To Forgive is to Sacrifice is to Love

To forgive someone for anything whether seemingly small or overwhelming to the soul is a sacrifice. It is a sacrifice because to truly forgive someone quite often involves a significant amount of pain. It is painful to face head on that someone hurt you, disappointed you, failed you or abandoned you. It is painful to look at the damage that was caused whether minor or catastrophic. It is painful to be treated in a manner that places you in a position requiring you to either forgive it or allow the bitterness and anger to overtake you. It is painful to think that you now are responsible in how you respond to the mess that someone else created in your life, and you wouldn't even be in that position if it weren't for this other person who hurt you, disappointed you, failed you or abandoned you. It is painful and time consuming to proactively get a grip on your own pain/loss and the effects of that pain so that you can place that pain/loss on the altar before God Almighty as a fragrant sacrifice. Often what needs to be given as the sacrifice is probably the anger, bitterness and other emotions often accompanying a loss encurred by another person. The habits that spoken of in His Word that we are continually reminded we are already dead to. The habits and emotions that ought not control us, yet subtely enter and take control if we are not paying attention like anger, bitterness, malice, slander, immorality, etc., etc.,

Imagine taking a bull by the horns and placing it on the altar so the priest can slit its throat. Would you be able to do it alone? Does it count as your sacrfice if you are not involved in placing a stubborn animal that is much larger& stronger than you up there? It's risky, those horns might get you, he may throw you or kick you and that beastly thing is not going down without a fight, but you are not left alone to place that sacrifice up there. God sees how heavy, strong and stubborn this animal is and he has provided help, and we must allow help to enter in if that sacrifice is going to be a sacrifice at all. It is not sacrificed until it is on the altar and dead. Once the bull is up there and the priest slits its throat then the animal after time becomes still, the blood is spilled and a quiet rest is allowed in the freedom of blood bought forgiveness.

Once the battle with the sacrifice is complete then a kind of freedom may be experienced. The freedom to love. The freedom to love God for giving you the great grace and power through the Holy Spirit to wrestle through that pain. The freedom to love yourself since you are no longer filled with anger and bitterness. The freedom to love others since you realize now that it is through Christ alone that the ability to forgive comes. Ultimately it matters only what He thinks and not what others think. The freedom and ability to even see that person that hurt you terribly as a whole person who also carries shattered dreams, consequences, hopes and fears. sound wierd? like it shouldn't be like that? it is one of the beautiful surprises of forgiveness. We are not promised that we will be rid of all our pain....it may or may not happen, but we will be given the ability to see beyond our own pain in order to see others as they truly are and to see Christ as he truly is....the Ultimate Blood Sacrifice carrying with it the purpose of paying for our sins so that forgiveness can be offered to each of us and we can offer forgiveness to one another. It truly is a glorious, astronomically costly gift.

I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, questions about these wrestlings from my own mind....please talk!