passion @ uwa

How many of us are able to confront the people who hurt us and tell them “I forgive you”? For me to do so, it is really a humongous step out of my comfort zone. How bout you?=) As I read today’s chapter I discovered a little secret from God on why we humans are not able to forgive. Are you ready?

The little secret is spelled as P-R-I-D-E. Yes, our pride! Now, what has pride got to do with our forgiveness?

Here’s the yummy part from the little secret, we as humans are born with pride, we all cannot escape the fact that we have pride. To forgive someone is taking a step in our life where we need to stop and take that bag of pride which we clinged closely to our shoulder, and place it on the ground. Then, after placing it on the ground, we need to lift up our foot, one at a time, that suddenly seemed to be stucked so heavily to the ground and walk (or call) towards the person who had hurt us. Some of us might reached to the point where we are able to approach the person, but as we draw nearer and nearer to the person we find ourself dragging out feet, and even at some point you have the thought of running back to where you started and pick up your “precious” bag of pride. FINALLY, you reached to where the person is, you thought that was tough enough but little did you know that those were the easier parts because now you have to face the hardest part. To say the words “I forgive you”. Ugh! The feeling of disgust suddenly reaches up to your throat. You are so tempted to say something instead of “I forgive you”. But no, you didn’t. No matter how hard it is, you took the courage to say it even though you stuttered as you said “I..I…I…for…forgi….forgive…y…yo…you!”, and viola! The disgusted feeling just lifted away. You felt as if the heaviest burden you’ve carried in your life is lifted away. Then you think to yourself, it isn’t that bad after all isn’t it?=)

But sadly, because of our pride that prevents us from confessing these 3 words, many of us struggled to face things in our life. Because of our pride, relationships are broken, hearts were left wounded. Just imagine that, the power of saying these 3 words can change lives, can heal lives that are broken!

“I forgive you”.

The only way we can find the strength to forgive others is to embrace the fact that Jesus has forgiven us [Eph 1:7]. Yes! That is what I believe we all need to know and understand. That Jesus has died for us 2000 years ago to cleanse and set us free from all our sin. Then you and I are able to set that bag of pride down from our life and forgive [Eph 4:32]. You might be thinking, “Oh yes, I know about Jesus dying upon the cross so that I will be forgiven”. BUT, how many of us really BELIEVE that God has already forgiven us? I’m not asking whether you know or not. I’m asking whether you BELIEVE that God really did died so that you will be forgiven. Knowing is one thing, believing is another. We might have heard this so many times that we are IMMUNE to it. So whenever anyone said this statement we’ll be thinking to ourselves that we know it and we turn a deaf ear towards that statement. Sounds familiar?

It won’t be easy, and you would not be able to trust that person automatically, but with God’s strength in you, just follow the example of Jesus and let the trust for that person slowly built in you after you forgive him/her. Let God be the strength in you [Phil 4:13] as you understand that He has forgiven you, to take your pride away and forgive others!

Have a blessed day! =P

Love,
Steph