Personal- Spiritual Encouragement

God Wants You To Do This: Forgive Yourself

Where there’s healing, there’s peace

Why forgive yourself

We kick ourselves over silly, unfortunate episodes in our lives, don’t we? We also relive major hurts and our most significant failures.

Some of us are walking paths strewn with failed romantic relationships, damaged family bonds, moments of selfishness, parenting mistakes, personal weaknesses, judgment errors, abandoned dreams, and lies of omission or commission.

Then there are those tiniest of mistakes we can’t seem to forget. We lie awake at night reconstructing some moment. One that in the grand scheme of things is inconsequential and should be forgotten.

We could be praying instead.

Reliving our past hurt and anger over and over is painful. It is also an act of disobedience to God. A commenter on one of my recent posts said that we should take care not to “insert ourselves where God should be.”

“I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.” ~C.S. Lewis

Hurt and anger damage you

We weigh ourselves down when we can’t let go of our past. Having asked for God’s forgiveness, should we not daily bathe ourselves in that cleansing power? Harboring the hurts bred by unforgiveness has harmful health outcomes like heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and increased anxiety. It’s our duty to take care of the mind and body for we are His temple (1 Corinthians 6:19).

What forgiveness means

Forgiveness means turning away from the hurt and leaving the past behind. To forgive yourself means that you no longer castigate yourself over “that awful thing” you hate about your life, your mistakes, or anything else in your past.

You move on… really. You. Move. On.

You won’t lie awake and shame yourself for how foolish you’ve been or what a mess you’ve made of your life. There may still be lingering consequences of past actions, that is true, but those remains don’t have to defeat you.

Like a broken heirloom plate that you can’t throw away, you must treat your heart and your life the same way: you patch up all the broken pieces, look at your masterpiece, and figure out how to decorate around it.

When you forgive yourself, you refuse to invest more time and energy in mourning the losses you have experienced. You find peace when you invest in the best things in your life instead.

What the Bible says

Nothing, specifically.

But if we are commanded to be kind to one another and to forgive one another then surely that includes us forgiving ourselves.

Resource: https://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/how-worrying-affects-your-body#1