Forgiveness

“For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” Psalm 86:5 KJV
Psalm 141:8 “But mine eyes are unto thee, O GOD the Lord: in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute.”

These two verses jumped out of my reading yesterday and today.  You know the feeling, when it just seems the words jump off the page and stand in front of your face going see me see me!  Yeap I saw them.

For me I look to the Psalm 141:8 first.  If our eyes are on God, if we put our soul and our trust in Him, He will not leave us.  He will guide us and help us and get us to where we need to be, whether we knew we needed to be there or not.  Our eyes and our hearts need to be focused on God.  If we focus on God there isn't room for us to focus on other things. 

I struggle with that.  I want to focus on the things around me, and when I do that I get worried and stressed out.  Not a nice feeling and definitely not something I want to do.  This year I am trying harder to make sure I always focus on God.  If I feel myself getting worried, depressed, or stressed out, I take a time out.  I just sit and let myself refocus.  I let go of whatever is bothering me and I give it to God.  If we give it to Him, He'll take it and our soul will be refreshed(personal experience).

The other verse also spoke to me.  Jesus came to Earth so that we could get forgiveness for our sins.  We don't have to do any great acts to show that we are worthy of forgiveness, we don't have to beat ourselves up constantly over mistakes that we have made, we just have to say "Lord I'm sorry for all the bad things I've done and I believe in You and the fact that You died for me and have given me eternal life and I want to claim that(very shortened version but you get the point)."  That's it.  Nothing more required.  It's wiped off.  So if I do something wrong, if I hold onto my worry and don't let it go to God, I can get His forgiveness just by asking!  How great is that!  We ask and boom it's there.

This also got me thinking about things in my life where I need to work on forgiveness and letting things go.  I have a time with that sometimes.  I've been hurt deeply by people I love, yet I need to forgive them and move on.  I have a hard time letting those hurts go sometimes.  God says to give them to Him and He will claim them as His own so they are no more to us.  Does anyone else having a problem giving their hurts over to God? 

I'm getting much better at giving Him my worry and stress and problems on a daily basis, but I'm still having troubles with old hurts and wounds.  This week I have made it a goal to give to God the two things that have hurt me the most that I want to release the least.  Why is it we want to hang onto our hurt?  Do we need it as a memory so that we don't make these mistakes again?   Do we need it as a barrier?  I think those are two of the things that have been in my thoughts as to why I don't want to give my hurts up.

What about you?  What do you need to forgive?  If God can forgive us, surely with His help we can forgive others.

Picture found on the internet, not mine but one I like.

And now I'm signing off to go start a day of school with my wonderful kids that will include our PE portion outside today as it's going to be in the 60's again!  I can't thank God enough for this wonderful weather!