Forgiveness Friday | Heart Preparation

Happy Friday Loves!!!

I’m soooo excited about the weekend. Mostly because I don’t have much planned! That’s rare for me. My Mommy is in town visiting me and Leo. That means the weekend will be filled with shopping, eating, shopping and cooking. Yes, I meant to say shopping twice. :) Anywho. With my Mom in town I thought about how far we’ve come in our relationship and FINALLY began planning the forgiveness series that I’ve had on my heart for sometime now. If you’re newer to my blog you may have not heard about the Lady Victory Tag I started.

I have a very strong belief and KNOWING that the inability to forgive cripples many of us from achieving God’s will for our lives. We hold on to so much in life. Things from our childhood, situations that we’re currently in. Years ago I read a book entitled Having Our Say by The Delany Sisters who at the time were 100 years old. They practiced yoga everyday and went unmarried, which they attributed their long life to. LOL! They were and still are role models to me. There was a passage in the book that changed my life. It explained that forgiveness was for the forgiver, not the forgiven. Totally blew my mind those years ago. Although I had heard the “let it go for you” thing before I was FINALLY in a place to receive it and apply it to my life. I was able to speak to my family about things I had held onto – blame, unforgiveness, hatred, jealously, anger. My life TRULY changed!

Forgiveness is a gift. It allows one to move through life without baggage. It’s much easier to live a life of peace when you’re not holding onto the past. SO…how to navigate life without unforgiveness? It’s not always easy. But I will say that it’s like exercising a muscle. The more you forgive the better you get at it.

Join me every Friday to get a good forgiveness workout! I promise you won’t regret doing the “work” it takes to be free of those things you may be holding onto. I want to share my testimony of how Jesus changed my life. His example and the Holy Spirit are amazing!

Ready? Right now? YUP, Let’s get into it!

So this week is all about preparation. We can be stubborn when it comes to the idea of forgiveness. Simply because there is SO much pain and anger that has filled those place in which God wants to fill. Some of us might say, “but I’m not just going to pretend like nothing happened” or “I can’t let this go and open myself up to being hurt AGAIN”. Forgiveness is not about forgetting nor is it about being vulnerable for another attack. It’s all about compassion, for ourselves and for those that seek forgiveness. More importantly it’s about being obedient to God’s will. We will get into that later, but for now let’s take down some notes to help us understand what forgiveness and being unwilling to forgive really means.

To Forgive, (verb): to stop feeling anger toward (someone who has done something wrong). to stop blaming (someone).

Here are a few notes I took down from the T.D. Jakes and Oprah Lifeclass on the OWN channel earlier this year:

1. Unforgiveness is the equivalent of nurturing your pain, and it grows and grows.

2. When you hold on to your history, you do it at the expense of your destiny.

3. Do it for yourself. I am in control of it, it is not in control of me.

GREAT points right? Let’s use these tips to think about forgiveness, identify which areas we seem to be unwilling to forgive and how we can began to forgive. On this Forgiveness Friday let’s be selfish and focus on ourselves. Since forgiveness starts at the heart, let’s search our hearts and pray, asking Jesus to prepare our hearts to begin the work of forgiving and letting go. Ask the Lord to remove our stubbornness to look into those areas where we’ve been hurt and unwilling to forgive. Jesus comfort and strengthen us as we open up places that we need to clear out. Give us the understanding and wisdom to look with new eyes on the past. Send your Holy angels to surround us as we try to move forward and forgive. Amen.

Scriptures for this week:

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you”. – Matthew 6:14

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you”. – Ephesians 4:32

As we go about our daily tasks in the next week let’s explore the possibility of forgiving. When thoughts of forgiveness and the defensive notion, “but they did this to me” come up,  acknowledge them as attacks from the enemy and promptly dismiss them. In the next coming weeks we will explore different techniques, prayers and practices we can do to further our forgiveness journey’s!

I’m so SUPER DUPER excited about this series! Please let me know your thoughts below in the comment section and ASK ME ANYTHING below or at thekglifestyle@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you and answer your questions in next week’s post!

I love you so much and so does Jesus!

Peace & Blessings,

P.S. Apparently “unforgiveness” is not really a word. The proper way to say it is: unwillingness to forgive. But I’ll be using it repetitively throughout the series. LOL!