An Awesome Website on Forgiveness

http://wgvulove.blogspot.com/p/about-this-project.html

The above link is an awesome web site on forgiveness.  This I think will prove helpful in learning to forgive.  I found this link at Jumping Java along with a card that had 9 steps to forgiveness.  I will put the 9 steps here on my blog.  These steps come directly from the above link.  This is by Dr Fred Luskin.

1. Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience.
2. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.
3. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning of their action. What you are after is to find peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the “peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story.”
4. Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes – or ten years – ago. Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.
5. At the moment you feel upset practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body’s flight or fight response.
6. Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the “unenforceable rules” you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them.
7. Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt seek out new ways to get what you want.
8. Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you. Forgiveness is about personal power.
9. Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive.

By Dr Fred Luskin

This above mentioned website is awesome if anyone wants to check it out!

Bin Laden, Dead!

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction
of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963

I am grateful that Osama Bin Laden has been brought to justice and that we have one less terrorist in the world.  However, I am pretty alarmed at the rejoicing and celebrating in his death.  Even if he was our enemy, he is still a human being that has been killed.  I do not believe that we should let our hate bring us to celebration in any lost life, even Bin Laden's.  Remember that it is this kind of hate that caused the 9-11 attacks.  This is the same kind of hate that caused so many innocent lives to come to an end. 
Also, when hate brings us to a point where we celebrate the death of our enemies we are not obeying God.  God wants us to forgive our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  He did not say to hate our enemies and celebrate their death.  This is what the word of God has to say about loving our enemies.

You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:38-48).

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. (NLT, Matthew 6:14-15)

I know it seems unjust and not right to say we should forgive a person that has caused so much harm, but isn't that exactly what Jesus calls those who belong to him to do.  We are supposed to take our cross up and follow Jesus.  In order to follow Jesus we must have the same kind of forgiveness that Jesus had when he called out from the cross,  "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34).   Lastly I will add that this kind of forgiveness is not cheap.  It is not to say that what happened was right, but that we will not return evil with evil.  This is not cheap grace, after all don't forget that it cost Jesus his life. 
Osama Bin Laden definitely had to die, but we do not have to celebrate over it.

How can God forgive such evil?

Nice question Joe? In my last post I wrote on the mercy of God and Joe commented on whether or not God could forgive evil to the degree of Hitler? I would argue that he can. Our human mind is incapable of this kind of forgiveness and that is probably why it is hard for us to understand this kind of forgiveness. It is hard to understand something that we can not do. I visited a web site that explains this forgiveness so well. The web site is http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5306

I especially liked this excerpt:
"This is the other lesson. Whether you have one billion sinners being forgiven of one sin, or one sinner being forgiven for a billion sins, it all amounts to the same thing--a billion sins. The work of the cross is such that it can forgive even the most egregious of sinners. The fact of Jeffrey Dahmer's forgiveness, if it is a fact, ought to teach us an entirely different lesson. Paul put it this way in I Timothy 1:15-16, "It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance (in other words be confident of this), that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. And yet for this reason I found mercy, in order than in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life." Paul says, Look, I am the biggest of sinners. I persecuted the church of God. I led people to their death because they were Christians. If God could forgive me, He could even forgive a Jeffrey Dahmer. He could even forgive a Greg Koukl. He could even forgive a Ken and John.

For those of you who are tempted to say, Listen I'm no Jeffrey Dahmer, my response is simply this: Maybe not, but you are no Jesus Christ either. You are more like Jeffrey Dahmer than you are like Jesus Christ. That's the comparison that ultimately will matter. If God can forgive Jeffrey, He can forgive you. And that is good news."


So can God forgive Hitler? Yes, if Hitler had wanted to be forgiven.