Inside: Forgiveness is a choice. It is not a denial that whatever hurt has been done against you isn’t real, but it does mean you need to face it and be reminded that not forgiving that sin against you is a sin in itself.

As I’m sharing this with you today, I don’t know what you, my listeners, are coming to this podcast with. I don’t know the hurts in your lives. Hurtful words, betrayal from a friend, disappointments, and even much darker areas of abuse to unspeakable offenses that many of us could not even fathom.

Many times we can just go on trying to live in a state of normalcy all the while, these past hurts are building resentment and bitterness in our hearts. Our God does not want us to be stuck there. In Christ, we have the freedom to be set free.

Forgiveness is a choice. It is not a denial that whatever hurt has been done against you isn’t real, but it does mean you need to face it and be reminded that not forgiving that sin against you is a sin in itself.

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Show Notes:

“nearly all the personal problems that drive people to seek pastoral counsel are related in some way to the issue of forgiveness.”
~ John MacArthur

“The outcome of our lives is not determined by what happens to us but by how we respond to what happens to us.”
~ Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

“When we as God’s children realize that His grace is sufficient for every situation, that by the power of His indwelling Spirit we have the ability to respond with grace and forgiveness to those who have sinned against us—at that point we are no longer victims. We are free to rise above whatever may have been done to us, to grow through it, and to become instruments of grace, reconciliation, and redemption in the lives of other hurting people and even in the lives of our offenders.”
~ Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Choosing Forgiveness: Your Journey to Freedom

Seven Ways to Love Those Who Have Hurt Us – (via @Ray Pritchard)

1 Greet Them

2. Disarm Them

3. Do Good To Them

4. Refuse to Speak Evil of Them

5. Thank God for Them

6. Pray for Them

7. Ask God to Bless Them

“It is shallow oneness to say that God forgives us because He is love…The love of God means Calvary—nothing less; the love of God is spelt on the Cross, and nowhere else. The only ground on which God can forgive me is the Cross of my Lord.”
~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

“If you’re a child of God, the ordeal you’re undergoing, however wrong or unfair or heartless it may be or may have been, in His providence and skillful hands will be used to take you somewhere good—deeper into His heart, to a place of greater dependence and trust, more perfectly refined into the likeness of Christ.”
~ Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Choosing Forgiveness: Your Journey to Freedom

In her book, Choosing Forgiveness, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (see chapter 5, The Art of Forgiveness – this chapter is worth your time to purchase this book) has us to write out anyone we need to forgive. We are to write out the people who have wronged us and their offenses. She knows we are going to be asking, “why would we bring this all up again.” Her reminder is we need to get honest and face the reality that we don’t forget, and we don’t just escape reality. In the midst of our pain, the point is to run to God. He is the only One who can free us from the hurt and bondage of the situation.

Nancy lays out a disclaimer that you don’t go trying to dig things up that you don’t have a recollection of but just the ones you know that need to be dealt with.

After you write them out, ask yourself the following questions:
“How have I responded to this person?”
“Have you blessed them?”
“Have you loved them?”
“Have you prayed for them?”
“Have you forgiven them?”

“Or would it be more honest to say that you have withheld love from them, resented them, and been angry with them?”
(above questions taken from Choosing Forgiveness: Your Journey to Freedom)

I love Nancy’s prayer to ask the Lord in seeking to forgive:

“Lord, by Your grace and in obedience to You, I choose to forgive—to clear their record, to press the delete button, to release the offender, to let the offense go. I do forgive!”