Fumbling with Forgiveness

I’ve been struggling hard the last few weeks with something that I don’t like.

Forgiveness.
Specifically, forgiving “enemies”.
It’s hard enough to forgive someone who you felt wronged you when they are close to you, a friend or family member. But we’re not only called to forgive the ones who we feel deserve it, or the ones that we like.
We are just called to forgive. And keep on forgiving. A whole bunch of times, even if they do the same thing over again.

I think I just vomited in my mouth a little bit…

I’ve learned this lesson before, but I have to keep learning it. Probably because I LIKE to forget it!

When I was 16, God allowed me to go through a couple good, hard, heartbreaking things in one year. In desperation, I clung to promises of God. I read my Bible like a starving person. And the overwhelming push from him throughout that time was for me to rest in God, let him take care of it, and to try my very best to forgive the ones who had hurt me.

That forgiveness didn’t happen overnight.

Emotions are a crazy and turbulent thing. We can’t control them, but we CAN corral them. God took me on a year-long journey of learning what real forgiveness was, and truly embracing for the first time what God’s forgiveness of MY wrongs to him really cost.

A favorite song of mine right now says, “When I was your foe, still your love fought for me.”

Take that in for a minute…
I was a foe, an enemy, of God.
I actually told him out loud once that I hated him.

And, still, he ran after me, he fought for me. He fought through my anger, and rebellion, and stubbornness, and he never stopped.  

He died for me.

Ephesians 4:32 is what hit me the hardest… “Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

As a 16 year old baby Christian, I read that verse and had to ask, So, how did God forgive me?

The answer was hard to swallow then, and it’s hard now.

He forgave me when I hated him.

He forgave me when I did things wrong against him.
He forgave me when I did things that hurt other people.
He forgave me when I tried to fill myself up with everything except him.
He forgave me BEFORE I ever asked for it, and when I definitely did not deserve it.
And…he keeps on forgiving me. Every. Single. Time.
His love, and his forgiveness, never run out.
Unconditional.

Take a big gulp, because...that’s how we are supposed to forgive others: before they ask, or deserve it, before they act nicer to us, or change, and even if they do it again!

So, here I am now, 22 years later, having to re-learn that same thing. People have hurt me lately. But people always hurt other people at one time or another. Because we’re people! I think that’s why, in Ephesians, we were admonished to be kind and compassionate to each other! Because we ALL have been hurt and will hurt others. 

You’ve probably heard the saying “Hurt people hurt people.” Meaning, of course, that, like a wounded animal reacts defensively, so do hurt and wounded people.

But, not God.
God reacts by fighting FOR us. He offers up himself as a hiding place for us. He offers to heal our wounds. He forgives.
And so must we.

It is, honestly, one of the truest representations of God’s love shown in human form, to love and forgive those who do not love and forgive us.

Jesus’ own words, recorded in Luke 6 verse 27 say it perfectly:

“But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other cheek also, and from one who takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt either. If love only those who love you, what benefit is it to you? For even the ungodly love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same…But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

Oh, I cannot tell you how that equally rips my heart and is a precious, healing balm to it!

I’ve spent weeks, maybe months, roiling in my mind and heart over injustice and hurts and pondering how I can make it right. I’ve said things in response that I shouldn’t have (…ie: wounded animal!), and I just knew the day would come when the wrongs against me would be righted.

But, maybe, maybe this whole time it was an opportunity to see God’s merciful love and forgiveness.  To live that out in front of others?!

I WANT to show that.

It’s hard. It is definitely a wrestling point and it takes so much effort in our human hearts!

But, much like that 16 year old girl learned a long time ago, the payoff is so much bigger and better than our own fumbling actions could ever produce!

So, corral those emotions rumbling around, and offer them over to God, and ask him to help you forgive...