Colossians 3:13 “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.” Today's episode is a hard one to hear and yet it is so necessary. It tells us how important forgiveness is and why we must do all we can to let go of the unforgiveness we are holding in our hearts. It is not hurting anyone but ourselves. Our unforgiveness is not hurting the other person, they have probably forgotten all about it. Forgiveness is about setting ourselves free and also opening ourselves up to so much more from God. Unforgiveness can block so much grace, love, and forgiveness from God. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Can Unforgiveness Affect My Eternal Salvation?
Colossians 3:13 “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”
I recently attended a boot camp to learn about the unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a technique to set people free from the things that weigh them down. The reality is that our enemy, the devil, wants to keep us from living out our destinies as children of God. Evil spirits can gain influence in our lives through open doorways. These are opened, often in childhood, by us or by other people. Through these doors, Satan’s lies and deceptions limit our access to the blessing of the kingdom of God. Sometimes we open doors to the enemy in ways we don’t know, for instance, participating in the occult, holding on to bitterness or unforgiveness, harboring resentment, and so on. On our first night of training, we learned about the first two essential steps.
The first one was repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, it is a part of our daily life, and yet when we sin it hurts our relationship with God. When we sin we are opening a door for the enemy to come in. Repentance for our sins is a big part of our freedom. If we truly want to be free we can’t have our sins hanging over us. One way our sins can invite the enemy in is because he will then use that sin to make us ashamed of what we did. Shame is straight from hell, it is not from God. Once we start to feel ashamed then we pull away and we tend to isolate ourselves because we feel as though we aren’t worth anything. Once we repent we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light and they no longer have hold over us.
The second essential step that we talked about is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me. This is the one that I don’t think we realize how important it is. I remember when I was at a Bible study and they were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” When they said that God forgives us the same way we forgive those who trespass against us, I was so surprised. I had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I have been a Catholic for my whole life and this was only about 10 years ago. I have probably said the Our Father prayer more times than I can count and yet I never really put two and two together.
Have you ever had a time when you heard something or realized something and it was life-changing for you? I can remember two times this has happened for me with scripture. The first one was when I discovered Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” When I discovered we have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the same power Jesus had, that was life-changing for me. The second time was when I discovered what I am really saying when I say the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us O Lord as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you know that is what you are saying? How many times have you said that prayer? Each time you say the rosary you say it at least 6 times. We also say it every time we attend mass.
When I heard this I was determined to learn how to forgive better. I was determined to not hold things against people. I have done my best to do this. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have learned quite a bit about forgiveness in my quest to become better at it. First I learned what forgiveness is and is not. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to give the thing that happened any space in your brain anymore. You are not going to think about it and you are not going to let it dictate what you do and how you act. Forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. You can forgive someone even if you don’t feel like it. You can forgive someone and yet not feel like anything has changed. Forgiveness is not saying the thing that the other person did was ok, it was not. When you forgive you are not letting the other person off the hook and condoning their behavior. Forgiveness is making a decision to turn the judgment over to God. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to let unforgiveness eat you up inside. The person you are refusing to forgive probably has moved on and your unforgiveness is not bothering them at all.
The analogy that I have heard time and time again about forgiveness is that it is like taking a little sip of poison every single day with the expectation that the other person will die. I know you are angry, hurt, and sad. I am sure you have every right to be, and also, as long as you keep thinking about it and refusing to forgive, you can’t really heal. I talk to people I know about unforgiveness all the time since learning we will be forgiven as we forgive. I can’t help it, I understand what is at stake and I know it is not worth it. Whomever you are refusing to forgive has probably taken enough from you, are you really going to let them take your eternal salvation too? No matter what they did to you, is not forgiving them worth the risk of God not forgiving you?
Our teacher told the story about a preacher/minister who had died and found out he was on his way to hell. He said he saw how horrible it was. In hell, this man saw another man on all fours on fire from head to toe. He had a collar around his neck attached to a chain and a demon was holding the chain. Our teacher told us that this man went to hell because he had unforgiveness in his heart. I was curious to hear the exact story so I looked it up online. It turns out it was a priest who had a heart attack and must have flatlined at some point. Here is what the priest said, "I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime trying to help so many people and made so many decisions that were godly decisions, but instead of me going up, I went down!” This priest was very angry as he said he did so much good in his lifetime. Then he said he saw Jesus and Jesus gave him a personal message. "Jesus said, 'You have been secretly upset with the people who have hurt you. You had been hoping that I would punish the people that hurt you. These are not your people. These are my people.' He said, 'I only want you to focus on the assignment I am giving you.’ The priest explains, “Although I did good, the thing I had in my heart was unforgiveness for the people who wronged me. A person that can't forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.”
This example is probably not what we want to hear. I know it scared me when I heard it and yet we must hear it. We have to know what will keep us from spending eternity with our Father. This is why God sends people to share these messages with us. Mary gave the little children of Fatima an image of hell and told them that more people than we know are ending up there. Forgiveness is not easy, I know that. I know that I don’t understand some of the things that have happened to you. I know people can be terrible and they do terrible things. If you are struggling to forgive I ask you to review what forgiveness is and is not again. You don’t have to forgive and forget. You don't have to forgive the person and invite them over for Christmas. It is perfectly ok to forgive the person and never see them again, never tell them you forgave them, never talk to them again. Forgiveness is for you, it is not for them.
The last line the priest said really hit me. “A person that can’t forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.” What if all the people we wronged refused to forgive us? What if God held original sin against us and refused to forgive us? What if he refused to send His only son to save us? Forgiveness is so much more important than we think it is. I know so many people who are refusing to forgive because they say the other person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. You might be right. Forgiveness is not about them, it is about you. It is about setting yourself free from the spirit of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness can block so much from the Lord. It can block healing, it can block graces, and it can block your forgiveness from the Lord. Is it really worth it?
I want to take a minute to add some hope to the end of this talk because if you are harboring unforgiveness it might be very scary to think of the consequences. You might have had some truly terrible things done to you and you want the Lord to forgive you and yet you have no idea where to even begin forgiving the other person or people. Here is the thing, the Lord doesn’t expect you to forgive on your own. We can’t actually forgive on our own. All we can do is say, yes Lord, I want to forgive, and the Lord can change your heart for you. If you are at a point right now where you really can’t even say,” Lord, I want to forgive, please help me.” That's ok. The Lord meets us where we are. Can you say I want to, want to forgive? Can you say, Jesus, please give me the grace to want, to want to forgive? If so, Jesus will help you get to that point and then you can move to actually forgiving.
My teacher told a story about a woman who was doing an Unbound session and the woman with whom she was working refused to forgive her sister. Well, this is the first step, you can’t move on to the rest if you can’t first get through forgiveness. The woman was adamant that she would not forgive or even pray for her sister. The woman leading the session asked if she would be able to ask Jesus to help her want, to want to forgive. She said yes and she asked Jesus. She said ok, now she wanted to want forgive, but she still couldn’t forgive. The leader asked her if she would be willing to do 1% of the work to forgive if Jesus could do the other 99%. She said she thought she might be able to do that and so she forgave her sister 1% and Jesus did the rest.
Remember, forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. She might not have felt any different after she forgave her sister that 1% but she was willing to do it. God will meet you where you are too! If all you can say right now is, “Lord please give me the grace to want, to want, to want to forgive.” That’s ok, just say it. God is the one who does the forgiving. We just need to say the words and God does all the hard parts. God is asking us to let Him in, to not refuse to let Him work on any area of us. Can we do that? Can we give God even a tiny little crack of a window where He can come in and transform our hearts? Don’t let the unforgiveness of what others did to you dictate the level of forgiveness you get from God. Haven’t they done enough? Don’t let them continue to have an effect on your life and definitely not your eternity. A wonderful way to conclude your forgiveness of another is to pray the Father’s Blessing upon them. God will rejoice in your wholehearted generosity because that is the way He is with us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to spend eternity with you. We don’t want anything to get in our way, especially unforgiveness. Please show us whom we need to forgive and then help us forgive them. For those we feel we can’t forgive, please help us Lord. Soften our hearts and give us the grace we need to at least want to forgive them. Help us say the words to allow you to come in and work on our hearts Lord. We want to hold nothing back from you. Help us also repent of our sins Lord. We don’t want to give the enemy any ammunition and when we keep our sins from you the enemy uses them against us. Help us turn them over to you Lord. Help us repent and turn back to you. Help us repair our relationship with you. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!