What happens when your life is eaten up, not by wrongs currently being done to you but by the lack of forgiveness that you allow to remain for yesterday’s wrongs? Who really is affected by my refusing to forgive?
ME.
I have found that apart from forgiveness, I will be MUCH more likely to chow down, inhale food, binge, and also to do that constant-just-a-bit-more-than-I-need munching in agitation.
When I keep accounts up to date and run to God to tell on the one who has wronged me, feel the pain, and then choose intentionally to release it to his care, to embrace his death on the cross as being sufficient, something …well… “magical” happens. It is supernatural. It is God’s kind of magic.
I don’t mean the “sanctified denial” that says, “Yes, Lord, I know I am supposed to forgive, so I forgive all my family members and the kids I knew growing up for being mean.” That is a great place to start, but at least for me, I found that God walked with me and showed me I needed to get down and dirty…and really deal with how I felt at the time of the wrong (even going back 40 years! It affected me today!), allow the pain and sadness and anger to wash over me but this time, this time, take the hand of Jesus Christ as he walked with me. He led me to look to him for his intentions and purposes in allowing the pain in the first place.
If you know that there are people in your life…no matter how small they may seem or how far removed from now…that you need to forgive, I want to encourage you to do it. When we get hurt today at the grocery store by the rude clerk, often, it is like rubbing salt in an old wound that never healed. We over-react and we wonder why the lady we don’t even know got such a rise out of us. Often this is an indicator that there are unresolved (unforgiven) issues from the past. I need to intentionally go with God to these places and ask him to help me to forgive.
I did that in detail with my mom and I have to continue to do it each time it resurfaces.
This has transformed my relationship with food and my body (and my mom!). I believe it can for many of us.
Who do you need to forgive today? Will you?
