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Blessing of Forgiveness Stephanie Smith

The Blessing of Forgiveness Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network 2442 Michelle Drive Tustin, CA 92780 Copyright © 2021 by Stephanie Smith All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Trilogy Christian Publishing Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, Ca 92780. Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please Trilogy Christian Publishing. Manufactured in the United States of America Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Catag-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-63769-530-2 ISBN 978-1-63769-531-9 (ebook)

Forgiveness

Noun:

The action or process of forgiving or being forgiven. (Webster’s Dictionary)

God’s forgiveness: clearing the guilty by sacrificing Your only begotten Son, so any who call on the name of Jesus have their record wiped clean and will know the love of the Father for all eternity, inseparably.

Forgiveness is God-ordained, it is the right choice always, and it is how we are to live our life.

In this book, I will talk about:

The Self-Care Power of Forgiveness

The Benefits of Forgiveness Over Anger

How to Overcome the Power of Anger

Making Forgiveness a Second Instinct

Knowing When You Need to Ask Forgiveness

How to Apologize

The Difference Between Being Weak and Being Meek

Introduction

Growing up, I was a kid who angered easily. My examples in my home were of choosing anger, rage, and fights over comion, mercy, and understanding. We didn’t talk things out or seek counsel from God. We just got angry. If a game wasn’t played my way or I had the last pick of a popsicle flavor, I would be sure to cast my feelings on everyone I encountered.

But being angry and holding grudges wasn’t my only example, and it didn’t show itself to me in the confines of my family only. Other kids, other adults, movies, tv, and music, everywhere you looked, the message of begrudging someone who hurt or wronged you spread.

I was raised in a Christian home. I was taught the Bible and the story of Jesus. But the biggest part of what Jesus did for us when he died for our sins, the huge forgiveness Jesus gave to everyone on the planet, was just a footnote to me. That is until recently, when the hurt and wrongdoings my family and I have gone through caused me to take a deeper look at the concept of forgiving.

I have noticed the huge impact two little words can have when you’ve been hurt, “I’m sorry.” I’ve seen the long-term effects of choosing anger over mercy, of being like the world instead of Christ-like, and decided I didn’t want any part of it.

Sadly, our attention usually isn’t given, nor our minds changed without major interference. That’s why I want to write this book. I feel God wants me to spread the word of forgiveness. I wouldn’t wish to see anybody choose the road of anger that leads to bitterness, loneliness, and so much more. I want to do my part

in helping my fellow human help their fellow human. And help someone come to the freedom of living in forgiveness.

Chapter One

Forgiveness is the ultimate form of self-care.

Today, you’ll see a buzzword over and over again: self-care. People are stressed, depressed, and tired for reasons they can’t seem to pinpoint. Someone somewhere suggested this was due to not spending enough time taking care of yourself. This sparked thousands of articles that brought the marketing companies into play, and now everywhere you look, it seems a product has been labeled as a self-care indulgence.

I don’t mean to diminish the effectiveness of a hot bath or the importance of getting enough sleep. So stop right here and listen. If you enjoy taking a bath or journaling feelings, keep doing those activities. I love to journal my feelings.

I do believe in self-care, but I also acknowledge there are businesses and markets in the world that comb for buzzwords like self-care so they can boost sales on products. I also acknowledge there is a devil who wants only to steal, kill, and destroy. But with all this focus on the material, I feel the original intent was lost in translation.

A qualm I have with the term self-care is the selfishness it can produce. There are people in this world who just want to take from others, drain them, and see that they get every drop. But there are also those selfless individuals who give too much of themselves to others and wind up neglecting their own health. The scales are way unequal here. What we’re looking for is a balance; you don’t want too much on either side.

To be a healthy, balanced individual, you need to focus on taking care of your body, mind, and spirit. Those lavender diffs are pretty, but they don’t do enough for the mind, in my opinion, and they sure don’t help the spirit.

A largely overlooked area is how we treat others. The treatment of others and the concept of self-care are never in the same sentence. Our family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and even the stranger we in the grocery line, how we treat them is not only crucial to our mental health but theirs also. The Bible tells us, “To love one another as we love ourselves” (Mark 12:31, ESV). This means when we’re making decisions that involve others, we should think of how it will affect them. The words we choose, whether we smile or not, and even our thoughts should all incorporate our fellow humans as if they were us. What I’m really saying is, put yourself in their shoes before you put on your own.

We’ve grown up with that proverb, but how many of us ever put it into practice? Life is different now. Things were easier before, towns were smaller, and people had a stronger sense of community. Perhaps that is exactly why we should strive to implement it now more than ever. If the person who hurt you, cut you off in traffic, or just gets on your very last nerve took time to consider how their actions would affect you, could you see yourself feeling more cared for? Could you see your levels of fatigue and unhappiness lowering? To think just one small gesture made your day.

But this isn’t the message being sent around by the masses, and it isn’t the example. Today’s people don’t have time to think about some nobody stranger they’ll never see again. They aren’t here to be anyone’s coddler. They don’t even have time for their own, their flesh and blood.

But then again, no one ever really considered their feelings. Why should they take the time to care for another when no one cares for them? And so, the

bitterness and the anger grow, the energy levels drop, and you find yourself in the candle aisle of Target.

Grudges are a lot like germs in that they’re everywhere you look, yet you can’t see them, and they’re darn hard to get off. Think of a grudge as a seed. When someone comes along and trips your emotions, causing them to land flat on their face, your mind hands you the packet of a grudge seed. It’s up to you to plant it in your heart or not. To give it home there or not. To water it every time you think of it and refuse to forgive.

The thing is, begrudging is so easy, and it feels so good, right? Wrong. Look closer and pay attention to how you feel when you choose anger and unforgiveness. The anger puts a damper on the rest of your day. It has the final say on how you’ll be the rest of the day. Every time you see that person, you have to drudge up the feelings you first felt when the emotion tripped you. How much energy is that costing you? What kind of toll is that taking on your body or life?

Choosing to begrudge seems like the easier and better option, but only because it is the most popular. The world turned its back on being decent and caring for others when it bought into the lie no one ever did the same for them. This is where the enemy comes in. He lies to us so he can steal our comion. If he gets that, it will kill our sense of responsibility to our neighbor. And if that happens, he will destroy our security of knowing we are forgiven and loved eternally.

The truth is, one man named Jesus came down from heaven, literal paradise heaven because he cared about you so much. He chose to suffer and die for every wrong thing you, the world, and all its inhabitants had ever done. The biggest kicker is He never did a thing wrong himself. Jesus had a perfect record with God and people. He never sinned and yet died for every sin committed.

This world is fallen, and the people in it are in a constant battle of good versus evil, darkness versus light, some in ways they never notice, and a part of that battle is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very hard thing to act on, but the freedom it brings will be worth it. I promise you.

Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea and think I’m advising you to ignore your feelings because acknowledging them and letting yourself feel the emotions is crucial to forgiving. If you have these strong emotions swirling inside of you and you never let them out, your forgiveness will, feelings-wise, be null. You forgive them in your head (a mental decision), but your heart will continue to carry the burden of unforgiveness.

When you’re in the heat of a moment, and you’ve just been tresed on emotionally, some of the first things you will feel are anger, embarrassment, vulnerability, or sadness. So, let’s say you’re in a public setting, and you feel the need to put a cap on those feelings until you get home, where you can shout at the walls about it. Once home and the shouting has ended, and you’ve gotten everything off your chest, you feel drained and sad. You’ve been weighed down instead of experiencing a release. Why is that? I believe it is because you have only focused on the negative. You have needs. You need to think and feel and express, but you also need to be nurtured, ed, and reminded of bright sides. So, while I advise you to let the emotional episode out in some healthy way, I also advise you to switch gears to positivity ASAP.

You need to say to yourself, “yes that was hurtful and affected me but I’m not going to let it be a lasting effect.” Why should you do this? Because it is how you win, it is how you get a resolution.

If you are familiar with the theology of Jesus being the second Adam, you don’t need this explanation. For those of you who do not know, Jesus lived his life on

earth they way God intended for Adam. Adam fell short, but Jesus always reached God’s standard. Because of this, we are to model our lives on Jesus’.

Living like Jesus will cause some discomfort at times, but we will be living for our good. How? Because we will be living how God made us to live. God’s plans are always good (Jeremiah 29:11).

Start praying and ask Jesus to help you see every person and encounter from His eyes. Place yourself in their position and ask questions. Did they mean it that way? Were they having a bad day? Is it worth staying mad and losing a relationship over? What would Jesus do? (Yes, I went there.) Because Jesus is the ultimate example for living life.

Once you’ve stepped outside of thinking in red anger and stepped into understanding and comion, you’ll feel your mood change. When you’re on a thought path of understanding, pray to God to help you forgive that person.

“Lord, what this person said was very hurtful to me. I don’t know if they realized that’s what they were doing, but I don’t want to form a grudge against them. I want to let the anger go. Please help me to forgive them for what they did.”

Implementing forgiveness will take time, especially if you land more on the fighter side of the spectrum, but just because something takes time and effort doesn’t mean you should never try. And it certainly doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Get personal and honest with God in your prayers, He can take it, and Jesus will take your pain.

To declare failure before trying is the number one killer of dreams and

happiness. Let yourself try and fail, but get yourself back up every time you stumble and keep working at it. You’ll find forgiving becomes much easier and natural when you practice it. (, a habit is learned.)

When Satan fell from heaven, many things occurred, one of which was unforgiveness. Satan, to this day, holds a grudge against God. Satan thinks God is wrong in His ways and tries every second to one-up Him.

People with a grudge try to suck others into their unforgiveness. They need others in their camp to appease the guilt and further their cause. Many things happened in Eden on the day of the first sin, one of which was Satan opening mankind to unforgiveness. I am not saying that Adam and Eve, the first male and female, were angry at God or held a grudge toward Him, but I am saying their descendants do. If you are one to work by the principle of extremes, consider this: The most extreme examples of forgiving and unforgiving are in Jesus and the devil.

The devil lies, constantly, and will always. He lied to Adam and Eve and continues to lie to every person on earth today. When the devil lied in the Garden, he made eating the fruit seem like the better option, like the right choice. He lied to cover the truth of what would happen once that fruit was eaten.

To sum it up, if unforgiveness feels like the right choice, the devil is lying to you, and you are falling for it. The devil knows what’s bad for you, and he wants to feed you the bad. He steals the good and lies about the bad. In doing so, he can destroy you.

Lies about forgiveness: You can’t do it. It’s too hard. It won’t feel good. They’ll never do the same for you.

Jesus, on the other hand, let Himself be brutally beaten, publicly humiliated, and killed in the most painful and gruesome way imaginable so that we could be forgiven. As Creator of the universe, Jesus had every right to hold mankind to their sins for all eternity; we wronged Him and not the other way around. He owes us nothing, yet freely gave Himself for our sakes.

Your choice, be like Jesus or be like the devil.

So, forgive that stranger in traffic, forgive your boss, and especially forgive those closest to you. Because grudges will never give you freedom. But forgiveness will.

Chapter Two

But what if I don’t want to let go of my anger?

Psalm 39 is David’s open letter to God to help him see past his anger. The age is short but clear. David wants to honor God with how he speaks, so David prays for God to show him the frequent insignificance of the things that anger him.

As people who have fallen and live in a fallen world, our natures, our natural thoughts and actions, don’t lean towards grace and forgiveness. Sure we want it for ourselves when we’ve done something wrong, but without Jesus in our hearts, selfishness is our natural inclination. People are angry. People are selfish. People are entitled. Jesus is joyful. Jesus is selfless. Jesus has the ultimate title and yet humbled Himself for us. If we have Him in our hearts, His ways will take over, and they will remove our old ways.

What I’m saying here is feeling anger is in our natural nature so don’t beat yourself up or others when anger shows its gritting teeth. But just because it was our natural state doesn’t make it a part of our born-again identities. There is good anger, and anger can be very healthy. If someone attacks your faith and you feel anger to stand up and defend it, this is a good thing. If someone is taking advantage of or wronging somebody, it is good to feel anger and stop the injustice. So, anger is a good thing when viewed as a motivator. But that’s not to say anger is all good and all meant to motivate positively. When given a choice between anger and forgiveness, which of the two is more beneficial? Anger has a lot of negative side effects.

Anger means red. It means you feel red all over, and you see red everywhere. Your body feels heightened, alive, you’re flooded with adrenaline, and you feel tremendous power! But pay closer attention. Your heart is thumping, and you are likely shaking. Is this really what power feels like? Then the high starts to fade. You feel drained, empty, as though your efforts produced no fruit. Truthfully they didn’t. All you got out of it was a quick rush. Your feelings aren’t any better because you didn’t pay them attention. You neglected them in hopes of false glory. I am convinced the main reason people choose to be angry rather than forgive in a situation has to do with the initial feelings. The initial feelings of anger are power and strength and the often delusional assurance you are right and you will prove yourself right.

We want to feel empowered. We want glory and attention. If someone hurts our feelings, we should hurt theirs more! But the initial feelings of forgiveness don’t read that way. Forgiving is showing vulnerability which can feel like weakness. It’s handing over your thoughts and heart to this person who just wronged or hurt you and risking they might do it again. Who would want to do such a thing?

Anger is easier than forgiveness, and because of that, people choose to be angry. We all suffer from a degree of laziness in different facets of life, sometimes in chores or work, and sometimes in our emotions. If we don’t take the time to give proper care and attention to these things, we find ourselves lacking or being underdeveloped in them.

Forgiveness takes work. It takes effort and determination to say, no more grudges, I’m going to have grace and mercy on my fellow man. It is my opinion that most people aren’t willing to put in that work. But you’ll find the benefits of forgiveness outweigh staying angry.

Forgiveness gives a sense of peace. It may not always be instant or even full peace, but it will bring peace. Forgiveness will, over time, help wipe the memory of wrongs from your mind and your heart. It will give you a sense of lightness

and even lower your blood pressure! Forgiveness will give you the relief you’re looking for! If you just reach for that rational side of your mind when in the throes of anger, you’ll find it to be like a life preserver. You will experience instant relief once your fingers grab hold of it. Forgiveness will bring you back from an abyss of uncertainty. It is a center in the abyss. It is a grounding. It keeps you from being pulled under in the current of aggravation.

If you find forgiving hard, try this thought exercise:

I can’t believe they just said/did that. They know how I feel about it. But wait, do they? Does this have grounds enough to be a fight? Is this worth my emotional attention? Did they mean it like that? I know my words are misinterpreted at times. Perhaps they were having a bad day.

If you practice changing your thoughts to ones that lean toward comion and mercy, understanding and relation, you will find it harder to get angered.

Now what if this exercise doesn’t apply because it wasn’t someone I know. It was just some stranger on the street? To that I say, it applies just as well. You won’t think, don’t they know my opinions and emotions better? But you will definitely be able to rationalize they are a person with bad days and misinterpreted intentions.

Okay, but what happens when it’s more than a small comment or someone cutting you in line? What happens when someone just goes too far? When someone goes too far, when they’ve hurt or wronged you in a huge, seemingly unforgivable way, you need stronger forgiveness. You need grace. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen to you often, and I’d like to say it never will, but that isn’t reasonable. What I can say is if your heart is truly trying to turn towards forgiveness then, with frequent prayer and a lot of patience, you will be able to

forgive them.

I advise you never to approach a situation wrong with the mindset of, “I’ll never forgive them.” You’re setting yourself up to fail. As a matter of fact, you’re giving yourself a cop-out. You’re making the hurt easier by saying you won’t work on resolving it. You’ll just keep holding it inside. You’re choosing the path of the majority to be lazy and bitter rather than work towards forgiveness and freedom. But I can promise you if you choose that way you will never feel better about it. You will never find peace.

I’m no theologian, but it doesn’t take a degree to see Satan is the most bitter creature in existence. Satan had a good life, he led the choir of Heaven, the music for God, but one thought changed it all. Do you know why Satan is the way he is? Because he hates God. Satan thought God was wrong in punishing him. Satan thought he had the right to be above God. Satan thinks God is wrong, and he is right.

Now, Satan was never given the gift of Jesus to reconcile him with God (more proof of how much God loves you), but it is undeniable that he harbors anger, pure wrath towards God.

Of course, God and Satan are the most extreme examples, but forgiveness is a very extreme thing for us. And there are many examples of people who were wronged out of pure evil. Think of the Holocaust. With extreme treses and iniquity comes forgiveness that is extremely hard to give; most people cannot forgive in these cases. But there are those out there who have forgiven someone or something that was nothing but pure evil. I don’t know of anyone who can forgive, who can display such goodness without knowing Christ.

There are levels to forgiveness just as there are levels of wrongs committed. You

won’t have the ability to forgive someone of a complete life-altering wrong overnight. But you will never come to the place of extreme forgiveness if you do not start to forgive. So, when someone costs you a great promotion, when someone cheats on you, when someone repeatedly makes a spectacle out of your insecurities, pray to Jesus and ask Him to help you forgive them.

Jesus is the ultimate example in life. He is the blueprint of perfection in any situation. When He was on earth, He experienced life just the same as we do. There wasn’t a single emotional experience missing from His life, which includes the choice between forgiveness or begrudging. If anyone had a reason to hate and begrudge someone, it was Jesus. He was persecuted and killed in the most brutal way possible, all for helping people. All for people undeserving. But that’s the great thing about the kingdom of Heaven: it works the complete, onehundred and eighty degrees opposite to the world. One of Jesus’ last words was a plea to God that He would forgive the people who were crucifying Him. The Son of God who hung dying on a cross, having been put there by a mob of sinners of which He came to save, forgave them. He forgave the people He had every right to hate. Jesus forgave them in His pain, His shame, and His fear because it was the will of the Father.

Praise the Lord the Father’s way is nothing like the world’s! Praise the Lord that our Lord Jesus was obedient unto death! Because if Jesus had chosen the world’s way, Satan’s way of doing things, we would remain separate from God today.

So, when someone has tipped over your milk bucket, and you think to yourself, I have every right to not forgive them, Jesus was in the same position and yet forgave. He will help you.

Chapter Three

Walk the walk

This chapter is dedicated to my friend, Olivia. She is a huge reason this book was even written. Thank you for being Christ-like and loving me.

What the Lord taught me through Olivia is to practice what you preach. Olivia and I became friends around junior high. If I were not the difficult person I can be, we would have been friends earlier. Long story short, I wasn’t ready for a “little sister” to befriend. Our friendship grew, and by our teen years, we were close, texting all day every day, shopping and movies, and even when we faced big decisions, like getting our ears pierced, we wanted each other to be there. We grew closer in our friendship the older we got. Bless her. She endured me as a teenager! But as commonly happens in the preteen/teen years, we grew apart. Only Olivia did not know it. The root of issues in our friendship came from me.

Olivia was the over-achieving type. She danced, acted, and was not only good at but liked math. I was the super shy and anxious type and believed Olivia had been born with the guts to do things I never could. I developed an inferiority complex toward my amazing friend.

There are two lessons here: One, be careful with the words you use, and two, don’t conform to cancel culture and close off a friend. Both of us went through the typical emotional swings of teenhood. I was going through something, and neither of us realized the severity. As a result, Olivia said something that hurt me.

Olivia went through a bit of a phase where she wasn’t the same, and I went through stuff of my own. Something hit between these two situations that caused me to ghost her. To ghost is to disappear by cutting all communication with no warning; to leave someone wondering if you fell off the face of the earth; to run away from problems, to be a coward. I can it now that I overreacted and have now completely forgiven Olivia. She was kind enough to forgive me and let me back into her life.

What happened between us is a perfect example of how the devil operates. I let my mind be filled with pride and I convinced myself Olivia wasn’t allowed to hurt me or ever reconcile with me. What caused me to ghost this sweet girl was insignificant compared to the years of love and laughter we had. That’s what pride does to relationships. It blinds you from reason and perspectives. Pride gets you to count one negative as worth more than one million positives. Pride breaks up friendships. Instead of talking to Olivia and letting her know that what she said hurt (like Jesus says in Matthew 18:15), I let the devil get a foothold, and it cost me a good friend. We all know how hard a friend, let alone a good one you can trust, is to come by. What happened between us is an example of how all the devil does is “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10).

I don’t want to excuse my behavior or elicit sympathy from the next statement, but it’s important background info for the whole story. I have experienced abandonment a few times. I’ve had friends disappear, a teacher, and close family. Now, you would think someone who has been ghosted before would be conscious of doing it to someone else. You would think that person would have a pretty hard time just letting someone go without notice. In my case, you would be right. I had such torment in my spirit when I left Olivia. I kept saying to myself, you know what this feels like, therefore you know how she feels. You’re wrong for doing this, Stephanie. I knew I was wrong, but I didn’t want to care. I wanted to run from my problem and just ditch out because everyone else did it, and it seemed easier.

The thing I didn’t realize when I made this rash decision to cut my friend out of my life was it would actually hurt me more. So, every time I thought about Olivia, I forced myself to recount what she did and say she was in the wrong, not me. What I learned about God from this experience is that His timing is perfect, He is good to convict you, and obedience to Him will always work out for your good in the end.

Olivia is a rare friend in that she has a relationship with Jesus Christ, she kept me able to myself, and she loved me. I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to find a friend in this world, nor how hard it is to find a good friend. I had a really good friend in Olivia, and I let the enemy and my flesh nature manipulate me into forfeiting that.

From the beginning, my decision did not sit right with me. I knew what I was doing was the wrong thing to do. I had a lot of guilt, and no matter how hard I tried not to think of her, Olivia would not vacate my thoughts. Of course, I knew this was the Holy Ghost convicting me to forgive and stay friends with Olivia. Yet, I still resisted.

Because of what I was going through in my life, I began to seek out Jesus for real. A few years later, after a lot of soul searching, Olivia was frequenting my thoughts again. People in my life started talking about her, people who didn’t ordinarily talk about her. I was seeing pictures of her. But what really hit me was learning she was pregnant. The thought of missing out on my friend of so many years becoming a mom broke my pride. When I first-hand encountered the love and the forgiveness that Jesus gave me, the Holy Spirit was so good to bring Olivia front and center in my mind. I wanted to forget her, but God wouldn’t let me. I wanted to ask forgiveness for what I did from Jesus but not Olivia. I was prideful and embarrassed over the situation, so crawling back to Olivia and itting all the hurt from both sides was never going to happen. Or so I thought.

For a few months, my spirit was frequented with forgiving Olivia. I worked it out in my heart and realized how wrong I had been in what I did. I thought I didn’t need to tell her how she hurt me, but according to Jesus in Luke 17:3, it was my duty to tell her. I wanted to just settle it with Jesus but Jesus wanted me to settle it with Olivia, face on.

Not too long before the pictures and questions of Olivia started popping up, I had told God that if Olivia were ever in my life again, I would apologize. I would be kind to her and humble myself, and I would not ignore her. Now, in my mind, this was never going to happen, or it would be in a grocery store or somehow on social media, and it would be quick because the sight of me would probably anger Olivia. Seeing Olivia again seemed like a far into the future prospect, but I was at least willing.

Do you know how God’s timing is never our timing?

After this agreement, the Lord kept asking me how I would feel if I kept the lack of communication going? If I just kept waiting around for fate to happen? How would I feel if Olivia’s daughter grew up knowing the hurt I had caused her mother? Would I be able to ask forgiveness then? Just the reality of not knowing the future, not knowing where I would be or where Olivia would be in another few years, was enough for me to tell the Lord I would reach out to her. And thank the Lord I did!

So, the time came for me to act, and I was so scared! I thought, no way she will forgive me. No way she will even respond. Jesus, this scares me. But I did it. I trusted in Jesus and, at His prompting, sent Olivia a brief letter of apology. The days seemed to be years as I waited for a response. Now, I am not a very patient person, and jumping to conclusions is a skill of mine, so I impatiently jumped to the conclusion that Olivia was not going to answer me. To anyone stepping out to reconcile an estranged relationship: Give it time!

One day, not long after I reached out, Olivia was in my inbox. I was scared to read her reply. But I went to the Lord, and He assured me it would be alright. Here’s a beautiful example of Olivia’s character: I wrote her a letter detailing where I was in life and why I had done to her what I had done to her. I asked her to forgive me, and she did. My friend, who was very pregnant, had a busy life of her own, and who had gone through some heartbreak caused by the person asking her forgiveness, forgave me. She didn’t make it awkward, didn’t make me feel anything but loved and forgiven, and I don’t know if there’s anyone else I know who could be so truly Christian as Olivia was to me.

God has healed our friendship, and I’m here telling you about it because I want you to know how powerful it is to choose to forgive. Dear reader, I want you to know how sweet this woman is; she forgave me. I’ll keep the details between us, but I will tell you Olivia was so understanding and so much like Christ in forgiving me. We are now reconciled and can easily call each other “friend,” all because we both chose forgiveness.

Is there anyone in your life you are missing out on because of the decision to withhold forgiveness? Is there a friend or family member out there that deserves another chance? Speaking from experience, I know how hard this is to do. I just wrote a chapter about it! I can also tell you from experience it is so totally worth it to forgive

Olivia was, again, a Christ-like example, and I pray you can experience the same if you need relationship restoration. But not everyone will be like Olivia. If you extended that olive branch and it was cast into the fire by the other person, I am sorry. But know that Jesus is just as pleased with you whether the person forgives you or not. When you choose forgiveness, Jesus rejoices over you because you are true to His words and His ways. He is pleased with you because you are acting like Him. And He will give you peace even if the other person did not accept your humility. You will be released from the burden of begrudgement, you child of God.

Chapter Four

I would like to offer some exercises in forgiveness: Nothing that will require special equipment, just your mind and maybe a notebook and pen. These are some things that may help you in working through your emotions. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Write out the exchange that happened, like it is a play. List the physical actions and facial expressions, as well as the dialogue. Once you’ve done this, read or act it out. What sticks out to you most about the encounter? What words really seem to strike you most? Circle those words.

Now take these circled words; think back in your mind to a time someone may have said something similar, or maybe even exactly the same. Often when the thing bothering us seems trivial and childish, it is because it reminds us of something that happened when we were kids that we never got over. It will take some time and several hours in prayer, but you can process and move on from such traumas. Whether or not the words said, or actions done have a root in childhood or not will influence the time needed to heal. Listen to me, don’t give up on replacing the lies and negativity with the truth. You may battle it the rest of your life, but it is worth fighting, and God wants you to realize hurtful words don’t have to have power over you. We can’t control the words or actions people employ against us, but we can control how they affect us. And when the words said are particularly harsh and therefore harder to get over, aids are welcome.

An example:

Tara stood in front of me with her arms crossed tight, her brow was furrowed, and her eyes were seething. Tara: “If you knew how to practice a little more selfcontrol maybe you wouldn’t find yourself in this situation. You are so immature.” My heart sank. I tried my best to focus on the anger to avoid crying in front of her. How could she call me immature? Has she taken a look at her

own choices lately?

Let’s say the word that sticks out to you most is immature. It bothers you because no one likes to be told anyone sees them as being immature. It implies incompetence and naivety; they think you aren’t ready for your grown-up pants. But it’s different here. It isn’t just some throwaway insult to you. Maybe it’s because you’ve modeled yourself after Tara because to you, she seems to have it all together. That would mean her opinion of you is taken seriously. To think someone you respect so much sees you as less than makes for a low blow to your esteem.

But sources of unforgiveness and anger aren’t always so easily spotted. Sometimes, if you look deeper, you will find the small thing that bothers you comes from a big place. If you had an experience from childhood that involved a parent or some other above you in rank where they called you immature, you would find Tara isn’t the one you’re truly mad at. And the higher presence didn’t even necessarily call you immature. Perhaps they always second-guessed you or belittled your work. These would send similar messages to your mind, crossing wires and making connections that Tara is really the person from your past, you haven’t grown, etc.

If you’ve wandered down the rabbit hole and ed these childhood pains, the next step is to work through them. The mere idea of this is enough to send most running. We don’t want to face those buried memories. After all, we buried them for a reason! But running away from something will always be a means of telling your mind something is unsafe, and the more you run, the more dangerous it seems. To be free of the fear, facing it is the only way.

Alright, you’ve decided to try. Give yourself a huge round of applause because you’ve already gotten over the hardest part. Not to say the rest will be easy, but you got the ball rolling. The tricky thing with forgiving something from the past is it already happened. You can’t just go back in time. You can’t physically, but

you can emotionally. You also won’t be able to involve the other person in this exercise directly.

This one will resemble those connect the dots work pages we all grew up doing in that the image or source of pain may not be visible at first. You’re going to start by meditating on that word or feeling that first stuck out. From there, you work backward and say that makes me feel like x because of y, and y is connected to z. You’ll carry on connecting memories with feelings until you find your source, and don’t stress if it takes you hours or even days to work through.

It’s all part of the process. In fact, the longer you spend, the better.

The next exercise will test your inner actor: Reenactment.

This one shares a lot in common with the first exercise but is more suited for those who dislike writing and think better aloud. Go in your room, or car, or closet, whatever works best for your sense of privacy. You may want to ensure you have the whole space alone; things could get loud. I also strongly recommend a mirror.

Now, look into your mirror and pretend the person is speaking to you. They’re using all the words they did. Speak back to them. Say all the things you wish you had in a real conversation. Be brutal, unforgiving even. I encourage you to let yourself get worked up. Doing so will be cathartic and release those heavy emotions. When you’re done, don’t be surprised to burst into tears if you haven’t already. Let the tears flow for as long as they come. Your body needs this and your spirit too. After being so honest to the person, even though they didn’t hear it, forgiving them will be easier as you’ve released the anger you held towards them.

The third exercise requires Scripture comparison. The name is descriptive enough. In this exercise, you will consult your Bible for a situation similar to yours. This will help you to ground yourself and have a specific verse to pray on.

I’ll give some examples:

Matthew 18:21–35 is home to a parable of Jesus’. The gist is a servant begs forgiveness, and more time of his master to pay off his debt, the master has mercy. When the servant leaves, he finds someone who owes him money and demands it without a trace of the mercy he received. Later the master is made aware of his behavior and throws him in jail.

In the modern day, we may have a situation where someone owes us some money, or maybe it’s something smaller, like a favor. If this person seems to be taking advantage of you and your good graces, it isn’t grounds to attack them the second you encounter them. We should speak with them and listen with mercy. Ask them if they have forgotten, perhaps?

If they have forgotten or perhaps had setbacks, be understanding. If they are caught in the headlights and thought perhaps you might forget all about it, you should still have mercy. Let them know you understand x and hope y improves, but you should also remind them you expect payment in whatever form you agreed on. If the person is clearly unable to pay you back, forgive them the debt, whatever it may be.

This verse can also be applied to a reverse situation in which you are the one in debt to someone. If they have mercy and show forgiveness to you, what right would you have to do anything less? “And whenever you stand praying, forgive,

if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your treses” (Mark 11:25, ESV). This verse speaks about combining prayer and forgiveness. It tells us that the two go hand in hand and that we should always include forgiving someone in prayer when they’ve hurt us.

When you sit down to have your quiet time with God, talking about the person who scorned you probably isn’t at the top of your priority list. In fact, if they enter your thoughts, you may feel resentment towards them as if they’re intruding upon your personal time with God. I will tell you these intrusive thoughts are your spirit seeking a remedy, seeking relief from the burden of anger. Your spirit knows that the Father is the One who can free you from this problem, and His Spirit wants you to bring it to His feet.

So, when you sit down to have your prayer time, if there is anyone or more than one whom you’re angry at, bring them to God in prayer. Say, “God, (name here) did or said (offense here) to me. When they did/said this to me my heart sank, it was unprepared for such an attack. It angers me greatly they did/said this to me Lord.” Make it personal by adding your feelings and every detail that sticks out to you and then release these feelings to God, say out loud that you release them. And declare in faith that God has freed you, and your heart will be lifted.

“And if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:4, ESV). This verse is quoted heavily among Christians. The reason, my guess anyway, is due to how applicable it is in life. Jesus tells us if someone has sinned against us seven times in one day and asks forgiveness, we are obligated to give it to them. Think about that: seven times in a day from just one individual! When you think about it, the ones closest to us are quite capable of not only reaching that number but going beyond it. Your spouse, child, friend, or parent all have this innate ability to push your buttons!

Of course, most often, they aren’t consciously trying to anger you. They may not even be aware you have been offended. Those times can be easier to forgive, especially when paired with a relatively small offense. But what about the other times? What about when someone close to you actively seeks to offend you? When they are trying to get a rise out of you? Do you still have to forgive them? Yes. But what if they don’t even ask your forgiveness? Surely there is a loophole that allows you to withhold forgiveness? No. Jesus said to forgive, and so you forgive.

Colossians 3:13 tells us to bear together and forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven us. This one I’d like to split into two sections: first up, the bearing together.

We’ve all heard the phrase bear with me, usually reserved for the harebrained ideas of our friends, but in this instance, God is telling us to stick it out with each other through the offenses. When you meet someone new or are acquainted with someone you aren’t a fan of, it can be easy to write them off at the first sign of something that offends you. But God does not want us to cop out so easily. When we are offended by someone we are particularly close to, it’s not as easy to ditch them. When someone, be they a close relationship or not, angers you, remind yourself of why or how you got into a relationship with them. Doing so will spark the love, care, and other good feelings that pulled you two together. Maybe it’s work-related, and you are obligated to be around this person, or maybe it’s your spouse or another familial person. Whoever it is, weigh the pros and cons in your mind. The pros and cons of staying angry versus bearing with them.

The second part of Colossians 3:13 reminds us we were forgiven by God, and because we were given this gift and we were created in His image, we are to exercise the same grace to our neighbors. Again, come to God in prayer and have your pros and cons ready, and list them to Him. If you struggle to find a pro or prefer less positive wording, call it an obligation list instead of a wishlist. Ask God to make those pros or obligations shine out to you, and He will. He will

make them more bearable to you. Ephesians 4:32 (ESV) says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Let’s be blunt for a moment. Sometimes you are being a baby. Sometimes you are looking for someone to be mad at. You want a conflict. Why? Perhaps it is for attention, or you’re just bored, but there are those times when we get angry over nothing. I’m not faulting you for it. I do it myself! We all do because we are human, and we want our way and everything to fall in line for us. So, when that doesn’t happen, and we are either not emotionally mature enough to deal with it or have a lot of it happening lately, we throw fits.

The good news is God knows we do this, and He loves us anyway. He doesn’t scorn us for being babies. He is understanding and loving always. That is why He gave us this verse to remind us we’re supposed to love each other just like He loves us. God wants us to be tenderhearted and kind to our neighbors, especially when we don’t want to. It is a healthy state for us to be in and good to practice frequently. When you catch yourself getting riled up at nothing, think of Ephesians 4:32 and use it to get yourself back in line with the ways of God.

1 Peter 4:8 (ESV), “Above all keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” This verse works best for the people in your life you are closest to, your spouse, kids, parents, and siblings, whoever it may be. It’s no secret or rarity that the ones we love are often the ones we get most angry at.

This verse tells us to love earnestly. Earnestly means to do something with sincerity and intense conviction. It’s telling us to put effort into our love, understand love is serious business, and know love won’t always come easy. Conviction means a firmly held belief or opinion. This verse wants us to understand loving someone is a belief that must be cared for with intention. Love is not a fleeting thing. Not real love. No matter how angry you get at that loved one, love is a serious commitment and not something to be traded over in anger at the first obstruction.

Psalm 78:38–39 (ESV), “He restrained His anger often and did not stir up all His wrath. He ed that they were but flesh, a wind that es and comes not again.” This verse is speaking of the mercy God had on the people of Israel. Very often, the Israelites would sin and forget how powerful God is and how they were to worship and respect Him. But God took mercy and ed they were fallen creatures and had to fight their nature. God could have struck them all if He wanted to. He could have ruined their lives or even ended them, but because He is a loving and merciful God, He didn’t.

We do not have the same power of wrath as God, but we are capable of inflicting life-damaging trauma, not just physically but spiritually. If we don’t restrain our anger as God did, we can bring our neighbors to their knees in one sentence. Powerful, right? That’s what words are: power. Think about it: God created the universe through speech. It is not such a stretch to point out our ability to create or destroy in the same way. We can’t produce a moon by saying, let there be a moon, but we can obliterate a great relationship, break spirits, and cause irreparable damage. “The power of life and death are in the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21, ESV). Watch how you wield such a powerful tool.

An exercise I would like to introduce involves free association. You will need pieces of paper, a pen, and something to hold the pieces. You’re going to write down every feeling you feel when thinking of this person. Whatever pops into your head, unfiltered, write it down. Next, you will draw them out at random and talk through this thought with yourself. For example, say the strip I pull out reads small. Ok, why did I write this down? Because they make me feel small when they do this offense. It makes me feel unimportant and unseen, like I’m a tiny ant running from their boot. That’s a valid feeling, and now you must process it. Get into their head. Why did they do this? Is it intentional or unconscious? Have you ever done the same? What was your motivation? Ask yourself, are you really any smaller? Of course you aren’t! Do their words control how you feel about yourself? If they do, I invite you to replace the words of a human with the words of God.

God says we are loved, precious, a treasure! (Isaiah 43:4) Replace the lies with the truth. I want you to free-associate the opposite of the word on the strip. For example, cross out small and write big. Do this with all your strips until you’re out of them. This exercise is something my counselor had me do. What it does is replace lies with the truth. It strips the lie of its power over you because the truth will always set you free (John 8:32).

Something most people don’t realize is just how powerful forgiveness is. Allow me to put it in perspective: The God of the universe looked at His creation that had fallen and sinned, and He knew right away He wanted to forgive them. Because of the law, Jesus had to come to earth and die for our sin so we could be forgiven. God’s forgiveness was costly, and Jesus paid that price for us. Now, God could have gotten angry at us and kept forgiveness from us. We had been given one rule to live in paradise, and we broke it. But because He loves us, He made a way to extend that forgiveness. We’ve learned three things about the nature of forgiveness: it is godly, it used to cost a fortune, but thanks to Jesus, it is free, and it wasn’t withheld.

The Bible says we were created to look like God (see Gen. 1:27), and we are also to act like God. By giving forgiveness, we are reflecting our Creator. Forgiveness is a powerful tool given to us by God. It allows us to do something God does. And, because He gave it to us underserved and unsparingly, we have no right to act as judge and withhold it from our neighbor. “But they did this!” or, “You didn’t hear how they said it.” No, I didn’t, but God did, and He’s watching how you respond too. He knows how hard it is for the flesh to let things go, especially when it comes to matters of pride and humiliation. He won’t hold it to you for thinking a less than Christian thought as long as you ask forgiveness later. He wants you to reflect Him to your antagonist, showing His love and forgiveness so you can make a change in the world. Also, God knows harboring anger isn’t good for you.

Forgiveness may be the less natural response in the beginning, but I promise

you, and I rarely promise, the more you do it, the more reflexive it becomes. Again, , a habit is learned. You will start to develop an immunity to the little things that used to easily crawl under your skin, and one day you will notice they just stopped bothering you. Your maturity level for what angers you will have shot up, and with this, you might see your old pesterers will pester you less.

This change in you will create a domino effect of peace: You will have more peace in supply, and it will attract people to you. They will want to know how x and y didn’t bother you. They will want to have some of your peace. Encourage these people in how you found your peace. Assure them they can also have peace in Jesus, who helps you to give forgiveness.

Chapter Five

I will be honest with you: Sometimes, I am the one who needs to ask for forgiveness rather than do the forgiving. I would like to put an estimated statistic out there. Note that nothing about this is official. None of it is based on any scientific study or educated proof but, I would say 50% of the time, we are the ones who need to ask forgiveness.

Just as it is a natural response to be angered, it is a natural response to want to anger someone. The situation may be an argument in which you wish to sting them as badly as they stung you, or maybe you’re having a bad day and just take it out on somebody. At multiple points in our lives, we have been the antagonist. It can be hard to accept your part as responsible for hurting or wronging someone, especially if you know the person. Not to say you should feel fine bullying strangers, just to note that special kind of ugly you feel when the steam coming out of your head has cleared, and you realize what you did or said to someone you love.

There is a misconception that Christians should never feel anger. People think being angry is a sin, but the Bible says to be angry and sin not (see Eph. 4:26). It is okay to feel anger. It is not okay to act out in violence or disrespect in response to that anger.

We all know the story of Jesus getting angry at the temple. He was angry at the merchants for trying to sell the holiness of God, so, He flipped over their tables and made a whip to drive out the livestock (see Mark 11:15–18). I think there is a major point in this story that is majorly overlooked. We know this story as a symbol of how to respect our sanctuaries and keep materialism out of God, or rather God out of materialism. But I think this age is also a means to show us how to deal with anger: what is the proper time to make a stir, and when

should we just keep silent?

You may see Jesus’ acts as violent or disrespectful, but they were far from it. Jesus was not flipping tables or whipping out chickens with the goal of physically hurting anyone. Jesus was not being disrespectful. The merchants were! They were in the presence of God, and they were defacing His place of worship. They were distracting people from praying. Jesus demonstrated the time to get boiling, raging, so angry you must flip a table is when your faith, belief, and principles are being defaced. I know many people who get to that level of anger for far less.

So, is it wrong to be angry? No. Is it a sin to feel anger towards someone? No. It is a sin to attack someone over disputes. It is wrong to begrudge and refuse to recognize your wrong or refuse to apologize. But it is also wrong to remain silent and placid when God is wronged or attacked. Jesus is our example. We are to disturb the peace when that peace is in the form of sacrilege. We are to fight when our God is the cause for conflict. We are also called to do justice in righteousness, which means seeing a fellow human mistreated or harmed should stir us to help them.

Now listen, I am not giving you permission to head-butt someone for having a co-exist bumper sticker. You should refrain from a physical altercation at all times. In fact, I cannot perceive any appropriate time to physically fight someone over God other than war. So keep your fists to yourself.

The battles you will be fighting will be with words and faith. The Bible tells us about the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10–18, listing the different pieces and their purposes. The Bible, the Word of God, is the only weapon referred to in this battle suit, and that is because it is the ultimate weapon for believers. That is why it is so important to know Scripture by memory. We must store Scripture in our heart so when we are attacked, and we will be, it won’t falter our faith or catch us off guard. We are always ready for battle.

God calls us to live in peace. Not peace from this world because there is none in it, not the true, lasting kind anyway. We find peace in Christ. How do we do that? We walk with Him every day of our lives. We follow His lead and act as He acted on earth. Ecclesiastes 3:8 (ESV) says there is “A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” You have probably heard the term seasons used in a Christian setting before. When the Bible talks about seasons, it is referring to a period of time. This period can be as short as a day or years in length, and we don’t know the length until we have experienced the beginning and the end of it. That is why the Bible uses seasons when referencing time. But in this case, the word time is used. I think this is so we interpret it differently from seasons.

I think a time is different from a season because you can feel when it is coming and ending. So how is this relevant to peace? When this age says there is a “time for war,” it isn’t exclusively speaking about a war in the traditional sense. When we picture war, we picture soldiers with uniforms, guns, and an opposing army to fight. This is true for this verse, but it also speaks to the war we go through daily. Our spirit is always at war with darkness. Most of this fighting goes unnoticed throughout your day. We are tempted, tested, and shot at by the devil using all earthly weapons at his disposal. These weapons are of sin, and he disguises them in hopes we are lured by their outside appearance or ignore a repercussion because of a promise of pleasure. You are hit with an attempt at lust by way of a beautiful stranger. You are hit with disregarding what is right using the flash of a screen to entertain you. It is important to be discerning in your spirit so that you aren’t easily caught by the snares of the enemy.

I would like to share an example from my life. Recently, I was having a really good day! You know those days where everything goes right? You’re feeling good, looking good, and all elements of the universe are cooperating with you. This happiness wasn’t from anything too spectacular: no lottery winning or world-changing problem solved. As I spent my day in a smile and spoke out my positivity, I noticed everyone I was encountering seemed to be having the worst day ever.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have had this experience many times before. I decide to be positive and joyful in this day God made, and as soon as I step outside boom! Negative people come flooding at me with their cantankerous attitudes and lists of why the world stinks. They seem bent on crushing my happy little bubble. And many times, these people have succeeded. I’m knocked down and feel misery in the pit of my stomach. But my life has recently had a major shift in my relationship with Jesus: I have actively been seeking Him. I want to be with Him all day long. I can’t stop reading my Bible and devotionals and studies or whatever I can get in my hands that’ll teach me more about my Savior. The devil has noticed this, and he hates it.

I had started living my life with peace regardless of my circumstances, because when you place your peace on circumstance it’s like leaving your food in the work fridge with no note. It will be taken from you. But, if you find your peace in Jesus, you can remain in peace even when life is chaos (see Philippians 4:7).

The first arrow was thrown at me, and I didn’t think much of it, then the second arrow came, and it was bigger, and because I have been in the Word diligently, I was able to recognize the situation for what it was: An attack from the devil. Over and over that day, attempts were made to get me to falter, but every time an arrow struck, my shield of faith (see Ephesians 6:10) protected me. I literally started laughing at the devil! It was just so pathetic how hard he was trying to get to me. I called him out on every attempt and quoted Scripture and said I was leaning on God, and there wasn’t a thing the devil could do about it!

I would love to tell you I made it through the whole day without feeling any sting from the arrows, but I want to be honest here. It was late at night, and the devil struck me with the final arrow. This one was the biggest he’d thrown all day. I won’t go into details, but I will say I broke down crying. It is a common misunderstanding that crying is a sign of weakness. It’s not. Crying is a sign of hurt, and it is healthy and necessary for healing.

The devil thought he’d won as I sat on the phone blubbering to my sister: “Here it comes, anytime now Stephanie will say everything is futile and why bother with being happy or strong or going into battle.” But God’s mercy hugged my heart. He had seen the battle. He’d been watching all day. Every time I resisted the devil’s arrows, God cheered me on. Every time I gave credit to God for keeping me on my feet and at peace, God smiled. God knew I needed His help because my heart was praying for Him to help me through the last hour of this day, and He did.

God gave me the strength I needed to hold that shield of faith up against the enemy; He stood me upright, laced His arms through mine, and whispered, “I am with you Stephanie.” The battle was won. I went to bed smiling and thanking God for all He had done for me that day. The devil shrank away, defeated. I am using this example to show how much the devil hates us being at peace and how ardently he will try to take it away from us.

When you wake up and decide you will radiate the joy of the Lord that day, then the devil will come for you in the form of a stranger’s road rage. But you must not give in to his attempts. You must fight to keep your peace by not fighting with the people around you. God wants you to be ready for battle, but nine times out of ten, that battle is happening in the spiritual realm. Nine times out of ten, you cannot see the enemy, the weapons, or the battlefield, unless you are guarding your heart with the Word and are led by the Spirit. God wants you to fight the enemy.

Chapter Six

God wants you to love your neighbor and be a peacemaker: “Strive for peace with everyone,” (Hebrews 12:14, ESV). God does not want you to be the antagonist in your story. God wants you to be the protagonist. God wants you to be the peacemaker because peacemakers make a difference worth counting and because peacemakers are “sons of God” (Matt. 5:9, ESV).

Proverbs 17:28 (ESV) says, “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” This verse is saying that sometimes, the best choice is to remain quiet: Hold your peace. The verse right before it (Proverbs 17:27) speaks of restraining words as a wise choice. I think you can get a sense of how this applies to a peacemaker.

We all know that one person in our life who just cannot keep their opinions to themselves, and if you can’t think of anyone, then that person might be you. If they’re in the room when a touchy subject is brought up, or someone makes a decision the majority does not agree with, but you all keep silent, knowing voicing that opinion is futile anyway because the person is set on it and too stubborn, but the antagonist simple has to speak their mind. I went on a tangent there, but you get the picture I’m painting, and before you know it, boom! All peace has left the room.

King Solomon was saying if a foolish person, a person known for wrong decisions and a general sense of lower intelligence, understands when to shut up, how much more should a wise person know when to? My point here is God wants us to refrain from antagonizing because we know better.

“For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, ‘Peace be with you!’” (Psalm 122:8, ESV). In this verse, David is speaking peace over the Israelites. The whole of Psalm 122 is short and centered on having peace throughout the land and on God’s people (the Jews). But whether you are Jew or Gentile, you are God’s people in Christ Jesus, and, as such, you are expected to not only know better about being a peacemaker but to wish peace on your neighbors.

The hardest times to keep peace with someone is when they are upset over something in their life and, as a result, are taking it out on you. It happens to the best of us. Keep this verse (Psalm 122:8) in mind when in that situation: Think of your neighbor’s peace and the value of that peace before your own. You want a really good reason to be a peaceful person? It connects your identity to God.

God is a God of peace, and when you carry your life in peace, you are connecting yourself to the image of God: You are showing your lineage is peace. But, as the fallen creatures we are, peace is not a natural mode of operation for us. It was before the first sin, and that is why we all crave peace because we know we once had it. The natural inclination for us is to start trouble, to cause a fuss, to look for something, anything to argue over. It varies in degree by individual, but left unchecked, will ultimately lead to ruin.

There is someone in my life whose life knows no peace. This person is aware of what the Bible says about peace and comprehends how to attain it, but they refuse to try. This person loves conflict. They can say they do not, but actions speak louder than words, and in this case, they are screaming. I have started on my journey to peace, by which I mean I made a choice and prayed to God that I wanted to be at peace and knew it would only be found in Him and meant I had to become a peacemaker. Knowing the and having a willing heart is what is needed to begin the journey to becoming a peacemaker. I continue to walk this journey in hopes one day I may perfect it. Perfect peace will happen for every born-again believer once the old is made new (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). Until then, the path is narrow but not impossible to be at peace.

To be a peacemaker is to make a covenant or commitment with God. It is to acknowledge that you are in need of peace. It is to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the only way to peace. It is to pray ardently every moment you feel the phantom pains of your old nature bubbling in your mind, and it is to pray for God to help you be a peacemaker in this time.

Romans 15:33 (ESV), “May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.” The book of Romans begins and ends with a wish for peace to the people of Christ. Romans 1:7 (ESV) says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul was setting an example as to how Christians should greet and leave other Christians: in peace. That person who sits next to you in church that you can’t help but find a reason to be annoyed by? Greet them and leave them in peace. Sally from the office that steals your lunch. Greet and leave in peace. Whoever they are, whether you consider them friend, acquaintance, or foe, you are to proclaim peace over their life. Is that always easy and natural? No. Can you pray for the Holy Spirit to help you? Yes! Will the Holy Spirit make a difference in your heart? Yes! But you have to be willing to change. So, whoever it is, we are to start in peace with them and leave them in peace. Thus, peacemakers not only keep their peace but introduce peace into situations.

Proverbs 16:7 (ESV), “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Are you a good Christian? Do you read your Bible, go to church, tithe, and all that jazz? Yeah? Well, then surely you are a good Christian, and God won’t care if you lash out at people or let your tongue go wild and destroy those around you. We know better than that. To please the Lord is to read His Word and to care for the church through attendance and tithe, but it is also to treat others kindly (see Luke 6:31; Matthew 7:12) And, it is to love people more than you love yourself (Mark 12:31, ESV).

It is pleasing to God when you put other people before yourself. What does that look like? It looks like checking with someone you love to see if you can make them breakfast in the morning. It looks like helping your neighbor rake leaves. It looks like taking the extra shift for your coworker because they’re having a hard

time. When you think of other people first, you will be moved to help them in some way, and when you act on this, you will give them a taste of God’s peace and comfort. And when you apply all these principles to the people you do not love so much, God will cause peace between the two of you.

Romans 12:18 (ESV),” If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

This is from the ESV version of the Bible, and I think it is the best translation for what Paul was saying. To me, this verse says to keep a peaceful life with the people in this world, don’t try to argue by purposefully provoking. Don’t put up your fists at the first sign of possible strife. But a peacemaker is not the same as a pacifist. A pacifist is a person who believes there is no justifiable reason for war or violence. God does not like needless bloodshed, “Thou shalt not commit murder” (Exodus 20:13, KJV), but the Bible is full of Scriptures concerning wars.

Ephesians tells us to put on the armor of God. Ecclesiastes 3:8 (ESV) says there is “a time for war.” In Jeremiah 51:20 (ESV), God calls Jeremiah “a weapon for battle.” The book of Matthew tells us war must happen before Christ returns on earth to rule (see the book of Revelation). 1 Timothy 6:12 (ESV) tells us to “fight the good fight of the faith!”

God is behind the warrior who fights for His causes. So, Paul tells us as far as depends on us, be peaceful. But, if the cause for the battle involves the Lord? Grab your Sword of Truth and run fearlessly into battle for God and with God. Keep from anger and antagonism because they are connected, and the one breeds the other. Walk peacefully throughout your life, wish peace to your fellow humans, exude peace through your actions and interactions. Decide to walk in peace, and your life will change.

Chapter Seven

Okay, you want to walk in peace, you’ve decided you do not want to hold to anger against people who have offended you, and you do not want to be the source of someone else’s anger. How do you follow through with that? What does that change involve? What does it look like? The first place to start is your mind, specifically, your thoughts. Ephesians 4:31–32 (ESV) says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

Alright, let’s break this down into more bite-sized pieces: The first three feelings are closely related to each other; bitterness, wrath, and anger. If we want a grudgeless mind, the first thing we have to do is face these ugly, buried feelings. Anger is a main focus of this book. Anger is the seed of wrath, and wrath the seed of bitterness. Anger is a part of our daily lives. We are annoyed at the coffee pot in the morning, then aggravated at traffic, and by the time our destination is reached, and we officially start our day, we’re angry.

The first step is to throw away the urge to anger. You can do this by praying to the Holy Spirit for help. It doesn’t have to be a long prayer. It can be as simple as “Holy Spirit, stop me from getting angry.” And the Holy Spirit will help you. As you feel anger rising in you, the Spirit will gently whisper to you a reminder of that prayer. Anger left unattended turns to wrath, and wrath seats itself in the cracks anger made in your heart. Wrath is anger at its highest level. Wrath is the more active voice of anger. Let me explain what I mean: In language, we have what is called active voice and ive voice. The ive voice sounds like, “Oh, my husband is so inconsiderate. He never takes out the trash.” ive voice looks like you taking the trash out while glaring at your husband. ive is the voice of anger. It is the voice in your head. The active voice is the person doing something. Active voice sounds like screaming at people and purposefully hurting people. Active voice looks like grabbing your friend by the collar during

an argument. It looks like throwing punches and throwing furniture. Active is the voice of wrath.

Bitterness: We all know bitterness, personally. When the anger has settled, and the wrath has cooled, but feelings weren’t expressed or repented, bitterness is the scars they leave. If anger cracks your heart and wrath settles in those cracks, bitterness ensures those cracks can never empty of the wrath and can never heal of the anger. The bitterness continues to pull and stretch those cracks and deepen them too. It hurts to have bitterness in your heart, but it hurts to remove it also. Bitterness is harder to let loose of than anger or wrath because it has features anger and wrath don’t. Bitterness has time as a power. It uses time to deepen the wound. It has remembrance as a power. It uses remembrance to pull the wound by bringing up its memory, usually in quiet moments. And finally, bitterness has the power of exaggeration. It uses exaggeration to stretch the wounds of your heart. The bitterness at home in your heart is never settled, so it has to continue to deepen the wound as time goes by with no resolution. It has to pull at the wounds to ensure they never lose their sting and freshness in your heart. Bitterness is never content with the extent of your bitterness. It has to continue to grow in size by altering the memory, often making it worse than it really was.

To clean your heart of its bitterness is more painful than the bitterness itself at first. You have to put on gloves and protective gear to prepare yourself for the pain. The top layer isn’t so bad as it is filled with fluff and filler bitterness such as thoughts and insults a child of elementary age would employ. The middle layer forces you to really get your hands dirty by scraping and scooping out the grime of the wrath that originally settled there. And once you’ve reached the bottom, the pit of the bitterness, there you truly feel pain. At the pit of it, there is a mirror, and that mirror is both a reflection of you and the memory of the wrong you assigned the bitterness to.

You peer into that mirror, and tears spring to your eyes as you relive the truth of that moment. You objectively listen to both sides. You accept that it happened and, therefore, it is in the past, and there is nothing you can do about it. You

acknowledge keeping the bitterness in your heart will only weigh you down and make you feel worse. You say to the memory, “You happened to me, and I don’t believe you should have.” You list all the feelings you feel towards it openly, holding nothing back. Your reflection in the mirror turns to Jesus, and you say to yourself, “I forgive them.”

The next three are clamor, slander, and malice. Clamor means to shout or make a loud noise, and it is also used to describe a way of getting attention. Paul tells us this type of behavior is unchristian. Drawing people’s attention is not a bad or unchristian thing, and neither is shouting or making a loud noise. What’s bad is when the attention is directed at you or another person for negative purposes. The attention you should be drawing people to is of Christ. Slander is any talk that is damaging or false. We can also cross-reference this one with the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16, KJV). God hates lying (see Proverbs 12:22), and to be honest, I hate it too.

Lying is a slippery slope. It’s a snare, unbiblical and ungodly. I’m not talking about when you tell a first grader their painting is the next Picasso. I’m talking about the lies you tell or have told in your life that made something stir in your gut when you told them. When I was a little girl, my parents instilled in me how wrong lying was. That being said, it didn’t completely keep me from lies. I am human and, therefore, weak on my own. But because they made such a big deal about fibs, I grew an intolerance toward them at a young age. My mother recently told me she believes God hates lies because Satan is the father of lies (see John 8:44). That is how far away lying is from the character of God: the distance of heaven to hell.

The last behavior we are told to put away from us is malice. Malice is causing harm on purpose. It is intentionally hurting people, it is intentionally ruining things, and it is intentionally going against God. God does not wish malice on His children, and He does not want His children to wish it on each other. Look at yourself honestly. Think of the times when you felt or acted out in malice. It’s okay. This is a safe place to be honest and bare your sin. While you’re looking at

those moments of malice, also try to see the cause for them. Why did you feel/wish malice? Then, ask the Holy Spirit to deliver you from the spirit of malice, and the Holy Spirit will rescue you.

The ending of Ephesians 4:31–32 tells us three things we are to be: kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. Kindness is something we are taught from the time we are toddlers. I recognize this is not always the case as some people do not have a Christ-like person in their childhood, but that doesn’t mean you have never witnessed kindness. The dictionary defines kindness as being “friendly, generous and, considerate.” Kindness does not only count in grand gestures. Kindness is an attitude we should put on every day, and it should lace in our interactions with all people. In a way, kindness is as simple as preschool and so basic a concept we teach it to two-year-olds. Be kind to everyone, smile at strangers, hold a door for somebody, in any way you can, reflect the care the Creator has for all of His children.

I think it is a peculiarity how we speak of the heart in different textures and temperatures. We call people soft-hearted, hard-hearted, cold-hearted, warmhearted, etc. I think these images we try to assign to our pulmonary organ belong to only two schools of character, either you are comionate, caring, and thoughtful of people around you, or apathetic, selfish, and could not possibly care less about those around you. Now, we like to say there are variants of the level of care depending on the individual and situation. And that’s certainly become the accepted reality, but biblically, on this topic and everything else, you are either all or none.

This verse in Ephesians tells us to be tenderhearted, and it stops there. It doesn’t list any clauses for exceptions. It just instructs us to be tenderhearted. Seem unfair? Seem too hard? Questioning if it really applies to everyone? Well, allow me to propose a common question; what did Jesus do? And I don’t mean it as a fickle question stitched onto a sweater sleeve from the ‘90s that shows people you’re a Christian. I mean it for real.

Jesus was tenderhearted, comionate, caring, selfless, and the best human being that ever lived (as He is both fully God and fully man.) We are to conduct our lives just as He did. The ultimate goal of any Christian’s life is to be exactly as Jesus; we want to do everything as He did, we want to be sinless and completely faithful and trusting to God. It’s hard, and most, if not all of us, won’t reach that level on this earth. We’ll have it in Heaven. That much is certain. But just because it may seem like an unattainable level does not justify the excuse to stop trying and following the guidelines in Ephesians 4:31-32, which are a great help on this mission.

Be tenderhearted to everyone, yes, even the people you disagree with and dislike. They deserve an even bigger measure of your heart, according to Scripture (see Matthew 5:44). Have comion for the hateful, show kindness to the unkind. They may not respond to it in kind, but that’s not the goal. That’s not what’s important. Being a reflection of the love of Jesus is the goal, and by softening your heart to your peers, you are doing just that. The last command of this verse is to forgive; “Forgiving one another just as God in Christ forgave you.” That’s a high bar, right? But it’s a fair bar. I think this command of forgiveness was worded perfectly because it calls to mind the oversized forgiveness we were given. That way, any time you are faced with forgiving someone, and you think, they don’t deserve my forgiveness, you are jolted to the reality of how unworthy you were of God’s forgiveness.

Forgive everyone for every offense they have ever committed. Now, breathe. I am not saying to excuse people or withhold justice because those concepts are not of God (see Deuteronomy 16:18). God is a God of justice, and He enforces punishment for a crime. But He is also a God of mercy and grace, and that is why He sent Jesus to serve our punishment so we could be spared. The Christian thing to do is to punish for a crime or shed light on a wrong, but we must simultaneously forgive the offender.

Chapter Eight

Keep an open mind with me as this chapter deals with a philosophy that isn’t discussed often in the Christian world. That philosophy is self-forgiveness. We are quick and frequent to speak of forgiving our neighbors, which is an important, godly principle. But why are we hesitant to speak of forgiving ourselves? It feels selfish, right? It feels indulgent and makes you think you might be good enough to be forgiven. Romans 3:23 (ESV) says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” you know what else that means? We are all worthy of forgiveness in God’s eyes. Christ proved it when He died for all of us. But is it just God we fear won’t approve of us forgiving ourselves? Or do we fear ourselves or our neighbors?

I have gone down the twisted thought path of “I can’t forgive what I’ve done because that’s like me saying it never happened and I am clean!” Friend, that is not what forgiving yourself does because only Christ can do that. Forgiving yourself is acknowledging that Christ did that! Jesus covered you. He died for your sins and washed them from existence with His blood, so yes, you are clean, and those sins are not part of who you are anymore. If you acknowledge the truth of what Jesus did, then you must forgive yourself because if you don’t, it’s like you are stating your judgment is better than God’s!

What about the neighbors? The ones who know the specifics of my sins and give me backhanded comments on them to embarrass me or ensure I never forget them? The Bible says something about people who do this: Matthew 7:3–5 gives a metaphor of someone pointing out the speck in a neighbor’s eye but ignoring the their own eye. This verse is meant to teach the lesson of hypocrisy to the hypocrite and comfort the victim of the shammer. If your specks are put on display, take comfort in knowing your neighbor has a sin the size of a log and have comion towards them as they are ignorant to their own sins. And I must state the age-old cliche, “Don’t worry about what others think or say!” Hard to do, impossible if you’re operating on your own, but with Jesus, all

things are possible. He will deafen your ears to the log-eyed neighbor. All you have to do is ask.

Another point I wish to state regarding Romans 3:23, and I do hope it was obvious but would hate any to miss it, is that it says we all fall short. We all sin. We are all sinners. In this respect, you aren’t special, dear, so don’t think your sins are too big or too small or not worth God’s time because all of those thoughts are lies. All of your sins are worthy of forgiveness through Jesus.

When I was a child, I misinterpreted God as being angry and harsh. I was scared to confess my sins to Him and ask for forgiveness because I thought He would give me a stern and loud lecture with lots of finger-pointing and questioning how I could do this. But Hebrews 8:12 (ESV) says, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will their sins no more.” I had heard this verse probably half a dozen times, but it wasn’t until I went through stuff of my own, and I came to God on my own, that I felt His mercy.

God is not like the authoritative figures in your life. He will not come to you with a promise to forgive and turn from that promise. God will not lure you into confession, promising to listen with mercy and dish out condemnation, God wants to forgive you, and He will do it through the eyes of mercy. Don’t be afraid to ask Him to forgive because God will always forgive those who repent, and He will always do it through love. But what if my sin is too much? What if it’s just too far for God’s forgiveness? Romans 8:38–39 (ESV), “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There is nothing you can do, nothing at all, that can separate God’s love towards you, and that love encapsulates His forgiveness as well.

We have all thought that thought and felt that feeling. We have all sinned, and we have all measured our sins according to our scales and determined which

were worse than the rest, but God’s scale is not our scale. To God, all sin repented of is considered worthy of forgiveness (see Romans 2:11, James 2:10). Maybe your worst sin was stealing a piece of candy, or maybe it was murder. Either way, God judges it equally, and that means He forgives it equally.

So, if you are holding back your repentance because you fear God’s rejection, please hear me when I say God will not reject your plea for redemption. Jesus will forgive you. If you are reading this book and you haven’t had the privilege of being raised in the Christian faith, or maybe you were raised Christian but never gave any thought or effort toward your faith it was just something you checked on forms under religion. Either way or any other way I haven’t mentioned, it is always good to state the cornerstone of the Christian faith. The founding of the Christian faith lies in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Christian faith in summary: God created everything and everyone. Life on earth was perfect, and the first people, Adam and Eve, lived in absolute peace, and there was nothing bad on earth at all. The first people broke the only rule God gave them and, as a result, brought a curse of death over the earth and its inhabitants. Between the time of the first sin (breaking the law) and the death of Jesus, people had to atone for their sins by sacrificing a certain animal or certain foods or incense to God. God created what is called a covenant between Him and the Jews. These sacrifices weren’t enough to cover all the sins of humanity, and they had to be offered daily. The only way to restore the relationship between God and humanity would be for people to live totally free of sin. People can’t do that, and God knows that.

The solution was for God to send Jesus, the second part of the Holy Trinity, to be born into this world as a human child, live a life totally free of any sin, that includes both sins in thought and action (see Matthew 5) so He could be killed, and His innocent blood would cover every sin committed by every person ever and by doing so take the punishment we all deserved. But that’s not even the best part! After being dead and buried for three days, Jesus Christ came back to life!

When Jesus rose again, He fulfilled the Law by having died for sin and restored the human race when He resurrected from the dead, and in doing this, He made it possible for us to be covered by His blood and go to Heaven. Jesus’ blood is the sacrificial blood that is totally pure, and when we become born again by receiving Jesus into our heart, we are made pure by His blood. Jesus created what is called the New Covenant. To hear more about the old covenant, read the first five books in the Old Testament. Genesis to Deuteronomy is full of God taking the Jewish people, or Israelites, out of captivity from the ancient Egyptians and introduces Himself to them in the wilderness. God establishes a covenant that instates the building of a temple in which the people may worship Him, and in this temple, there is a curtain that only the high priest was permitted to enter. Behind this curtain dwelled the presence of God. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into this partitioned area, known as the Holy of Holies, and offer a sacrifice of atonement for all the Israelites sins.

The significance of the curtain is very important in its symbolism. The curtain was necessary for the people’s safety because of how powerful God’s presence is. But symbolically, the curtain represented the separation of God and us. When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the Holy of Holies tore in two (see Matthew 27:51). The symbolic reality of this event was Jesus removing the separation that stood between God and us. To be saved, to be forgiven, all you have to do is ask Jesus. He literally has you covered. Praise Jesus!

Okay, this next verse is a real favorite for those in the saved community and for good a reason too! Its truth are the words that you just need to hear every time you feel that you aren’t good enough for the forgiveness of Jesus: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1–2, ESV)

Here are a few synonyms for the word condemnation: accusation, doom, disapproval, judgment, blame, and a sentence.

The word that sticks with me the most is a sentence. Because of what Jesus did for us, living in Him means our life sentence of death has been removed, completely wiped away from the record books. And God does have a record book (See Revelation 20:15; 21:27; Psalm 69:28; Philippians 4:3). Because of Jesus, you are free to confess and free to accept Him in your heart, and you are free from eternal death. “So that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians1:7–8 ESV)

I wanted to include this verse because I love the wording of the reminder in it: Jesus makes us guiltless. All those sins you committed, all that stuff you confessed and repented of, you no longer have to bear the guilt of it because, when Jesus washes away sins, He rids you of every factor pertaining to sin. You may not feel an instant relief-time is expected to let yourself drop the burden of the guilt, but in Jesus’ eyes, you are guiltless instantaneously!

In order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faiththat I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Philippians 3:8–12 (ESV) I wanted to include this age in Philippians because it describes the balance we are in as Christians: The balance between living a righteous life and succumbing to our sinful nature. Becoming saved does not immediately remove all thoughts or urges of sin. In fact, even the most seasoned Christian still struggles with sin and temptation. It is simply the world in which we live.

Removing sin from our lives, in thought and action, takes effort, conscious and

determined, persevering effort. But that’s not to say we give up on that effort. Just because Jesus has covered us in His righteousness, and we praise Him for it because we could never be righteous on our own, does not mean we cease to try and live righteously. Now that you’re saved, you should have double the motivation to do good and be good. You should have double motivation because you live in the confidence that even when you fail, you are still forgiven.

Chapter Nine

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the struggle with self-righteousness. As Philippians 3:8–12 stated, we cannot be righteous on our own but some Christians struggle with views of equality in sin and forgiveness. They are the self-righteous. I believe the self-righteous struggle with vulnerability, which is at the root of their stern words or unforgiving faces. We’ve all encountered them. The self-righteous are blind to their own sin or are taunted by thoughts of their own unforgiveness. The self-righteous (SR) struggle to see themselves as equal with the rest of humanity. A big problem they face is unbelief that Jesus would forgive some other’s sins because they do not see themselves as sinful.

They are spiritually blind to Romans 3:23. They take it to mean that all but they have sinned. A question I pose to the SR, if you can’t believe Jesus would forgive someone else, then how can you believe He forgave you? At the heart of this thinking is a lack of trust. You don’t trust Jesus would really forgive everyone or that everyone is worthy of His forgiveness because you have been hurt and lied to by so many in your life.

The SR use the experiences of people transgressing them to build their gracelacking doctrine. The kind that says you have to reach a certain standard before Jesus accepts you. Friend, Jesus is nothing like the SR even though He is the only SR. He experienced life as we do and felt the feelings, and went through temptations and struggles, but His God nature meant His wiring, His response, was not like ours. And a lot of people, both in the biblical s and still today, continue to transgress Jesus.

We did. We were transgressors of the Lord until we came to saving grace. In coming to that grace, there wasn’t a standard of conduct we had to reach before being covered in the Blood of Jesus. The SR forget this. They are like the church

in Ephesus in Revelation 2:4 (ESV), “You have abandoned the love that you had at first.” The SR forgot Christ’s love. They focus on sin rather than forgiveness, on works instead of grace. Now they aren’t without merit as they will speak first and fight hardest against darkness being accepted in the world. But they have lost sight of the love that brought them out of that darkness, and without God’s love, you’re in a religion. Without God’s love, you won’t draw converts to the kingdom, and you will quickly burn yourself out.

Now, if you are the hard-boiled, self-righteous, “I follow the Red Letters to the letter” type, here is a verse for you: Psalm 32:5 (ESV), “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity, I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” If you’ve been a Christian a long, long time-maybe even your whole life, struggling with sin is still a struggle because the tempter is still out there. Perhaps you are harder on yourself because you think the righteous requirement of the Law lays on you to fulfill. Perhaps you are too afraid to be vulnerable with God because you think He will be mad at you. After all, you’ve been a Christian for how long? And you are still struggling with this? Those are lies given to you by the devil because that is not the way of God. Find comfort in this verse: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love to those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:10–11, ESV).

God won’t chide you for sinning because you have been a Christian for long enough to know better; perhaps you are harsher on the sins of others because they, in your measurement, have sinned worse than all of yours combined! But to God, sin is sin, all equally bad and all equally worthy of forgiveness. God is safe and caring. Be vulnerable with God. Confess your sins and melt away the false belief of any self-righteousness by entrusting all your righteousness to Jesus.

Chapter Ten

As I’ve mentioned, becoming saved and repenting is not a guarantee that the urge to sin or succumbing to sin will vanish. I have shared some Scriptures that speak of Jesus’ forgiving grace. So, if I still fall prey to sin and have the forgiveness of Jesus at my fingertips, I can live whatever way I desire, right? No. You cannot take your forgiveness and grace as a license to live in sin. I can guarantee, with absolute certainty, those who live their life according to the laws of the Bible have absolute security in eternity.

Here’s my thought process on the issue of living a life you are told to versus living the way you desire to: If you truly desire a life filled by Jesus, then your desired life will be what Jesus desires of you. It is as simple as that and, yet, as hard as that of a commitment. Beginning a life with Jesus can be one of the most fragile times in the life of a Christian. In my opinion, any firsts or beginner stages are apt to fragility because of inexperience.

Committing to Jesus is a symbolic marriage. The Bible talks about the church (Christians) being the bride of Christ. Once you become grounded in your faith, the commitment to Christ is as easy and natural as breathing. Just like marriage to a human spouse, that commitment can scare people away from Jesus or, more frequently, to a shallow relationship with Him in which you will choose your will and not His. I offer a verse to help orient you to the life of ultimate commitment to Jesus.

Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:22–24 (ESV) Do you wonder what being a forgiver makes you look like? Colossians 3:10 (ESV) says, “And you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its Creator,” you look like God. Don’t get confused or twist anything. I’m not saying you are God or that you should think of yourself as a god. I’m saying you reflect the nature of God. God forgives, and He performed the greatest act of forgiveness that has ever been or ever will be. This means God’s capacity to forgive through Christ is inexhaustible. This means as a forgiver of both yourself and your neighbor, your forgiveness is inexhaustible. As long as you are living your life for Christ and what He wants, your heart will be drawn to forgive. As long as you come to the Lord with a heart of conviction and a vow of repentance, you must forgive yourself and others because He did.

You walk on this earth emitting a radiance that confuses people, but it also causes people to feel pulled to you. They want to know your secret. It is your job to give glory to God and reveal the secret of His love. Each day your mind is renewed because you are seeping yourself in the knowledge of the Creator, knowledge that you are forgiven! You’re feeling good. You’re walking around with a radiance. You are alive for the first time, and you want to keep this elation, so what should you do? First, you need to ask God, “What do you like to see?”

For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. 1 Peter 3:10–12 (ESV) Let’s break this down: The first line matches the question we just asked. We want to maintain a life we love and have good days, and it tells us how. We know our days come from God (see Job 14:5), and we asked God what He wants our lives to look like. His response is to keep from speaking evil or lying. We

know what lies are, and we know when we tell them so that part is easy enough to understand, but what exactly does speaking evil entail? If you are gossiping, slandering, speaking behind someone’s back, or letting hate and hurt come out of your mouth, you profess evil in the world. Don’t let anything come out of your mouth if it is against the principles of God.

The next section tells us to “turn away from evil and do good.” You may be thinking, I’m not an evil person. I’ve never committed a crime or wished any ill will towards someone. I ask you to be honest with yourself. If you look in your mind, you will find traces of evil. You may not have broken the law on earth, but we are all guilty of breaking God’s law. Evil is anything that goes against God, so to test if something is evil or not, search the Bible and compare it to the Scriptures. Evil is everywhere. Ever notice how the word evil is just a letter shy from devil? That’s not a coincidence.

ittedly, the bigger evils are much easier to spot, and it can be easy for little slivers of evil to creep into us in thoughts or actions, probably thoughts more so than actions, but to God, it’s the same thing. Thinking evil is the same as doing evil. Thankfully, God knows us. He knows we struggle, and that is why He sent His Holy Spirit to help us. Talk to the Spirit, and He will intervene. The Spirit will press your heart when evil is near and convict you to do good. Good is clear and easy to see. We know good if we know God. If what you are thinking or doing gives you an inexplicable sense of warm wholeness, you can bet it’s good.

“Let him seek peace and pursue it.” Isn’t that the same thing? Seeking and pursuing? No. Seeking peace refers to someone who does not know peace and is searching for it. Pursuing peace infers that the person has seen peace, they have known it, and they are following it wherever it goes. In other words, seekers of peace have not yet found the peace of Jesus; pursuers of peace follow the way and truth and life of Jesus.

This age ends with a promise, a statement from God. God is watching over

the righteous (those who are after Him), and His ears are listening to their prayers. If you live for God and Jesus lives in you, then God is with you. He is paying attention to your life. The verse ends with another factual statement: God is not with the unrighteous. God is not with those who are against Him. He is not with those who are without His Son.

With all of these new principles to and abide by, you may find yourself getting anxious or overthinking if you’re anything like me. I have stated it multiple times now, and I’ll say it again, God knows your struggle. God knows what it’s like to live in this world in the form of a fallen human (see Hebrews 5:7–9). God looks at your heart. If your heart is for Him, then He will be more than gracious when you fall down. Being a Christian is not about following a strict rulebook to the point you think you can’t laugh in church or you live a life void of fun. God is fun. God created smiling and laughter and all that is good. Being a Christian is about modeling your heart after God’s and doing His will to the best of your ability. So, in the words of 1 Peter 5:7 (ESV), “Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you.” Don’t overthink it, just live it.

How about another verse that shows you of God’s grace when you fall?

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:1–2 (ESV) Pay attention to this verse, don’t read it too quickly. It opens with the author telling us why he has written what he has and moves into an assurance that even if we sin after being saved, we are still forgiven. Pay attention to the comma between having an advocate with God. That comma means everything. That comma is the break that tells us Jesus is our advocate. He is our righteousness. That comma is the difference between hopelessness and hope.

I think the greatest obstacle people face when it comes to repentance, or forgiveness of any kind, is pride. I think it’s connected to the curse. You see, the serpent persuaded Eve by telling her the forbidden fruit would make her like God. Eve should have retorted to the serpent that she was already made in the image of God, but she didn’t. She let pride, and Adam as well, into herself. Eve and Adam got puffed up by lies and refused to be deflated. Because of that bad seed allowed into the cursed human nature, all descendants of Adam and Eve, all people struggle with pride. James 4:6–8 talks about God’s feelings towards the proud versus the humble. It also talks “resisting the devil” and what to do with our sins.

Pride is a trap set by the devil. It is a mind game. Don’t fall for it. Take that humble pie and stuff your face in it! Do you know why it stings to humble yourself? Because humility is the antidote to the poison of pride. It’s cleansing your system, coursing through your blood, and removing the haughty spirit. But, once you have been sufficiently flushed by humility and the lies replaced with the truth, you will have built up an immunity to the pride, just like a vaccination.

Ask the Holy Spirit to search you for pride. You will know when pride has been found because your thoughts will fill with any time you’ve been prideful, and you will be shown what types of situations you are prone to be prideful in. Let me warn you, don’t ask for things from the Lord unless you mean it because, for one, if your heart isn’t after God, it won’t find Him (see Jeremiah 29:13), and the other issue is how scared it will make you if you aren’t ready for it. Once you have been shown your pride, you have to decide in your heart if you are ready to live without it or not. Some are unable to let go of their pride, and they suffer for it. Others are unwilling to relent some pride from their hearts. You can’t be humbled with any trace of pride. The pride and humility cannot coexist.

I pray you will decide to take the hard way and remove all pride from yourself. It is a lifelong journey and commitment. It will not happen overnight. Not even an hour will before you find yourself in a situation where pride attempts to run

your life. This is why knowing Scripture is essential to your life: The Word of God is a weapon (see Ephesians 5:16), and it is victorious over all other weapons. You kill pride with humility, and you gain humility by putting God first, and God is put first by prayer and reading His Word, and allowing His Spirit to guide you.

Hebrews 12:10 (ESV), “For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.” This verse is comparing how our parents discipline us as children and that when they disciplined us, it was for our own good in their eyes. God disciplines those He loves as well. God’s discipline does not look like discipline from an earthly authoritative figure. Firstly, God has no hindrances as people do. God knows everything and can see everything all at once. This means He knows what is best for us, and He knows how to get us there. But, a lot of the time, we require great discipline first. Before we can stand firm in the plans God designed for us we have to be able to sit through lesser situations in life. These lesser situations are usually times when nothing is going right, and while you are in this time, you can’t see a way out, let alone how this may be used for good.

God is not wasteful, and He will use every aspect of our lives to teach and grow us into the full maturity we were destined for. I am not trying to be preachy or make anyone feel less than for not acknowledging good in bad situations. The hardest time to find the light is in the darkness. But that light is there, and as long as we keep our eyes open and keep an attitude of grit, accepting that this is an opportunity God can use to teach us, we will look back at those times with a grateful spot in our heart. God will discipline you, and if there is a sin you repeatedly struggle with, God is going to do what He can to draw you away from it. That means sometimes life is going to hurt. But that hurt is only temporary and will be used for our good.

Something I struggle with is giving grace to myself. Maybe you’re like this too? I repent of sin and believe Jesus forgives it, but I can’t seem to stop thinking of it. The Bible talks about this in Isaiah 43:18 (NASB), “Do not call to mind the

former things, or ponder things of the past.” You see, the enemy doesn’t want us to believe that Jesus really is capable of removing our sin. The devil wants us to stay stuck in doubt to the power of Jesus so that we can’t move to the future God has for us, nor can we live in the freedom we have been gifted. So, he uses the memories we have to attack us. And if you do not struggle with self-grace, the devil will use your memories in the form of doubting whether or not following Jesus is really worth it. “ how fun it was?” the enemy will whisper to you, “Before you had all this guilt to carry? Before you cared about morals and pleasing God?”

Well, we can shut these lies up with the Word real quick. First, sin was fun for a time, but it never fulfilled me, never gave me the peace that I was searching for. Second, I carry no guilt because Jesus removed all of my guilt on the cross. Third, I continue to live my life in a devoted desire to please my Father because I love Him. But I do not have to be burdened with the weight of pleasing Him because, yup, Jesus did that for me too. Thus Isaiah 43:18 has two commands: Do not dwell on your past sins because they have been erased from existence, and do not ponder your sinful acts lest you fall to them again. Both are equally important principles to live by.

Chapter Eleven

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has ed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV)

It all comes down to love. Choosing to forgive everyone, and I mean everyone, including yourself and including the strangers in traffic and that one person who hurt or wronged you so bad you thought you would never recover. Choosing to forgive, to give grace and mercy whether they seem worthy of it or not, is all grounded in love.

I’ll break down this last verse. The first line, “If anyone is in Christ,” is saying if anyone is a Christian you have been delivered from sin and been saved by the Blood of Jesus, “he is a new creation.” You have been given a new spirit and a new heart in your body. The sin-stained human nature that was full of violence and hate (hate is the opposite of love) is no longer a part of you. The old you was the opposite of love. Because you are a new creation, your nature is now driven by love. It is driven by God’s love. The end of the verse is a reiteration of the beginning points made.

Paul was pressing the importance of our new way of life, our new life. He was stressing that everything from your life before you were saved has literally been wiped from existence. It can no longer be reached, accessed, tapped into, drawn from. It is no longer a part of you as far as God sees. So, that nature to hate should be blotted out of you. But Paul wrote this verse because he knew it doesn’t work like that. Until we are in Heaven with Jesus and the Father, we will continue to be at war with the things of this world. Imagine that the deceased nature of you became a ghost to the earth. This is not what happens as the only ghost that is real is the Holy Ghost, but for the sake of this metaphor, let’s imagine the old you is a ghost. That ghost is stuck in this earth, and it cannot rest

until it is a part of you again. But, because you have accepted Jesus into your heart, and the Holy Spirit has taken home in you, there is no room for that old ghost. So, your ghost may tempt you, and the devil or others may haunt you by bringing your old self to remembrance, but it is no longer a part of you.

The Bible says in Ephesians 6:12 (NLT), “For we are not fighting against fleshand-blood enemies, but against evil rulers, and unseen authorities of the world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” This might sound a bit confusing, but I pray what I type the Holy Spirit will make clear to you. There is an invisible world. It cannot be seen by the human eye. It is the realm the Bible calls the spirit world. It is full of angels and demons, God’s warring and ministering angels, and Satan’s forces of darkness. The evil that is in the world all stems from Satan. This world is happening all around us 24/7. Our spirit, the invisible force inside of us, is us! The spirit is more alive thanks to Jesus than the body we can see. Our spirit is under attack always and from every conceivable and inconceivable angle because Satan wants your soul. He doesn’t want you to live with God and have eternal happiness. He sends his minions of darkness, the demons, to do his bidding against us.

They work at us in any way they can. Some of their favorite ways are to place thoughts of doubt in us and anger in our hearts. Suppose the demons can get you to doubt yourself that opens a crack in your heart that they can slip into. If that crack is not flushed out and sealed by the Holy Spirit the demons will fester and grow that doubtful thought. They will cause it to grow. Your doubt will grow into other things to doubt until they reach your faith. Don’t let them reach your faith! As soon as you get those thoughts, cast them out with the proclamation that you know it is a lie sent by the devil and you have been saved by Jesus, who you will never replace.

If the dark forces can access your heart, they can turn it as dark as they are and remove any love, comion, or kindness from it. The devil knows no love. He knows lust and covetousness, and he will use those to trick your feelings so that

you think they are love. The Bible says that God is love, so love comes from God. Satan is the absence of God. That is what the torture of hell really is, separation from God eternally. Satan cannot and does not have an ounce of a milliliter of love in him. Satan is full of hate, and hate will slowly kill you if you give it residence in your being. Satan will, again, disguise this hate with the sin of pride and lying. He will twist your mind and whisper to you that, “You deserve better treatment than that and you should let them know by spewing hate on them, they broke down your image, they made you look like a fool in front of everybody, don’t they know who you are? Ugh, they are always getting the promotion and the breaks in life. When is it going to be your turn? When will you get the attention you deserve? You should assert yourself to them to show how big you are.” Pride and lies that is all those thoughts are.

Satan has no voice on how humans should treat each other because he is not our Creator, and he does not want us to treat each other with love, kindness, and respect. Satan is literally incapable of those virtues. After the fall in the garden and the curse fell on the earth, Satan was given free rein to run around and do as he pleased. My dad once told me that the thing Satan wants the most is a human form because humans were made in the image of God, and that is what Satan wants. He wants to be God. You will find no love in Satan, no comion, no mercy, no grace, no kindness, no safety, no peace, no rest, no joy, no goodness, no , and no encouragement. All of these come from God.

God uses 2 Corinthians 5:17 to remind us of how we, His children, are to be, of how we are to treat each other whether or not we enjoy being around that person. We use 2 Corinthians 5:17 to remind us we are no longer ruled by our old self and that we were made new by God, and we are to reflect that newness. There are many different kinds of love: The love you feel toward your family, toward your spouse, toward your children, toward your friend, and toward the stranger. True love can be tested. If it is pure and holy, you will feel no conviction towards feeling the feeling. It will be hard to put into words because what you are feeling is from God.

False love, the lies that the devil feeds to our sinful nature and tries to disguise as love, will be easy to spot. It is not of God, and that means it will cause much pain. Let me take a moment because I can hear the questions and raised hands saying, “Love hurts sometimes!” Yes, love can hurt. But, when we experience pain from true love, it is almost always due to that person we love experiencing hurt, and that is called empathy. The pain that comes from false love is pain you are causing the people who care about or the damage that comes with loving the wrong person, such as being with a bad influence and taking on their bad behavior. But the worst pain that comes from false love is the blindness you get towards God.

When you believe the lies of false love, your eyes cannot see God. Your ears cannot hear His words. Your spirit dries up from thirst that only His love can quench. False love is choosing to ignore God, and turning your back on God will cause you the most burn of all. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, forgiveness is grounded in love. As a new creation that has had your sins forgiven and wiped from existence through a death sacrifice made by the Son of God, it is your obligation to live as the new creature you are. I urge you to please be the difference in the world. Shine your light and flavor the earth as the salt you are. Choose to love, always.

Chapter Twelve

When Forgiveness Is Ongoing

Reader, there is someone in my life, someone who should be very close to me, who continues to walk away from me. For the sake of privacy, I won’t give a name or official relationship position. We will call this person Pain. (Pain, if you’re reading this, know the example is presented to help others by relating my own experience with you. This is in no way meant to shame, guilt, or humiliate you.) For a few years now, Pain has tresed against me. Pain has let me down more times than I can count or . Pain has demolished a relationship in my life I had high expectations for (Pain has also disappointed all of my expectations.)

There was a time I spoke to Pain frequently and got promises from Pain that I counted on. That time has ed. Pain has problems of their own, many, and I don’t believe everything Pain has done to me was intentional. Giving some grace to Pain has helped me to hold to some sanity in areas I otherwise would not have been able to do so. I want to specify that the issues and dynamics of my relationship with Pain are lightyears different compared to what happened with Olivia and me. What I really want you to glean from this chapter is how to move on from a relationship when the happy ending doesn’t come.

I believe that God can do absolutely anything; He can save, restore, and renew whomever He so pleases to. But the gift of free will He deposited into man means God cannot act against the will of a person. Sadly, as of the time I pen this book, Pain’s will seems to be that God stays out of their life. This is doubly sad to me because Pain use to invite God into their wounds and trust Him for healing, and because Pain cannot heal without God.

Pain and I didn’t have a great start or middle in life (I won’t say about the ending because as long as Pain is alive, restoration and healing are possible.) With what Pain continues to do against me, forgiving Pain is just about a daily occurrence. When a person sins against you 7 times 70 times, you forgive them. I dare say Pain has exceeded that number. But I know Jesus was not giving Peter permission (nor you or I) to cease forgiving once a quota was met.

One of the reasons Jesus instructs us to forgive is for our benefit: Forgiving instead of begrudging allows your soul and spirit to heal from what was done to you. I had a grudge towards Pain, and all it did was hurt me more. Pain didn’t take notice of my unforgiveness, and it didn’t place any weight in Pain’s spirit when I refused to forgive.

Allow me to insert here that our Heavenly Father understands certain transgressions require a time of processing or mourning before we can begin to forgive the offender. He is not callous to your pain, and He will not urge you to forgive if He knows you aren’t ready to receive such instruction. An incredible mystery about the Holy Ghost is how He grows us in spiritual maturity. The more you forgive, the quicker you will hear the Holy Ghost prompt you to forgive and be willing to obey. This happens because you have grown in faith towards the counsel of the Counselor. As you heed the command to forgive the Spirit of God will give you the strength to do so.

The mourning phase over (a time period whose length I do not recall), I was ready to forgive Pain. First, I told God I forgave Pain and asked Him to help me walk in that forgiveness. I have told Pain personally that I forgave them on several occasions, these being the times I was asked by Pain to forgive them. I had the misconception that forgiving Pain was a one-time deal, but boy was I wrong.

It didn’t take a week before Pain hurt me again. I wasn’t ready for the offense, but I was ready to forgive Pain. This cycle continues to this day, Pain hurts me, and I forgive them. However, the Lord showed me something else I didn’t know about forgiving Pain. At times a person can be toxic to your life, the reasons vary, but the root effect stays the same. If a person is in your life, a person you continue to forgive, yet they continue to transgress your forgiveness, the Lord will release you from that relationship.

When toxicity in relationships happens, the best course of action is boundaries. I wasn’t aware boundaries were accepted by God (that is when it comes to applying them towards others. Obviously, God desires and is the only person trustworthy to have no boundaries with.) I thought forgiving someone always looked like it did with Olivia. But people aren’t always as pure of heart as Olivia, and they will continue to take advantage of your forgiveness and grace without boundaries.

The Lord is still working with me on boundaries with Pain as the dynamics of our relationship can really vex my heart, and Pain knows this. Pain knows how much I love Jesus and how proud I am to be a follower of Christ, and Pain will attempt to manipulate my relationship with Jesus to pull down my boundaries. Pain doesn’t believe boundaries are in the life of a Christian, at least, when it comes to the two of us. They don’t believe forgiveness and grace have truly been extended because they can’t do whatever they want whenever they want to me.

For example, say a young child is playing by a power outlet and has a piece of metal in one hand and a cup of water in another. As a loving and caring guardian over that child, you would remove them from the outlet and put up a boundary so they cannot go near it and hurt themselves. Would this make you unforgiving or ungracious? Of course not! This would make you wise and mature in spirit as you did what was best for the situation.

You would forgive the child for being so reckless near an outlet and realize they

didn’t know any better. You would extend grace by gently but effectively removing them from that danger zone and not screaming at them over something they didn’t understand. This example is clear cut and simple compared to my reality with Pain but is, at its core, the same. I am justified to guard my heart by the Word of God itself (See Proverbs 4:23).

There are dozens of verses in Scripture, especially in Proverbs, instructing us to be wise in who we allow in our lives and what we allow them to do. God sees you, and He sees when someone is lying to you and manipulating you, and He has no qualm with you for telling that person, “I’m sorry but we cannot hang out,” because of an ongoing desire they have to trample over you.

God has taught me that sometimes forgiving a person does entail letting them out of your life. Pain knows I have standards for it, and it knows, deep down, how I should be treated by it. But Pain just isn’t ready to forgive. Because of Jesus, I have hope for Pain. I hope that Pain will accept the gift of forgiveness that Jesus offers and extend it to me one day. And when that comes, I will rejoice and praise the name of the Lord.

Epilogue

We have come to the end of our journey discussing the power and gift of forgiveness. It is my sincere hope this book helped you and that God was able to reach you through these pages.

This world has a short supply of forgiveness. In fact, I would call forgiveness endangered, if not an antiquity. Besides, the forgiveness on the earth is not much to boast of. That is why God had to bring His kind of forgiveness Himself into the earth so that we, who are fallen, could know what forgiveness is.

I want to encourage you, if you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, to call on Him today. A prayer of salvation will never be denied by the Lord Jesus. You have only to believe in Him and on Him, acknowledging you are a sinner, and without Him, you’re bound for hell. Ask Jesus to show Himself to you by entering your heart and restoring you from where you fell, that is, back to His presence. And then get a Bible and read it from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21–Find a church where you can be discipled and continue to grow in relationship with the Father.

If you have Jesus as Lord and Savior and this book brought to your mind someone in need of forgiveness, either by you or you need to ask for theirs, don’t wait until you feel more comfortable. Reach out today and extend that olive branch, both from your heart and in action. Life is too short to hold a grudge. Besides, as a Christian, you are commanded to forgive. Jesus did not make grudges an option to His church.

Thank you for spending this time with me.

Thank the Lord God Almighty for inspiring me to write this book.

Thank Jesus Christ for showing me forgiveness.

Hallelujah!

Forgiveness: A state of life for the believer in Jesus Christ; a way of life; frequent action of a Christian toward people.