Waiting for someone to repent before we forgive is to surrender our future to the person who wronged us. Author unknown
Words of Jesus taken from Luke 6:27-28 The New Living Translation.
But if you are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for the happiness of those who curse you.
One thing I have learned from working a program of recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction is that I must forgive. The lesson of forgiveness actually goes beyond my recovery and is rooted in my faith as a Christian, but before I could stay sober I had to actually put the principle to work in my life. Jesus says, if you are willing, so if find that I have to make the choice. Forgiveness is a decision that I must make that goes against what my natural feelings express. Forgiveness is like swimming up stream through the boulders and rapids to the calm waters above the falls. Its hard. This morning when I read these words that Jesus spoke I recall to mind, my own deliverance from drugs and alcohol and what was needed on my behalf to be set free. Forgiveness has played a big part in my being sober today. I am about to relate an experience that I am not proud of, but it has been a major factor in my understanding of how forgiveness works. In 1995 my ex-wife died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol. That same year a man that I knew died as a result of drug addiction. His ex-wife and I got hooked up, after all we had a lot of common misery to share, and neither one of us had any desire to stop using and drinking. For two years we shot dope, got drunk and fought. We attempted to get sober at one point and started attending church, but with no real support group we soon failed. We started spending less time with each other and she started a new relationship with someone else. The problem was that we still continued to see each other from time to time. At that time in my life I was living at the back end of my property in a small trailer in the woods. I remember one moonless night when she and I were there asleep, how I awoke to the sound of my tires being slashed with a knife. The next thing I know is that there is this guy trying to get in the trailer, hes drunk and has a knife and says he is going to kill me. I kept the lights off and prepared to defend myself. I mainly tried to keep him from entering the trailer. He continued to stab the knife through the walls and doors, broke windows, and just went nuts. I was terrified. He finally broke through one door and she and I fled out the other door. I walked through the woods to the closest neighbor and called the sheriff. The guy was arrested and charged. Six months later my alcoholism and drug addictions had escalated to the point that the only way I could continue to live, was to surrender. Broken, beat, and spiritually bankrupt, I crawled back to God asking forgiveness. What an awesome God we have. No words can describe the length that God has traveled to allow me to be set free. I did not deserve freedom. I went to treatment for substance abuse in the fall of 1998. After I came home those first few months were very difficult, but I wanted more than anything else to stay sober. I remember having this hatred for the guy that tried to kill me. I want revenge for letting him scare me like he did. What made it worse was that I saw him daily as I went to town. Knowing that resentments and anger are some of the main reasons for relapses, I had to deal with forgiving him in order to stay sober. Believe me, I did not want to forgive, but I knew that everything hinged on forgiveness. My salvation first and next my sobriety. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous there is a story titled Freedom From Bondage. In it a woman describes resentment against a person that she could not forgive. She learned that if she would pray for that person everyday, even though she did not want too, and pray for them to have everything she wanted herself out of life, that if she did it for two weeks, she could be set free of the resentment. She tried it and it worked. From that example I did the same thing. I hated that guy and I forced myself daily to pray for his salvation, his health, his peace, and his prosperity. It took exactly fourteen days, and I remember on the fourteenth day how I started seeing him in a different light. I started seeing him as being sick, alcoholic, and in the grips of a bondage that kept him tied. I had to choose to forgive him and I most definitely had to work at it. Today I swim in the calm waters above the waterfalls. I have peace about the whole situation. Jesus gives us the same solution today when He says Pray for the happiness of those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. It works! God has done for me what I could not do for myself JRE
Share this with me from the Life Recovery Bible ..
We no longer need to be controlled by other peoples dispositions and actions. Even when we have done our best to make amends for the wrongs we have done, the situation may not change. And even when we have come to terms with the wrongs that have been done against us, our feelings may not change. But we dont have to be held captive by our feelings of others. We can choose to forgive and act in loving ways. This will free us from being controlled by anyone other than God. As we choose to forgive others and do good, our feelings will change with time.
Words of Jesus taken from Luke 6:27-28 The New Living Translation.
But if you are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for the happiness of those who curse you.
One thing I have learned from working a program of recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction is that I must forgive. The lesson of forgiveness actually goes beyond my recovery and is rooted in my faith as a Christian, but before I could stay sober I had to actually put the principle to work in my life. Jesus says, if you are willing, so if find that I have to make the choice. Forgiveness is a decision that I must make that goes against what my natural feelings express. Forgiveness is like swimming up stream through the boulders and rapids to the calm waters above the falls. Its hard. This morning when I read these words that Jesus spoke I recall to mind, my own deliverance from drugs and alcohol and what was needed on my behalf to be set free. Forgiveness has played a big part in my being sober today. I am about to relate an experience that I am not proud of, but it has been a major factor in my understanding of how forgiveness works. In 1995 my ex-wife died of an overdose of drugs and alcohol. That same year a man that I knew died as a result of drug addiction. His ex-wife and I got hooked up, after all we had a lot of common misery to share, and neither one of us had any desire to stop using and drinking. For two years we shot dope, got drunk and fought. We attempted to get sober at one point and started attending church, but with no real support group we soon failed. We started spending less time with each other and she started a new relationship with someone else. The problem was that we still continued to see each other from time to time. At that time in my life I was living at the back end of my property in a small trailer in the woods. I remember one moonless night when she and I were there asleep, how I awoke to the sound of my tires being slashed with a knife. The next thing I know is that there is this guy trying to get in the trailer, hes drunk and has a knife and says he is going to kill me. I kept the lights off and prepared to defend myself. I mainly tried to keep him from entering the trailer. He continued to stab the knife through the walls and doors, broke windows, and just went nuts. I was terrified. He finally broke through one door and she and I fled out the other door. I walked through the woods to the closest neighbor and called the sheriff. The guy was arrested and charged. Six months later my alcoholism and drug addictions had escalated to the point that the only way I could continue to live, was to surrender. Broken, beat, and spiritually bankrupt, I crawled back to God asking forgiveness. What an awesome God we have. No words can describe the length that God has traveled to allow me to be set free. I did not deserve freedom. I went to treatment for substance abuse in the fall of 1998. After I came home those first few months were very difficult, but I wanted more than anything else to stay sober. I remember having this hatred for the guy that tried to kill me. I want revenge for letting him scare me like he did. What made it worse was that I saw him daily as I went to town. Knowing that resentments and anger are some of the main reasons for relapses, I had to deal with forgiving him in order to stay sober. Believe me, I did not want to forgive, but I knew that everything hinged on forgiveness. My salvation first and next my sobriety. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous there is a story titled Freedom From Bondage. In it a woman describes resentment against a person that she could not forgive. She learned that if she would pray for that person everyday, even though she did not want too, and pray for them to have everything she wanted herself out of life, that if she did it for two weeks, she could be set free of the resentment. She tried it and it worked. From that example I did the same thing. I hated that guy and I forced myself daily to pray for his salvation, his health, his peace, and his prosperity. It took exactly fourteen days, and I remember on the fourteenth day how I started seeing him in a different light. I started seeing him as being sick, alcoholic, and in the grips of a bondage that kept him tied. I had to choose to forgive him and I most definitely had to work at it. Today I swim in the calm waters above the waterfalls. I have peace about the whole situation. Jesus gives us the same solution today when He says Pray for the happiness of those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. It works! God has done for me what I could not do for myself JRE
Share this with me from the Life Recovery Bible ..
We no longer need to be controlled by other peoples dispositions and actions. Even when we have done our best to make amends for the wrongs we have done, the situation may not change. And even when we have come to terms with the wrongs that have been done against us, our feelings may not change. But we dont have to be held captive by our feelings of others. We can choose to forgive and act in loving ways. This will free us from being controlled by anyone other than God. As we choose to forgive others and do good, our feelings will change with time.