Re: FORGIVENESS - What does it take?

If someone chops your hand off, it is VERY likely that you will never be able to forget. I wouldn't ask you to forget even if it were possible, and it would actually be uncaring and unsympathetic (incompassionate) of me to expect you to forget. I wouldn't even BLAME (that wouldn't be compassionate of me) you if you never again spoke to the person responsible for your hand being "HISTORY". Depending on your ability to "get on with life", you might have nightmares, and, even if you didn't, you might always have issues about the hand not being there and fantasies (illusions) about having a hand. So, forget about this "FORGIVE and FORGET" garbage, forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. As long as you have a brain and the MEMORY that goes along with it, most likely, and hopefully, you will not forget, but LEARN that the person responsible, is not a good person to know and that you should avoid similar situations (learn from your experience and don't repeat it). You cannot forgive "WRONG", ONLY Jesus can do that, BUT, you CAN "DECLINE" to count it against them AS SIN (because the WRONG has been done to US first, and then to God, God doesn't begrudge or deny us that). When we have been hurt PERSONALLY, we can decide to "LET BY-GONES BE BY-GONES" and ask God to do the same. If someone is asking you to forgive them because they want you to SOOTH THEIR CONSCIENCE, even if you don't feel that you are being used, you have a responsibility not to forgive them because that gives them "THE OKAY" to do it all over again to somebody else and that makes you morally guilty of that second offense. UNTIL they SINCERELY express SORROW for what they did (HURT YOU, they have to settle the rest with God because you can ONLY address the HURTing part), you have a responsibility to LET GOD teach them the error of their way or else they might never get to recieve the Lord's blessings. How can they ever get to understand COMPASSION if they never understand that they HURT you?
ACTS chapter 7 verse 60. Tweet