How to Forgive Permanently
There is always that battle within to forgive. You try to forgive, but the hurt raises its ugly head again. The battle then is multiplied with vengeance, bitterness and a whole host of poor emotions knocking on your door.
Jesus fought this battle first - and won. Here's how!
Nails in His hands, thorns on His head, but YOU stayed in His heart. Don't forget Calvary existed for forgiveness.
Suspended in torture the first words Jesus bellowed from His cross were:
FORGIVE them Father for they don't know what they do. (Luke 23:34)
The purest, strongest, clearest forgiveness rises from that point when you too are nailed by pain. It is in the fiercest pain that the bowels of the heart are finally touched.
Jesus did not yell forgiveness when His pain had gone, but at His meanest trial; that most difficult of times to utter such unshackling words. And so He too fulfilled:
This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18:35)
From forgiveness spoken in the deepest pain arises the deepest peace.
There is an authenticity to the spoken forgiveness at the point of greatest hurt, that is not matched from a forgiveness spoken when the injury has dulled - for then the heart has not been touched.
A forgiveness released (upon perpetrators) during the heart's terror is no mere intellectual assent, it rises from the seat of the heart. Such a forgiveness cleanses the soul,and hostility owns no foothold to appear yet again.
When the soul feels stronger and forgiveness is given - these words will flee, only to be required yet again should a reminder be triggered.
Forgiveness from the heart knows no triggers, for the gun has been tossed away.
When the heart feels the most pain, this is truly the most difficult but also the most cleansing time to forgive.
Forgiveness is the most important seed to sow, for it is the one I NEED the most.
Today's Soul Snippet:
'Forgiveness cannot be withdrawn for then it was not forgiveness'.
ENJOY too ~ The Unforgiving
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