- Saying yes to forgiveness can you you the freedom to say, "I love you." Love can cover a multitude of sins. Love is not about changing people into what you want them to be. It's easy for us to get trapped in criticism. (Amen!)
- Saying yes to forgiveness can give you the freedom to say, "I am sorry." We want to be forgiven, but we have problems passing that along. God freely forgives us, but we are very slow to forgive each other.
- Saying yes to forgiveness can give you the freedom to say, "You are forgiven." Forgiveness is like a light - it dispels the darkness.
In closing, he said that when you say yes to forgiveness, you set the prisoner free. And, that prisoner is you. When you can't forgive, you give people power over you.
These simple things really made an impact with me. It's really easy to forgive but never forget. Every time you get into a fight, you bring up every wrong doing that a certain person has done against you. We're all guilty of that one. True forgiveness is letting go, and let me tell you - that is the hard part. It's so easy to carry all that anger and hurt around with us. How do you let go? Well, I don't necessarily have the answer to that, but in the end, I always end up thinking about how it's not that big of a deal.... Sin is sin. We all hurt. We all damage other people. It's a natural human flaw. If we learn nothing from it or don't let go of it all, it weighs us down. Plus, I feel like most of the time people really are sorry - we just don't want to hear it b/c we would rather hang on to all the hurt. Not really easy, but I guess that really isn't the point.
