HOPE TRIUMPHS
HOW TO FORGIVE AND FIND FORGIVENESS
It’s not easy to forgive others who wrong you, writes Reverend Tony Zekveld. Yet there’s hope. Image credit: GEANCARLO PERUZZOLO on Pexels.
By REVEREND TONY ZEKVELD
Do you find it difficult to forgive others who hurt you? Probably so. It’s not easy to forgive others who wrong you; perhaps impossible.
We easily hold grudges, grievances, and resentments against others. We can’t look at them, talk with them and certainly not eat with them.
Sometimes the hurt and pain caused by another is horrible, indescribably evil. Does such a one deserve forgiveness?
Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian woman, shares the story in her book The Hiding Place (also a movie) when German soldiers stormed her home in Holland and confined her and her sister Betsy in a German concentration camp during the second world war. They were treated brutally.
Years later, while speaking on the topic of forgiveness, she met one of the German soldiers from the camp, who came to her after her speech. He told her that he had “found Christ”. He begged her to forgive him. Immediately the memory of his brutality silenced her. She spoke in her heart, “Lord, I cannot forgive that man”.
She said, “I prayed and prayed: Lord, give me the grace to forgive!” And, suddenly, God gave her the grace. She found it in her heart to forgive him. “Sir, I forgive you!” she said. “I could now look him in the eye and see him, once an enemy, now a brother!”
She no longer held his wrongdoing against him. That’s forgiveness! God had forgiven him, so must she forgive him. That’s grace, love so undeserved.
How could she forgive him? How can you forgive?
In order to have the grace to forgive others, we need to know the grace of God’s forgiveness of sins in our own lives. And this forgiveness comes through Jesus, God’s Son. God willingly gave Him as the Perfect Sacrifice. He was brutally tortured, hung on the cross for our sins to reconcile us to God. This is His amazing love for people like us who do not deserve grace. In Christ, we receive the grace to truly forgive, no longer holding it against another.
Suppose this man who treated Corrie so brutally, never was sorry for what he did to her and her sister and never did ask for forgiveness. Must she then forgive him? No. But she should be willing and ready to forgive. The willingness to forgive is also God’s grace.
You can pray for that. He sets you on the path of restoration!
If you want to talk more, feel free to phone or text Reverend Tony Zekveld (“call me Pastor Tony”) at Hope Centre at 416-740-0543. His email is hopecentre@primus.ca and website: www.hopecentrebrampton.com.