Forgive as You Have Been Forgiven 8/20/13

Dear Friends.

I hope today will be a blessing to all. I am starting my day with a cup of Door County Highlander Grog Coffee.

Matthew 6:14-15    
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.


I see many people weighed down by the burden of being unable to forgive others. It is a weight around our necks and causes us to sink to depths that we cannot imagine.
I wish that when I was younger I would have read the story of Corrie  Ten Boom. Hers is an amazing story of faith and forgiveness.

Writing in Christianity Today. Professor Lewis B. Smedes relates a story about Corrie Ten Boom to illustrate the power of God and forgiveness.

She was stuck for the war years in a concentration camp, humiliated and degraded, especially in the delousing shower where the women were ogled by the leering guard. But she made it through that hell. And eventually she felt she had, by grace, forgiven even those fiends, who guarded the shower stalls.

So she preached forgiveness, for individuals, for all of Europe. She preached in Bloemendaal, in the United States, and one Sunday, in Munich. After the sermon, greeting people she saw a man come toward her, hand outstretched; "Ja Fraulein, it is wonderful that Jesus forgives us all our sins, just as you say." She remembered his face; it was the leering, lecherous, mocking face of an SS guard of the shower stall.

Her hand froze by her side. She could not forgive. She thought she had forgiven all. But she could not forgive when she met a guard, standing in the solid flesh in front of her. Ashamed, horrified at herself, she prayed. "Lord forgive me, I cannot forgive." And as she prayed she felt forgiven, accepted, in spite of her shabby performance as a famous forgiver.

Her hand was suddenly unfrozen. The ice of hate melted. Her hand went out. She forgave and she was forgiven.

Many of us will go through life with the cancer of a grudge. It eats away at us from the inside. We need to forgive others as God forgives us. He doesn't keep a grudge and neither should we. Only God can help us forgive others. He also gives us the power we need to move on.

Have a good day. Forgive someone and let go of the grudge.

Marty