Matthew 5:44-45
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do good to those who hate you. That you would be a child of God in heaven.”
Have you been wronged? I'm not talking about a small type, i’m talking about the kind that goes deep, the one feeling that is next to impossible to forget. Sometimes we become so used to carrying this weight on our shoulders that we don’t realize how much it weighs us down. Personally when I have a struggle to forgive someone if affects every attribute of my life. I'm not mentally in the moment because I am constantly going back to this one moment I was hurt.
Forgiving is choosing between living burdened & living free. By forgiving, you let go of your grief & judgments & allow yourself to rebuild & mend you back, mentally. While this may sound good now, sometimes forgiveness can just feel impossible. By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live with an attitude of settling the situation. This can be a slow process and it doesn't always have to include the person you are forgiving. Forgiveness isn't something you do for the person who wronged you, it's something you do for you.
So if forgiveness is something you do for yourself and if it can help you rebuild yourself, why is it so hard?
Here's a few ways to look at this :
Sometimes we are filled with thoughts of revenge and wanting to satisfy ourselves by getting them back. You enjoy feeling on top. Another reason is, maybe you don't know how to resolve the situation. Maybe you're afraid that by forgiving someone you have to restore that friendship, or vise versa and it is that you don’t want to lose that person and by forgiving you’re scared you will have no friendship with them whatsoever.
These reasons why we are scared to forgive make us where we really need to stop and think. We need to rethink our thoughts and feelings. As hard as it is, when someone wrongs you, you can’t shut out on them. You have to continuously pray for that person, and for your personal relationship with that person. Most importantly you have to love your enemies. Jesus wasn't just friends with the best of the best and the kings, he was friends with the outcast and the sinners too. We are called to do the same.
Remember this: love is the only thing that can turn an enemy into a friend.
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