The "F" Word

The "F word. Now, now folks! Don't clutch your pearls or let your mouth hang open like that; do you want to catch some unwanted flies? I needed something catchy to get your attention. Did it work? I sure hope so! Today's blog is a big one, or at least I like to think so. Grab a cup of coffee, soda, or whatever you are drinking, and give me about 5 minutes of your time.

So what "F" word am I referring to? Forgiveness. I have been holding off on this blog. Who am I to talk to you about such a weighty subject? Honestly, it seems to keep coming up daily. Between devotions with the kids, to the books I am reading, or the sheer fact that the Lord has been dealing with unforgiveness in my heart since the beginning of the year.

What is forgiveness? If you search the basic definition of forgiveness, you get this generic description: "the act of forgiving." Don't you love it when dictionaries do that? Let's use the root word to describe the word in question. I think not. I am not sure if it is because I am a woman or someone who really craves knowledge, I need a more in-depth answer than that. According to the APA, forgiveness is a bit more detailed than that:

"Forgiveness involves willfully putting aside feelings of resentment toward someone who has committed a wrong, been unfair or hurtful, or otherwise harmed you in some way. Forgiveness is not merely accepting what happened or ceasing to be angry. Rather, it involves a voluntary transformation of your feelings, attitudes, and behavior, so that you are no longer dominated by resentment and can express compassion, generosity, or the like toward the person who wronged you." https://www.apa.org/topics/forgiveness

Now that is my kind of definition! Not only does it show what forgiveness is, but it also describes the reward of forgiveness. Allowing our "putting aside" to free us from anger, resentment, etc. Then putting on compassion, kindness, and more. It frees you.

You may think to yourself: "that it is all fine and dandy for some situations, but who are you to tell me what to do?" Can I be honest with you? Forgiveness has been kind of hard for me recently. As the Lord has been refining me, I have been examining my actions, reactions, thoughts, and how I speak. It is kind of ugly, in my opinion.

It feels like the unforgiveness in my heart is like bamboo. What do you mean, Heidi? Bamboo takes around 3 years to do "its thing." Once it reaches maturation, it can grow 2 feet a day. That is 1-inch an hour. And if you need to kill it, you have a huge root system to deal with. It is a pain.

Unforgiveness is just the same. Something is done to us, said about us, or we see some type of injustice (I could go on and on), the seed of unforgiveness gets planted. And if we do not snatch that thing up right then and there, it will start to grow. It does not always grow into a full blown problem overnight, but it will grow if left unchecked. And once it starts growing, it will take root. Those roots will grow and grow until you become choked out by unforgiveness. And unforgiveness is deadly and dangerous according to scripture.

In Matthew 18, Peter comes to Jesus, asking him how many times he must forgive someone who wrongs him. Up to 7 times? I wonder if Peter thought he was being generous with that number. Jesus's reply probably shocked Peter; he said he should forgive 70 times. I don't think Jesus really meant that number as an absolute. Rather, I think He wanted Peter to catch the heart of the Father.

He then goes through this discourse about a servant who owed a little money, who was about to be sold (along with his children and wife) in order to pay the debt he owed. The master had pity on him. Not only did he not sell the servant and his family, he wiped out the debt the man owed. Talk about generosity. I wonder if Sally May would be so generous to me?

You'd think this would have had a pretty significant impact on the servant. Nope. When a fellow servant of this man came to him, asking for the same grace in paying back his debt, he was met with jail time. Talk about being a turd, if there ever was one. This man had been forgiven of a significant debt, but couldn't do the same for his fellow servant. When word got back to the master, he threw the servant whose debt he had forgiven in prison.

It is like that with us and Jesus. You and I have been forgiven of so much! I think I would be quite embarrassed if I were to lay out just a portion of my sins before you. And to think that Jesus, seeing all the ugly in my heart and life, my evil actions, my disagreeable thoughts, still chose to go to the cross for me. In my place, He bore all of my sin.

How many times have I not forgiven someone else? How many times have I held contempt, resentment, and unforgiveness like a little idol that I pet, nourishing, and allowing it to grow freely? More times than I would like to admit, if I am being transparent. Scripture makes it very plain, when we do this, we are in danger of being "thrown into prison." I don't know about you, but that is scary.

You may say: "Heidi, you have NO idea what they did to me." And you know what, you would be right. But I can share with you a place where I have had to allow forgiveness rule and reign. With a vulnerable transparency, when I was a young child, I had a neighbor take inappropriate pictures of me. I was maybe 4 years old, possibly 5. I had suppressed this memory up into my sophomore year in college. I had to go to counseling--thank God I did!

During that time, I had to come to a crossroads. Would I forgive this neighbor? Or would I allow the unforgiveness to start taking root, growing and growing until it consumed me? Through an act of faith and guidance from my counselor, I was able to forgive this person of the act they committed against me and my innocence as a child. I had to forgive that it caused such a wound, I suppressed it for almost 2 decades, not realizing it had affected how I acted or responded to certain situations growing up.

Forgiveness is not always easy. Many of you have real trauma and deep wounds. Wounds so deep, it affects how you move, how you think, how you love or don't love, etc. I have seen the aged, so eat up with unforgiveness that it has affected them physically. It has deep roots and it spreads like a virus.

Forgiveness is an act of faith a lot of the time. What do I mean? Sometimes the feelings of forgiveness aren't always there. In faith, we may make the proclamation we forgive X, Y, Z. It reminds me of the late Corrie ten Boom (I just finished reading Tramp for the Lord). Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who was arrested by the Gestapo in Haarlem and thrown into a concentration camp along with her sister. Sparing you all the details, in the end, she survived but her sister did not.

Many years later, in a church, a man approached Corrie. Immediately, she recognized the man who had once been apart of the Nazi cruelty at the very concentration camp where her sister had died. This guard who was cruel and inflicted pain on many had become a Christian had come to ask forgiveness from Corrie. How could she forgive the vile in this man?

Could you forgive him? I know I would have had trouble myself. As Corrie contemplated where she could forgive or not, she prayed to herself: "Jesus, help me. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling." And as an act of faith, she reached her hand out, she uttered: "I forgive you, brother." (Tramp for the Lord. 58) Reaching her hand out was the act of faith, and the Lord supplied the feeling.

Maybe you are consumed with unforgiveness. Maybe you think you have forgiven, but your actions and reactions would speak differently. Ask the Lord to help you. Take a step of faith, forgive the person. It does not negate the actions of the person. It doesn't even mean you allow them back in your life. Rather, it frees you. It frees you from the destruction unforgiveness brings. You take the step of faith, day-by-day, moment-by-moment. The Lord will provide the feeling. In return, it allows you to be forgiven, it frees you, it transforms you.

"Then it was that another secret of forgiveness became evident. It is not enough to simply say, “I forgive you.” I must also begin to live it out. And in my case, that meant acting as though their sins, like mine, were buried in the depths of the deepest sea. If God could remember them no more—and He had said, “[Your] sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17)—then neither should I. And the reason the thoughts kept coming back to me was that I kept turning their sin over in my mind." --Corrie ten Boom (Tramp for the Lord. 207-208)