Forgiveness and Forgetting

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Bro:

I find it hard to believe that you have had as rough a ride from church folk
as I have, but I'll take your word for it.If I wasn't so darned logical and
knew that I can't ignore truth no matter how much it has allowed me to be
hurt I wouldn't hold to Apostolic doctrine anymore either. So I can relate.

I'll assume you have done something wrong. The devil loves to use a time
when we're hurt to get that extra little jab in over something we did. If I
got upset with someone not even remotely connected with things, he would be
right there, showing me what a lousy person I was so I "deserved" what
happened. This for me was hard to overcome.

What is forgiveness? It is removing the punishment from an offense. That's
why Jesus' cry on the cross "Father, forgive them" is possible. Or Stephen's
asking not ot have this laid to their charge. You don't wish to see God
judge them, to punish them. That is forgiveness. Hurt is different.

Hurt is your response to a situation you have been in. It is emotions.
Emotions occur when we think of a situation. Think of a nice memory=nice
emotions. Bad memory=bad emotions. If you have the opportunity to replace
these bad memories of the person and your bad experience with good ones (or
even neutral ones) the hurt will lessen. Emotions and actual forgiveness
aren't directly related, just as a sense of condemnation doesn't necessarily
reflect our state with God.

I'm still dealing with some of the things that have happened to me. New ones
pop up every so often, some people don't want to let things drop. But God
does a work, slowly but surely.

If you want to talk about it, feel free.

Frank

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-higher-fire@prairienet.org
> [mailto:owner-higher-fire@prairienet.org]On Behalf Of Matthew Shaw
> Sent: Thursday, September 24, 1998 2:28 PM
> To: higher-fire@prairienet.org
> Subject: Re: Forgiveness and Forgetting
>
>
>
> I guess, all boiled down, my question is:
>
> Have I forgiven this person if I cannot forget his offense and feel
> extremely uncomfortable around him?
>
> I can't really intimate the full details of what happened, but I can tell
> you that it is a miracle that I'm still Apostolic!  It would be easier to
> put out of my mind if it wasn't a wound inflicted by someone in the
> household of faith.
>
> All Honour to Christ Jesus.
>
> Matthew
>
>