Hi oktornado,
Let me be blunt and hopefully you will take a moment to stop and consider my words.
Why do you feel that it would 'devalue' you to forgive someone? Don't you see that you're the one suffering from this refusal to forgive? Don't you understand Jesus' words that you're the one who will be held accountable for your inability to forgive?
Is it possible that, as the Scriptures warn us, you think too highly of yourself. You think that by forgiving someone you are not the 'man' that you're supposed to be? Friend, I'd encourage you to consider that your inability to forgive someone comes more from selfish pride than any kind of godly nature.
Yes, it may be a terrible sin that was visited upon you by these three people. They may have slaughtered your parents, beat you senseless and left you for dead, kept you under lock and key as a child without food for nourishment, but...
They are wicked. They are sinners. They are doing what sinners do. Consider that when Jesus hung on that cross he looked down upon those who had spat on him, forced a prickly crown of thorns painfully into his scalp. They had scourged him to within an inch of his life, leaving his flesh a bleeding pulp of oozing sores and cuts. Yet, he looked down on those very people and said to his Father, "Forgive them for they know not what they are doing." Friend, that should be exactly your words spoken to God for these three people, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they have done." Then follow up and ask your Father, if you are a born again believer, to also give you a heart as big as His that will forgive them for the pain and suffering they brought into your life through that ignorance.
If you are born again, then you are a child of the King of the universe; the one who creates and rules all things. Now act like it!!!!!
God bless you.
In Christ, Ted
