Take My Hand Inspirations
Fault-Finding
or Finding Forgiveness?
Alice
sat in her cushiony, comfy, cozy living room chair—fuming! Her rage was so fierce, no amount of gigantic quantities of ice-cold water could quench it. In fact, whenever Alice was provoked by the
least little, tiny irritant, she became an all-consuming fire—a total
out-of-body, out-of-her-mind experience.
“It’s my temperament,” she’d excuse herself. “Is it my fault I have a
choleric type of temperament? So don’t mess with me, and we’ll be fine,” she
mused to her plethora of classmates and roommates that came into and bolted out
of her estranged life; and now, bellowing at her newly wed husband, she refuses
to accept that she has a problem which he jokingly, in his sanguine-sensitive
way, pointed out.
Oh
Alice: But that servant went out and found one of his
fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and
took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet
and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he
would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt.
(Matthew 18:28-30. Read the whole Parable
of the Unforgivng Servant, Matthew 18:21-35).
She
wants everyone else to understand why she behaves the way she does, but refuses
to accept advice on how to change for the better. When we find fault in others, it clouds our
own mind about what we look like in the sight of our family members, friends,
classmates, co-workers, spouse, even strangers.
We lock others up in the prison of our heart and won’t let them out
until personal vengeance is complete.
Still, at times, once we’ve got "revenge", we want to continually remind
the offender about the trespass he or she made against us “adding salt to the
wound.”
Who is in the
prison of your heart right now? And why
can’t you let them go by finding forgiveness?
To
forgive can be one of the hardest tasks of obedience to the Lord for many of us
who can so easily find fault in others rather than admitting our own
shortcomings or weaknesses. Shifting the
blame on others or on our “temperament” for the way we react in any situation
is wrong, dear Christian brother and sister.
With
dark hot crimson blood spewing from the lash-opened gashes on His neck, back,
arms, legs and hands callously spiked to a wooden stake, and with dark cold
memories re-flashing the near neck breaking slap on the cheek, the contemptuous spit onto His speechless face,
the piercing needles of thorns harshly pressed on His humble head, stripped
naked and mocked by those who whole-hardheartedly plotted against him unto
crucifixion, Jesus gazed down at humanity hanging mid-air from that rugged
cross and sighed His first words at that third hour, “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)
Forgive?!!! Them?!!!
What!!! Why?!!!!!!!!
Jesus
knew that the tiniest amount of bitterness hidden inside the heart can fester
or grow into full blown vengeance; and that to remove the bitterness seed
before it germinates, YOU MUST FORGIVE. . . . lest any root
of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled.
(Hebrews 12:15b). Jesus was positioned
to return to His heavenly home; and He understood that bitterness would be a
blockage to His impending and assured victory over death, hell, and the grave,
Satan’s dominion.
The
serpent has a varied arsenal of weapons in which to move the Christian off his
or her heavenly course. Besides sex,
lust for money, power and fame, and music, unforgiveness is also one of his
most effective derailing tools against the born-again Christian. Unforgiveness is linked to the pain-filled
memories of a person. Once the devil can
tap into what hurts you, what gives you pain, he’s got you trapped in his
sticky slippery web of debilitating emotional instability—in a volatile, often
eternal life threatening concoction of anger, rage, fear, hatred and finally,
landing you in his dungeon of despair and depression. The
only way of escape is through finding forgiveness.
When
you truly forgive, you release all the pain, hurt, trauma, drama and weariness
associated with bitterness. These are
the symptoms leading to a brokened heart.
Do you not yet understand that whatever
enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the
mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things that
defile a man. (Matthew
15:17-20a).
To
be defiled
means that the beauty, importance and purity of a thing or of a person has been
spoiled or made unclean, dirty. Jesus taught us in the Beatitudes, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God. (Matthew 5:8). And
that is why He was able to ask His Father to forgive you and me, while
we were still sinners. Christ died for
us to show us how much God, our Father, loves us.
To
be unable to forgive is a sign of the internal fear you struggle with every
waking moment of your life (See my blog entitled Fighting Fear—Part 1). You fear not being good enough in the eyes of
those you care about, so you put up this wall of transferring your own
insecurity onto the faults or whatever you can find “wrong” with the other
person. This makes you feel superior as you loftily look down loathing the good
qualities you clearly see in the people around you—qualities you obviously lack
and so disguise your inferiority complex in a heap of insults, assaults, unscrupulous
accusations and highly audible arguments.
All for what?
DON’T
YOU WANT TO BE FORGIVEN BY OUR HEAVENLY FATHER? For if you
forgive men their trespasses [against you], your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. But if you do not forgive
men their trespasses [against you], neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15).
Do
you honestly think you have never offended, hurt, insulted or trespassed
against someone else damaging their feelings and trust in you? Then take the boulder (log, that great big
blinding stick) out of your own eye, so that you can clearly see what you are
doing to others when you don’t forgive.
There
are stages to unforgiveness: Rooted in ill-feelings, unforgiveness festers into
anger (often uncontrollable), leading on a course toward bitterness (having
sharp negative emotions), which out of the mouth come slander and resentment
(repeatedly reminding yourself about past offenses and talking about it to
damage another’s name and reputation); which soon erupts as a vomiting volcano
of hatred carried out by any terrifying act of vengeance to get even or to
permanently punish the trespasser.
Can
you enter into the Kingdom carrying all this bad baggage in your heart? And God won’t let you come near the
gate! That is why Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them . . . .” He had to clean out His heart and purify it
by finding forgiveness for His crucifiers.
He had to be clean in order to enter into a clean environment, His holy heavenly
home.
We
can taste a touch of heaven in our hearts whenever we clean it out. To clean out your heart means to remove
everything and everyone you have imprisoned in it since you were in Nursery
school. In fact, those hostages you kept imprisoned in your heart for so long probably don't even know they are captured. They walk around free, happy and receiving the blessings of the Lord, while you sulk and swim in your cesspool of negative thoughts, words and actions. It was hard for me to forgive
others at first, but I forced myself to do it even when they were wrong about
they said or did or thought to and about me.
And
to forgive is definitely to attempt to forget.
When you make a conscious effort to forget about the past pain, and
replace that pain with the truth about who you really are—a beautiful, holy and
righteous child of God redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb, given mercy to start
all over again—then forgiving others will come quite naturally over time. Take it from a melancholic choleric, finding
forgiveness and acting on it has given me beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for
mourning, and peace for despair. . . .
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for those who struggle with
forgiving others. Open their hearts to
feel your love for them as they take a step to forgive those who have hurt
them. Please give them the grace to
forgive over and over and over again; as you explained to Apostle Peter: Lord,
how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, “I do not say to
you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21-22).
© 2017 by Take My Hand Inspirations, a
division of PepParadise Society Ltd Publishers.
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Take My Hand Inspirations
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