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Bitter or Better?
Many people carry guilt for failures that God has already forgiven them for. Instead of looking down in shame, we can look up to the God who is the lifter of our heads, standing in our identity as forgiven people. Instead of looking inwards at our past mistakes, we can look outwards and walk in our calling to bring God’s kingdom in. Instead of looking back at our past, we can look forward knowing that with God our past doesn’t define our future.
Extending forgiveness may be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do – but there is a breakthrough on the other side of that decision. Forgiveness cannot re-write the past but it does make it possible to pen a new and better future. Hurt people hurt people; forgiven people forgive people. This message will help you to understand the characteristics and consequences of true forgiveness.
We can’t choose the treatment we receive but we can choose our response: we can choose forgiveness. We can choose forgiveness that isn’t based on the other person’s repentance, that doesn’t excuse the behaviour and that recognises forgiveness may be something we have to repeatedly choose. We can choose to cancel the debt that is owed us, knowing all this is possible with God.
No matter how big our hurt is, our God is bigger. No matter how deep our pain is, God’s love is deeper. No matter how strong the hold that unforgiveness has on us, our God is stronger. Today we can choose to forgive unjust treatment and experience true freedom.
People may have attacked us, abused us, betrayed us, cheated us, mistreated us, ridiculed us and violated us; they may have done it deliberately, maliciously, viciously and even repeatedly – and without remorse. This can cause us deep pain – a pain we don’t make light of and a pain that God understands. But God commands us to forgive them. This is not easy – but we can do it with the Spirit’s help. In commanding us to forgive, God actually has our best interests at heart; the failure to forgive is a devastating and torturous form of self-destruction. When you forgive, you are the true beneficiary. This message brings home the point that to forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that, all along, that prisoner was in fact you.
