My Daily Devotional

Forgiveness Is A Choice

"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?  Jesus answered, I will tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

          Matthew 18:21-22

         Today I want to follow up on the issue of forgiveness that I wrote about in a previous devotional, and how we need to deal with it. So often people blame God for permitting things to happen in their lives, such as a death of a loved one.  It is hard to understand why God lets some of the things happen to us in these circumstances.  But only He knows the reason why these things do happen.  Regardless of all this we will never have a true happiness as long as we harbor bitterness in our hearts.  We cannot continue to wallow in self pity, always feeling sorry for ourselves, thinking that life has not dealt us a fair hand.  We must let go of these negative attitudes and the accompanying anger.   We will never know how each piece of God's puzzle for our lives will come together, but we must trust Him for all the answers.  We may never know the answer why things happen the way they do, but we must forget the past and move on with our lives.  Keep in mind, just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean that one does not exist.  We simply haven't discovered it yet and may never know the answer. 1^st Corinthians 2:9 "However, as it is written:  No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." We must have enough courage and faith to say "God, I don't understand it, but I trust you."  We can't spend all our time trying to figure out why certain things have happened, but rather trust God to make something good out of it.  I believe this is the faith and kind of attitude God wants each of us to have about these kinds of things we don't understand.   For our emotional and spiritual health, we must let the past go.  It doesn't do any of us any good to go around hating somebody, nor does it make any sense to stay angry for something somebody did to us in the past.  We can't do anything about the past, but can only do something about the future. Hebrews 12:15 "Make sure that no root of bitterness shoots forth and causes trouble and many become contaminated by it." We need to be careful that our bitterness and lack of forgiveness does not contaminate others around us, as they are influenced by the way we handle a bad situation in our lives. If we are a Christian many of our friends and neighbors look to us to be an example for them in times of trial and trouble, and our actions during these times can have a great impact on them and their lives. If we have bitterness inside it is going to contaminate everything that comes out of us.  It will affect our personalities and our attitudes, as well as how we treat other people.   We need to examine our hearts to make sure we haven't buried anger and unforgiveness on the inside. In all of our lives we have all had negative things happen to us.  These could have been last week, last month or years ago when somebody has hurt us.  Too often, instead of letting this hurt go and giving it to God, we've held on to it.  We haven't forgiven, and now we are faced with the negative attitudes, and not having the peace and joy in our lives that we should have.  We must release all the pain and hurt from inside us, and not let what happened in the past affect our future.  We need to trust God and He will enable us to release the hurt and pain from our life.  We must learn to forgive to be free.  Forgiveness is a choice, but it is not an option if we want to live a happy life.