There's one thing that I dislike about traveling. It's lugging the big suitcase around. You have to make room for it in the car, you have to carry it around, you have to pick it up and put in on the scale. Sometimes you even have to pick it up and try to squeeze it into one of those seriously undersized overhead bins. Luggage is heavy. It's awkward, it falls over a lot, and really is an inconvenience.
Sadly, a lot of us carry around a great deal of luggage. Not the traveling kind, but the kind that comes when we fail to forgive another for what they have done to us. Now, right here at the outset, I should explain what this word forgive really means. We have this sense that, if we just say the word, it goes away. But it probably shouldn't surprise you, especially if you've been following my thoughts for a while, that forgiveness sure isn't that easy.
To forgive someone is to make a conscious choice to never let that particular thing or issue affect your relationship again. You truly let it go. You don't hold it against them. You don't open up your luggage and store it in there for some future appropriate time, because if you have forgiven, there will never be an appropriate time. Forgiving someone means you let go, and you work to make sure that it never comes up again.
You might have noticed. That's not easy to do. Forgiveness takes work. It means that, when that particular thing pops into your mind, you make a conscious effort to remove it again. When you are interacting with that person, you don't let any memory of that thing get in the way of what you're doing or saying. You put it out of sight. Just think of that one Psalm verse that God uses to describe forgiveness. Psalm 103:12 says "As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgression from us." You can't measure how far the east is from the west. It's out of sight. You can't see it, and so you can't continue to dwell on it.
Now, just in case you're wondering or feeling really guilty at this point, the only one who can truly do this properly is God Himself. You and I will always fail and falter in this. We'll let the grudge come back to haunt us. We'll slip and let our thoughts be influenced by what happened before. However, we can make the effort to grow in our forgiveness. We don't do it to be more forgiven by God, since Jesus has taken care of that completely. Instead, we do it to better reflect the forgiving God who has made us into a new creation.
Sadly, a lot of us carry around a great deal of luggage. Not the traveling kind, but the kind that comes when we fail to forgive another for what they have done to us. Now, right here at the outset, I should explain what this word forgive really means. We have this sense that, if we just say the word, it goes away. But it probably shouldn't surprise you, especially if you've been following my thoughts for a while, that forgiveness sure isn't that easy.
To forgive someone is to make a conscious choice to never let that particular thing or issue affect your relationship again. You truly let it go. You don't hold it against them. You don't open up your luggage and store it in there for some future appropriate time, because if you have forgiven, there will never be an appropriate time. Forgiving someone means you let go, and you work to make sure that it never comes up again.
You might have noticed. That's not easy to do. Forgiveness takes work. It means that, when that particular thing pops into your mind, you make a conscious effort to remove it again. When you are interacting with that person, you don't let any memory of that thing get in the way of what you're doing or saying. You put it out of sight. Just think of that one Psalm verse that God uses to describe forgiveness. Psalm 103:12 says "As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgression from us." You can't measure how far the east is from the west. It's out of sight. You can't see it, and so you can't continue to dwell on it.
Now, just in case you're wondering or feeling really guilty at this point, the only one who can truly do this properly is God Himself. You and I will always fail and falter in this. We'll let the grudge come back to haunt us. We'll slip and let our thoughts be influenced by what happened before. However, we can make the effort to grow in our forgiveness. We don't do it to be more forgiven by God, since Jesus has taken care of that completely. Instead, we do it to better reflect the forgiving God who has made us into a new creation.
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