“Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Luke 17:4 NIV
How is your forgiveness muscle feeling today? Is it strong and flexible? Or is it tight and out of order?
Forgiveness is a discipline, much like love and prayer and worship are all disciplines. To forgive well, you must practice forgiveness often. In the small moments of overlooking accidental offenses, you can practice offering grace and not being bothered. Instead of being irritated and reliving those moments, giving dramatic accounts of tiny details, why not just let them go? Put those incidents out of your mind and don’t talk about them.
For greater offenses, where real hurt was meant and suffered, forgiveness may involve an ongoing program of deciding to take steps toward releasing your anger, asking God to heal your wounds, and when appropriate, restoring the relationship with the person.
Sometimes forgiveness will be as easy as saying, “No worries,” and moving on with a smile. Sometimes it will be as hard as getting up every day and making yourself think the words, I will forgive.
But one thing you cannot do is ignore the exercise. There’s a good reason Jesus commanded you to forgive and forgive and forgive again. The person who cannot forgive will never be free.
Dear God who has forgiven me so much, help me forgive every day. Amen.
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Today’s reading was adapted from Daily Wisdom for Women: 2018 Devotional Collection with permission from Barbour Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reading was written by Marian Leslie.