Skip to main content

An Unforgiving Heart

Mark 11:25 

“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” 

If there's a singular thing guaranteed in this life is that humans will be humans. People hurt people: they may say things that hurt you, do things the hurt you and make you feel...hurt. I think I’m getting to an age where I’m starting to see more people do things that I don’t appreciate, it can be friendships, family or people you work with whether school or in the office. With all those different people can come this internal damage called ‘unforgiveness’.  

It’s one of those things that isn’t solely seen internally but also produced externally. We all know someone that when a certain person walks into a room, their whole mood changes. Almost as if that person is a trigger for anger: sparking negative emotions just based on the presence of them. For some of us, that person that we know is ourselves, and we need to recognise that as unforgiveness.  

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget about what happened, or you never feel hurt by it, it’s recognising to not attach that hurt to how you treat the person that done you wrong. Whether that person is close or not close, or whether that person is even yourself, it’s about dropping that weight of pain, and walking in freedom.  

Looking at the verse, we see forgiveness can almost be seen as quite transactional. We forgive because our God that is in heaven has already forgiven us. When you make the decision to not forgive someone, you are unintentionally saying the cross wasn’t enough for you: that somehow your forgiveness is valued higher than Christ’s forgiveness. We have been forgiven and so out of that forgiveness we should pour it into other people.  

We can hold unforgiveness in the present, but we can also hold unforgiveness in the past. Time doesn’t heal entirely, God does. Whatever the situation may be, however someone may have treated you, cast it onto a sovereign God, who will not only soften your heart, but facilitate the peace to heal from it.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being intentional with Joy

James 1: 2   “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”   Have you ever not been in a good mood? Have you ever felt like things are just not going your way? If you answered yes to any of those questions, it shows that you are human. Problems occur and things happen that can make us upset, and that is an unfortunate reality we have to face in this world .   For me, one of my resolutions this year is to be more joyful. If I had to make a book about the year of 2024, the title of it would be “ A sequence of difficulties” . In my life, it seemed I was experiencing problem after problem and issue after issue. I couldn’t escape them. The bitter truth is that problems and issues are inevitable, but our attitude towards them isn’t .   At th at time, I was angry at God for allowing all those things to happen to me, but in retrospect I can be grateful to see the work God was doing inside of me, the resilience he was building, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dealing with Fear

2 Timothy 1:7 “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”  Fear is a universal emotion we all feel.  It comes in different formats, affects different people differently and is an unavoidable aspect of life.  For me, as I’ve progressed in my relationship with God, fear has been the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with.  Whether it was certain dreams, visions or the enemy trying to play with my mind: they were all spiritual attacks.  You may not deal with spiritual attacks, and maybe your fear is embedded of people’s perception of you.  Maybe you have fear of rejection, or fear of failure, nevertheless we should all identify our fear, but let us not make it our identity.  Don’t hold your fear hostage, set it free by allowing Jesus to use his keys of comfort.  Looking at the verse, once we have given our lives to Jesus and have accepted him as our lord and saviour, w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Equipping ourselves

Ephesians 6:13   “ Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand”   Recently I had a conversation with one of my friends. Before our interaction, I didn’t set any expectation other than simply just seeing how they were doing. To my surprise, my friend asked me a question: and what was just a simple question, felt like an opportunity for me to express my faith. If I had not already had a foundation of God’s word, it would have been a missed opportunity. We are all presented with opportunities, some we may not be aware of, others we may not feel comftable in expressing, but all of them we need to be equipped for.    Our faith and belief are counter-cultural: it doesn’t agree with the views of today and goes against the perspectives and viewpoints of the society we live in.  As long as you claim to be a Christian, there will be people that dis...
Post a Comment
Read more