Jesus said, “The most important commandment is this: ... you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:29-31 NLT)
How do we love our neighbor as ourselves when someone has seriously offended us, or deeply pained us in a life changing way? The answer is Forgiveness!
I believe forgiving and loving go hand-in-hand, and are a process only possible with God’s help ~ because of His profound, unconditional love for us. But, how?
* Take inventory: Ask God to show us areas where unforgiveness rules.
* Ask, and receive God’s forgiveness of our own sins, mistakes and blunders.
* Know that we have God’s strength, wisdom and ultimate love which enables us to forgive others.
* Pray blessings for those who have hurt us ~ with a sincere heart.
* Love our neighbor as ourselves, because we can love as God loves us!
Unforgiveness is often time the root of anger, defensiveness, cynicism, isolation, inability to trust, addiction, or illness. I pray that with God's strength, wisdom and love, you will release the poison that hurts YOU, allowing love, peace and forgiveness to fill you!
Remember what Christ went through – mockery, torture, death. Scripture says that when he went to the cross HE bore our grief, weakness, sorrow, sin, and disease so that we would suffer no more. Can we dismiss His ultimate sacrifice for us and defy the principal commands because we believe our offense/pain is far worse than anything Jesus went through. Ponder upon the unconditional love God has for us through His Son and ask Him to give you the grace to forgive those who have hurt you and allow the love of Jesus to heal your broken heart and make you whole ~ complete freedom, able to be loved and to love!
Michelle Lord Samples
Certified Christian Life Coach
www.fromtheheartlifecoach.com
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He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all. Isaiah 53:2-6 (NLT)
Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood. Hebrews 12:3-4 (Amplified)
"Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor. Matthew 7:1-5 (The Message)
"bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. (Colossians 3:13 NKJV)
And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your failings and shortcomings. Mark 11:25-26 (Amplified)
Part of Lord’s prayer: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts, and have given up resentment against) our debtors…For if you forgive people their trespasses [their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment], your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses. Matthew 6:12,14-15 (Amplified)
My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:14-20 (The Message)
And what are the characteristics of that love – God’s love? In 1 Corinthians 13 it shares "Love never gives up; cares more for others than for self; doesn't want what it doesn't have; doesn't strut; doesn't have a swelled head; doesn't force itself on others; isn't always "me first;" doesn't fly off the handle; doesn't keep score of the sins of others; doesn't revel when others grovel; takes pleasure in the flowering of truth; puts up with anything; trusts God always; always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.” …”Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”
