Forgive Me

Today during church, my pastor was talking about the Lord's prayer again. A majority of todays lesson was about forgiveness. There is that one line in the Lord's prayer that gets me every time. Its the part that says forgive us our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses against us. This is something that I repeat for the Lord's prayer, but I never really gave it much thought.

Every day I sin, its no secret. We are all sinners. Therefore, every single day I ask for forgiveness. I guess I assumed that I would be forgiven always. I never really stopped to think about the Lord's prayer and what it says. If we have not forgiven others who have done things to us, then God won't forgive us for what we have done to Him. I think we have a tendency to assume that we are forgiven because we simply ask for forgiveness.

We are called to first forgive others. I would like to say that I have forgiven everyone that has ever hurt me, but the truth is, I haven't. Sometimes the messages really speak to me. In fact it felt like this one was God hitting me over the head with a message. One of the things that I struggle with the most is forgiveness. I tend to hold things in and remain bitter. I have held things in for years at a time before I could forgive someone.

My problem is that in my head I know that forgiving doesn't mean forgetting what they did, but I can't seem to get my heart on the same page. There was a time when someone told me that I had to forgive and forget. Since then I have really had a hard time "forgetting" what that person said to me. So I continue to ask for forgiveness without actually forgiving those who have done wrong to me.

I am kind kicking myself for never taking this seriously before. That's why I am sharing this with all of you. It is my confession, and its something I need to work on. Before I can continue to ask for forgiveness from Christ, I need to give forgiveness to those who have hurt me in the past. The other thing that I need to do, is get off my high horse and ask for forgiveness to all of those that I have hurt recently. We are, of course, sinners and I hate to admit that I have hurt people, but that's the truth.

So this coming week my goal is to at least write down all of the people/ things that I haven't forgiven and I need to start forgiving. It won't happen all at once, that's why I'm making a list!