FORGIVENESS – Letting go of the hurt and anger caused you by a person’s wrong actions.
Tim peeled the orange and took a big bite. Instead of it being sweet like he expected, it was bitter. Tim quickly went to the sink and tried to rinse the awful taste out of his mouth. It took a long time to get rid of that bad taste. Has that ever happened to you?
Just like your mouth, did you know that it is possible to have bitterness in your heart? That can happen when we don’t forgive others when they do something wrong against us. Forgiving means letting go of the hurt rather than holding on to it. It’s only natural to get angry or be hurt when others do bad or mean things to us. However, God’s Word, the Bible, warns about holding on to anger. When we hold on to the anger, it grows and grows inside of us. Soon, we become bitter, and our lives are miserable. This has happened to many people.
One man in the Bible had a very good reason to be angry and to get bitter. He had 11 brothers, and 10 of them hated him. It was obvious that he was their father’s favorite son. He got better treatment and even a special coat that made him look like he was a king. When the brothers did bad things, which they often did, Joseph told their father. You see, Joseph believed in God and wanted to do what was right. The brothers did whatever they wanted. God also gave Joseph dreams, and Joseph told them to the family. The dreams made it look like Joseph would be a ruler over them, and they would all bow down to him.
One day the father, Jacob, sent Joseph to check up on his brothers, who were out watching the flocks of animals. When the brothers saw him coming, they planned to kill him. They hated him that much. That’s what not forgiving can do to you. They grabbed him, tore off that special coat, and threw Joseph into a deep hole in the ground. He couldn’t get out without help. They planned to leave Joseph there until he died. In the meantime, then they sat down to eat their lunch.
While they were eating, a caravan came by. This was a group of merchants, which are people who bought and sold things. One of the brothers came up with another idea. Instead of killing Joseph, why not sell him as a slave? They would be rid of him, and they would make some money too. He would suffer as a slave, and that made them happy. They pulled him out of the pit and sold him for twenty pieces of silver. Joseph was tied up and carried off to a different country, Egypt. A man named Potiphar bought him and put him to work in his house.
At this point, Joseph could have become bitter, but instead Joseph trusted God to work everything out. He did his very best, and soon he was put in charge of all the slaves. Then, Potiphar’s wife lied about Joseph and accused him of doing a very bad thing. He had actually done the right thing, which pleased God, but Joseph was thrown in prison instead. Again, Joseph responded the right way, and he trusted in God. He didn’t let bitterness grow in his heart. In time, Joseph was put in control of all the prisoners.
At one point, the King’s butler had been in prison, but He promised to put in a good word for Joseph when he got released. However, he forgot about Joseph for two whole years. It wasn’t until one day when the King was troubled over two dreams that he had had, that the butler remembered Joseph. Joseph had revealed the meaning of the butler’s dream while he was in prison. It came true exactly as Joseph had said. Joseph trusted God even during this two-year delay.
Joseph was able to tell the King the meaning of his dreams. There would be seven years of plenty, and seven years when no food would grow. His advice was to store up food in the good years. Because of his wisdom, Joseph was put in charge of storing food in the years of plenty. When the bad years came, people came from all over that part of the world to buy food from him.
One day, Joseph’s brothers came to buy food. They didn’t recognize him, but he knew who they were. They had once tried to kill him, and then they sold him as a slave. Now, he was the second most powerful man on earth, and they were at his mercy. He could have very easily killed them, put them in jail, or sold them as slaves. Instead, Joseph decided to test them to see if their hearts had changed at all in the thirteen years they had been apart.
The story has a happy ending as we learn that the brothers had changed, and eventually Joseph told them who he was. They were afraid at first, but he reassured them that he had forgiven them for all that they had done to him. He said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Joseph saw that God had a plan to use all the bad he endured to prepare him to save the lives of many people. Joseph also saw that it was better to forgive than to get vengeance. How different his life and story would have ended had he hurt or killed his brothers? Instead, he was reunited with his very old father, Jacob, and enjoyed his family until the day that he died.
Many families are split apart because people don’t forgive. We are all sinners and do things that hurt others. When we do, we need to go to them and ask for forgiveness. God’s Word teaches us that we need to forgive others, just like God forgives us. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, their sin separated them from God. God was not surprised, as He had a plan to show His great love and to restore our relationship with Him. He sent His Son, Jesus, to pay the price for our sins by dying on the cross. When we ask Jesus to forgive us, He does, and He makes us part of God’s family. Have you asked Jesus to forgive you? Do you forgive others?