Forgiving When You Don’t Feel Like it

“I want my money now” Chris demanded, choking one of his collegues. “Where’s my money? I want it now.” The collegue begged and asked him to be patient. But Chris kept demanding the money and finally got fed up and filed a case against him. At that time, Chris had forgotten that he was in the same position as his collegue was, a few days back when the boss was demanding money. And when Chris begged for mercy, his boss forgave his debt. When the boss heard about what Chris did, he was greatly disappointed.

Most of the time in our lives, we are like Chris. We forget how Jesus died for our sins and how God forgave us. Its easy to be judgemental about others when they act like Chris, but when we look into our life we’ll be able to see many more times we’ve been like Chris.

Some time back, I came to know that one of my friends was lying to me about some things. I was really hurt and whenever I saw her, anger used to build up in me because we were so close and I used to tell her everything in my life. I didn’t want to forgive her as I felt betrayed and used.

I attended a camp where a doctor came and shared about a particular instance in his life, in which he started seeing a flashback of all the wrong things he has done. And after this he heard a voice telling him “Son, inspite of all this I still love you.”

I sat there and broke into tears and this phrase kept sounding in my ears over and over. I could literally hear God saying to me “Sharon, I forgive you for all the things you’ve done wrong. I love you. And as much as I love you I love your friend and I’ve forgiven her too.” Even though it was hard for me to forgive her I was reminded of a verse which says “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:13). After this, I was able to forgive my friend.

Most of the time when we get hurt by others, we tend to hold them as a “hostage.” We usually get hurt when a close friend of ours lies to us or cheats us. But the difference we see in people is that some hold it to their hearts while some others don’t.

Its better to forgive them than to hold things against them.