FORGIVENESS: The Gateway to Healing

Unforgiveness is accommodating to the narrative, true as it may be, that we are the victim, we have been wronged. Emotionally laden victimhood, however, is a state and an identity imposed on us by the enemy. In this way he destroys our chance to experience true happiness and joy in this life. Forgiveness is a gift from God. At the human level, we can adopt coping strategies to help us navigate through memories of negative experiences, however these will only ever be a temporary fix as true forgiveness is only possible through God.

Asked to look back to the moment of our conception, our minds wrongly go to the moment of our physical formation. The fact is that we are first conceived in God’s heart. C.S. Lewis famously said: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit..”

God created us with a beautiful plan for our life. Our identity therefore is not found in our birth certificate because at the heart of the temporary human, is the eternal soul that longs to be in communion with the Divine that created us. Communion with God however is much easier to achieve when we are free from the burden of unforgiveness. God has loved us into being, numbered the hairs on our head and our days on this earth.

God’s enemy, angry and defeated by the death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, also has a plan. That plan is to undo or distort God’s plan for our life. Incapable of creating, he is set on destroying. This should not disturb us. Rather it can caution us and remind us to keep our eyes on our Lord Jesus and to seek His perfect will in every area of our life.

We all have the choice to belong to Jesus and claim His Lordship over our lives.  I personally love the quote: “God’s grace covers me. That is all I know. That is all I need” (author unknown).  To be forgiven and covered by His grace, is to experience healing and true freedom.

As challenging as it can be for us, surrendering all to God and asking for the grace to forgive, breaks the iron chain that holds us emotionally stuck in our painful pasts. It lifts off the heavy blanket of oppressive thoughts and wicked lies that tell us we will never be free, that this is all there is to life.

To ask God for the grace to forgive, is to acknowledge our human limitations, our weakness, as we submit ourselves to the ultimate healer, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But He said to me “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”. I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are your works!  

~ Psalm 139:13-14 ~