Forgiveness

The Holy Bible says: "Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors Matthew 6:12". We are thought to ask for forgiveness from God when we pray to him, or at least we should. We should ask for forgiveness because we are constantly doing bad things. But, the Bible teaches that we must ask for forgiveness after we have forgiven someone and not before. Most of the time we ask God for forgiveness but we have a hard time forgiving someone that has done something to us and made us angry. That is wrong. We must come to God with a clean heart and not with a heart and soul full of hate. Well, then what is forgiveness? How am I suppose to forgive if I don’t even understand the meaning of the word forgiveness? According to the American Heritage dictionary forgiveness means "to stop feeling anger for or resentment against" If you break it down it is a deep definition. What I mean is that you must stop feeling anger or resentment. Have you heard of the term “I forgive but I never forget"? If you agree with this term then you don’t understand the meaning of the word forgiveness. To forgive is to completely let go. To forgive is to stop all bad feeling from coming out of your mind, heart, and soul towards that someone or something. If you forgive someone means that you forgot about it. Whatever it is, it is forgotten. Pretty cool! The Holy Bible teaches that you should not come to the presence of God if someone has something against you. Matthew 5:23-24. God asks us to go and forgive before we ask him for forgiveness. We must forgive without asking for anything in return. I know it is hard to forgive, especially when we are really angry, but if we want forgiveness from God we must learn to forgive others first.

How many times should we forgive? Peter went to Jesus and asked that question. We can find that story in Matthew 18:21-22. Jesus kindly answered: " seventy times seven ". Well, that is a lot of times. If you try to play smart and keep count of how many times you forgive someone, by the time you get to twenty five you would have learned a lesson and your heart would have turned soft and you would probably loose count and would have to start all over again. Jesus point was that we should always forgive doesn’t matter how many times we are offended.
There are a lot of benefits for us if we start practicing forgiveness. First, forgiveness sets us free. Second, it is for our own good. Third, it heals us.
Being mad or having resentment makes our lives pretty miserable. If we forgive then those feelings go away and we start living a happy life. We are set free from the chains of resentment and hate. We cannot be truly happy if we hate someone. That is why forgiving someone is good for us. We will be walking around without that heavy burden on top of us. At the end we will be healed. Every time you get hurt you need healing. If you don’t get any healing then that hurt will grow and it might even damage more parts of you, just like a real wound.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us the greatest example of forgiveness. He did not only just preached about it, he also showed it, even when he was crucified. Luke 23:34 says "(Jesus) said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing". These words came out from our Lord Jesus Christ when he was crucified and the soldiers were playing with the robe Jesus carried from Jerusalem. Even when he was in pain and dieing he was able to forgive everybody around him. His words are even for us. Jesus asked God to forgive us even when we didn’t deserve it. That is the perfect example for us. If our Lord Jesus Christ was able to forgive on the cross why shouldn’t we be able to forgive others their little mistakes.

Practicing forgiveness is a great thing to do. If you start doing it you will find joy and peace in your life. Take a moment right now and think if you need to ask for forgiveness or forgive someone. If you do, then go ahead. Don’t waist any minute. Take that opportunity to go and ask for forgiveness. Believe me, the first few times will be hard, but as you get used to it you will be developing character and a heart that is close to God.