Forgiveness Is For You Not Them

Rev. Karif Lawrence

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

I am siting at my desk and I want to share with you something that is on my mind and in my heart. I know that in our society forgiveness is something which needs to be taken and demanded. However, I want to look at it from a different perspective. When we do something to someone else we rarely ask for their forgiveness. Instead we try to ignore the pain we have caused them or worse, justify how it is their fault we hurt them because of their action or inaction. The problem with this is that we are hurting ourselves much longer than we hurt them. How you ask? We are the one that loses their friendship/relationship and the addition they can bring to our lives. We miss out on the great ideas they can offer to future problems and issues. We also forfeit the strength and encouragement they can offer when we are feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated. We also miss out on forgiveness from God. 1 John 1:9 tells us that our forgiveness is conditional on our acknowledgement of the things we have done wrong to others and to God. To acknowledge our actions and words have hurt is not enough. We also must ask them and God to forgive us. Once we do this God forgives us instantly but only if we are sincere and mean it from our heart. When this happens, we are forgiven by God there is a joy and peace which we receive that is kinda awesome. So the big idea is when we ask others for forgiveness whether they give it or not we receive from God and you can’t beat a gift from Him. If we don’t ask, we don’t get. We miss out. So ask!