Freedom thru Forgiveness 5

November 9, 2009 · Filed Under forgiveness, freedom 

From BobHamp.com

Forgiveness:  God’s Gift to allow you to be who He made you to be, in the face of real evil and real pain.  What is it?  What is our part?  What is God’s part.  The answers to these questions may open the door to your freedom.  Forgiveness is a two part process, the first part, is yours.  You do your part, and it connects you to the work that God already performed through Jesus on the cross.  Let’s examine.

1.  Your Part:  You must make a CHOICE. The choice is this: You choose to live with the consequences of the other’s sin, and not charge it to their account.  Did I mention that this is not easy.  In some cases it may be the most difficult choice a human can make.  Jesus made this choice in the Garden of Gesthemane the night before His crucifixion.  This choice required such intense will-work, that the Son of God sweat drops of blood as He chose to take our sins upon Himself and not charge them to our account.  Whe you make this difficult choice it accomplishes three important things on your behalf.

A.  It gives you back your Mind: When you are angry at another, you give them real estate in your mind.  Forgiving restores back to you posession of what you have given away.  If you have ever wondered why it is difficult to control your thoughts, consider this;  It is impossible to submit to God what you have already given to someone else.

B.  It gives the offender Back to God: When you release them, you give them over to God for Him to work justice in their lives.  Justice is not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.  This approach simply results in a lot of blind toothless people.  True justice is when wrong things are made right.  God is better at this than you are.

C.  It opens the door for Part two, God’s part of forgiveness: Healing your soul: When you give up the role of being your own healer, however futile it may have been, you make room for God to do what He does best. I am convinced that the restoration of our souls is the real goal of forgiveness.  This allows us to be who we are created to be even when we have faced real evil or real pain.

2.  God’s Part:  The HEALING made available to us through the Cross of Jesus:  Jesus died for the sins of the world.  He died for your sins. Have you ever considered that He died for the sins committed against you? The day He died, He endured an onslaught of human pain.  He was betrayed, abused, shamed, mocked, rejected, abandoned, and the list could go on.  On that day, He earned the right to take not only your sins, but the sins that others have committed against you.  He earned the right to take onto His own Being that which you were never designed to bear; the consequence of sin.  You cannot give it to Him, until you take responsibility for what you do with these consequences.  But you were never designed to bear this weight for the rest of your life.

The conversation would sound something like this:

God, I choose to forgive my father for abandoning our family.  I choose today to live with the consequences of his sin, and not charge this sin to his account.  But God, when he left us, I felt afraid.  I felt abandoned.  I felt rejected and alone. Would you take the pain from his sin, and lift it from me?  Would you take this pain and put it on the cross, where it belongs?  God thank you for yor willingness to take from me what I cannot bear.

Notice three parts to this prayer:

1.  A choice:  Not just a desire, a choice

2.  An accounting:  Name the sins you are forgiving.

3.  An accoutning of the cost: Name the consequences you have borne.  Fear. abandonment, etc.  This is not done to rehearse again what you feel, but to acknowledge what you are giving to Jesus.

Next post, we will look at some important considerations in forgiving.

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