I know Father that when I have done wrong and have sinned against you and to other people, I can humbly come to you and ask for forgiveness. God I can even ask you to show me the sins that I am unaware of and you forgive me.

“But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong.”

1 John 1.9

See, this is your beautiful character. It is part of how you love. Your love doesn’t shut me out or keep me away from you. Your love is open to me even in my darkest of hours. So why is it hard to forgive others? Forgiving people is important to God, just as much as Him forgiving us is important to him!

Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us.

Matthew 6:12

The whole bible is filled with your gracious love. In Isaiah 1:18; you make us new and bright us snow, in Ephesians 1:7; your overflowing grace covers us and forgives us and in Micah 7:18-19, you show your compassion to our unrighteousness.

In essence You are awesome.

Bu why do I find it hard to forgive those who have wronged and hurt me.

When we are hurt, we focus on the pain, we focus on the action that caused us the pain. We don’t want to see anything else. We sometimes want to pity ourselves. But it is important to forgive others. God clearly asks us to extend the grace He gave us, to those who have wronged us. But again we are stubborn.

I have been hurt, been taken for a fool sometimes and have been wronged by the people closest to me. Those who I thought would never hurt me have left me in tears. But I have learnt that I cannot put all my faith and trust in everyone simply because no one is perfect and humans will disappoint continuously. However I know that I had to forgive and let the hurt go.

“Put aside all bitterness, losing your temper, anger, shouting and slander, along with every other evil. Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.”

Ephesians 4:31-32

This was and is hard to do because hurt doesn’t disappear overnight. But I choose to forgive those that hurt me. I do not want the hurt to control me and I do not want these individuals to control my life. Instead I want to focus on God and to have positive energy around me.

So every day I ask God to help me forgive others and take away my bitterness and anger. Sometimes it can be extremely hard to forgive, especially forgiving those who continuously hurt us or those who are unwilling to change. We always have to keep in mind that forgiving someone does not mean that the person has to change. However, in forgiving, we free ourselves from the being captive of bitterness – which does not benefit us. My mum always says- “being bitter will block your blessings, so let go of the hurt”. And I couldn’t agree more. Not forgiving harbours in negative energy, which only builds up, causes us to say and do things that goes against God, which in turn steals our blessings. Can we also remember that regardless of how much one must have hurt us God always loves them! Therefore the best we could do is to forgive people, and let God do the changing. Holding on to bitterness cannot change people, God’s power does!

No matter how hard it might be, let us look to God and his beautiful love, and let us learn to forgive. In doing this we become more like Christ.

Mag x