Ask For Forgiveness

Ask for Forgiveness

If you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.

“I am sorry for what I said,” I stated, eyes forward on the road. Julie and I were traveling to a speaking event together, and I’d been a little snarky to my friend earlier that morning.

“I know,” she responded with a lopsided grin. “You were right to challenge me.”

Although that may have been true, my heart was not in the right place when I had responded to her text. I spoke from a place of annoyance and anger, not love. I needed to apologize, not so much for what I said, but for my emotion behind it. My heart and mind were in the wrong place, and I knew it.

Although this was a small bump on the road of friendship with Julie, asking forgiveness of others is not something that has always come easily to me. There have been many more times where pride reared its ugly head and prevented me from apologizing, even when I knew that I was wrong.

But getting older and walking with God have made me much more tender to the Holy Spirit when he nudges me to make things right by asking for forgiveness, and this has benefited my closest relationships like little else.

Jesus did not mince words when he told us that we must be reconciled to those we’ve wronged before we can come to him in worship. If I am going to follow his teachings, then forgiveness in relationships must be central to my life. It may not always be easy, but I have never regretted mending a friendship through forgiveness.

— Kendra

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Ask God to show you if there is someone you need to apologize to. Pray for wisdom and then find a way to ask for forgiveness.