Forgive And Forget Movie

[Lu Rounsaville]

2We have to distinguish between our calling to forgive those who are sorry and ask for forgiveness and our call to love everyone without exception, including those who have wronged us and are not sorry that they did. Sometimes these two concepts are conflated.

The first step to loving and forgiving as God does is to recognize that we cannot do it apart from Christ. It is essential to meditate upon what Christ did for us on the cross and the fact that he loves us infinitely and forgives us over and over again. Ultimately, we have to get to the place where we acknowledge our powerlessness so that we can allow Christ to love and forgive in us and through us.

The benevolence of forgiving also has side effects. Forgiveness actively interacts with feelings of self-worth and respect. Every act of forgiveness represents a power dynamic. Research shows the person with power in a relationship is less likely to forgive than the person without it. The outcome is then in the hands of the transgressors, and if the transgressor continues to inflict the same wounds, the person who forgave is more likely to experience a drop in self-esteem. A study showed that forgiving too readily can erode self-respect and lead to more significant relationship problems and more disagreeable partners.

The resistance to forgiving is as much an individual rebellion as it is a social one. It is this act of mercy that allows humans to wield moral superiority. The question then is: who are we without our constant ability to forgive and forget? Still, people, flawed in different measures, erect boundaries and exercise personal choice depending on their emotional bandwidths.

Forgiveness is given. Trust, however, is earned. If a person has shown themselves to be untrustworthy, it is not a mark of wisdom to put your trust in them. At the same time, Christians are people who live with the daily reminder that God has redeemed them and transformed their lives. Of course God can do the same thing for this untrustworthy person who has caused us harm.

So what are we to do? For the most part, forgiveness means you give someone the opportunity to regain your trust, but that starts in the small things and slowly increases as people prove their repentance and trustworthiness.

Life is complicated. Relationships are messy. We all need to pray for wisdom, and live with a heart that desires to glorify God. This may lead us back to people who caused great pain in our lives. God can bring is truly beautiful and miraculous healing and redemption.

I am the Youth Pastor at South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham, MA. I am committed to seeing the next generation rooted in the Christian faith and committed to the Church. I'm the author of "Lead Them to Jesus: A Handbook for Youth Workers" (New Growth Press, forthcoming in 2021), "A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry: Teenagers in the Life of the Church" (Randall House Academic, 2019), and am a contributor to "Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry: A Practical Guide" (Crossway, 2016). I am also a regular contributor to the Rooted Ministry and co-host the podcast "Thanos to Theos," which discusses comics, culture, theology, and youth ministry.

We are all imperfect. We can all make mistakes in our careers, or be treated unfairly by someone at work. Can you think of a time when this happened to you? I can think of a few. How long did you hold on to that moment when you stumbled and fell a little in your career? For many of us, we spend months, or even years, blaming ourselves or others for what happened. Forgiving and forgetting is far from our minds. I am writing this to remind all of us to forgive and forget in life and at work.

Stop letting yourself relive your past career mistakes. Forgiving and forgetting is key to your future career success. We are all imperfect, and unfortunately sh** happens sometimes. The best way to deal with it is to move on so you can experience every new moment with freshness and 100% focus.

I prayed constantly for God to give me the grace to forgive that adultery. In tears, I often pleaded with God for His healing. For the Holy Spirit to give me the strength to move past that horrific wound. And for the courage to be intimate in my marriage again. For trust in my spouse to be repaired.

In His steadfast love, God granted all of those requests and more. Forgiveness flowed, our relationship was repaired, and He pulled our marriage out of the depths of the sea. And even though they had been forgiven, those memories were stored in the hard drives of my mind. Yours are, too.

When we buy into the forgive-and-forget lie, we end up berating ourselves when we remember our wounds. We get frustrated and spend futile time and energy trying to make ourselves forget again. It is a useless, unproductive cycle that only succeeds in embedding the hurt deeper.

This happens when shame plays a part in the wound. Rape victims deal with this because some people still believe the nauseating assumption that somehow the victim invited or deserved it. The victim may hide it to avoid being called loose. Shame is the single biggest factor in hiding a wound.

When we hand our wounds up to Jesus Christ, we take them out of circulation. The wounds do not have the opportunity to fester in us or spread to others. Taking the wounds out of circulation stops the cycle. That is how Jesus patterned forgiveness. He felt the wounds, absorbed the pains, and forgave them from the cross. He took them out of circulation for eternity.

Even though you and I cannot forget a wound, we can certainly choose how to deal with the pain of their offense going forward. We can choose options 1 and 2 above and let bitterness sink in, or we can go with option 3 and live in the freedom that forgiveness brings.

The thing about the east and west is that there is no end. Once you start heading east, you are always heading east until you change directions. Once you journey west, you are always journeying west.

When someone hurts us, God commands us to forgive because hate and bitterness do not line up with His teaching to love. Hate and love cannot coexist. Forgiveness cannot blossom when roots of unforgiveness hide in the soil of our hearts.

The power of Christ in us enables us to forgive the deepest wounds. Trust me. I have been divorced for twelve years now. Had I refused to let God work His forgiveness in me and then through me, I would be an angry, bitter, hot mess about now. A healed heart is FREEDOM.

The heart of forgiveness always beats with liberation and freedom. Not necessarily for those who hurt you. But for you. Forgiveness is costly. We struggle not to lash out at those who hurt us.

The cost of forgiveness is death. Just ask Jesus. He sacrificed His life to forgive us eternally. And His forgiveness leads us to experience a resurrection of new life centered in Him.

So start by asking God for just one small step today on the road toward forgiveness. Tomorrow, ask Him for another small step. The road ends in the death of bitterness and resurrection to life. The dead-end road ends at Calvary.

The hardest struggle we face in extending forgiveness is falsely believing that we are somehow condoning their actions. That lie comes straight from the devil. The enemy loves weaving a web of toxicity around that lie because we want those who hurt us to pay for their transgressions.

Some believe that forgiveness should only be extended when their perpetrator asks for it. Or when they have groveled enough. But when is enough enough? Your pain cannot be undone, only surrendered to God.

Others believe that forgiveness means you must reconcile with the person who hurt you and go skipping through the tulip fields into the sunset together. Neither could be further from the truth. In order to extend forgiveness, we need to clearly understand what it is not.

For instance, a rape victim suffers horrible atrocities, and there are legal consequences for the violator. The victim can forgive her attacker yet still follow the legal process to take the proper course for her attacker to reap the punishment for his actions.

Forgiveness takes one. It is extended from one individual to another and released. Reconciliation takes two people who agree to set aside past hurtful behavior, communicate to repair the relationship, and move forward together.

I realized that reconciliation for my marriage was not possible due to the kind of women with whom my ex-husband was involved. If we had reconciled and continued in our marriage, I stood a very real chance of contracting HPV, HIV, or AIDS.

In situations where habitual abuse (whether physical or verbal) has occurred, reconciliation may not be possible because safe mental and physical boundaries must be established. But forgiveness is still commanded.

Forgiveness does not obligate the forgiver to protect the offender from reaping the consequences of his or her actions. Consequences are usually what it takes for offenders to change their behavior. If their actions have broken the law (rape, harming a child, etc.), we can and should follow through with appropriate legal action.

It is not our job to determine whether someone deserves forgiveness of sins. God never tells us in His Word to extend it only when the offender begs for it. Some people hold grudges and stay angry until they believe their offender has suffered enough. But how do we determine when enough is enough?

Hate and anger have consuming power, and those toxins can control and define us. When we allow unforgiveness to consume us, the object of our wrath actually has control over us. It can keep our hearts dangling over the fire, so to speak.

What we harbor internally eventually surfaces externally. Forgiveness means we acknowledge the hurtful actions or words, pray for God to provide insight on how best to convey them gracefully to the offender, and allow God to move us toward Him for healing.

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