To Forgive or Not

The other day I got an email from a frustrated Christian woman. She told me how she has been trying to forgive her husband of adultery and get over the resentment she is feeling towards him. The problem is when he committed the infidelity he was not a practicing Christian man.

It has been only recently that he has decided to turn his life around and walk with the Lord Jesus. But she is not letting her resentment go. She still feels considerable pain, even though her husband is repentant and remorseful of his actions.

So what do you think about this? If he were a changed man why would she still be feeling resentful towards her husband? Do you think I am getting both sides to the story? I never get the full story when I only get a one sided view of an issue – it makes it hard when I don’t hear the other side to the story.

And what about her? Do you think she has never sinned against the man she married? I am sure that she must get angry with her husband from time to time, or disrespected him or treated him with contempt, and she possibly even flirted with other men herself. She certainly is not without sin because we all sin!

We often have this one sided view of our position in the marriage and we tend to get pious just because we did not commit a sexual sin against our spouse, and somehow because of that we think we’re a better person, a better Christian, or a better marriage partner, etc. But to God, it does not matter what sin we commit or don’t commit because to Him a sin is a sin. (Unless it is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of Christ Jesus)

We are not to get angry, store up wealth, judge our neighbor, covet what our neighbor has, become greedy, or even look at a man or woman with thoughts of lust, and yet, we all do those things every single day. Do we want to be forgiven if we were repentant? I think so!

What are feelings of resentment all about anyway? Well, it is a negative emotion that we hold against someone so we can feel better about ourselves. If we don’t have our angry and bitter feelings to hurt back with, we may become vulnerable to being hurt again. This is why God asks us to continue to forgive over and over again.

In other words, we cannot get rid of our resent filled feelings until we make the switch from our own playing field to God’s playing field. As Christian’s everything we do and say should be done based out of God’s playing field, otherwise what would all this Christian stuff be about? God has blessed us with so much and yet many of us take those blessings for granted. We are not stuck living in our resentment when we ask Christ to help us deal with our emotions and then to forgive others.

Truth be told, we have to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes first before we realize the ramifications of our own actions. Or scripturally speaking, take the log out of our own eye first before we can take the sliver out of our spouse’s eye. God will bless us with the humbleness we need so we can hand over our bitterness and resentment to Him.

Without God in the forefront of our lives, we actually think our selfish feelings our okay to have, but they aren’t. It’s okay to feel resentment and anger for a time, but to be free to love our spouse with the love we have been given from God we have to let those negative emotions go and forgive, possibly over and over again.

Why do you think God does not judge sins differently?

How can we forgive our spouse when we ourselves still need forgiveness from Christ for our sins?

Do you think if you prayed to God to help you forgive, would you be able to?

What really stops us from being able to forgive?

Could it be our unwillingness to want to give up the emotions that go with unforgivness?

You Can forgive COMPLETELY when you give your hurt to God and the emotions that go with that hurt!