Nisan 5
Forgiveness
“Who is an Ěl like You – taking away crookedness and passing
over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance? He shall not retain
His wrath forever, for He Himself delights in kindness. He shall turn back, He shall have
compassion on us, He shall trample upon our crookednesses! AND YOU THROW ALL
OUR SINS INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA!” (Mic 7:18-19 ISR,
emphasis mine)
The mother of my first
husband was a very bitter, vindictive, unforgiving woman. When I met my future in-laws for the first
time, the two of them had not spoken to each other in over a year, all the
while residing within the same house.
This sad state of affairs was all because the husband had said (or done)
something that had made the wife angry.
And from what I learned, this was not the first time she had imposed
this type of punishment on her husband.
When my then mother-in-law died, some years later, she was all but
confined to a wheel chair from arthritis, her hands so crippled that she could
not write her name, and with other physical problems involved as well. Yet the things she held close to her heart
were the many “grudges” she hled against people that had “done her wrong”, and
she took these grudges with her into the grave.
Unforgiveness and bitterness
are a cancer that will eat you alive, both physically and spiritually. Brethren, when it comes right down “to where
the rubber meets the road”, unforgiveness has its root in pride, and this is
something our Elohim cannot tolerate in His kingdom. When we choose to not forgive someone an offense, a wrong done, a hurt suffered, we
set ourselves up as judge, jury, and
executioner of the one that did the wrong to
us, and that is a position reserved for our Creator. Basically, we are pushing YHWH our Elohim off
of His throne, saying “I will handle this
one …”
Has
someone done something to you as horrible as what people have done to the
Father, in that they tortured, slaughtered, and executed Yeshua, the Son of
Elohim? Are we not continually, in our
self-sovereignty, rejecting the love and care of our Elohim, believing that we
can tend to ourselves better than He can?
And yet, our Father chooses to forgive.
Are we so much better and bigger
than our Elohim that we cannot (or will not) forgive another that is made in
His image? Our Elohim knows the bondage
of unforgiveness; it is one of the reasons for our Messiah’s death, to free us from this bondage (see Acts 5:30-31;
Acts 26:18). The key, however, to
receiving our own forgiveness from
the Father, is to first forgive
others what they have done …
“For
if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father shall also forgive
you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither shall your Father
forgive your trespasses.” (Mat 6:14-15 ISR)
Once
we choose to release forgiveness, then we have first and foremost restored our
relationship with our Creator. As we
persevere in this forgiveness – and it may not be easy – it will allow Elohim
to act in our behalf, because now our heart is in right relationship with Him.
In this case, I do know what I
am talking about: I had to learn to walk
in forgiveness toward this mother-in-law, and her son, the one that I called “husband”. My first husband was extremely abusive, even
tried to kill me several times, but my ABBA was faithful, and delivered my
children and I out of the lion’s mouth.
But first, I had to walk in
forgiveness before He did so.
“Be
forebearing one to another, and be forgiving one to another, and if a man has
concerning his neighbor a complaint, as the Messiah forgave you, thus also you forgive.” (Col 3:13 HRVS, emphasis
mine)
©2018
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