Forgiveness

I'm going to take us back to The Shack today. It's amazing what God has done for me during this re-read, and how He's used what's happened since the first time to make this reading just as valuable.

You can probably think of someone who's hurt you. Maybe it went on for weeks or months, or even years. So how did you forgive them? Have you yet?

Last year I had a friend at school who caused me great pain. He wasn't being the person I knew he could be, and I felt like he had been deceiving me the entire time I'd known him. To look at someone I thought was my friend and realized I didn't even know him was devastating. So, I started praying for him every day. As badly as I wanted him to return to a life lived for the glory of God, and as much as I knew the Lord loved him, this was not an easy process. I was so angry and frustrated with him that there would be days that praying for him was the last thing I wanted to do. But God was working to show me that Jesus had already taken care of everything my friend was doing, and even though it was painful, there was still so much love to be had.

3 months in, I realized that in addition to praying for him, I had to be praying for the Lord to show me how to forgive him. When I first started praying for this, I had no idea how I was going to be able to offer forgiveness. But a little over a month later, my friend told me he had things to apologize for, and thanked me for my daily prayer. And as unbelievable as it is, I forgave him in that instant. I remembered Matthew 18, where Jesus says to forgive your brother not just seven times, but seventy times seven, and that God is the only one with the power to judge. Now, this doesn't mean that I forgot everything my friend said and did, or that I automatically trusted him again, but it did mean that we could start rebuilding a relationship.

In The Shack, a man struggles with forgiveness when God asks him to offer it to someone who has caused a lot of suffering in his life. But, in the story, God says, "Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. And sometimes - and this may seem incomprehensible to you right now - that road may even take you to the miracle of fully restored trust" My margin notes are five letters that spell out my friend's name, and then one of my very favorite five letter words- grace.

Think about what Jesus must have felt to forgive us. If God in the flesh can offer forgiveness to all of humanity, surely we can forgive each other.



Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how many times could my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" "I tell you, not as many as seven," Jesus said to him, "but 70 times seven". Matthew 18:21-22