All posts tagged: Forgiveness

Why forgiveness is like an onion

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According to a recent survey conducted by the American Bible Society, Americans who regularly read their Bible are more able to forgive others than those who don’t. In its survey, ABS asked people to respond to this statement: “I am able to sincerely forgive whatever someone else has done to me, regardless of whether they ever ask for forgiveness or not.” The survey found that 94% of those who considered themselves to be scripturally engaged agreed with that statement, compared to only 6% who did not. Scripturally engaged people were defined as those who believe the Bible impacts their daily lives and relationship with God and others. In comparison, only 59% of the people who were not scripturally engaged agreed with that statement. As believers, we understand that we must forgive those who hurt us. This was one of Christ’s major messages, we have to forgive, because we have been forgiven. But I would like to point out one important point about forgiveness. You may need to forgive the same incident more than once. When …

Forgiveness

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Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. — Luke 17:3 By Rick Renner When I was a young boy, I had a baseball coach who really disliked me. No matter how hard I tried to please him, he poked fun at me and tried to embarrass me in front of my teammates. His words and behavior would hurt me deeply, but I can remember my father telling me to forgive him. My dad would gently urge me to “grin and bear it” because these things happen in life. So when my coach insulted me, I’d do my best to forgive him and then muster the strength to wipe away my tears and walk back onto the ball field. It was wrong of that baseball coach to treat me in that way, but his negativity provided a good learning experience to help prepare me for life. I’m so thankful my father taught me to forgive, get back on the field, and not let the words …

An explosion of rage over too much mayo?

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I am not sure how much a Subway sandwich costs in Atlanta, Georgia, and of course, the price varies depending on the size and type, but I am guessing around $8.00. And a subway employee was shot to death and another injured requiring emergency surgery when a customer became enraged and opened fire after an employee put too much mayo on a sub. In an interview with Fox News, the Subway manager, Willie Glenn said “Believe it or not, it was about too much mayonnaise on his sandwich. He decided to escalate the situation and from there that’s when all hell broke loose.” The police have not caught the person responsible for the murder. Though the mayo triggered the violence, it was not the cause, because whole people do not kill someone over an $8 mistake.. I suspect that the person responsible walked into that subway carrying grudges, and by his reaction, I am guessing a mountain of offenses. It reminds me of the story of the King who called for an audit of his …

The devastating power of words

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Recently, Tom Clark, podcaster and writer, shared an interesting story on Charisma News of something that happened to him at the 50th class reunion of his former high school. He was approached by a 69-year-old man, who he had not seen for 50 years. Until the man introduced himself, Tom didn’t even recognize his former teammate from the high school football team. Then the man made a strange request and asked Tom for forgiveness. Since he hadn’t seen the man for over five decades, Tom had no idea what he was talking about, but said he would readily forgive, but wanted to know what he needed to forgive this man for. The man said, ‘forgive me for dropping that touchdown pass.’ At that moment, Tom remembered the incident and words he had spoken to the young man after he had dropped a touchdown pass during a high school football game: “Can’t you catch? You’re ruining my passing percentage!” The man had never forgotten those impactful words, and a half a century later they were still …

Going the ‘extra mile’ of forgiveness in Zimbabwe

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In Matthew 5:41, Jesus was referring to an interesting privilege available to Roman soldiers when he told his disciples, ‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.’ It’s where we get the idiom used today, about ‘going the extra mile.’ It is based on a Roman law, that allowed a Roman soldier to compel any idle, able-bodied man or a man walking in the same direction, provided he was not a Roman citizen, to carry the soldier’s armour for one thousand paces or approximately a mile. Jesus taught if a soldier required this of you, instead of resenting and fighting it, a person should forgive and offer to carry the soldier’s armour two miles. In the verse prior to this, Jesus also taught if a man steals your shirt, then give your cloak as well. And CBN reports that this is the attitude that Craig Deall and his family took in 2003, when the Zimbabwe government seized their farm, without compensation. It was part of the government’s land reform policy …

From fear to anger

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The upheaval on our planet right now has created rifts in relationships online, off-line, in our churches and communities. I cringe when I see unkind comments and anger directed at opposing opinions amongst friends. We find ourselves in a crisis as the pressure builds and creates cracks of division and deep crevices of fear and hopelessness in our lives.  A crisis tends to bring out what is really inside us, and we shouldn’t be surprised by the ranting and pushing all around us. In these moments, love bows to fear as it takes control of our lives and vitriolic words pour off our keyboards onto the screen.   Death or life lies in our hands, and in every crisis there is the opportunity to make things better. Proverbs tells us that life and death is in our tongue (Proverbs 18:21). When we speak we can bring encouragement and life to people, or we can speak with condemnation, anger and bitterness, bringing death. This applies to the things we say and the things we write as we comment …

The red flag: Moving past anger

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When dealing with anger, it seems that we often make it about the other person, the one who sparked our anger. We blame our anger on them and their actions or words, and rarely about our response and the way we handled the offence. I read where one author treated his anger like a marker or a red flag, as he called it. Whenever he felt a reaction to an offence and recognized the anger that was rising from it, he literally visualized planting a red flag in the ground, staking out where his anger began. From that moment, he would take personal responsibility for his anger and not make it about the other person, as he intentionally worked towards creating a response that would bring resolve and peace for himself.   Looking back at the red flag marker, he could see how far he had come from his initial response.   This has been an awesome visualization that I practice when I feel anger stirring in me.  And, the goal, of course, is to move past the red …

Knowing God as a Forgiving Father

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by Dr. Michael L. Brown As many of you know, before I came to faith in Jesus in late 1971 as a 16-year-old, Jewish, hippie rock drummer, I was a heavy drug user, even boasting about my drug use. I also broke into a couple of houses with my friends, as well as a doctor’s office. (The primary motivation was just to do something crazy.) Even more shamefully, I stole money from my father on several occasions when some of my friends needed a few bucks. This was the most despicable act of all. A few weeks after coming to the Lord, I was sitting in the kitchen one night talking with my dad, who was the senior lawyer in the New York Supreme Court. As we sat there alone, he asked me a direct question: “Michael, did you steal that money from me a few months back?” Not only had I stolen the money, but I had cut through the screen door in the back of the house to make it look as if …

Why Kelly forgave her husband’s murderers?

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There is a lot of anger in the world today, and a lot of reasons to justify our anger and certainly Kelly Saenz had a reason. While working in Colombia sharing the Gospel, Kelly and Pabel Saenz met and were married in 2008 and continued to work together, sharing their faith in the South American country. But things took a dramatic turn in November 2014, when Pabel, who was working as a motorcycle taxi driver, disappeared after going into a dangerous region in Colombia. Kelly spent the next couple of days frantically searching for her husband, but three days later she received word from the regional police that her husband was dead having been choked to death by two men in the area that Pabel had travelled to. When she found out where her husband had died, Kelly went to the village and met with the chief to discuss her husband’s murder. It was then she discovered that two of the chief’s nephews were the ones’ responsible. In a meeting with the village council, she …

Why a black man risked his life to rescue a white cop?

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Even though he had previous run-ins with the police, Daylan McLee, 31, a black man, risked his life to save a white police officer trapped inside a burning cop car in Uniontown, PA. McLee was at home when he heard a large crash outside his home. Two cars had collided at a nearby intersection. One of them was a police car operated by Jay Hanley who had now had a broken leg and was trapped inside his burning car that could potentially explode. McLee took the initiative and with the help of another police officer ripped open the car door and pulled Hanley to safety. A police spokesman said without McLee’s help there was real possibility Hanley would have died. The Blaze explains why McLee did it: “I know this man is my brother through Christ, and I couldn’t leave him behind,” McLee said. “There were people outside screaming. We felt it in the house. It was like a jolt.”… “There is value in every human life,” he said. “We are all children of God, …

Can forgiveness heal a nation?

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I am convinced there are extremists trying to take advantage of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer to create anarchy and sow division in the US. But a recent article on Christian Post is giving me hope. It is a story about a group of white believers in Houston, Texas called Praytest. It was started by a white Christian rapper Bobby Herring and recently they went to a black public housing complex in Houston, Texas called Cuney Homes. It was in the same area of the city where George Floyd grew up before he moved to Minneapolis. At the complex, Praytest met with a group of black believers many who attend Free Indeed Church, pastored by Johnny D. Gentry. In an interview with Click2Houston, Herring explained what happened next: “One of the videos that went viral with Pastor Johnny Gentry and myself on one side facing each other, white people kneeling asking God for forgiveness and then you see my black brothers and sisters kneeling asking God for forgiveness, that …

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Are we vulnerable to satanic attack if we don’t forgive others?

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Many years ago, my wife and I had a Christian couple over for supper. After the meal we were sitting around talking. I can’t even remember what we were talking about, but suddenly the man exploded in anger. We all turned to the man in utter shock. You could hear the rage in his voice and see it on is face. He was blustery red. His eyes were wide. His voice was loud. We just looked at him stunned by what was coming out of his mouth. When he started settling down a bit, I asked him why he was so angry. He looked at me and said he didn’t know why. What we were talking about was so nondescript that I can’t even remember what it was about, but something we said triggered a fury deep within the man. A rage was so real, that I still remember it decades later. Though the husband didn’t know why he was so angry, there may have been a good reason for the rage. Jesus made an …

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Study shows that religious people live longer

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According to the Daily Mail, a study undertaken by researchers from Ohio State University in the US concluded that religious people live on average four years longer than atheists or non religious. The results of their study were published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science Journal. The group of psychology researchers came to this conclusion after studying the obituaries of over 1,000 people. This included 505 recorded n the Des Moines Register in Iowa in January and February 2012. The study led by doctoral student Laura Wallace concluded that church goers outlived non-religious people by 9.45 years. However, once they factored out other elements that can contribute to longer life including marriage and gender, that difference shrunk to 6.48 years. A second study of 1,096 obituaries published in 42 cites between August 2010 and August 2011 showed religious people lived an average of 5.64 years longer than those who weren’t. Once gender and marital status were factored out that difference dropped to 3.82 years. The researchers said there were several factors that may contribute …

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Forgiving, the springboard to a better future

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Has anyone ever told you to “move on” or “get over it.” I am learning, after a few years of dealing with unforgiveness in my life, that you never really get over the past.  And much to my relief, it’s OK! The act of forgiveness is a process and not just a one-time act. It has been helpful for me to understand that we need to develop the capacity to forgive. It is a skill we must learn and practice every day. We each have our own unique story of anger and hurt, but there are two components to forgiveness: Step 1: Grieving what was and what could have been. Step 2: Letting go – of the suffering Most think that a big part of forgiveness is about forgetting the incident or person that brought so much hurt and anger. But denying our past, without first acknowledging it, does not make it easier to forgive. Several experts on forgiveness talk about the importance of grieving over what happened and what could have been. We need …

Flamenco dance, Seville, Spain Credit: Laurence Vagner/Flickr/Creative Commons

The Dance of Life

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Español: La Danza de la Vida These past few weeks my eyes have been opened to my need for love, respect and acceptance from others. I tend to accuse others of being uncaring when they dismiss my plans and ideas. I demand from others what I am lacking in myself and make others responsible for the way I feel. When I quit blaming others for the way I am feeling (angry, hurt, rejected), only then can I see what the real problem is — my lack of self-esteem mostly. I needed to ask ‘why’ am I blaming someone else for my lack of self-worth and insecurities. Why do I so badly need to be right? Resentment and anger are dis-empowering. They debilitate and cripple us, yet we unknowingly lean on them like crutches to get the emotional support and love that we so badly need. When we seek love without giving it to ourselves first, (embracing our value and worth in God and believing that) we will never be satisfied with what we get from people.  …

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How are we to respond?

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In mid-October, a small Presbyterian church in Mayesville, South Carolina was vandalized with Satanic graffiti that included crosses drawn upside down, pentagrams and  the word “Satan.” There were over 20 pieces of graffiti spray painted on Salem Black River Presbyterian Church and two of its other buildings. One door was also broken open but nothing was stolen from the church. It was simple act of malicious vandalism. But the church had security cameras and caught video of four people vandalizing the church with the satanic imagery. After police distributed images captured from the video, people began to call in names of the suspects.  The Sumter County Sheriff’s department discovered that all four allegedly involved in the vandalism were from the nearby Shaw Air Force Base. The sheriff’s office have charged four people, Kayla Eilerman, Daveion Green, Clayre Savage and Brandon Munoz, with vandalism, trespass and conspiracy. Meanwhile in Canada, this past August, Trinity Baptist Church located in Burlington, Ontario was set on fire. The fire destroyed the old part of its building, but the fire …

Forgiving others is like an onion with many layers. Credit: Marco Verch/Wikipedial

Abortion survivor tells her story of forgiving her mother, father and even her grandmother

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On August 24, 1977, Melissa Ohden’s mother, 19, went to Saint Luke’s hospital in Sioux City, Iowa for the first step in her saline abortion that takes five days to complete. She was eight months pregnant and on August 29, 1977 she delivered her child. Her mother, who worked as an educational nurse at the hospital and was in the room as the abortion took place, had coerced her daughter into having the abortion. But unknown to her mother, Melissa was born alive and the staff left her to die in a pile of medical waste. But a while later when another nurse entered the room she heard a faint whimpering and rustling and discovered Melissa still alive. The nurse rushed Melissa to emergency and after a three-month stint in the hospital she was adopted by a Catholic family, Ron and Linda Ohden, who lived in Sioux Falls. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Melissa, 40, shared her incredible story of forgiveness as she spent 17 years trying to track down her parents. Initially …

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Neither do I condemn you

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In an article for Foxnews, Angel Hatfield shared a powerful story on forgiveness. Hatfield, who serves as executive producer for a movie “Because of Gracia” grew up in a Christian home. In fact, her father pastored a church. As she left her teen years, Hatfield became rebellious: “I skated in sin believing the big lie that there was more pleasure to be found in this world than in God.” Hatfield became pregnant and after hiding her pregnancy for five months, she finally decided to come clean with her father on what had happened. She was expecting her father to react and judge her for what she had done. Instead, he hung his head and when he finally spoke, her dad expressed his disappointment for what had happened but then he added: “And you have made poor choices which now have consequences. It won’t be easy — and there will be struggles and a hard path ahead of you. But I love you — and now I figure I have been given more to love.” Then …

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The river of life

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I remember five years ago, when I deliberately chose once and for all to forgive those who had wounded me over the years. It involved people I regularly interacted with at church and work. In my mind’s eye, I dumped it all on a garbage heap and burned it. When I looked back there was nothing left but smoke. Every time, I was reminded of the incident and was tempted to look back, I only saw blackened earth. There was nothing left to remember or react to. On my journey to wholeness over the past few years, I have learned that offense throws me completely off course and away from the purpose and plans God has for my life. Unforgiveness, and its children anger and resentment, created a current in my life that pulled me backwards and worked against the moving of the Holy Spirit. It was an extra weight in my boat as I navigated up the river of life.  I was not gaining ground spiritually and my boat was sinking. Unforgiveness attracted the …

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Forgive for your heart’s sake

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Español: Perdóname por el bien de tu corazón When Jesus spoke on forgiveness He was very clear on one thing: if we don’t forgive those who offend us, God would not forgive us. 14 For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. (Matthew 6:14-15 NASV) I sometimes wonder if we struggle to forgive ourselves for things that we have done in the past, that it is a sign of spiritual blockages caused by our unwillingness to forgive. These blockages hinder us from fully experiencing God’s forgiveness. But an article on John Hopkins Medicine, Forgiveness: Your Health depends on It, provides one more reason to forgive. We need to do it for the sake of our physical health. Like many of God’s commandments, such as circumcision that improves a man’s health, the need to forgive is another section in God’s user’s manual on proper operation of the human body. According to the John Hopkins’ article, …

Anger, bitterness and unforgiveness are linked

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Now in their 80s and 90s, many survivors of the Nazi Holocaust were upset when a photo of Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, 81, surfaced earlier this year. It was a photo of Eva embracing Oskar Groening, 94, in a German courtroom in the city of Lunenburg. Groening had been a SS sergeant and chief accountant at Auschwitz concentration camp, the same camp the Nazis sent Eva and her Hungarian Jewish family to die. The courts found Groening guilty and complicit in the slaughter of 300,000 Jews in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Eva and her identical twin sister Miriam were ten when their family arrived at the concentration camp. As the cattle cars emptied, Eva recalls the Nazis scouring the hundred of Jews standing on the train platform. The guards were looking for identical twins. When a guard saw Eva and Miriam, he yanked them out of their mothers arms and took them away. They were of keen interest to Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi surgeon at the camp who used Jews for his brutal experiments. He …

A wintry day in Sheffield, England. Credit: Wojtek Gurak/Flickr/Creative Commons

Forgiving a Christmas Eve murder

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It was December 24, 2012, and organist Alan Greaves, 68, was walking to Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Saviour’s Anglican church in Sheffield, England where he was scheduled to play. On his 10-minute journey, he ran in to two men — Jonathan Bowling, 22, and Ashley Foster, 22.  Both had left a Christmas gathering earlier that evening in a foul mood. According to court records, the two men were looking for trouble and saw Greaves as easy pickings. They attacked Greaves with a pick ax handle and hammer and he would later die in hospital from his injuries. But in a powerful testimony, Alan’s wife Maureen Greaves, 63, shared in an interview with the English newspaper, The Guardian, of her journey to forgiving the two men who murdered her husband in the unprovoked attack. Maureen, 63, currently serves as a lay minister with the Anglican church working with a group called the Church Army. Married for forty years, she and her husband have four children, two sons and two daughters. She recounted the night …

Independence day celebrations at the National Mall in Washington, DC Credit: Mark Andre/Flickr/Creative Commons

Did this Prophetic act in Washington, DC break a curse over the US?

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According to an article on Charisma News, some are calling an event that took place on October 21, 2016 a prophetic act that could profoundly impact America. On that day, 1000 Native Americans representing Indian tribes across both the US and Canada gathered in Washington DC to forgive the early Americans who broke treaties they made with Indian tribes decades ago. At the event called the National Day of Prayer for First Nations held at the Washington Mall, representatives of America’s tribal groups spoke declarations forgiving America. Speaking on behalf of the (Euchee) Yuchi tribe, Negiel Bigpond stated he was forgiving “the US, whether it asked for it or not.” Bigpond who organized the prayer event is a fourth generation pastor and serves as a tribal chief. He along with other native leaders and intercessors spoke a number of declarations that are posted at the All Tribes DC website. This included: “We repent of every curse spoken over America by our ancestors and we release the power of forgiveness to bring healing and the peace …

The trap of offense

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“Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” – Michael Hyatt from ‘Why leaders can’t afford to be offended’’ The other day I did it again and took offense at a comment on Facebook. I chose to make it personal and kept going over it in my mind until my emotions got the better of me. I quickly typed in a comment to straighten that person out. Thankfully, before I hit the send button, I called my husband and shared my offense with him. He calmly advised me to let it go because it would not accomplish any great purpose and probably create more misunderstanding. Not what I wanted to hear! But, I did take his advice because I knew it was wisdom even though I was itching to press the send button. After calming down, I decided I really wanted to get on top of my emotional response to the offense. I was reminded of this verse in the Bible; “It is necessary that temptation come, but woe …

Forgiving our parents and forefathers is a necessary step to breaking Generational curses. Photo: Mae Wells/Flickr/Creative Commons

Generational Curses: Part 6 — the one condition, forgiving our parents

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In Exodus 20:4-5, the Bible says the iniquity of the parents would be passed on to their children for up to four generations. In the previous posts, we talked about how Jesus’ death on the cross broke this curse Galatians 3: 9-13. But having the curse broken does not guarantee it’s broken. Similarly, just because Jesus died for our sins, does not mean every one is saved and just because by His stripes we are healed, does not mean everyone is automatically healed. We have to contend and believe for salvation and healing and similarly must do the same to break Generational Curses. Though Jesus broke the curse, there is one condition attached for it to happen — forgiveness. In Leviticus 26, God lays out the blessings and punishment that He would place on Israel if they chose to live unrighteously. Initially God would judge them with blight, pestilence and disease hoping this would turn the nation from its iniquity. However, if Israel failed to respond, they would face the ultimate punishment — removal from …

Jameel McGee with the former "dirty cop" Andrew Collins

Former ‘dirty’ cop and the innocent man he framed now preaching redemption and forgiveness

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In 2005, Jameel McGee, 35, was arrested and charged with dealing crack cocaine and eventually served four years for the offense. The only problem was McGee who lives in Benton Harbor, Michigan, did not have any drugs on him, but the arresting officer Andrews Collins, 33, falsified the police report accusing McGee. Collins knew the drugs belonged to another person in the car that McGee had been riding in. But no one else knew and the courts sentenced McGee to ten years in prison for a trafficking crime he didn’t commit. Though McGee’s insistence he was innocent is a common enough claim for those arrested for drugs, in this case he was eventually proven right. In an AP story, Collins admitted he was a dirty cop. It began when he worked narcotics with the police department. It started small but escalated to the point he was stealing drugs and even money and planting drugs on people and falsifying reports to get a quick arrest. Meanwhile as he sat in prison, God began working on McGee …

God want to heal our brokeness. Photo: Howard Hall/Flickr/Creative Commons

Circle of Love

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It had been a year since I lost my son to suicide and I was invited to join a new women’s group at church. I wanted to stay home and not risk baring my heart to anyone. God knew I needed this group of women and gently pushed me out the door of my comfort zone. To be honest, I was angry with my son for choosing to leave us the way he did. I am a resilient person and found myself able to move forward in my life despite our loss.  My resiliency, though, left me unable to express myself and release my grief. There were five women in this group and each of us had our own pain and grief to deal with. Some of us were angry with God for the circumstances we were facing.  Others, like myself, were angry at our loved one for the choice they had made. We were all here to release the pain and guilt of poor choices made and we began to realize that we needed …

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It doesn’t have to be a life sentence

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I lost my eldest son Graham in 2004 to suicide. Six years later my grief took me to a five-day seminar to help deal with the emotional upheaval in my life due to his death. I had filled out their forms, answered questions, shared my story and the reasons why I wanted to attend the seminar. On the first day, we all received a name tag. One facilitator came up to me and gave me mine. I glanced at it as I took it from her hand. The words “life sentence” we’re neatly printed on it.  It caught me completely off guard.  It took a few days into the seminar to face the cold hard facts. As  judge, juror and prosecutor, I had sentenced myself to a life-time of guilt and shame  for the death of my son. Death from suicide carries a stigma with it and the grieving is more complex. I could not understand why my son took this drastic measure. He willingly left us. I did something wrong. My husband and I …

Dealing with the pain of grief.

How grief tilted my world

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My first-born son, Graham, died on January 15, 2004. He was 18 years old.  He took his own life while stranded on a country road in his own vehicle. My world took a serious tilt. My perspective on life shifted to the dark side. Everything and everyone changed as I viewed them through the eyes of grief. I didn’t know what to do with the people who surrounded me and engaged in life with me. I was terrified to talk about the loss of my son. Not feeling free to share feelings and thoughts hindered my grieving process.  I read the Bible and books on grief and suicide hoping this would help me deal with people’s questions and comments. Nothing could prepare me though. I had to face it alone and walk through the unknown waters of grief and let the waves splash over me. People meant well and out of the uncertainty of what to say their comments sometimes came across the wrong way — like my son’s suicide was probably for the best …

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A woman’s perspective: Can forgiving others make you feel lighter and jump higher?

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I read an article recently referring to a study reported in Social Psychology and Personality Science that determined the act of forgiving makes us lighter both emotionally and physically? The study involved two groups. One group was to remember a time they forgave someone and the second group was asked to remember a time they couldn’t forgive. Through their mind’s eye, the group that was able to forgive perceived the slope of a nearby hill to be less steep than the second group that was unable to forgive. The researchers said it was the equivalent of a person with a heavy backpack finding it more difficult to climb a hill than a person without. Ryan Fehr, assistant professor of management at the University of Washington, also measured the vertical jumps of each participant in the study. He found that the group who forgave, on average, jumped higher than those who were unable to forgive. Fehr concluded that the act of forgiveness unburdened one’s mind and brought a lightness to their physical being and did in …

Are you a victim of your circumstances or your thinking? Photo Great Beyond/Flickr

Are you a victim of a victim mentality?

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A few years ago at a seminar for emotional healing, a group of us were in the hallway waiting for the next session to start. We were all proud that we had survived our traumatic experiences over the years. We walked into the session unprepared for what was next. As the speaker explained the new principle we were learning, we looked at one another. Why should we be surprised that each one of us had operated in survivor mode and were manifesting the symptoms of a “victim mentality?” I was filtering my experiences through a ‘victim mentality’ mindset that created a distorted view of life. A person with such a mentality, expects bad things will happen. They consider themselves a perpetual victim. Because of this perspective, they twist the most innocent things as a personal attack on them. Even the good things are bent out of shape. My perception of life being hard was reinforced daily because of this mindset. Endurance and perseverance were key to weathering the storms of life that never seemed to …

It is time to cancel the debt. Photo: Taxrebate.org.uk

How offenses become a debtors’ prison

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In Mathew 6, Jesus makes an odd connection. In verse 12 — towards the end of His teaching on prayer — Jesus says “And forgive us our debt, as we also forgive our debtors”. Then two verses later (v 14), the Lord elaborates: “For if you forgive others their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.” So what is the odd connection? Well in these two verses Jesus linked the concept of “debt” with “transgression or offense.” How could these two be the same? There are many offenses that have no connection to finances. It could be something someone said, rejection or abuse. In fact most offenses are not related to money. So why did Jesus use the word “debt” to describe “offense?” The reason is simple — there are many similarities between debt and offense. Offenses create a sense of indebtedness! Though an offense does not involve money, it creates a debt in your heart. You were dealt with unfairly or unreasonably. You were mistreated or rejected. When we are offended, we feel someone …

(Left) Metal with Bible page fused on it: Photo Jin Lee National September 11 Memorial Museum (Right) Twin Towers in flames Flickr/Michael Foran

Powerful words of forgiveness from a Red Letter edition of the Bible

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Anger is such a powerful emotion. But nothing drives this emotion more than paying someone back for a wrong they committed against you. Though most of us never act out on this, how many have thought and even plotted revenge in our minds? Or am I the only person who has ever done this? There was a powerful story that came out of 9-11 when New York’s Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001. Six months later, as people were cleaning up the mess, a fireman found a piece of metal with paper fused to it. I have no idea how this can happen without burning the paper but there it was paper melted to metal. Not just any paper, it was a page from the Bible and not just any Bible, it was a King James red-letter edition with Jesus’ words are all in red — for emphasis. It was not just any page, but a page from Jesus’ sermon on the mount found in the Gospel of Matthew and front and center …