Forgiveness

You can live a life of revenge.. sometimes without even knowing it.

When I think about revenge, I think about fights. and knives. and duels. and dark alleys. and lots of other mental pictures cinema has conjured up of sinister plots and forlorn characters who conquer evil and right wrongs. Those plots are revenge and that's fiction.

I've never heard of passive revenge.

Passive revenge is withholding forgiveness.

Ah. That revenge I do.

The many forms unforgiveness takes - the revenge of anger. Disrespect. Ignoring. Gossip. Bitterness. It molds and it builds and it holds hostage and we are held captive. When we don't forgive, we choose chains of revenge.

That's astonishing to me.

I pick and choose how much forgiveness to give away, but I'm not doing what you did to me, so I'm showing you lots of mercy, right? I let time ultimately dictate how smooth the welcoming back process is. My pride says hold on tight. And what trips me up is that it's not active payback, so it's good. Right? But it's less about how I intentionally act and more about how I purposefully don't. I don't exact payback, but I also don't forgive. I don't inflict physical pain or destruct and destroy, but I deny someone the gift of freedom from a debt.

I'm processing this as I type, but this has to be of the utmost importance. When we withhold forgiveness, we are choosing revenge. Do I get that? Revenge. That deep, spiteful, ugly word. I push forgiveness away and I live that.

But forgiveness is hard and sometimes I say, 'but how can I possibly forgive this? or that?'

And for real. How do we?

When it hurts and we're in pain and we can't forgive ourselves. When someone has hurt us something fierce. When our mistakes say we're not worthy. When we have to live with the scars of what's been done.

How?

And through all the thinking and the analyzing and the justifying - I think it really is simple.

We forgive because we've been forgiven.

We owe a debt we can't pay and Christ on the cross said 'Father, forgive them.'

We've been set free.

And sometimes I scream NO REALLY TELL ME HOW, but I honestly, deep down, bottom of my heart know this is the answer.

Jesus Christ.

We strive to imitate His holiness - His love and His forgiveness - and we live knowing His grace is limitless. FREE YOURSELF. Understand what you've been forgiven of through the power of the substitutionary atonement of Christ and set each other free.

way more processing in this little head of mine.