Choose Forgiveness
Photo by Gemma Chua-Tran on Unsplash
Ugh forgiveness. It makes me feel weak. It makes me feel weak to forgive those that I deem as unworthy. If someone hurts me, whether done intentionally or unintentionally, it truly sucks that I have to be the one to forgive them. But that is what our God has instructed us to do. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. It’s taken me a few times to grasp this concept, if I can be frank. But one day, I think I decided to take the idea of forgiveness on a situational basis and just go for it. When a situation arises where I am placed in the position where I need to forgive, this can be from the biggest to the smallest of cases, I have decided to dive head first in the pool of forgiveness.
Okay wait Damesha what does that look like? It’s a few things. Sit and get comfortable.
First, I have established within myself that I want to live for Jesus. Period.
I have decided that I want to live a life that is pleasing to Jesus. I am committed to all that that entails. One of those aspects of this life with Jesus, is that I have to forgive a person when someone has done something I didn’t appreciate. Because I have that facet of my life already established, I don’t make excuses when it comes time to forgive. Literally the Holy Spirit wouldn’t allow me to even if I wanted to.
Secondly, our bible says “Vengenace is mine, saith the Lord”.
I once heard a prominent leader say that we shouldn’t even have to worry about getting someone back, or trying to prove to them that they were wrong, because vengeance is the Lord’s. Sometimes, we forget who the God is that we serve. This is the same God that says “he will fight for us, we just have to stay calm” (Exodus 14:14). Too often, when someone disrespects us or does something to hurt us, we respond in a way that highlights this mentality that our response is what’s necessary to make the person understand and act differently. It’s almost our pride seeping through. Yikes I know. Let me break it down further.
When done wrong, many run to the thought that the person needs to know how they made you feel and that you need to “set them straight”. Okay let me be real. It usually goes more like “they got me messed up! I’m not the one.” Yeah girl, same. So first when we think this way, we are responding from our flesh. Let’s call that out first. We are told to “be angry, but sin not.” (Ephesians 4:26) But we all fall into our flesh. So we snap on the person. We tell them off and really let them have it right? Let me ask you though…what do you think is going to happen after that? Most times we think “I just need to tell them off, one good time and they’ll get the point.” Are we really that immersed in pride that we think our “snapping off” is that powerful to truly change the behavior of a person? Think on it.
In most cases, our snapback or our vengeance, isn’t enough.
It’s not sufficient. We are not more powerful than God and us trying to take matters into our own hands, simply won’t work. When someone hurts you, understand that the Lord will turn that situation around for your good. We don’t have to say anything or do anything but what He told us to do. And that is to simply forgive, my friend.
Choose forgiveness.
Have you had to practice forgiveness recently in a tough situation? How did you handle it? Comment down below and share your experience.