My Daily Devotional

We Must Be Able To Forgive

           "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

          Matthew 6:14

          My message today is about forgiveness.  I can't stress enough the importance of being able to forgive others. We have all experienced situations during our lives where someone has lied about us, done things to harm us and caused pain or taken advantage of us.  We have then had difficulties letting go and have harbored our feelings and have had trouble forgiving them for what they have done to us.  God is very specific in his instructions as to how we are to handle these types of situations.  The scripture above is pretty plain as to how God views us not being able to forgive someone who has sinned against us.  Forgiving someone is one of the more difficult things to overcome in most of our lives, but if we are not able to overcome this obstacle, it will be difficult for us to build any kind of relationship with the people who have harmed us. For our emotional and spiritual health, we must let the past go.  It doesn't accomplish anything to go around with a chip on our shoulder because of something that happened in our past.  We can't change what happened ten years ago, or even yesterday as we can't go back in time.  We need to be able to forgive and forget and go on with our lives.  This is why it is so important to be able to let go of the bitterness we have in our hearts and be able to move on.  If we don't release our bitterness and continue to harbor our lack of forgiveness, we are going to contaminate others around us.  We must be able to forgive others in order for God to forgive our sins.