Forgiveness is Essential to Your Healing: Part 2
Continuing on in our discussion on forgiveness. We will now consider these points:
- When to forgive?
- How do you handle issues that are hard to forgive?
- What are the benefits of forgiveness?
Fifth, you need to forgive whenever you are wronged or offended. There are no exceptions to this, even when it is very difficult.
Sixth, when you find it hard to forgive, simply be honest with the Lord and tell Him, “Lord, I am willing to forgive, help me be able to forgive.” When you submit your struggle to God, He helps you overcome any blockages or fears you may have about forgiveness. You simply make the choice to forgive. It is not about your feelings. However, over time as you continue to forgive the Lord brings your emotions and feelings into alignment with the choice you have made.
A great example of this is Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie and her family hid Jews in Holland during WWII. They were eventually arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Corrie lost her father and sister in the camps. After the war one of the prison guards came up to her after a meeting and asked for her forgiveness. She realized she had not fully forgiven this guard that had been so cruel to her family, but with the Lord’s help she was able to forgive them.
She sums it up well with this quote, “Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.”
Seventh, when you forgive from your heart it brings a greater connection to God and others. It opens the way for the Lord to work in your life and bring greater healing physically, emotionally and spiritually. So, it is important for you to forgive those the Lord brings to mind as you are dealing with your memory of trauma or pain. Doing so will free you to receive the fullness of healing the Lord wants to provide you with.
