Forgiveness

I love writing...it's like my own personal therapy. I'm always so unfocused when I try to talk to God that sometimes I just have to write it all down, everything that I'm feeling, and offer it up to Him. Sometimes it's just the only way that I can express or even attempt to express what I'm feeling. This post is basically one of those times, so if nothing I'm saying makes any sense whatsoever, don't worry about it.
-taye


In Him we have forgiveness

Today, I think that God is trying to teach me about His forgiveness…even if He is not I am for sure learning about it. It is unbelievable; I cannot begin to fathom how He forgives people of every crappy thing they do…how He forgives me of every crappy thing I do. But He has not really been showing me of His forgiveness of my sins, He has been showing me how to forgive others as He forgives them…as He forgives me.

I have friends who have done hurtful things to me, and some friends who have not done anything at all, which in turn has also been hurtful to me. But I am learning to forgive them. I am not going to name any names, for I do not feel like that will help anything at all, first by exposing their sins or second by bringing back their sin as theirs and not their sin as forgiven by Christ and laid upon the cross.

When I was younger, there was a person who continually hurt me (not physically, but emotionally) for years, affecting my thoughts in a lot of ways, even now. It took years to come to the point where I could honestly forgive that person, but a few years ago I finally did, and it was a huge burden lifted from the weight of my past. Only God gave me the strength and ability to forgive that person.

More recently, I had a good friend confess a sin to me. In all honesty it has absolutely nothing to do with me, but she needed to talk to someone about it, and I happened to be that person whom she wanted to talk to. Although it was not relevant to me specifically, it hurt me. It hurt me that she was so deeply hurt. But it hurt me because I felt like what she had done had in some way betrayed our friendship. But thinking and praying about that situation, it did not have anything to do with me. She was forgiven by God of her sin, and I had to learn to forgive as God had forgiven her. After all, if I love her, with only a glimpse of God’s love for her, then it was not too terribly difficult to forgive her.

Even more recently (really recently… as in this week) I had a good friend who just, out of nowhere, stopped talking to me, for no reason apparent to me. I still do not know what is going on, or what their situation is; whether I have or have not done something to induce this silence is unknown to me. I have really had to trust in God this week because of this, it has extremely hurt me, but I do not really know why it has exactly hurt me so deeply. This sounds ridiculously insane but I had a dream last night about this situation. Do you believe that God gives answer in the form of a dream? I feel like that sounds really strange, but I never remember dreams and I remember every single detail about this one. I have spent the last two days asking God for some kind of answer; some sort of explanation. I feel like this dream may have been that, or it could have just been the fact that I ate a lot of Nutella before going to sleep. Whichever it was, it has stuck in my mind all day long. I will not go into the details of this dream, but basically, I feel like my friend has done something he ashamed of and that may be the reason he is not talking to me, (our conversations have been filled with discussions of the Bible and God, and a lot of times when people are ashamed of something, they shy away from God and things to do with Him…including people who talk about Him frequently) But I have a desire to forgive him of whatever it is, if that dream even remotely came from God.

Through these three examples from my life, whether from my childhood, the more recent past, or presently, God is teaching me how His forgiveness works by allowing me to feel glimpses of that forgiveness. The forgiveness where the other person has done nothing to earn it, where most people would hold a grudge for the next fifty years, but where I have been able, only by God’s grace to fully and completely forgive them.

“In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”
Ephesians 1:7 NIV