When we choose to forgive others, even when they are not broken themselves, God pours out freedom, grace, peace, joy, love — and even forgiveness itself into our hearts. It takes your breath away when you experience it yourself. It takes you to depths with God that you never could have reached except through this mysterious path.
— testimonial quoted in Choosing Forgiveness, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, p. 141
But though that person’s hardness will affect his well-being and his relationships until he faces and deals with his sin, though it may keep him in bondage, no one can force you to be bound as a prisoner in your own heart — not as long as you take the bold step to forgive. That is a choice you can and must make, regardless of where the other person is in their journey.
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 134
Forgiveness does not mean that we will cease to hurt. The wounds are deep, and we may hurt for a very long time. Just because we continue to experience emotional pain does not mean that we have failed to forgive.
Forgiveness does not mean that we will forget…. No, we remember, but in forgiving we no longer use the memory against others.
Forgiveness is not pretending that the offense did not really matter. It did matter, and it does matter, and there is no use pretending otherwise. The offense is real, but when we forgive, the offense no longer controls our behavior.
Forgiveness is not acting as if things are just the same as before the offense. We must face the fact that things will never be the same. By the grace of God they can be a thousand times better, but they will never again be the same.
What then is forgiveness? It is a miracle of grace whereby the offense no longer separates…. Forgiveness means that the power of love that holds us together is greater than the power of the offense that separates us. That is forgiveness. In forgiveness we are releasing our offenders so that they are no longer bound to us. In a very real sense we are freeing them to receive God’s grace. We are also inviting our offenders back into the circle of fellowship.
— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 187-188
Having a good cry can help us to heal. We can feel sad about what is happening or has happened and then move back into the present moment. Breaking down in tears over a seriously painful event is perfectly natural and healthy. Think of your tears as a sign of your compassion and love. Allow yourself to be fully present to the pain. Feel your emotions. Observe your thoughts. Your tears will help to heal your broken heart. Let your vulnerability be your strength. Tears of sorrow cleanse your soul. Crying is a sign of acceptance. You face the pain, you feel it in your body, you observe it in your mind and emotions. Crying doesn’t last long. You catch yourself, realizing it is now time to let go and move on.
— Alexandra Stoddard, Choosing Happiness, p. 83
As long as the only cry heard among us is for vengeance, there can be no reconciliation. If our hearts are so narrow as to see only how others have hurt and offended us, we cannot see how we have offended God and so find no need to seek forgiveness. If we are always calculating in our hearts how much this one or that one has violated our rights, by the very nature of things we will not be able to pray this prayer.
In the affairs of human beings there is a vicious circle of retaliation: you gore my ox, and I’ll gore your ox; you hurt me, and I’ll hurt you in return. Now the giving of forgiveness is so essential because it breaks this law of retribution. We are offended, and, instead of offending in return, we forgive. (Be assured that we are able to do this only because of the supreme act of forgiveness at Golgotha, which once and for all broke the back of the cycle of retaliation.) When we do, when we forgive, it unleashes a flood of forgiving graces from heaven and among human beings.
— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 187
Our distress over money doesn’t come so much from a lack of it as from our belief that it can protect us. And yet, no bank account can be fat enough nor health potion strong enough to protect anyone. The world is a place of fear and danger. You can feel safe, but only in God. As our place in God’s heart dawns on us, we see money as one of the world’s more amusing preoccupations, and we become more generous with the little of it we have.
— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 25
Jesus invites us to pray: “Forgive us our debts.” He teaches us in this way because he knows how very much God loves to forgive. It is the one thing he yearns to do, aches to do, rushes to do. At the very heart of the universe is God’s desire to give and to forgive.
— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 186
First Corinthians 10:13 is certainly a promise — but it isn’t talking about trials. It’s talking about temptation. The promise is that God will always, always give you the power to say no to sin. But when it comes to heartaches, physical problems, and disappointments — things out of your control, difficult circumstances suddenly thrust upon you — you may very well be overwhelmed beyond what you can bear. There is a kind of suffering that rips your world apart and leaves you bewildered and wounded. There are trials that overwhelm.
I drew a deep breath, showing my friend the context of the promise — and her brow furrowed. “But take heart,” I told her. “It’s when we are at the end of our strength . . . that’s when we fall helplessly into the everlasting arms of God. That’s when God floods our hearts with sustaining grace.”
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, January 31 entry
When we think about it for a moment, though, we realize that this prayer is completely consistent with Jesus’ pattern of living, for he occupied himself with the trivialities of humankind. He provided wine for those who were celebrating, food for those who were hungry, rest for those who were weary (John 2:1-12; 6:1-14; Mark 6:31). He went out of his way to find the “little people”: the poor, the sick, the powerless. So it is fully in order that he invites us to pray for daily bread.
In doing so Jesus has transfigured the trivialities of everyday life. Try to imagine what our prayer experience would be like if he had forbidden us to ask for the little things. What if the only things we were allowed to talk about were the weighty matters, the important things, the profound issues? We would be orphaned in the cosmos, cold, and terribly alone. But the opposite is true: he welcomes us with our 1,001 trifles, for they are each important to him.
— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 185
It seems to me that I and most of the people I know have forgotten how to grieve like this — not only for others but for ourselves. We have forgotten how to grieve at all. It no longer comes naturally to us. We have to learn it from self-help books and therapists. Or we have to do without.
All I have to offer you is a list of don’ts. Don’t forbid painful topics. Don’t judge. Don’t preach. When people tell you of their pain, don’t say anything at all. Don’t think, if you can help it, at least at first. Just hear it and, if you can, cry. Cry for them and for yourself, because you, too, have suffered such things, or will. Cry that there is evil in this world, that we are all of us sometimes the victims and often the perpetrators of it. Cry that people, however messed up, and even if they themselves caused the misery in which they find themselves, have to suffer at all…. Remind yourself of these truths about the pain of our world and the sins that occasion it. Others’ sins. Our own sins. Because it is only this grieving, this taking of a knee, that truly comforts us, that connects us to one another and to God.
— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 96