Freedom Through Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a difficult emotion to live; sometimes unforgiveness is much easier. There are always actions of forgiveness and actions of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is usually a justified action or reaction to an offense. It sounds like this, "you're not gonna get by with that " or it has a lot of I's and you's, you can fill in the blank.
Unforgiveness is an offense that has not been handled well. When we validate unforgiveness, it turns into a hot mess of emotions, which then turn into actions. We can get a “victim mentality,” where everything we do and feel comes from a defeated place. For some people, that unforgiveness victim mentality looks a badge that reads, "look how I have been treated." Then, there is getting offended and turning it into self-pity. That becomes a "rightly so" attitude. There is also an attitude of "I'll get you back" (revenge), which turns into self-destructive action. Little things that offend us, we just shrug it off and validate our feelings of "well this is just how I feel about that/you/it." Before we know, it there is a root of unforgiveness that has grown into an attitude and opinion that resembles the characteristics of unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness is a sneaky and sly lie of the enemy. Unforgiveness takes every opportunity to create a justified feeling in our emotions. When we justify unforgiveness, we have held out our hands to be shackled and bound. Did you catch that? Justified unforgiveness gives the enemy permission to enslave us to the bondages and the strongholds of a life of captivity.
Satan always plays on our feelings and the most effective feeling that he uses is unforgiveness. All of us have witnessed the devil wreaking havoc thru unforgiveness in families, marriages, friends, coworkers, and even other christians always having drama and fault-finding and offense. We have seen it, or we may BE it! God gives us a way out of the imprisonment; it is called “forgiveness.” This emotion of forgiveness is when we "let it go." (I know I hear the song too, but it’s true)!
In the Bible, God calls this “dying to the flesh.” You know when you cut your finger how it hurts? Well, when we die to our flesh, it hurts more because it is a cutting away of the enemy's hold on us through our feelings and emotions. Jesus did a lot of cutting away on me!! Forgiveness is not a weakness. It is allowing God's power to be at work in you and through you with the actions of forgiveness.
God taught me in my marriage to forgive when Tim didn't deserve it. We don't deserve the forgiveness that God offers us through Jesus. He freely gives us forgiveness of our sins and gives us eternal life. God showed me in 2011-2012 what forgiveness can do. Forgiveness allows God to do miracles. I sought God, and He would put in my mind and my spirit, "Be quick to repent and be quick to forgive." Wow! That is dying to the flesh over and over again. At the time, when all my circumstances were at the worst, God asked me to forgive and repent. I would wrestle with God, “repent for what? I haven't done anything wrong! And forgive Tim? He doesn't deserve it!” I know God was probably laughing at me thinking, “we have got along way to go!”
That dying to the flesh is wrestling with the truth and the lie. After praying more, reading the Word more, obeying more, God began to show me how much He loved me. I started to have a relationship with Jesus like I had never experienced. He was my friend, the one I talked to, cried with and He was my Lord and Savior. The more time I spent with Jesus, I started changing. Sometimes I didn't even recognize myself. I started repenting and forgiving. It was not this big event like waters parting or a big hallelujah chorus. It was a gradual emotion of love and compassion towards Tim and also a "let it go" attitude to the circumstances of a failing marriage. It was me repenting of wanting my way, vindication, me repenting of my wrongs in the marriage. God was teaching me how to forgive and how to trust God's word. Being a Christian my whole life, I was learning for the first time forgiveness God's way.
One of the passages that became real to me is in Mark 11:22-26 (these are the red words):
"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, "Go, throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him so that your father in heaven may forgive you your sins.
I was praying for radical, outrageous miracles and praying for mountains to move. I was believing, and there is was the word "if." If I am offended, "if" I have been wronged, I needed to forgive.
Then one day I was praying the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:9-13, and there it was again in verse 14, the whole forgiveness message as if it were in neon lights.
November 12, 2012 the big event, the waters did part and it was a big hallelujah chorus, and the mountains did move. The choice of forgiveness reached to the heart of God. (Here’s a link to our marriage miracle testimony here).
Through forgiveness, God breaks the bondage and the shackles of sin. Forgiveness allows God to work in our lives. He is the one who frees us from sin and forgives us.
If you have never received forgiveness from Jesus, ask Him to forgive you of our your sins. Ask Jesus to come and set you free from everything that has imprisoned you. He will come and deliver you and give you eternal life.
My prayer is that through the forgiveness God so freely gives us, we can also forgive others. God's power, the Holy Spirit, will be made real in your life through forgiveness. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a revelation of forgiveness and expect miracles. Yes the mountains will move!!!