By Ken Fletcher
“It is a prison to live in the land of unfogiveness. It’s a prison of our own making. A place of bondage and despair. A place of sadness. Of negativity. A place of fear. Jesus has called us to rise up out of this place we have locked ourselves in.
He calls us to liberty and freedom. To positivity. To Faith. To forgive and be free starts with a decision. Jesus gives us the power within to release everything to Him. Why live in a barren place of fear, when we can turn it all over to Jesus and be free?
For sure, we will have more opportunities to stay in unforgiveness. But, we should have learned already that we never want to stay there! Many people live in perpetual unforgiveness. Never releasing the other. Because they may have experienced wrong done to them. It can be kept. Going everywhere with them!
We can feel that we are justified in our stance. The other must pay, we think. When, we ourselves are placing ourselves in a prison of our own design. Keeping ourselves in the desert place of fear and anger. But, we won’t let it go. So, more time is spent in the desert place inside of our soul. It’s not a nice place to live. Though we are justified, we are sad, we’re angry, and hold on to the resentment like it’s precious–because we’re justified!
Justified to keep it inside! Because we have been wronged. Yep! So, in time, we keep gathering and accumulating more and more until we become a very bitter person. But, we’re justified all right! Yep! We can keep it all. If we want to. But, at what cost to us and others?
If we keep it up, we will be very troubled indeed–and very depressed. This is no good path for any of us! We should be quick to forgive. And, stay free inside. Giving it all to Jesus. All the wrong and all the misunderstandings.
Maybe we don’t know all that is behind what happened to us. Maybe we might understand the other’s motivation if we knew the whole story behind everything. But, we are working with partial information–not the complete. Even though we do not know the whole picture, we assume too much.
Do we endeavor to understand? Or are we so dug in to our own perspective that we cannot even begin to understand what may have been behind it? Yes, we may have been a victim. But, to remain in that frame of mind KEEPS us a victim. And, traps us in a destructive frame of mind. A frame of mind that is not just against the other, but becomes really against ourselves!
It’s like an acid that eats away at what is good. We must get rid of the poison within us. The unforgiveness. It really is poison to us individually. We cannot get the poison out of another person, but we CAN get the poison out of us!
We can give it all to Jesus. We can forgive and be free. No matter what the other person does, we can be free. We should live this way. Continually living free of unforgiveness. Can we? Yes! It’s possible. It is a personal decision we can make within ourselves. To refuse to stay in unforgiveness any more! Actively giving it to Jesus intentionally and deliberately. Understanding that it’s poison to our being.
Unforgiveness draws the enemy and can give him access to our lives. He places visions and phrases on a loop to amplify the offense in our minds. So that we don’t want to forgive. And, we stay in this desert place where he likes for us to stay. Because it gives him more access to our lives as time goes along, if we don’t forgive.
Are we going to give it to Jesus and be free? I have seen extraordinary examples of people forgiving others in the face of terrible wrong. During criminal trials, as in the cases of some we have seen on TV, who have forgiven the murderers of their own children! How is this even possible?
I have seen this and wondered how they were able to do such a thing? I believe they knew that unless they forgive the murderers they themselves would become captive through unforgiveness to the wrong of the others. And, they must have personally decided it was far better to release the hatred to Jesus and be free rather to live in bondage to unforgiveness.
There’s obviously a supernatural power that gives the parents of these murdered children ability beyond themselves. It really is amazing to see this overcoming power at work in a person. But, it all begins with a choice.
Jesus will take something that hurt us and turn it into something positive in our lives to help others. But, He can’t do that without our consent and our choice to trust Him with it all by faith. Then, we move out of the arena of self and into the arena of God.
We choose to let Him have it. And, in doing so, we choose to be free from unforgiveness’s bondage and control over us. As it has been said for thousands of years, and it’s still true, forgive and be free!” KF KenFletcher.org
