Deep Things You Need To Know About Forgiveness
November 16, 2019 at 7:14 pm,
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In the journey to peace and healing in our lives, both guilt and self-forgiveness created a tremendous impact on the process. Guilt is defined as a feeling of responsibility for a fault that compromised their own standards of conduct or violated a universal moral standard. Guilt and lack of self-forgiveness burdens many people with a weight of shame and the destruction of deep-seated resentments. Much has been written about the destructiveness of repressed emotions and particularly anger and resentment in contributing to life-threatening illnesses. Therefore, anger and resentment are not a good contributing factor to one’s health and well-being.
The belief that emotion is a weakness becomes a dreadful
legacy. True enough, emotion hinders a person to focus his mind in a
normal state. The result of her action affects people in their
peaceful workplaces, and even inside the religious institution. The
teachings that strength means not feeling or denying our feelings are tantamount
to creating illness. The beliefs such as “boys don't cry” and “good girls
don't get angry” are unable to get in touch with what they actually feel.
Depression is thought to be caused by anger turned inward and is only one of
the symptoms to protect ourselves from the scorn associated with expressing
feelings. Many other illnesses particularly addictions are theorized
to be expressions of a deep level of emotional pain.
Why people won’t
forgive? I think it starts from our hearts unforgiving ourselves. We
believe that we have a tendency to believe that we are unworthy of love,
respect, acceptance, appreciation, and the right to live a life of peace, joy,
harmony, and abundance. The lack of love for others is also the reason
behind the unforgiving heart. How can you forgive without love? Isn’t it?
This is why Jesus said this in Matt 22:37, "And he said to him, Have love for the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." BBE
If we don’t know how to love God first, we’ll surely not love others too. Loving God and loving a person is totally different from each other. God’s love transcends by means of His word—the Bible. By knowing God, faith will increase and God’s power is the one who will work in our lives. There will be a life change and transformation if we truly seek Him and accepted Him by heart. This can be done by following His teachings and commandments—it is total obedience to His word. A person should know how to submit himself to God before he can show love to others. Learning to love others is a heart that is softened by God and not a heart of stone.
As well as forgiveness is a heart that is already molded and
shaped its figure to a wonderful image.
In Col. 3:13, “Being gentle to
one another and having forgiveness for one another, if anyone has done wrong to
his brother, even as the Lord had forgiveness for you.” BBE
The Lord first
forgives us and therefore, we also forgive others. God has the authority
to forgive and that authority transcends to us that we should also learn to
forgive others because an unforgiving heart is an unrepentant heart. You
cannot have real success in life if without forgiveness. Wealth cannot
buy forgiveness—it’s priceless.
Somewhere along the
line, we have this belief that each one of the principles and laws of society
molds us and defined who we are supposed to be. We stopped trusting
and believing self-worth. We always think that we are not good enough and
unable to contribute to the society that we lived in. This kind of
thinking traced back to where and how we are groomed and raised by our
parents—our upbringing.
Statements such
as “you failed” became our usual utterance to blame and abuse ourselves with
guilt. It’s an abuse due to the fact it is simply as painful when we do
it to ourselves as when others do it to us. We became our own judge and jury
who do the verdict as guilty of our perceived offenses. When our parents,
teachers, and other societal influences are unable to love themselves
unconditionally, this learned attitude is being passed on to the next
generation as a disgrace in an effort to control behavior.
The shame that is
inside ours is totally different from guilt. Some say shame is deeper and
prevalent but the truth is shame sometimes was ignored. There is a
numbness that runs through their veins which they commonly didn’t feel anything
and eventually they can face the people who they should be shameful of.
Children grow up believing they are “not good enough” and became an
example of having inferiority, inadequacy, being a dangerous and hateful
person. Could their parents be blamed? There is a big factor that parents
are the ones who’s responsible for their child’s upbringing. What the
child is acting right now has a big influence sourced from their parents or
caregivers.
This sense of shame
differs from guilt therein guilt is regarding behavior. Shame is deeper and a
lot of pervasive. It's regarding your being and feelings of inferiority,
inadequacy, being dangerous and hateful become the conviction underlying your
life. But what we fail to teach them is relevant to failing. No one got a
good grade instantly because we are born imperfect. Great men do fail a
lot before they reach the pinnacle of success in their field. Lack of
encouragement from our parents turned us to become inferior to ourselves.
Learning to forgive
others and learning to forgive ourselves does not bring shame to others and
shame to ourselves. Humbling ourselves before God and others is a true
treasure of life. It leads to the path of success in life whether you
like it or not.
1 Peter 5:6-7
"Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may
exalt you in due time; casting all your worries on him because he cares for you." WEB
The
Lord said this in Matthew 18:21-22, “Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother
sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus said to him,
"I don't tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven.
WEB
Does Jesus meant to say that to forgive others is at a maximum of 490
times? Absolutely not! Jesus is trying to say that the seven times will
multiply into 490 times. Wow! That’s too much. That would mean
forgiveness is eternal. We don’t hesitate to give forgiveness to
others. Our hearts should be opened to receive forgiveness as well as
giving to forgive others. Those are the deep things that we should know
about forgiveness.
Photo credited to Adrijana from Pexels