by Joe Baranowski
What led me to experiencing God’s love was learning forgiveness. A guy I worked with insulted my nationality and I retaliated by threatening him with physical harm. He had a lot of friends and instantly I had many enemies. There was no place to hide; I would have to work with him again. My counselor suggested I ask him to forgive me. You can imagine my reaction, “Me? It was he who called me a name!” The next day we did work together and I asked him to forgive me for threatening him. He suggested that he should be asking me for forgiveness. From that day forward there was peace between us.
There are three types of offenses, intentional, unintentional, and perceived. All of these hurt and must be appropriately dealt with in love for our relationships to heal and flourish. The intentional offense is something said or done with deliberation to cause us pain. With the unintentional offense, the person didn’t say or do it on purpose, but we were still affected. The perceived offense is something we took the wrong way or an old wound from our past was reopened. Either way these offenses are real to us and have to be dealt with in a loving way that will lead to forgiveness. Too often people give in to their pain and find comfort there. They avoid the one who hurt them and talk to everyone else about how they have been wronged by their offender. Every time the story is told and retold the hurt is renewed as if it just happened. Resentment, bitterness, and revenge rule the day, sometimes for decades. There are people who go to their graves holding grudges and resentments. Sadly, it is families, friendships, churches and workplaces that pay the price. A scenario might look like this. This person can’t go to this one’s event because this other one might be there and so neither one shows up.
Most times before we forgive we need to confront the person who offended us and speak the truth in love. “When you said this or did this, I felt this way.” Instead of attacking, we would do well to open up to reveal the hurt that is there. This will lead us to the path of forgiveness and the way that God has forgiven us.
When we do forgive it is not forgetting but choosing not to remember. It means you don’t bring it up anymore. You don’t gossip about it to others. You have forgiven. You can give as before to the relationship. There are some situations where we can’t have the confrontation, but we can still forgive. We can still let go of the bitter resentful feelings that keep us in bondage.
“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).
