So I could spend a lot of time in this blog, telling you how beneficial the act of forgiveness is. How it improves heart health and lowers blood pressure. How it improves mental health and builds the immune system. The problem is, I don't believe that is enough, sometimes, to get us to forgive. I mean deep down in our most secret being, we each know instinctively that we should forgive. We watch as the lack of forgiveness destroys our bodies and relationships, slowly and painfully. So it really doesn't surprise us when we hear that the act of forgiveness is actually healthy.

But it doesn't seem to matter when we have to deal with the really big painful issues in life. When we are confronted with those monsters that make Hitler look like a little lost school boy. Matthew 6:15 bounces around in the back of our head and makes us that much angrier. If we don't forgive, our heavenly Father won't forgive us. How can a just God ask me to forgive my parents who abused me, the neighbor who raped me, or the murderer who took my son? Worse how am I supposed to forgive God when He let the flood take my entire family.

We are born wanting to see justice, no, we demand it! We fight for it as if it were a God given right. The problem is, God never created that part of us. Justice requires us to see what is right and what is wrong, an ability we stole with original sin. Without knowing details of an event beyond the limits of our pain, we consider ourselves more worthy to judge someone than God. “This woman you gave me, God. She is the one that ate the fruit. I would never have eaten it if she hadn't already done so. You must have given me someone defective! Why would you do such an unloving thing?” All the while God is hoping that we will love our wife and lay our life down for her the way Christ laid His life down for the church.

The problem is that just as we were never created to judge, neither were we created with an ability to forgive. None of us can truly forgive unless God gives us that ability. This leaves us in a terrible place. We are required to forgive if we ourselves want to be forgiven, yet we have no ability to forgive. Beyond that, any healing we might receive can only begin with forgiveness. How hopeless our lives are... But God!

God didn't ask us to feel like forgiving. He just said do it. Christ didn't tell Peter don't be afraid of the water, He just said walk on it. One is just as impossible as the other, but the Master requires it of us. And so we take the step out of the boat, certain we will sink. With our words we say, “I forgive you,” just as certain that our feelings will not change. And all of the sudden a miracle just as holy and tremendous as the virgin birth is unleashed in our hearts and somehow we begin to feel forgiveness start. It's not that we stop wanting to see justice, it is simply that we no longer demand to be responsible for seeing justice carried out. We never could to begin with.

So the question is, are you ready to be healed? Are you ready to step out of the boat? Are you ready to get off the throne and allow God to take His rightful place in your life? Are you ready to forgive? Are you ready to be forgiven? Are you ready to be free?