Matthew 13:15, CEB - For this people’s senses have become calloused, and they’ve become hard of hearing, and they’ve shut their eyes so that they won’t see with their eyes or hear with their ears or understand with their minds, and change their hearts and lives that I may heal them.
This
seems abundantly obvious, but in order to forgive someone, you have want to forgive. Quite often, this is a serious
challenge. In a very real way, refusing
to forgive someone feels right. After
all, they did wrong/hurtful. It is even
reasonable to hold on to offense in the presence of wrong. Many times, we do not want to forgive. And if
you do not want to forgive, you will not forgive. The will to forgive is an essential component
of forgiveness.
But if
we don’t have the will to forgive, how do we develop it? We’ve talked about some the ways we do this
in previous devotionals in this series on forgiveness. One potential mind-changing realization is
that forgiveness is good for us. There
are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational benefits when we
learn to forgive. When we become
convinced that forgiveness will help us in all these ways, our reluctance to
forgive can be weakened.
While I
was getting my Master’s degree, I was part of a Clinical Pastoral Education(CPE)
internship working as a Chaplain in a children’s hospital for a summer. Part of the program was weekly counseling
sessions with my supervisor. In one of
these sessions, my counselor and I were discussing a coping mechanism that I
had when I encountered intense feelings of grief. I expressed both a desire to change and a
seeming powerlessness to do so. My
supervisor said something to me at that moment that I will never forget; “Eric,
you will never change that defense mechanism until the pain of keeping it in
place exceeds the pain you are avoiding.” She was right. Later that summer, I realized my defense
mechanism was actually causing me more pain than engaging the grief I
encountered in my work in the hospital.
This realization helped me gain the will to change my approach.
Part of
wanting to forgive is acknowledging the pain that not forgiving is causing
us. It actually the flip-side of looking
at the benefits of forgiveness. We look at how we are suffering because we have
not been willing to forgive. The
toxicity of unforgiveness has a cumulative effect on us just as the benefits of
forgiveness bring cumulative benefits to our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual
and relational health. If examining the
benefits of forgiveness is not enough to move the needle of your will towards
wanting to forgive, consider the costs to continuing in unforgiveness.
Questions: Consider
an offense that, at this point, you have not been able to forgive. Forgetting about the offender for a moment, what
would it look like for you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and
socially for you to forgive the offense?
What is it costing you not to forgive?
Prayer: Give us a
clear picture of what it is costing us to continue in unforgiveness Lord. Show us a vision for what life could be like
if we could get free of the hurts of the past. Heal us Great Physician. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people who are being diagnosed with COVID this week as cases are rising again.
Song: Don’t Let Your
Heart Be Hardened – Petra
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