Do you place limits on your forgiveness? I place limits on my forgiveness. Sometimes an offense seems so horrible that my first reaction might be to say, “It’s impossible to forgive.”
One of my friends placed limits on her forgiveness when a young man killed her only child for the little bit of money in his pocket. After about six months, she went to the prison where the murderer serves a life sentence without parole. She forgave him. Could you have done that?
I struggled for seven and a half years to forgive my ex-husband for his physical, verbal, emotional, and financial abuse of our only child and me.
When our only child died unexpectedly after surgery, I attended his Celebration of Life service and burial. My ex-husband was there with his second wife and their family. The sight of him triggered memories of past trauma, and I went through the forgiveness process again—thankfully faster than before. How would you have felt in the presence of someone who hurt you and a loved one?
In 1 Kings 12, King Jeroboam of Israel made two golden calves and told the people they were their gods. Verse 31 says, “[He] built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites”
A man of God from Judah went to the king and in 1 Kings 13:2-3, he said, “O altar, altar . . . A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places . . . and human bones will be burned on you . . . The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.”
Enraged, King Jeroboam stretched out his hand and said, “Seize him.” As he did so, his hand shriveled, the altar split apart, and the ashes poured out.
Then the king asked the man of God to pray that God would restore his hand.
The man of God prayed for the king, and God restored his hand. You might be thinking I wouldn’t have prayed for him. He just wanted to kill me. Let him have a shriveled hand.
Forgiveness is never easy, but it gives you peace, freedom, and the abundant life. That beats being an emotional prisoner of the one you refuse to forgive.
Copyright © by Yvonne Ortega February 15, 2016
