Forgiveness. It seems so simple, yet can also seems like one of the hardest things to do. Personally, I can forgive easier than I can forget. How can I just forget how people hurt me? How can I just erase the pain from my memory? How was Jesus able to forgive the truly horrible actions people committed against him?
Is forgiveness something we are naturally born with? Does forgiveness have to be taught and practiced? Do some people just naturally have a more forgiving disposition that others?
Then I feel like there are different levels of forgiveness. Of course I can forgive the person who cut me off in traffic. But do they need my forgiveness? Or is forgiveness only for the people who are close to me who truly hurt me?
I’m not sure if there’s a black and white answer to this. (And if there is, please share.) But I do know that sometimes we think we don’t deserve forgiveness. We feel as though we are too far gone and that there is no bringing us back. If you don’t take anything else away from this blog, hear me when I saw this: you are NEVER too far gone. You can ALWAYS earn forgiveness from God. Your story is NOT over. We all hit rough patches and seasons in our lives. Heck, we may even have periods where we stray from our relationship with God. We forget to pray, we get too busy to go to church, and we are just too tired to read our Bibles and have daily quiet time with God. I think that is just called life.
I think some of us are taught growing up that some sins are worse than others. This feeds into the lie that sometimes we do not deserve forgiveness. Maybe we have committed “the ultimate sin” and therefore we do not deserve all the forgiveness in the world. UM HELLO. Jesus paid the ultimate price for us. He died on the cross after being beaten and ridiculed. Are you saying that what He went through wasn’t worth it? That our sins are too much to where not even His death can save us? That is absolutely a lie from Satan.
Your story is not over, not even close. You story may have ups and downs, twists and turns, headache and heartbreak. But your story is beautiful. Your story is uniquely you. Nobody else has your chapters. You may be in a dry spell right now, or you may be thriving and living your best life. Either one is perfectly fine! I believe that to truly appreciate the good in our lives, we have to go through some tough spots. But it’s during those tough spots that we grow in our relationship with God. We learn who we really are. We are able to see how tough we are and how much we are capable of handling. We become the warriors God created us to be.
So please, don’t ever write off your story and think that God is through with you, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. He loves you and He wants the best for you, just like we do.
