Forgiveness

​Forgiveness doesn't give you amnesia. Instead it (often slowly) destroys the pain that is connected to the memory allowing you be driven less and less by retaliation or revenge.
Forgiveness is not about the person who wronged you and in that we see the trap. So long as the focus is on THEM, escaping the bitterness prison is impossible.
Forgiveness is between you and God alone, no one else. That is why you can forgive ANYONE... even if they are dead.. because THEY have nothing whatsoever to do with YOUR forgiveness and healing.
Forgiveness is returning proper timing to your life. The price you pay to relive what happened in the past is your focus in the present. Said a different way, you can’t concentrate on what you’re doing right now or even in setting goals for what is to come if you are focused on what happened to you in the past. Forgiveness leaves what they did to you in your past where it belongs and hands you back your personal dignity, authority and power.
I often hear people say something like “you don’t understand how bad they hurt me…”. When we are wounded, we always seek agreement on that level of woundedness. There’s nothing wrong with seeking agreement of course but A spirit of wisdom will enter your life and teach you to seek agreement to your strengths and agreement towards your healings, away from that woundedness.
Forgiveness let’s you hand the reigns of retaliation back to God Himself and trusts that He will repay on your behalf setting you free of the burden of revenge and ushering in a confidence that God can do what you cannot. This also sets you completely free from the power and the wounding that the original perpetrator did to you.
Consider this… When the devil can’t kill you he will try to stop you. When he can’t stop you the only thing he has left is to try to distract you and few things are more powerful as it relates to distractions than personal offenses. If the enemy can just get under your skin with a little demon of retaliation or revenge, he knows that he has distracted you away from what you really want be doing.
Now I want to talk to some of you who have carried some anger or bitterness against others for years and years. Instead of revisiting the original offense, come with me to a higher place and see the bigger picture. See that you are being played and you have been tricked into trading today’s focus for yesterdays offense. God gave you a memory primarily to replay pleasures, but the enemy has got in and hijacked your memory and is forcing you to replay offenses. Today the invitation comes from the Lord ultimately to take your life back by changing your focus.
That person that hurt you really doesn’t need to be in your life any longer. They are taking a precious space and taking mental and spiritual energy that they don’t deserve.
As you read this today, let the Holy Spirit grow and magnify your future. Let the dreams begin to come alive. Fresh vision, fresh excitement about what is to come, literally let God begin to dream through you and you will see the words of Paul, come alive in your life as you forget what lies behind but instead press on, forward toward the mark of the prize of the high calling which is in Christ.
When Jesus was on the cross most of us remember the account when he says father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. Let me translate that verse a different way for you using our modern language today… When Jesus on the cross he actually looks out and says Dad, they don’t understand what’s really going on here and if I focus on them I’ll lose track of what you and I are doing here together.
Forgiveness helps you regain personal focus, it keeps you productive and it restores freedom in your soul to love others like you were really created to love others.
You are created in the image of the master lover of the universe. If your soul can come in to freedom and offer blanket forgiveness for everyone who has ever harmed you in your life, you will be set free to be an image of that master lover and not only will the lives of everyone around you change, so also will your own life change for the better. Your heart will actually match the unoffendable heart of God.
Just a handful of thoughts to get your Sunday off to a nice start
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