Forgiveness Series – Self forgiveness

Hello and welcome to the forgiveness series.

My sincere prayer is that you will understand and find your own path to complete forgiveness thereby leading a peaceful and beautiful life. Feel free to comment, ask questions and contribute in the comments box below. Sit tight and let’s ride.

While preparing for this series, I looked up the meaning of forgiveness. I found a lot and most of them still had the word ‘forgive’ in it. One that struck me the most is the one by Merriam-Webster’s Learners Dictionary: “to stop feeling anger toward (someone who has done something wrong); to stop blaming (someone); to stop feeling anger about (something); to forgive someone for (something wrong); to stop requiring payment of (money that is owed)”.

Forgiveness is a continuous process because everyday that we live, we will always find ourselves being hurt one way or another. For today’s read, we will concentrate on ourselves.

Life gave me a full bowl of several unfair meals at an early age that caused me to sink into a place where I always hurt myself one way or anothe through my words and thoughts. Whenever I reacted negatively to a situation, I always end up beating myself up for my reaction. It can go on for days and weeks and months. I always told myself, I couldn’t be forgiven and that’s why bad things were happening. Like I mentioned before, I kept a diary of hurts. For every time I looked into it, I always believed a lie which I made my truth then. Some of you reading this, your own case may be worse than mine. Perhaps, you have done way more troubling things and you believe you don’t deserve any good because of those actions. Hey friend, you didn’t create you, and you deserve every good and perfect gift from God.

Whatever it is you have done and can’t seem to bring yourself to forgive yourself, I will share with you some biblical principles and truths so you understand that not attaining a place of self forgiveness will only rob you of the beautiful things of life.

Looking at the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:12 (ERV) – “Forgive our sins, just as we have forgiven those who did wrong to us“. How many times have we prayed this prayer. Either in school or even in our homes. Or even in our everyday activities. We desire God’s forgiveness so much but yet the requirement is to forgive those who did wrong to us. Now bringing it home. How many times have we thought to forgive ourselves when we wronged ourselves and yet we expect God to forgive us? Hmmmm, I never saw it this way. Me neither before.

Let’s look at another one in Mark 11:25 (CEB) – “And whenever you stand up to pray, if you have something against anyone, forgive so that your Father in heaven may forgive you, your wrongdoings.” You may say, but I am confessing my wrong doings to God asking for his forgiveness, what do you mean I should forgive myself again. The easiest to always blame for unanswered prayers is you for your past misdeeds. When you have prayed and God doesn’t answer right away, you quickly say, it’s because I did this and that. And you know what, that is the reason you should forgive yourself. When you have forgiven yourself and you pray and experience a delay, you will not tie it to anything but believe that God wants to give you his best after all.

The thing about forgiving yourself is that, this wrong you have to forgive yourself for, many atimes is not known to anyone. Just you and God and the devil. God desires that you forgive yourself and give him a chance to live in you by asking for his forgiveness but you know what, the devil doesn’t like that so he makes you believe a lie that you cannot be forgiven and then you find it so hard to forgive yourself. Be courageous and choose to forgive yourself and enjoy every beautiful thing.

It’s not people around us who needs forgiveness alone, we need to forgive ourselves and the moment we learn to forgive ourselves completely, it wouldn’t be difficult to forgive another person. Like I said, it is a continuous process. We will always hurt ourselves but we must learn to promptly forgive us.

How do you know, you haven’t forgiven yourself?

When you do not like who you are.
When you cannot tell the person in the mirror that you love him/her.
When every time, you look in the mirror, you cannot but frown.
When people see something good in you but you see the opposite.
When you find yourself cursing yourself anytime challenges come your way.
When your response to situations is, ‘if only I had not done…”
The list goes on.

How can you come to a place of self forgiveness.

You see the man in the mirror as an imperfect creation of God who is bound to make mistakes.
You tell that man in the mirror that you love him and genuinely mean it. It wouldn’t be easy at first but when you do it daily and repetitively, just like someone who gets brainwashed, it sinks in and you believe it.
You tell the man in the mirror that you can be better and will be better.
You make up your mind to better yourself.
You go unashamed to your creator-GOD and confess everything. Remember he knows everything afterall. Tell him, you forgive yourself through his help. It’s okay to cry about it. Vent it all out to him.
Everyday, remind yourself that the past is the past and the man in the mirror is a new man.
Claim the promises of God as you daily search scriptures.
Always and I mean ALWAYS fall back to God.

When you have done this and more, join me tomorrow as we talk about forgiving others. Remember, it’s easier to learn to forgive others, when we have learnt to forgive ourselves. It’s easier to learn to love others when we have learnt to love ourselves.

Until you read from me tomorrow, go to the man(not limited to the male folks but everyone) in the mirror and tell him how much you love him and that you have chosen to forgive him and let God. In the end, Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself – Suzanne Somers

“To forgive others, you must forgive yourself first”. – Debasish Mridha

“You cannot travel back in time to fix your mistakes, but you can learn from them and forgive yourself for not knowing better”. – Leon Brown

“You forgive yourself for every failure because you are trying to do the right thing. God knows that and you know it. Nobody else may know it”. – Maya Angelou

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future”. – Bernard Meltzer

God bless you.

Part 1 – Forgiveness Series

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