Struggling to Forgive
Daily Reading: Genesis 39, Psalm 39, Mark 11, Proverbs 8
“Truly, I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Mark 11:23-25
Every morning when I am about to do my readings for the day I always pray a simple prayer of, “God, what do you have for me today?”
Today the answer was not hard to discern.
Forgiving others used to be an extreme weakness of mine. I had an extremely hard time not holding things against people. The majority of my life has been believing that there were almost no people in my life that I could count on in the clutch, that most people would take advantage of me eventually, and that few people truly cared.
I imagine I am not alone in this.
The challenging part of being surrounded by other human beings is that they are human beings. If we are waiting on the edge of our seat for them to disappoint us, we will never have to wait long. We all fall short.
If our first response is, “See, I knew it…” we live a life of keeping others at an arms length away to “avoid getting hurt”, we have our guard up at all times, and we search out the worst motives in others instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt.
God wants our reaction to be one of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is hard.
Throughout the last 7-10 years, I feel like I had grown a lot in this area. I feel like giving grace and forgiveness had become strengths of mine over time. God has really worked on me in this area and I had much more peace of mind in my relationships with others.
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. Life is so much more peaceful when you forgive quickly. Life is significantly more enjoyable when you don’t hold on tightly to every wrong someone does against you. Life is so much more rich and full when there isn’t a constant movie playing in your mind, replaying of every slight you have felt in the last year or imagining terrible conversations unfolding in the future with the person you are harboring unforgiveness towards.
Lack of forgiveness is exhausting.
Over the last 6 months or so, this has been more of a challenge for me once again.
I feel extremely grateful for the opportunities God has blessed me with to impact lives in a variety of contexts.
I have an amazing wife and four incredible children, and am constantly trying to do a better and better job as a husband and father.
As Vice President of the company I work for I have the chance to influence the lives of so many of our employees, as well as our clients.
As the Varsity Girls Basketball Coach, I can be a positive influence in the lives of so many players through both words and actions.
Running a youth basketball program provides even more chances to make an impact.
However, along with the opportunities that these all present to influence the lives of others, being in multiple leadership roles is also filled with challenges.
The reality is that every single day there is someone questioning a decision, disagreeing with an approach, assigning motives where there are none, and frustrated with me in some way.
It can be demoralizing to do your absolute best, seek to serve people as well as you can, devote countless hours pouring into people’s lives, and feel like it will never be enough.
This morning Jesus gave me fresh conviction that I need to stop worrying so much about what other people think, the way I am treated, or the things that may be going on in their lives that are causing them to treat me poorly.
I need to stop being frustrated with other people, when I cannot control their side of the equation.
It is an issue with me. I have slid back into a habit pattern of unforgiveness.
When we turn to Jesus and ask him into our lives, we are called to forgive. This isn’t just a small asterisk or minor footnote when it comes to our faith. At the end of Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray he concludes with this in Matthew 6:14-15:
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
As a church we rarely think of “unforgiveness” as a sin that needs to be rooted out of our lives the same way we think about things like lying, violence, lust, drug abuse, etc. And yet at the end of teaching his disciples how to pray, this was the singular thing that Jesus decided to highlight. This was the issue that Jesus says has the power of keeping us from receiving the full forgiveness of God.
Whenever I feel stressed, underappreciated, overlooked, taken advantage of, overwhelmed, angry, and generally just distant from God; there is a 100% chance that there is someone in my life I have not fully forgiven.
Always.
I am stewing in it. I am allowing that anger to fester. I am harboring ill will. I am not giving forgiveness freely the way Jesus commands us to and in return I don’t feel that closeness with the Father that we have access to.
Forgiveness.
It is hard, but it is worth the constant pursuit.
True forgiveness takes more than just 30 seconds of quick prayer. We frequently need to really come before the Father and absolutely plea for his help in forgiving others. Forgiveness is unnatural. It runs counter to every natural wiring we have as human beings.
That is why we need God.
I am going to go back to living a life of forgiveness. I am going to go back to seeing the best in people and not waiting for the other shoe to fall. I am going to go back to loving people even when they may not “deserve it” because God first loved me when I certainly didn’t deserve his love! I am going to go back to living a life that has forgiveness at the center of it.
Thank you God for revealing this to me today. I needed the reminder.
Daily Reflection & Dialogue
Who am I currently withholding forgiveness from?
