We do know this — any offender who is restored by God’s grace is not simply returned to where he was before it all took place. Through the Lord’s great mercy, guilty sinners can be declared guilt-free and restored to lives of greater fruitfulness than they ever dreamed possible.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 111
If you’re a child of God, the ordeal you’re undergoing, however wrong or unfair or heartless it may be or may have been, in His providence and skillful hands will be used to take you somewhere good — deeper into His heart, to a place of greater dependence and trust, more perfectly refined into the likeness of Christ.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 107
Even when you can’t see the results — though the situation may not clear up entirely or get any better at all — you can still know that you’ve done what God has required of you. You can continue to forgive as His grace and love flow through you. And you can walk in peace — His peace.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 100
We sometimes feel that, if we forgive someone, justice will not be served. They’ll get off scot-free. We’ll be doing little more than giving them permission to do wrong again, seeing how easily we let them get away with it this time.
From a human perspective, this makes sense. But our minds need to be renewed to think God’s way. According to God’s Word, wrongdoers will get their just due. But we’re not the ones responsible to mete out the penalty….
Letting the offender off your hook doesn’t mean he’s off God’s hook. Forgiveness releases the accused from your custody and turns him over to God — the righteous Judge — the one and only One who is both able and responsible for meting out justice.
And so what feels like the height of unfairness, what seems to be nothing more than giving our offender the pass, actually becomes for us a step of freedom….
But listen to Joseph’s response to his distraught brothers: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” (Genesis 50:19 NIV).
What wise, humble words! Am I in the place of God? Is it my job to make you pay for what you’ve done? Do I really want the added burden of this after all I’ve been through already? Isn’t it foolish to think that revenge could be as sweet as advertised — sweet enough to make up for the pain of all these years?
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 92-94
While forgiveness is indeed costly, it is not beyond the means of those who have Christ’s life flowing within them. When God tells us to love our enemies, He also gives us the love to go along with the command.
Yes, you can do this… because He can do this….
And so because He has forgiven us — and because of His boundless life which now indwells us — what offense is too great for us to forgive?
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 90-92
When we get hurt, no matter how serious the offense or how deep the wound, God has grace available to help us deal with the offense and forgive the offender. At that point, we have one of two choices: We can acknowledge our need and humbly reach out to Him for His grace to forgive and release the offender. Or we can resist Him, fail to receive His grace, and hold on to the hurt.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 75
Like drinking poison and hoping someone else would die. That’s a powerful word picture for what unforgiveness is like in the human heart. Though it may feel right, though it may seem justified, though it may appear to be the only option available to us, it is destructive and deadly to the one who drinks it. The very weapon we use to inflict pain on our offender becomes a sword turned inward on ourselves, doing far more damage to us — and to those who love us — than to those who have hurt us.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness:Â Your Journey to Freedom, p. 50-51
When we as God’s children realize that His grace is sufficient for every situation, that by the power of His indwelling Spirit we have the ability to respond with grace and forgiveness to those who have sinned against us — at that point we are no longer victims. We are free to rise above whatever may have been done to us, to grow through it, and to become instruments of grace, reconciliation, and redemption in the lives of other hurting people and even in the lives of our offenders.
Yes, we can be free — if we choose to be.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 42
You need to realize that when you sow the love of God, you will reap the love of God. You need to develop faith in this spiritual law — even though you may not harvest it from the field in which you sowed, or as quickly as you would like.
— John Bevere, The Bait of Satan:Â Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense, p. 14-15
If you’ve got someone who seems opposite to you in almost every respect, you’ve got the right person. In a sense, your partner is the repository of your rejected strengths. Forgive your partner and, together, you become whole.
— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 43