A WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE

FORGIVENESS

Recently, I was looking over some of the previous articles that I had written. I wanted to see what God had been speaking to me to speak to you. What I found was that the topic that He had given me last year in July is the exact same topic that He gave me for this July's article. And the topic is: FORGIVENESS.

Forgiveness is an attribute that we will have to continuously apply through life. As people we all will have to forgive someone during the course of our days here on earth. You may have to even forgive the same person for the same thing multiple times.

Each walk is different.

I was speaking with an individual who is walking through her journey of healing and forgiveness explaining to her that when you have wronged an individual you then have to give that individual time to process the hurt and the pain that you caused them.

We are all striving to be like Christ. That striving is part of our walk towards maturity. The Bible tells us, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:31-32 NKJV.

God makes forgiveness easy.

The enemy makes it hard. It’s his job to stop us from receiving Pastor Rhoda Turner God’s promises. Christian Faith

I have four daughters and when one is just being nasty towards Fellowship Church her other sisters and unforgiving it’s really hard for me to reward her Chandler, AZ www.cffaz.org

with anything. I typically ask them, "How do you think God would handle this situation?", and the response I usually get is something along the lines of "she’s just so irritating”. I then will turn it on them by showing them how they too can be that way and reminding them that we are not responsible for their actions, but we are always responsible for our own actions and responses. Their inability to control themselves does not dictate how we respond. I know there have been plenty of times when I irritated the Lord. He never got an attitude with me or stopped speaking to me. He embraced me, irritations and all. That’s something that we have to remember. God loves us with all of our flaws. It's just like God to present us with opportunities to implement His Word. Recently, a co-worker who is also a believer, behaved in a way that gave me a chance to practice what I had been preaching to my daughters. An incident happened at work where she Rhoda filed a complaint against me with the Human Resource Department. HR came to the campus that I work at and had a meeting with the principal and a couple of the Distinct Administrators. The individual was in tears because of something that I had done towards

TURNER her. The whole incident was baffling to me, as I was only following a directive given to me by the principal. After investigating the allegations, the truth came to light regarding who filed the complaint. This coworker blamed me for what happened. Again, I was following and doing what I was told to do. What it boiled down to was that she was upset with the principal, but she took her anger out on me, and from that moment on our relationship was never the same. Her attitude towards me changed. She became rude, but I continued to walk in God’s love to her. I believe that the more you strive to be like Christ the easier it becomes. I was able to love her in spite of her treatment towards me, because I practice loving people daily. I was even able to forgive her, because I had practice in that area too. And I practice it with the Word backing me up. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots.” Luke 23:34 NKJV. We can forgive them like Jesus when we keep in mind that they don't really know what they are doing sometimes. Take Jesus' words at face value. When I read this scripture, I take it at face value at that moment. When people are causing harm, they aren’t always in the correct frame of mind; if they were they wouldn’t have done what they did. They would have chosen differently. They haven't contemplated the aftermath of their actions, only immediate gratification. Forgiveness provides the offender the opportunity to get back to their proper mind and do things differently, clean slates. And we have the opportunity to provide them with that.