A number of years ago, after an elderly
woman passed away, family members were cleaning out her house and found a
scrapbook filled with obituaries from the local newspaper. The death
notices all pertained to people she had hated. As bizarre as it may sound, she
kept a scrapbook of her dead enemies! She had five different clippings of
her most despised dead foe in her morbid memory book.
Instead of having an “In Loving Memory” book, hers was a book of hateful memories. Apparently she gained some kind of weird satisfaction by thinking they could no longer torment her. Or could they? If you don’t forgive your deceased enemies, they’ll continue to haunt you through your hateful memories of them.
Maybe you don’t have a scrapbook of your dead enemies, but do you keep a scrapbook in your mind of your living enemies? When you go to bed at night, your enemies climb in the bed with you to keep you awake. When you go on vacation, your enemies travel with you to ruin your trip. Is it worth it?
First
Corinthians 13:5 says love “does not take into account a wrong suffered.” That
means you must tear up your hurt list and remove the enemies from your
scrapbook. We forgive our enemies because God has forgiven us FAR MORE than
what others have done to us. “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving
each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32).
When you forgive, your enemies will stop haunting you, and the root of bitterness will shrivel up and die. How to do you know when you’ve forgiven someone? You aren’t being tormented anymore. www.makinglifecount.net
