The Merry-Go-Round of Forgiveness--- Part 1

While living in Ohio, I had tremendous difficulty in relationships. I know in part it was because we were there to help plant a church and the amount of spiritual warfare that came with church planting was, at times too intense to explain. I also see now though, that it was a period in my life where God desperately wanted to teach me things about myself I would not otherwise have learned. 

He wanted me to not only be able to talk about forgiveness and what it looked like, how pretty it was, and what the bible says about it. He wanted me to have to experience, to give away that deep down, ‘only with God kind’ of forgiveness. The type of forgiveness the family members of the church shooting in South Carolina gave to the man who murdered their loved ones. 

I quickly learned during my time in Ohio that forgiveness was not an emotion. It was an act of the will. It involved me begging God, through His spirit, to help me release someone from a debt I thought they owed me, and eventually emotions of forgiveness would usually follow.

I remember waking up and praying “Help me God to have new mercies for _____ today , just like I know you have for me today.” This became my go to prayer when it came to forgiveness. I would pray it every single day, sometimes multiple times a day when I literally wanted to give up on certain people and though those hard hard days, God taught me that for me forgiveness is a process. 

See, Forgiveness isn’t a fake happy. It’s not a hurry up and say the words, “I forgive you.” Forgiveness isn’t an ignore the problem, thinking it will go away, and in the process pretend to like the person who hurt you type of thing. Forgiveness as stated above, is a process; it takes time; it takes God’s power and utter dependance on Him. 

I would give up my bitterness, resentment, the debt against someone, and then I would take it back, and then, have to give it up again. Then, something else would happen, and I would go on the merry-go-round of forgiveness all over again. Sometimes I felt like I would never be finish the process, that I would never arrive at legit “forgiveness status.” But, every single time, when I would have these relational issues in Ohio, right when I would really want to fall apart and give up, God would give me just what I needed to carry on in this monumental process of forgiveness.