Forgiveness Is Healing

Colossians 3:13

“Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you.”

C.S. Lewis once said, “Forgiving does not mean excusing…if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive.” I think the reason why we have a hard time with forgiveness is because we tend to want to take the path of least resistance, especially in relationships. That may not make any sense at first. In fact, most people would say, “Isn’t forgiving someone the path of least resistance?”

No way. It’s the hardest thing to do, because it’s the only selfless option. Forgiveness is you giving up the right to hurt someone for hurting you. Besides being obedient, you get no satisfaction from forgiving someone...because it’s not about you. You are forfeiting the right for it to be about you.

Even if you’re goal isn’t to hurt the other person, when you refuse to forgive them, it’s still detrimental. I once heard someone call it the “battery acid in the soul.” It leads to anger, resentment, isolation, and even health problems. The funny thing is, more often than not, the other person usually doesn’t have a clue that they’ve hurt you. In the end, people who hang on to bitterness cause more pain to themselves than the person who hurt them.

We are broken people complaining about the fact that other people are broken. Isn’t that really what it boils down to? How silly is that? We need to change our perspective. Just like love, forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling. I’m not saying there is not pain and very real hurt involved. When someone hurts us, we may not be able to control how we feel, but we can choose how we act and what we do with our pain. When you choose forgiveness, you are choosing to fix what is broken, you are choosing healing, and ultimately you are choosing freedom.

Lord, thank You for showing us how to forgive. Help us to choose forgiveness, even when we don’t feel like it. We trust in You to bring healing in our feelings, our memories, and our view of those who have hurt us. Make us more like You every day.

Strength Injection

Isaiah 40:29

“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength.”

Today our culture is enamored with the powerful, the famous, and the accomplished. We call them celebrities. There are people out there who are willing to pay any price just to see some of them play their sport. Others wait in long lines to watch their movies or get their autograph. Most of us don’t know them personally or have even met them, but there is something that draws us to them. There is something that makes us want to connect with those who are well-known, talented, or beautiful.

While everyone else is clamoring for the powerful, God is pursuing the faint and the powerless. He gives strength to the exhausted. He seeks out the broken-hearted and the overlooked and gives them the greatest honor imaginable — His attention and His love.

It’s never been God’s method of operation to find those who are powerful and skilled and recruit them on to His team. All throughout the Bible God chooses those who have no merit, who are weak, and who would have ended up being a no body, and He empowers them to do something extraordinary.

It is God's grace, not our value, that draws Him to hurting, helpless people. He is constantly positioning us in such a way to where we receive the greatest amount of joy and He receives the greatest amount of glory. More often than not that means injecting His strength into those who are the weakest so that His power and His goodness can be displayed the loudest.

This is SO freeing because it means that we can let all of our failures and weaknesses (and good works and strength) fall around our feet and reach out to a God, who is the most powerful, famous, and beautiful of them all.

Lord, I realize that You are the only one who can mend the broken-hearted and give strength to the powerless. So, that is how I come before You now. I ask that You do in me what I cannot. Give me an infusion of Your strength, and position me in such a way to make Your name famous.