From Dream to Destiny: The Ten Tests You Must Go Through to Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life (23 page)

But when you forgive that person and release him or her, you release God to act in the situation. You release God to be the Judge He rightfully is. You release God to bring justice on the scene—and God is the only One who can! As hard as you might try to bring justice to a situation, you will never be able to do that—because you are not just! Not one of us is. But God is just—and He is the only one who can bring justice
to a situation.

When you forgive someone and release him or her, you also release yourself from torment. You release yourself from the bondage of trying to make that situation right.

If you do not forgive, you will live your life searching for vindication. You will live your life always trying to
prove something
rather than trying to
please Someone.

There was a time in my life when I was having a hard time forgiving someone. Thoughts about it seemed to flood my mind, no matter where I was. As I was driving down the road, I would be going through an argument in my mind of why he was wrong and I was right. This didn’t just happen one time, either. I would go through this in my mind day after day.

Like many Christians, I knew how to play the game. I had actually convinced myself that I had forgiven this man. I would justify my thought patterns in this way: “Of course, I’ve forgiven him. But one day I will have to talk to him about this. I will need to help him understand the darkness that he walks in.” And I actually thought I had forgiven him!

One night I couldn’t sleep. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and I had been replaying that obsession over and over in my mind. Have you ever been there? If you have, you know what I’m talking about. You just keep replaying that offense until you can’t even go to sleep—and yet you think you’ve forgiven that person!

Anyway, I was lying there in bed, replaying it over and over in my mind; and suddenly the Lord just broke in on my thoughts. (It’s so wonderful when He does that!) The Lord spoke very clearly in my heart and said, “Forgive him!”

“But I have forgiven him,” I said.

“No, you have not,” the Lord replied. “You are holding this against him. You continue to think about it, and you even talk to other people about it. You have not released him. You have not forgiven him the same way that I have forgiven you—because I am not still thinking about your sin. I am not going around talking to other people about it, either. Now, forgive him!”

“But, God,” I said with absolute sincerity, “He was wrong.”

“Of course he was wrong,” the Lord said to me. “There’s no need to
forgive people when they are right!”

You don’t need to forgive people for being right!
I had never thought about it that way before. When you have to forgive people, it is usually not because they have been baking cookies for you, is it? It is because they have been wrong!

God said to me again, “Yes, he was wrong. Now forgive him!”

“But, Lord,” I said, “I wasn’t wrong in this situation.”

I wasn’t quite prepared for the Lord’s reply. “No, you weren’t wrong,” He said to me. “But how would you like to have Me bring up some of the situations in which you
were
wrong?
How much time do you have?”

Ouch! Then the Lord did bring up a situation from my past. It was a situation in which I had been the one who was wrong—and it was not a pleasant remembrance. Then He said to me, “Was what he did to you worse than what you did in that situation?”

“No, Lord,” I replied. “What I did back there was much worse than what he did to me.”

“That’s right,” the Lord said. “And I forgave you, didn’t I?
Now forgive him
.”

When God said that last “forgive him,” I had the distinct feeling that He wasn’t just
encouraging
me to forgive—He was
telling
me to! You know, He
is
Lord! He
is
Master! And that means He can
command
us to do it—and we had better just obey!

God told me, “Forgive him and release him.”

So I forgave him. That meant I
released
him completely—and I prayed for his good.

I have decided now that I have nothing to prove—but I do have Someone to please. The One I have to please is the Lord Jesus Christ—and I will not be pleasing to Him if I do not forgive! If I hold unforgiveness toward someone, I will always be trying to vindicate myself and to prove that I was right. That is a lonely and miserable way to live.

Joseph could have done that. He could have lived the rest of his life trying to vindicate himself and get justice for the terrible things that had happened to him. Instead, Joseph
released
the situation to God. He went on with his life, and allowed God to vindicate him.

Let me show you a couple of Scripture passages that speak to this
issue of releasing those who have wronged you.

You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD (Lev. 19:18).

Dear friends, never avenge yourselves, leave that to God. For it is written, “I will take vengeance, I will repay those who deserve it,” says the Lord. Instead, you need to do what the scriptures say, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty give them something to drink and they will be ashamed of what they have done to you. Don’t let evil get the best of you but conquer evil doing good (Rom. 12:19-21,
NLT
).

Perhaps you are more familiar with this translation of Romans 12:19: “‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

God says vengeance belongs strictly to Him. He forbids us to take vengeance for the wrongs that are done to us. We are supposed to leave that up to Him. And the reason we must leave that up to God is because He is the only One who can bring righteous judgment to any situation. That is why vengeance belongs to the Lord.

Receive

I believe the reason many people have a hard time
giving
forgiveness is because
they have never received it.
You can’t
give
something to others that you don’t
have
yourself. The Bible makes it very clear that there is a connection between our forgiveness of others and God’s forgiveness for us.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray this way: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matt. 6:12-13).

I suppose you have prayed the Lord’s Prayer at one time or another. When you did, did you realize that you were asking God to forgive you
in the same way that you forgive other people?
(Now that you know that, you might be wishing you hadn’t prayed that prayer!)

In the verses immediately following the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus explains this further: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15).

That is an amazing Scripture passage—and I have to admit that I sometimes wish that it was not in the Bible! Jesus Himself said that if we do not forgive others, then He is not going to forgive us. This is what the Bible says—so we had better forgive! And the way that we forgive is in the same way we have been forgiven.

The Lord showed me that one reason people have a difficulty
giving
forgiveness to others is because they haven’t really
received
it themselves. There is something inside of us that just seems to have a hard time believing that God has totally and completely forgiven us. And because we haven’t
received
His forgiveness ourselves, it is difficult for us to
give
it to others.

Jesus said: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8).

The only way that you can
freely give
something is if you have
freely received
it. And until you
receive
His forgiveness fully and freely, you won’t be able to
give
it fully and freely.

If you believe that you must somehow
earn
your forgiveness, you will make other people earn their forgiveness also. If you believe that somehow you are
paying
for your forgiveness, you will make others pay for forgiveness also.

We fall into this trap all too often. Sometimes we even live as though God Himself is keeping score—after He gave us the best gift He had, His beloved Son, to set us free from the penalty of our sins! We pray as if God is getting back at us for all the stuff we’ve done wrong! We look at misfortunes in life as God’s way of getting even!

If we’re a little short in our check register at the end of the month, we might think that God is getting back at us for being late with our tithe. We might even say, “Oh, yes, thank You for getting back at me, Lord. Now we’re even. Now we’re square. That’s good.”

Or if we get a flat tire on the way to work, we might think God is getting back at us for our having neglected our morning prayers. We might say, “Yes, thank You, God. I knew You were going to do this, because I
didn’t have my quiet time this morning. I was supposed to have it, but I got up late. Oh, and now it is starting to rain! That is really a good touch, God. I will really remember this lesson now! Thank You, Lord, for getting back at me.
Now we’re even.”

Can I tell you something very important?
God is never going to get back
at you—because He already “got back” at Jesus! God is never going to get even with you because He already “got even” with Jesus. God is never going to make you pay for the wrong you have done—because Jesus has already paid the penalty in full! Isaiah 53:10 says, “It pleased the LORD to bruise Him.” How could it have pleased God to bruise His own Son? It pleased Him because all of our sin was atoned for and He could once again have a relationship with us. That is the goodness of God. That is the forgiveness of God. But for some of us, it just seems too good to be true. We have to learn to
receive
it.

This brings to mind an incident that happened about 15 years ago with my wife, Debbie. We were getting ready for church one morning, and at that time we lived in a very small house, with a very small bathroom. Any time we were getting ready to go somewhere, we had to do a bit of strategic maneuvering around each other in that tiny space. Anyway, Debbie was standing at the bathroom sink doing her face. She was still barefoot and in her bathrobe; but I was already dressed, complete with hard-sole dress shoes for church. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and as I reached for something, the full weight of my entire body came down on her little toe!

She screamed—and at first her screams had no sound to them. She was in too much pain to make any real noise!

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed over and over.

“It’s OK—it’s OK,” Debbie said, as she hobbled toward the bed to sit down.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I frantically repeated.

“I know,” she said. “I know. It’s OK—it was an accident.”

I said, “No, no! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

I kept saying it over and over again, and I think it was making her agony worse. She was probably thinking,
Just leave me alone and go away, will you?
But she said to me, “Really, it’s OK! I forgive you.”

I said, “No, no. I feel so bad! I feel so bad!”

And she kept saying to me, “It’s OK.”

Finally I said to her, “No, it is not OK. I want you to hit me!”

“What?” she said. “I don’t want to hit you!”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I feel bad, and I will feel better if you just hit me!”

The problem was not that Debbie was not
giving
forgiveness. The problem was that I wasn’t
receiving
forgiveness. I wanted somehow to even the score between us!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians who have a “Hit me” mentality. They have not received the forgiveness God freely has provided for them—so they want God to “hit” them. They think that if God hits them, it will make them feel better about the wrong they have done! This is the essence and origin of doing penance.