I’m not presuming to be an expert on how to forgive. I’m only sharing what I’ve learned. But for some, it’s harder to do than for others.
We know Jesus said, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”-Matthew 6:14,15. But He did not explain how to forgive. He simply commanded and warned that we must.
I’m terrified of becoming bitter; I’ve fought the bitterness I had against different people in my life, and I overcome it. Some battles were harder than others.
When I was newly born again, I worked with a Christian lady who was the same age as my grandmother. She was a strong woman, very assertive but also sensitive, and I was timid.
She and I didn’t always get along. She was my superior, and after months of working with her, I became bitter towards her.
I remember during prayer time begging God to “get her back and repay her for the unkind way she treated me.” I didn’t like her, and I knew I didn’t love her. There was a saying that went around in our little group: “You have to love people, but you don’t have to like them.” That saying fueled my grudge. I knew that was wrong and felt pricked in my conscience. But in time and by God’s mercy, I saw how wretched I was. I pleaded with God to help me love and forgive her. “Lord, You know I don’t love her. You tell us to forgive, but how? How do I forgive? Change my heart! I can’t do it on my own. I need Your help.”
I prayed that way for two weeks, and after two weeks, I noticed a difference in my heart. God was changing me! He made me understand how to treat her. I couldn’t treat her the same way I treated others because she was different; everyone is unique. She needed to be handled differently. God gave me a genuine desire to be kind to her, whereas before I didn’t care about her feelings. God put a love for this Christian lady in my heart! I could not have forgiven her without His help.
(When I write this experience, please consider that I was at fault many times in our disagreements, and I asked her forgiveness and made peace with her.)
If you’ve ever read The Hiding Place, you may remember the encounter Corrie had with the former concentration camp guard.
“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.
It was 1947, and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.
“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”
The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.
It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors, and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.
“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.
Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment, we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.
And having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I never again had difficulty in forgiving: I wish I could say it! I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on. But they didn’t.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior–but only draw them fresh from God each day.”-The Hiding Place
Her testimony led me to draw strength from the One who is my strength. What I learned from that experience is that when you don’t comprehend how to do something, especially a command from the Bible, ask the Author. He knows the answer. He wrote the book and the commands in it.
“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.”-Isaiah 55:6
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”-Jeremiah 29:13
When in your walk with Christ, you come upon a problem so complex that you don’t know how to do or what to do, ask the Lord. He is right there, waiting for your desperate cry. He wants to tell you, but you must first ask. “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”-Isaiah 30:21 “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”-John 14:26
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