is obeying God and forgiving the person. When the enemy stirs up my feelings immediately going to God in prayer and reminding myself that I have forgiven the person and praying for them.

    I am so grateful that God's forgiveness is much greater and purer than mine.

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  12. Hei Denise,and peace from God to you and your family.
    Thanks for the nice comment,
    and God bless you and your family.
    Lukas 1 vers 45
    Romans 8 from verse 24 to verse 32
    I am grateful if you would pray for me and my family.
    Greeting
    Jan Samuel

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  13. sometimes we are hurt when or true friends commit mistakes.we should just forgive
    them and only remember how they supported us when we needed them the most

    FORGIVE ME QUOTES

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