Remove the Roadblocks to Forgiveness

Yesterday, I posed some questions about why it is so hard for us to forgive. Hopefully, that got you thinking. As we journey together, try to keep a journal handy so that you can jot down ideas as they come to you.

My View of Forgiveness
I like to think of forgiveness as a winding road over rough terrain. Along the way, we encounter obstacles that may deter us, force us to turn back, or make us more determined than ever to move forward. Today, I would like to give you an overview of where we're going for the next eight weeks. Hopefully, this blog will serve as a road map for our journey.

The Roadblocks to Forgiveness
The way I see it, there are nine major roadblocks to forgiveness. As long as these stand in our way, we can't make much progress:

1) anger
2) fear
3) mistrust
4) poor self-image
5) guilt
6) revenge
7) pride
8) hatred
9) depression

We'll be spending two days on each of these topics along the way. Please send in your comments as we work through them so that I can address any questions that you may have.

Remove the Roadblocks to Forgiveness
In order to remove the roadblocks that we encounter, I believe there is a step-by-step process that we can follow to successfully forgive others. This is not a quick fix, and there are no guaranteed results. But I've used it on myself, and I'll be sharing my experieces along the way. It involves ten steps, as follows:

1) Recognize righteousness.
2) Identify sin.
3) Admit that you've got problems, too.
4) Change your ways.
5) Ask God to forgive you.
6) Accept God's grace.
7) Ask others to forgive you.
8) Offer restitution to the people you have hurt.
9) Now, forgive the person who has hurt you.
10) Teach others to forgive.

I believe that one of the primary reasons we fail to forgive is because we have put ourselves in God's place as judge. We'll be talking more about this, but for now, think about what Jesus had to say about judging others:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matt 7:3-5)

As you can see, this process involves a lot of self-discovery about our own brokenness. Only by finding healing for ourselves through God's grace, can we learn how to forgive the people who have hurt us. We'll spend two days on each of these ten steps, finishing our series on forgiveness on Friday, March 25.

Today's Challenge
Get a journal, composition book, or spiral notebook for this series. On the first page, write out a prayer, asking God to reveal what you need to learn over the course of our study on forgiveness.