A lady became ill and checked into the hospital for tests. The results came back and the doctor walked into her room and said, “Ma’am, I’m afraid I have some bad news. You have rabies. You better make out your will as soon as possible.”
He left her and several hours later stopped by again. He saw a paper filled out with numerous names listed and said, “You must have a lot of people you want to remember in your will.”
The lady said, “Oh, I haven’t started my will. This is a list of people I’m going to bite as soon as I get out of here.”
Usually, when it comes to our sin, we want grace, but when someone offends us, we want justice. Yet, God calls us to forgive.
Mark Twain said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Too often we think about the crushing and payback rather than the fragrance of forgiveness. We think we are hurting the other person when we withhold forgiveness, but, instead, we are only hurting ourselves. We’re like the little boy sitting on the park bench in obvious agony. A man walked by and asked him what was wrong.
He answered, “I’m sitting on a bumble bee.”
“Then why don’t you get up?”
“Because I figure I’m hurting him more than he’s hurting me.”
Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The world’s darkest prison is the prison of an unforgiving heart. When we refuse to forgive others, we only imprison ourselves and compound our suffering. Some of the most miserable people I’ve met have been those who would not forgive others.”
Have we imprisoned ourselves in the prison of unforgiveness? What does our willingness to forgive reveal?
Forgiveness reveals the condition of our heart. Our willingness to forgive or our withholding forgiveness is a spiritual barometer that reflects where our heart is. Forgiveness is a matter of the heart.
Forgiveness reveals obedience to God. Ephesians 4:32 reads, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”
Colossians 3:13 reads, “ … bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.” We obey God’s Word when we forgive.
Forgiveness reveals healthy spiritual growth. We can’t move forward in our spiritual lives when we refuse to forgive. Failing to forgive can turn into bitterness, and bitterness will poison our lives until we’re miserable people.
Along with moving forward with God, we also want to move forward from hurt. On March 28, 2010, Conor McBride walked into the Tallahassee Police Department and told the officer on duty, “You need to arrest me. I just shot my fiancée in the head.”
An hour earlier, he shot Ann Margaret Grosmaire, his girlfriend of three years. They had been fighting for 38 hours. Four days later, after her condition did not improve, her parents removed her from life support.
As his daughter lay in ICU, Andy Grosmaire felt he heard her say, “Forgive him.”
“No, no way. It’s impossible.” But he kept hearing Anne’s voice, “forgive him.”
As he was praying later in her room, “I realized it was not just Ann asking me to forgive Conor, it was Jesus Christ. And I hadn’t said no to him before, and I wasn’t going to start then. It was just a wave of joy and I told Ann,‘I will, I will.’”
The wife came to the same decision. The Grosmaire’s decision to forgive Conor eventually led the prosecutor to recommend 20 years in prison, plus ten years of probation rather than a life sentence.
Ann’s mother said later, “I think when people can’t forgive, they’re stuck. All they can feel is the emotion surrounding the moment. I can be sad, but I don’t have to stay stuck in that moment when this awful thing happened. Because if I do, I may never come out of it.” (www.denisonforum.org/cultural-commentary/603-parents-forgive-daughters-m…, Jan. 7, 2013).
Are you stuck in a place of hurt? Aren’t you ready to move on?
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[Dr. David L. Chancey is pastor, McDonough Road Baptist Church, Fayetteville, Georgia. The church family meets at 352 McDonough Road and invites you to join them this Sunday for Bible study at 9:45 a.m. and worship at 10:55 a.m. Visit them on the web at www.mcdonoughroad.org and “like” them on Facebook.]
