by Jessie Mejias

The most important element of healing is forgiveness. In all the years that I have been receiving and ministering healing, I have never known any lasting healing or deliverance to occur without forgiveness. 

If you were dying slowly from poison and someone came to you and told you that they had the antidote that would completely cure you, but to obtain it you would have to let the one who poisoned you go free, what would do?

Would you take it or would you prefer to die rather than let the perpetrator go free?

Today I would like to talk about the fact that God has offered us an antidote to hurt and anger that is 100% guaranteed to work if you take it as prescribed.

What is that antidote? Forgiveness.

The choice that we are facing when we talk about forgiveness is serious: (spiritual) death or life. We can take the antidote and live, letting our offender go. Or we can keep the offender in prison and die slowly of bitterness each day.

Let’s look at what the Bible tells us to do in Ephesians 4:32:

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. (New King James Version)

And become useful and helpful and kind to one another, tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one another [readily and freely], as God in Christ forgave you. (Amplified Bible)

Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you. (The Message)

Why forgive?

This forgiveness always starts with God’s forgiveness of us, is continued by His command to forgive one another and then completed by His enabling us, by His grace, to release those we are holding captive by our unforgiveness. 

There is something about the effects of forgiveness that penetrates into the heavenly realms. Spiritual bondages are broken through forgiveness. Anger is conquered through forgiveness. Physical healings can be obtained through forgiveness. It is what Jesus died on the cross for: so that we could be forgiven and then we can turn around and forgive others.

He is our highest model: on the cross when He was forsaken by His Father, He forgave those who crucified Him and He turned and offered forgiveness to the thief on the cross. Even in His death He was modeling forgiveness. 

The greatest incentive to forgive is to set ourselves and others free. When we do not forgive, the result is not just bitterness but we also remained tied spiritually to the person who offended us, the very person we want to be free from!

When I took driving lessons, I was told that I was to keep my eye on the lane that I wanted to be in, that wherever my eyes went is what I would eventually drive towards. When we do not forgive, our gaze is always set in the direction of the person toward whom we are bitter, effectively making them our focus for life. The thought of what they have done to us carries the same fresh feeling of hurt as it did the day they first wounded us, even if the event happened twenty years ago. The anger rises and our blood boils as if the offense just happened. This is no less than imprisonment to the past. 

What happens when we don’t forgive?

We are angry because we have been hurt, we want revenge, we want the other person to suffer. 

The core of anger is always the same: murder. 

We have a death wish for the one who hurt us because they deserve nothing short of death for what they have done to us. Also, in our brokenness we think that if they were dead we would no longer have to deal with them. This is the profound meaning of “Anger is as the sin of murder.” 

As long as we are holding feelings of unforgiveness and revenge in our hearts we are no better than murderers who sit on death row. If the person was in front of us and we had a knife we would repeatedly stab them through the heart for what they did to us. We say we never want to see them again but when we do not forgive what we are actually doing is holding them close, not keeping them away as we say we want to. Anger and unforgiveness are like invisible chains that bind us to the one who hurt us.

When we say, Lord, not my will but yours be done, we are actually saying, Lord I want to bless that person, because God is first and foremost GOOD. He desires blessing to be upon His children not cursing. When we pray the Our Father we are agreeing with God that forgiveness is the best way to handle hurts and grievances.

Jesus said in John 20:23 “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

When we forgive, something breaks in the heavenlies. When the chains snap off of us, they also snap off of the one we have been holding through unforgiveness. We are free to really walk away and no longer feel the power of their hurt. They lose their power over us. We can think about them and not feel a fist tightening in our chest or a constriction in our throat. We are really free! And God is now also able to work in the other person’s life because we are no longer strangling them with our judgment. 

What is forgiveness like? 

For surface, fresh hurts, forgiveness is not a hard process, it is a matter of choice to release the person to God. 

For the deepest wounds, forgiveness is like peeling away layer after layer until we come to the heart of our hurt. 

In both cases, it looks like we are taking the person by the hand and releasing them into God’s hands.

How can we forgive?

True forgiveness can only occur by the grace of God. We need the Holy Spirit to show us how and what we are holding against the one who hurt us and we need the Holy Spirit to show us that our part is to forgive. When we forgive, we are letting go and letting God. We untie our hands, our offender’s hands and God’s hands. And God rejoices because on the day that we forgive we have taken one more giant step to becoming conformed to the image of His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. And we all as we behold in a mirror are being changed daily. 2 Corinthians 3:18

We must first make the choice to let go of the desire for revenge, and then ask for the Lord’s help. 

The 9-step prayer is a great tool for helping us walk through the steps to forgiveness.

Finding Freedom Through Forgiveness

By Jean C. Wulf

Step 1. Forgive me for the anger and resentment I feel toward You, Lord, my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children, all those who have caused me to feel ................ 

Step 2. Forgive me for judging You, Lord, my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children, that ............... 

Step 3. Stir Your grace within me that I might forgive You, Lord, my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children, all of those who made me feel ...............

Step 4. Stir Your grace within me that I might forgive the debt I feel I am owed because of the wrong that was done to me. 

Step 5. Stir Your grace within me that I might release the sense of entitlement I feel to .................. 

Step 6. Forgive me for my pride in my woundedness and struggle that feels as if it is more than others have had to endure.

Step 7. Stir Your grace within me that I might forgive myself for being caught in these judgments. 

Step 8. Lord, destroy the fruit of these judgments in my life and my family's life even for future generations. 

Step 9. By Your grace, Lord, enable me to desire Your blessing to be manifest in the lives of all those who have hurt me. 

When we pray this, we are making a choice to forgive, release the offender from our judgment and bless him or her. Do not leave out any of these steps. In my prayer counseling however, I have added a step. We bring the unforgiveness, bitterness and judgment to death on the cross, asking the Lord to destroy these at their root and then replace them with whatever He wants to give to one who is forgiving. Then I ask the Lord to show the one who is doing the forgiving a picture of what that transaction, i.e. trading the unforgiveness for His blessing, looks like.

When someone has hurt us and we have not forgiven, it is like having a wound that has never healed properly. Although on the surface everything looks fine, any time someone does something to us that reminds us of that buried hurt, we have an abnormal reaction and more unforgiveness gets piled up on it. That is why the 9-step prayer is so effective. 

In all of this, we must not forget to forgive God (because after all, He let it happen) and ourselves for our part in the sin of unforgiveness, in which we set ourselves up as judge and jury.

How can we continue to walk in forgiveness?

As long as we are in these earthly bodies, hurts will occur. Those hurts, if not dealt with properly and as soon as recognized, can become lodged in our hearts and fester. As we remain close to the Lord and listen to Him daily, His Holy Spirit is faithful to show us when we are holding unforgiveness. The Lord may also reveal unforgiveness to us through our dreams if we pay attention. As soon as we realize that we have been hurt, we can swiftly respond by making the choice to forgive the offender, release him or her from our judgment of them, and ask the Lord to bless them. If we are unable to make this choice then we may need to be healed from a painful memory or experience by inviting the Lord Jesus to show us where He was and what He was doing when that happened, thus allowing Him to bring truth to our hearts.

Forgiveness and the healing of memories go hand in hand. At times, choosing to forgive can remove a block to the healing of a memory; at other times, healing of a memory can remove a block to forgiving. I have seen both eventualities.

In the first case, the one who is praying is having difficulty seeing the Lord Jesus in the memory. Making a choice to forgive the offender in the memory has invariably removed the blinders from the eyes of the person’s heart, allowing them to see Jesus in the scene and then receive His healing truth.

In the latter case, as the Lord begins to show the one who is praying where He was and what He was doing, He will often also show them how He feels about the offender, thereby giving the person a new perspective and a new willingness to forgive that they may not have had otherwise.

What are the results of forgiveness?

Whom the Son has set free is free indeed. Forgiveness is the path the Lord has chosen to set His people free.

Through forgiveness, we can have peace, hope and joy in our hearts but there are other benefits. Forgiveness is the means of healing deep wounds to our spirits thus making the way for healing of our bodies of the physical ailments that may have come in through hurt and unforgiveness. Forgiveness also paves the way for deliverance from demonic oppression. 

The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy and he uses whatever is already IN us to accomplish his evil purposes. When we forgive, we remove that foothold, that legal ground for him to attack us.

Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins,
For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.”

It is the antidote to hurt, it is the balm that heals all wounds, it is the tweezer that pulls out the thorn from the angry lion’s paw. It is God’s chosen way.