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A Life of Freedom
The Bible says that love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil (1 Corinthians 13:5). The Amplified Bible says: it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
Wow, is that even possible? I think it is! Just imagine, if someone did something that irritated you, hurt you, or made you mad – and you just took no notice of it, paid no attention to it! If, when someone offended you (intentionally or not), you just forgave automatically, before the offense even had a chance to hit your heart or get stuck in your mind.
I think the Bible is giving us a tool here for a life of freedom. And I believe we can live this way because God’s love resides in us. Romans 5:5 says, “…the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” This is not natural human love – not an ooey-gooey feeling -- but the supernatural God-kind of love, and it’s already in your heart. That means you can make a choice every day to yield to it.
I think the only way to walk in this kind of love is to get really good at forgiving – the big things and the small things. The better we get at forgiving the little irritations and “unfairnesses” of life on a day to day basis, the easier it is for us to forgive truly painful events in our lives.
How do we get better at something? We have to practice. To get better at playing the piano, we have to practice. To get better at giving speeches, we have to do it more. To get better at playing any kind of sport, we have to practice.
I think it’s the same with forgiveness. The more we practice, the better we get at it. If we practice forgiving the small things – the little daily irritations – then I’m pretty sure we’ll be better able to forgive when big hurts come along. We can walk away from those hurts with barely a scratch on us. We can live in freedom and keep our blessing pipe flowing all the time. I believe that’s how God wants us to live, and He’s empowered us to do it.
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About this Plan
We’ve all had very major, very painful things happen to us, and forgiveness is the key to getting free from the hurts of the past. But what if we aimed to live a lifestyle of forgiveness – where nothing bothers us, where even small hurts just roll off us like water off a duck’s back? That’s the life of freedom God wants for us!
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