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Is there someone in your life who’s difficult to forgive? In this episode, I share from my own personal experiences and from scriptures how to do it and why. I bust some myths about forgiveness — false ideas that make it more difficult to forgive than it needs to be. When we forgive someone, it does not mean everything is going to be okay. But it does mean that the person who has hurt you no longer has control over you. Protection is part of healthy forgiveness.
You can download the transcript from our Media Center >>
Excerpt:
Jesus told us to forgive seventy times seven times. He said that in Matthew 18:22. In other words: every day, every moment of the day, repeatedly as often as necessary. Because, in the Bible, the number seven means fullness. So when Jesus said forgive seventy times seven times, he was talking about the fullness of fullness – ten times the fullness of fullness. In the Bible, ten means infinity.
We are called to forget when we forgive others, but not in a way of ignoring what happened. We are to forget as in: We are no longer dwelling on it, we are no longer obsessing on it – which is usually what happens when we have problems forgiving somebody. We can’t let go of what they did to us. We are obsessing on it. We think about it even when we’re doing other things, when we’re working, even when we’re sleeping sometimes. It’s in our dreams! Or it keeps us awake at night. We are obsessing and God wants to heal us of that. He wants us to be delivered from that.
The way this is accomplished is through us choosing to forgive. This means that we let go of our right to seek revenge. We let go of our right to hear the other person ask for our forgiveness. We let go of our right and our need to know that they are remorseful and that they’re not going to do it again. We turn to God for protection. We put up boundaries so that person is not going to harm us again.
For more help on this topic, see our WordByte called Betrayal and abandonment: Have you been betrayed by a friend?
More episodes about healing >>
More WordBytes on Healing from Suffering >>
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