As a follower of Christ, I have walked in the footsteps of the Apostle. Like Paul, I have been beat up, shot at, stabbed, lied to, lied about, slandered, and confined because of my beliefs.
As a servant of Christ, I have suffered in the testing of my faith. Like Job, I have lost my wealth (twice), children, and health.
As child of God, I have been restored - and blessed with more than I could have ever thought to ask for. When all else had failed, when everything had been taken away, I learned (finally) how to work through and resolve my issues with anger, frustration, and forgiveness.
To be in a position of restoration, I had to get right with God. Please believe me when I tell you that time does not heal all wounds & distance doesn’t remove the bitter taste of anger. Yes, we can understandably be angry about a situation that we have gone through, but there comes a point in time when we have to willing move past resentment and forgive the person or the people who have wronged us. But forgiving a person means overcoming different obstacles.
With true forgiveness, there are no conditions or demands attached to it. You may have heard it said that by forgiving someone of the wrong(s) they have done to us - that it "frees" us. That's true. When we rid ourselves of the negativity associated with the anger, frustration, and resentment of a given situation, then we are truly able to forgive that person and we are free to find ourselves and can then move on with our lives. But how do we forgive someone?
To forgive someone who has wronged us, we have to:
1. Choose to want to forgive the person. It doesn’t matter whether they ask us to forgive them or if they don’t. If you are ever going to forgive someone, you have to choose to take the higher road and be willingly move past the hurt and anger that you associate with that person.
2. Stop dwelling on your hurt and anger. While it’s easy to demean the character of a person who lies, cheats, steals, or takes advantage of someone, it can be difficult when you have an opportunity to deplore them but choose not to. Basically, if you want to really forgive someone, you have to stop gossiping about him or her and what he or she has done.
3. Get over your self-pride. Someone doesn’t always have to “pay for what’s happened.” That type of attitude only leaves YOU (the victim) festering in self-pity, shame, and loneliness. If you don’t stop dwelling on the actual or perceived wrong doing, you will eventually drive even your friends and family away. Trust me, the person who has wronged you, if he or she is even cognizant that you have been wronged, probably doesn’t think about the matter much - if at all.
4. Stop fearing how people will perceive you. Some people fear that if they forgive a person, others will think they are weak or inferior. Some people fear that if they tell the person who wronged them, that he or she is forgiven for the act, that the person will reject them.
5. Stop listening to negative advice. My children’s mother and I ended up divorced because she routinely listened to the advice of her friends rather than seeking Christian counsel. Their poor advice coupled with my pride left us both bitter and angry. I ended up divorced a second time because I listened to poor advice before I deployed to Qatar and I rushed naively into remarriage with a woman that I thought I knew, but really I didn’t. In many respects I had left myself vulnerable to being conned as I still had several issues that I had to work through from my first marriage. [Did you notice how many times the word “I” is used in this paragraph? I responded with pride the first time around and I listened to negative advice the second go around.]
6. Forgive completely. We can’t hold on to part of our past and expect to get over the things that happened.
7. Take time for ourselves. It takes time to forgive a person for some wrongs. If a supervisor or a co-worker says something negative about a project that has been turned in, that’s easy for some people to forgive. Being cheated on or having your identity stolen by someone you trusted, those can be a little harder to let go of – but we have to. We have to take whatever time is necessary to work through letting go of the situation.