When my kids were little, they would often get into arguments and fights with each other. When Britton and I intervened, we would ask them what was happening and why they were upset with each other. Then we would ask them to do two things. The first was to apologize to each other, own what each needed to own, and ask for forgiveness. The second thing we’d do is ask our kids to give forgiveness to each other. We did this because offering forgiveness to the person who hurt us is often a step we miss.
My kids were often good at saying, “I’m sorry, and please forgive me,” but they weren’t the greatest at giving forgiveness to each other. Often the response from my kids to their sibling saying, “I’m sorry,” was “Ok,” which is simply an acknowledgement of the statement that was made. When we respond to an apology with “I forgive you,” we are making a powerful statement. Forgiveness doesn’t erase what’s happened, but it makes it possible to move forward and begin to heal our relationship. When we say “I forgive you” to someone, we declare that we will not hold an offence against them.
Think of it like this – we all have a ledger in our soul where we keep track of offences committed against us. Like good accountants, we go over that ledger repeatedly, rehearsing the offence. When we forgive, we zero out the debt from the ledger in our souls. There will still be times when we want to put the item back in the ledger, but that’s exactly when we need to rehearse the forgiveness we have given, just as we used to rehearse the offence.
This weekend we’ll be talking all about forgiveness in our worship gathering – the forgiveness we need and the forgiveness we extend. This Sunday, we are going to open the ledgers of our soul and do a little audit to see if there is forgiveness we need to seek and forgiveness we need to give. I hope you’ll join us this weekend as we look at Matthew 18:21-35 and explore the forgiveness of sins – ours and others.
See you Sunday,
Pastor Kirk
