Establishing Lasting Forgiveness

A letter  I wrote to a pastor I recently heard preach on the issue of forgiveness. I thought it might be relevant to some of us as well:

Hey Pastor, 

What a great New Years Day sermon!  

You're one of the better preachers in London. Probably in Canada but so far most preachers I have heard lately are in the London area! 

The next thing I am going to say is not in any way a correction, complaint or anything like that. It's is just what I was meditating on after the sermon. 

You talked about the way we forgive those who harm us. You gave a couple of really good examples. 

Being one who loves the practical aspects of the application of God's word I thought of ways from the Bible that Jesus has helped me to get my forgiveness nailed down. You would know what I mean.... often I forgive but I leak and so, many times I am having to go through the whole process again. 

I like your definition of faith - believing something enough to act upon it. That's exactly right. And as you have also said, nothing ever becomes real in our lives till we act on it. 

Here are some of the things the Lord has helped me to DO to rivet my forgiveness into my heart.  Here is the primary scripture I found to help me in this:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; [45] That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: 

Matthew 5:44-45 KJV

Jesus tells us to DO ---- remember that action thing you talk about? --- four things to people who harm us. I have found that as I actually do them they are the path to forgive others in a permanent and healthy way. 

In order,  Jesus says for us to 

Love them
Bless them
Do good to them
And pray for them.

As I think you know well, these are not easy things to do. 

Now some might see the commands as a sequential list. I have found for me I cannot follow them sequentially. 

In fact, the first command is for me the hardest. To love those harming me is such a far thing from my usual heart that I have never been able to start there. 

I have learned the act of praying  is where I have to start. 

Praying vengeance and curses of course should not be part of the prayer process in this but sometimes I do have a season of prayer that has those things in them.

In spite of this often being the place I begin to pray for them, praying anything for someone who has harmed me begins slowly to change my heart toward the offence and the person. 

I have learned to keep praying until my emotions have moved from myself to the other person's well being. I pray until I really care what happens to them. I find once I am in that space forgiveness becomes easier since I don't want them to suffer even though they have brought suffering into my life. 

The second act for me is blessing them. 

I am not yet ready to do good for them since my heart is not quite ready to. It is  especially not ready to love them. I have moved from wanting fire to come down from heaven and consume them though. And I am no longer feeling  so sorry for myself. So I move on to bless them. For me that means something more than blessing them in prayer. I find for me it is to bless them in actual actions towards them.

It was here that I found a secret action which unleashed the power of forgiveness,  took captive my heart and delivered it from reoccurring episodes of wrath. Here's the scripture:

A gift in secret pacifieth anger: and a reward in the bosom strong wrath.

Proverbs 21:14 KJV

Now the way I used to read this when I was young was that if I gave a gift to someone it would stop them being angry with me. That is true of the second part  --- a reward in the bosom strong wrath.--- several scriptures confirm this idea. And it is usually the case that if you give gifts to people their heart grows softer towards you. That's another issue. 

I was still working on being able to speak a blessing over them to myself or others. So I am not seeking to win their heart yet. I am seeking to change mine!

One day as I was reading the passage and was dealing with a deep offence someone had done to me I realized that the first part was not asking me to give a gift that the person knew about. It is a gift given in secret.... if I give a secret gift then the only ones who know about it are me and God. I asked, "So what good is thin solving my problem of them hating me?" 

Suddenly I knew exactly what Jesus was telling me. The wrath that was being pacified was not the one harming me but mine. 

I did it. 

The result was crazy and amazing!.

As I arranged to give my gift to the one who hated me and sought my harm continually I found all kinds of reasons to not do it in secret. You know, how will it change his heart if he doesn't know. What if he thinks it's from someone else and they get the credit I deserve? Could I leave a little hint that it was from me? But after I had tried everything I gave the gift completely in secret. When I do my heart was changed. The lingering anger and secret desire to see God take care of it, read send fire from heaven!, was gone. I was asking Jesus to forgive me for holding such offence in my heart against someone who he had loved so much that he had given his life for. I was ready to actually love the one that hurt me. But not the kind of love that is from the world. I was ready to Agape them. I began to love them with God's love. 

So I have come to love them like Jesus. The final step for me is to do good to them.

The way I found I could do the best good for them was to stop telling everyone else what they had done to me. You know the drill.... I forgive them but do you know what they did to me???!!' I found that in loving them I no longer want to remember their sins against them. 

Not with anyone. Not even God.

Further as I continued to pray for them I found things I could say about them that were good qualities. 

All along as I was doing these things I saw this wonderful change in my heart towards them. 

No more sting of remembrance of the offence. 

No more seeking God's vengeance against them even though I forgave them.

No more being gripped by self pity. 

No more trips around the forgiveness mountain. 

Instead a flow of life that softened and made my heart a little more like Jesus's came out from my inner most being. A river of life.  

So once again thank you for your excellent sermon which gave pause for me to remember some wonderful lessons Jesus taught me and  is still working out in my life.

Leonard