Culture
The Power of Forgiveness
Force is often the default method to bring about change. Ambition, desire, and strategy hold our attention. In the history of mankind, violence, like a raging storm, upends kingdoms and usurps thrones. Those who exhibit the most ruthless behavior often find their will realized and manifested on the Earth. We are taught that power is measured by how one can dominate others and manipulate their environment.
Bitterness is a disease that infects many of us. Whether it be from disappointment, disaster, or demonic devious schemes. We’ve all experienced something that has wounded our souls and made us feel the sting of misused power inflicting us. That pain lingers. We hide it away and pretend it isn’t there.
What can make these traumas, especially as a child, is that they come from people we once trusted.
I speak from experience as someone who went through something that hampered me and weighed me down growing up. One single wound, delivered in such a way, can surely affect more than people want to recognize. I know what it is like to feel that fear wrap itself around your heart and suffocate you. How do you forgive when the pain is ever present?
As those who have found themselves awakening to the corrupt system all around you, we often find it a challenge to resist the bitterness that forms at the sight of pure evil. The initial stages of awakening cause shock, anger, and a seismic shift in thinking. The wool is removed from your eyes and you can’t believe you’ve been at the behest of venomous wolves your entire life. All as the mainstream media tells you these snakes should be trusted. A Goliath system designed to keep you in chains.
Alice down the rabbit hole so easily causes the vines of bitterness to wrap around your very soul and it can cause you to enter a very dark place, almost as dark as the very rabbit hole itself.
How do we find peace in the midst of such evil?
Perhaps the Psalmist says it best: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”
All of our lives we eat and feast in the very courts of Mystery Babylon. Once we recognize this, we are shocked into a state of rage. Without public justice being administered, we cry out in rage and sadness.
What if I were to propose to you that there’s another level to go to? A way to ascend the Matrix while still fighting within it.
It’s as simple as laying down our yoke to God. Giving over our feelings of oppression and bitterness as we see the truth is more powerful than you can imagine. You become unchained. There is a truth: Babylon has enveloped itself around each nation and put the people into invisible slavery.
But the greater truth is this: It was over before it began. God knows the beginning from the end. The Alpha and the Omega. He wins and there’s nothing they can do to stop Him from accomplishing His vision for healing and peace.
This greater truth can give you rest. It can free you even as you seek to free others through information and truth.
I plead with all of my conspiracy theorist friends who see with 20/20 vision to consider laying down those feelings of bitterness to God now. Not that you forget or become apathetic but that you let God heal those enraged emotions and embrace the truth. Nothing can stop God from winning. Nothing.
When Paul in the Bible chose to murder blooming Christians at the beginning of the church age, he could not have possibly foreseen what would come next. He watched as a man named Stephen was stoned to death for simply telling the truth. As he was being mauled to death, he did something so remarkable that few can comprehend it. He forgave these murderous people and his face shone like an angel. What a remarkable example for Paul as he looked on in approval of this heinous deed. The seed that Stephen planted by his act of forgiveness would go on to change the earth forever.
Your act of forgiveness could very well start a chain reaction, a seismic quake with love at the epicenter.
I truly believe this did something to Paul and cracked his hardened exterior. One act of forgiveness can change nations. When Paul saw this, something began that could not be stopped. Shortly after he became one of the most impassioned Christians to ever live and would go on to give his life in service of Christ. He would write around two-thirds the New Testament and become one of the most consequential Christians to ever live. But few give credit to Stephen. If it wasn’t for Stephen’s example, we might not have had Paul as we know him today.
An act of forgiveness and peace can be more transformational than the evil inherent in man. Love changes the world.
So I ask you today, if you have someone who has hurt you that you find yourself having a hard time forgiving, give it to God. Forgive and let God’s power into your life. Whether it be a brother, a sister, your father, or a mother. You can forgive them and find some measure of peace. The pain often doesn’t go away entirely but the peace of God can transcend and give you joy.
Even though Joseph found himself betrayed by his own family, thrown in a well, backstabbed in prison, and living a life of bittersweet pain. He found himself in a position to enact his own revenge against the people who hurt him. But what did he do? He forgave them and gave them a place to live. He proclaimed that God had brought him there and had planned to use that betrayal all along.
When we see God’s hand moving in the pain and the sorrow, when we allow Him to transform our situations into something beautiful, we truly transcend Babylon and live from a heavenly place. We become aliens and strangers in this world. A shining beacon on a hill.
Forgiveness is more powerful than man’s weapons of war.
Forgive yourself, forgive others, and give your emotional bandage to God today. You won’t regret it.
Is there someone you feel God calling you to forgive today? Do you have a story of forgiveness you’d like to share? Feel free to comment your stories in chat for people to read.
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