Uncommen: God GoalsSample

Forgive Others As You Have Been Forgiven

Colossians 3:13 "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."

If you haven't noticed yet, these God Goals are getting harder and harder as we move forward to the next day. On day one, we focused on praying more, and on day two, we touched on loving our neighbor. But now, as the preacher says, I've gone from preaching to meddling." If loving others was hard, forgiving them can seem almost impossible. After all, they wronged me!!!

You probably don't have to close your eyes to think of that one person you know you should forgive but don't want to forgive, whether it was an actual offense, a perceived slight, or one of those fancy made-up problems. Just because you've put distance between you and that person doesn't mean you have forgiven them. We do a great job of keeping that argument alive even when the person isn't there. I've won every argument I've ever had in the shower.

What I love about this verse is the first four words, "bear with each other..." God knew we would have times when we would struggle with each other, but we were told to bear with each other. Allow that person to say something that hurts your feelings only to forgive them for doing so. You may have just done the same thing to someone the day before to cause hurt feelings.

What's strange is I've seen significant life events create opportunities for reconciliation with family and friends. I've seen people spend years nipping at each other, avoiding each other at all costs, only to mend relationships at a funeral. I've seen families who haven't spoken in 10 years start to reconcile at a wedding. So why does it take these milestone events for us to forgive someone? Maybe it's because we changed our perspective and realized the issue wasn't that important after all.

The problem is we don't have these significant events every day, and quite frankly, we should be able to forgive any day of the week. If you need time to pray and reflect on the situation to forgive someone, do so by all means. If that doesn't motivate you to forgive, let's move to the last part of our verse, "Forgive as the Lord forgave you."

When you and I didn't deserve God's forgiveness, He gave it freely.

Romans 5:8 "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Uncommen Questions:

How well do you forgive others?

Do you feel they have to approach you first?

Uncommen Challenge:

I challenge us all to be quick to forgive because it will free us up from a lifetime of bitterness.