When was the last time you were shown grace when you least deserved it?
Mercy is NOT getting what we deserve.
Grace is getting what we DON’T deserve.
Both show us just how much God loves us.
But are we in turn showing that to those around us?
I have had a few doozy situations where I have been badly hurt by someone I loved over my lifetime.
Forgiving them is offering grace. They don’t deserve it for the hurt they caused, but neither do I for the hurt I cause others either. God’s grace plan for all of us…in His mercy.
Forgiving them is showing mercy.
Not cutting them out of our lives over the hurt that they have caused.
Sometimes we do have to part ways with someone. Things may be too unhealthy in how we relate to hang out anymore. If God tells us to move on, there is a good reason for it. Usually so we can both grow healthier.
But we aren’t to take the baggage of unforgiveness along with us as we go.
Not offering mercy and grace locks us in a prison within. We add our own wound of to those we are already needing healing for…making a worse mess to clean up than had we released ourselves to forgive.
Let me be clear.
Forgiving someone does not mean what they did was okay. It wasn’t and isn’t and never will be.
Forgiving means we aren’t standing as their judge. We allow God to judge them instead.
God forgave us at a high cost to himself. Jesus, the Holy, had to take all of humanity’s crappy dirty scuzzy let’s just call it evil unholy acts of sin on Himself, and did for us to be given mercy and grace.
Because of His great love for us.
By honoring that selfless act of sacrifice, we chose to align with the mercy and grace He offers us, by offering it to one another when we hurt one another.
It keeps us free and whole within when we forgive each other, and ask God to bind up and heal our hearts from our woundedness.
We are no longer tethered to one another in ways we can not always understand when we release and forgive.
I know that I am sooooo not qualified to judge anybody else. I know what I am capable of when I don’t follow the Spirit’s promptings, and the messes I can cause and make along the way.
I am thankful in His mercy, I am made right with God. I am grateful by His grace, I am able to walk with God.
Our forgiving one another opens the receiver of that forgiveness to catch a glimpse of His gift to us, Jesus.
Forgive.
Show mercy.
Radiate grace.
Soar free.
KARLA LEES 