To Forgive Or Not To Forgive? - The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge
To Forgive or Not to Forgive?
If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15
These verses have always been a little disconcerting to me. I think I understand the plain message of the words, but does Christ really understand what He is asking me to do? I wonder if He knows about some of the things I still vividly remember that others have done to me through the years. And is He asking me to forgive them or I’m out of luck to receive His forgiveness for my wrongdoings?
I imagine proposing a simpler solution—why doesn’t God just forgive everyone (including me) as I believe He did through His Son on the cross, and we’ll be done with it? Don’t ask me to forgive them as well. And don’t put that contingency clause for my own forgiveness on the tail end of it.
And then I begin to look inside a little deeper, and I can’t help but wonder sometimes if I don’t have trouble forgiving others because I don’t want to forgive myself for all the stuff I’ve done. What about you? I mean, it seems as though sometimes the baggage we carry isn’t really something we want to carry around, but we do it anyway. Either we enjoy the misery and want the self-imposed pity parties we’re throwing to continue, or more likely, we simply can’t forgive ourselves for all the times we have fallen short of God’s standard.
So we turn around and don’t forgive others. And our hearts begin to harden not only toward others, but toward ourselves. But God’s plan of forgiveness provides total freedom for us from guilt over what we have done and from the bitterness toward others for what they have done to us. The ability to forgive is a reflection of a repentant, spiritually reborn heart. That repentance begins one-on-one with God.
Uncommon Key > How willing are you to forgive yourself and others? Confess your lack of forgiveness to God and begin to change your attitude. And start making a list of people who have wronged you whom you need to offer grace to.
