Stuck in Unforgiveness

As if it is anything to brag about, I should have a Doctor's degree in unforgiveness. I spent over twenty years living in it and sad to say I did not even realize I was stuck. That sounds bizarre doesn't it? Well, that is just one small example of the deception the enemy of our soul uses to keep us stuck.

It started out like any other thing starts. I was just living life the best I could with the knowledge I had. My knowledge was an accumulation of tradition with pieces and parts gleaned from the world around me and a proper raisi'n ( As my mother would say, "You can tell they have been raised right"). Sometimes my mother took me to church. My grandmother took me every time I visited her but my heart did not go. My heart, that needed to hear about the grace of God, was just too small. Even though I accepted Jesus when I was thirteen, I didn't read the bible or see how God could help me until much later.

But later, oh the later, I really needed to understand and encompass the grace of God and more than that, apply it to to myself. You see I was willing to forgive other people but not myself. I held myself hostage in a prison of so much guilt and condemnation I could barely breathe. I just knew I had made this mess and surely I could fix it, couldn't I? No, I could not fix much of anything, not even supper some days. I so wanted to make things right. I so wanted things to be right, but they weren't.

They weren't right because I was not right with God. I was keeping Him and His grace at bay. I thought I had to pay for what I had done. I thought I didn't deserve it. So, sad to say I was waiting on the people I had hurt to forgive me before I allowed God to forgive me for the awful things I had done. But God in His great amazing grace helped me. I was so sick and tired of feeling miserable, guilty and depressed all the time. I finally gave up the lie. The lie that I could ever pay for what I had done. The lie that I could fix other people's pain. I was my own worst enemy. I was like a rag doll in the devil's hand, he was controlling my life, if you can even call it a life. I can tell you from experience, he wants to kill, steal and destroy and for twenty years I let him do just that. He killed my faith, he stole my peace and he destroyed my hope. But God, two of my favorite words in the bible, wanted me to apply His grace and forgive everyone, especially myself.

Understand  this, forgiveness is a choice. It is not a natural thing. It does not come easy because there is hurt.The pain we feel is very real. The anger we feel because of the hurt is very real. But forgiveness is very real too. When we have practiced hurt, anger, guilt and condemnation of our self or others, it takes just as much practice of forgiveness to let it all go. What I mean by that is this: When something happens to us or we do something to someone, most of the time we think about it, we talk about it, we think about it, we talk about it. We go over it and over it. We drive it home so to speak. When we do this we allow the enemy of our soul to set up a stronghold in our mind. The enemy will bring it up to us in our thoughts every chance he gets. He will get us into think about it, talk about it mode, driving it deeper into our heart through our thoughts. It is at this point, you have to remind yourself you have forgiven that person, or situation. You have to tear down the strongholds with the truth of God, which is I have forgiven. You have to chose to apply His grace, every time, to every person and every situation. Practice. practice. practice.... Applying His grace.