Forgiveness is hard. I can’t do it on my own. As a matter of fact, the illusion that I can set myself free is powerful and our culture vigorously defends it. But as a Christian I know that only Christ can set me free from the burden of unforgiveness, because without God’s mercy, I have no hope of being merciful. So I must approach God with my need and prayer is how I do that.
Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16).
How much energy and commerce center around our desire to be self-sufficient? Entire industries revolve around our desire for personal power. How many books are sold as having the solution, yet leaving the reader seeking more, looking for deeper answers? Even Christianity recognizes that God is bringing us into fulfillment, but it is ongoing. We look to the Resurrection as the first fruits of this process of divinization. We are being restored to the divine image and we play a role in this process as active participants in God’s grace and mercy in the world. We must become God’s mercy by inviting God to live and work in us by recognizing our need and by actually being merciful.
The self-seeking self may only be set free from the search by finding truth in Christ. Freedom is found in the truth of who we are and of who God is which is the Gospel message. In Christ we find in faith that we are understood in mercy by a God who is no longer a stranger to human want and misery, but a God who lived and died as one of us.
Thomas Merton points out in Love and Living that this discovery that we are “mercifully understood” gives us a spirit of mercy which allows us to understand others with mercy. Merton, a Trappist monk who wrote prolifically in the 50’s and 60’s, says, “The weakness and defenselessness in our hearts, which make us pitiless to others, are then dispelled not by power but by trust in the divine mercy, which is given us when we no longer seek to defend our defenselessness, and are ready to accept our own boundless need in a merciful exchange with others whose poverty is as great as our own!”
Chasing the illusion of self salvation only weds us to the illusion of power which is the sin of pride. By looking to God’s own life on earth and by looking to the message of the Gospel, which includes an act of forgiveness on the cross, we may glimpse what it means to be human. In this humility we might even find the grace to let go of our judgments and forgive. In an act of mercy we become radically vulnerable, because we recognize our own frailty and neediness as human beings and in this recognition we glimpse something of God’s glory.
So in order to forgive we must approach the throne so that God’s mercy may be lived in us. This is what I try to do:
1. Recognize and confess the need to forgive.
2. Ask God for the willingness to forgive.
3. Make the decision to forgive and release your claims on the person you are forgiving.
Sometimes the burden lifts immediately, sometimes it takes a while.
4. When you fall into the old patterns of judgment and resentment, remind yourself that you made a decision to forgive and ask God to take the feelings from you.
I say this, “God you handle these feelings toward “so and so” because I can’t”
It also helps to pray for the person I am trying to forgive.
5. Allow God’s mercy to fill your heart and turn your experience into wisdom.
You don’t have to forgive and forget.
*** Sometimes we have trauma and deep emotional pain which requires the guidance of a professional. This works wonders if used in concert with a faith practice. Ask your minister or priest or friends in your community if they have had good experience with mental health practitioners. Christ can work with professionals. Find someone who works for you. It is well worth it. ***
1 comment:
When you squeeze an orange you expect to get orange juice. When you smash a mango in your car door, well you get mushy mango everywhere, as was the case two days ago.
I was meditating on forgiveness the past few days and these particular fruit came to mind. Who am I when I am squeezed, feeling pressure and being crushed or broken? Is it Jesus juice or is it stress, anxiety, or anger mush? Am I an example of Galatians 5:22-23? Do I walk in the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? As I read your writings on forgiveness, I realized when I lack the fruit of the Spirit towards others is when I have unforgiveness or a judgment against them. So the past few days I have been waiting on the Lord for some Spiritual house cleaning, meditating on Psalm 130. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy, if you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope…”
Thanks for your inspiration and confirmation to go there.
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