The Miracle of Forgiveness

And that's when I learned something that has stayed with me, that forgiveness is a miracle.

It's a miracle God does in the human heart.

It's a miracle of the heart when all the list of reasons and explanations and the demands, all of that falls away.

And we're able to release someone from the cage of hurt that we have had locked up.

Because Satan will tell you to hold on to the hurt.

He will keep reminding you of all those memories.

But resentment only breeds more resentment.

But I learned forgiveness breeds freedom.

But we have to choose to forgive.

Remember the question that I've talked about in the previous episodes.

What kind of woman will you choose to be? When you choose to forgive, freedom, healing, and peace can begin to take root where bitterness and resentment once grew.

And that experience that I had in that moment is one of the reasons forgiveness became one of the 10 attributes I chose to write about in Stand Steady.

And the order that I talk about these attributes in the book is intentional too.

They build on one another.

We begin with truth because everything else has to be built on the truth of God's word.

And then once we're standing on truth, one of the first places God's truth confronts us is in the area of forgiveness.

Because our culture, the world we live in, doesn't encourage forgiveness very well.

The world loves to hold a grudge.

And the world will encourage you to do the same.

Our culture encourages us to nurse our grievances, replay the offense in our head over and over to talk about it, post about it, tell everybody how we've been wronged, make the other person pay.

And I look around today and I see so much anger.

And yes, sometimes people have very legitimate reasons to be angry.

There is real betrayal.

There's hurt.

There's abuse.