Dr. Lawrence Butler

The Bridge Church, Pembroke

We seem to be living in a world that is struggling with hatred, venom and bitterness. Hurts consume our hearts and leave scars that never really get healed. It seems to me that so many of the evil events that occur in our country are motivated by real or imagined wrongs that we carry around day after day. 

People are living with unforgiveness that at times is palpable. The blessing we are missing is the power of Christianity to conquer evil with forgiveness. There is not one person who has not endured mistreatment by someone, although sometimes we feel no one has been abused as badly as we have. All mistreatment is not equal, and I understand that. However, all misdeeds can be washed away by forgiveness.

Corrie Ten Boom is the author of a classic Christian book entitled The Hiding Place. She and her family hid Jewish people during the Holocaust.

They were discovered and eventually ended up in a concentration camp.

Her entire family was killed, yet she survived. Years later she was speaking at a church only to see in the crowd a former guard from the prison camp, the very same one that killed Corrie’s sister. Following the service, the former guard came to her and asked for forgiveness. She found herself unable to do so, lacking the grace to release the angry bitterness in her heart.

Immediately she prayed, asking God to forgive her inability to forgive the guard. She testified that immediately the grace of God flowed through her and she was able to stretch forth her hand, grasping the former soldier’s hand and granting forgiveness.

She stated that day she was set free!

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, freeing the heart to focus on better things and releasing us from bondage. Perhaps your marriage fell apart, or your career, or maybe your children despise you even though you have never mistreated them. It could be that someone abused you sexually or psychologically. No matter what happened, you remain in prison because you have been unable to forgive. Forgiveness brings healing.

It is God’s way of releasing you from the destructive power of hatred. God forgave you unequivocally when you asked. Let’s do the same for others.

“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).