“Forgiveness is Divine but never pay full price for late Pizza.” Michelangelo The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Forgiving someone who hurt you is incredibly hard. I wish there was an easy answer or way to do it. The following are the things that I have done or think about to help me forgive. Comment and let me know what you think. Do you have someone you need to forgive? What helps you forgive others? Let me know.
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Saying the words “I forgive you” out loud. I don’t know why this helps, but when I have become bitter (bitterness = unwillingness to forgive and holding on to the hurt that another person caused you) at another human being this has helped. For years I held onto some bitterness against someone. One day a few years ago I was thinking about how this person hurt me, and I was pretty upset. At that moment something clicked in me. You see some of Jesus last words were “Father forgive them…”. He said this out loud for everyone to hear. Why? I don’t know, but saying the words “I forgive you” out loud worked for Jesus and so I gave it a shot. I said out loud I forgive ______ for doing _______ to me. My relationship with this person hasn’t been the same since. I’ve truly forgiven them and saying it out loud is what aloud me to finally let it go.
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I once read that forgiving someone has nothing to do with the other person it has everything to do with you. When you are bitter towards someone it doesn’t affect the other person. They don’t think about it, know about it, dwell on it etc. But when you are bitter you hold onto it, carry the burden with you, and it affects you a ton! Learning to forgive is about not carrying that burden any longer. It’s about letting go. Decide in your heart that you will no longer carry the burden and then let it go.
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Learning to understand how God forgives us. Our poor choices (or sin) are what put Jesus on the cross. We sin all the time and it is in complete rebellion to God. Yet, when we ask God to forgive us, somehow God forgives us and loves us like it never happened. Understanding that God is not bitter at me helps me learn to forgive others. Jesus forgave a cruel group of self righteous men who basically had Him murdered on a cross, He forgave one of His closest friends who denied Him, He forgives me when I rebel against Him. That is challenging because I’ve never been hurt like that. If Jesus can forgive then I need to.
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Pray for that person. Jesus said to pray for our enemies. It is difficult to pray for someone you hate.
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Understand that people aren’t perfect. People are going to let you down 100% of the time. They will. At some point every human will let you down. You can either understand this and offer them God’s grace (grace – freely given unmerited love of God) or you can fault them for being imperfect. Now I believe that the Bible teaches us to be wise. If someone continually hurts you or doesn’t have your best interest in mind then you should remove yourself from them and not allow them to hurt you. But if someone hurt you and it was either because they are imperfect and made a bad judgment call or because they had your best interest in mind, but it wasn’t what you wanted then understanding that humans are imperfect helps alleviate some of the pain.