personal development on Unforgiveness

As a young pastor, I wanted to pray for Jean, who had been sick in bed for about a week. So I took Mike, a fellow leader in the church, with me to her home. Her husband, Jim, greeted us at the door an...

He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope ...

Heavenly Father, forgive us for the times when we take advantage of your unfailing love. You forgive us day in and day out, you never fail us, and you’ll never leave us. As a result, we become complac...

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not be...

God of lasting forgiveness, You are not surprised to find us standing before Your throne once again, asking for Your forgiveness. It’s true, Father: we have sinned again. In our thinking, in our doing...

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is th...

Lord Almighty, you tell us that if we have a quarrel with another, we are to make amends before coming to worship. We seek your mercy today – for all of us live at odds with others to varying degrees....

Heavenly Father, forgive us when we are lost, and when we do not seek those who are. Forgive us when we harden our hearts and do not understand the magnitude of your love. Lead us with your Holy Spiri...

Gracious God, you forgive us whenever we ask, and so we ask you now to forgive all of our sins. We need your grace again, for we often return to the same sins, over and over again. Your Spirit longs t...

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

Lord Jesus Christ, you are quicker to forgive us than we are to brings our sin before you. We worry that the sin we carry is too deep for you to pardon or too evil for you to bear. We forget that you ...

Gracious God, we ask for Your forgiveness and receive it with joyful hearts. Renew our minds so that we may discern what is good. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may be Your witnesses in the world...

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

Contempt is so painful To be dismissed, disregarded Questioning instead of dignity Accusation instead of personhood I have felt its sting and hollowness As have you, my Jesus Help me hear the needed ...

Elizabeth Elliot's story of forgiveness started in 1956 on the banks of the Curaray River in Ecuador when her husband and four other young missionaries were attacked and killed by members of the H...

To become peacemakers, then, we must begin with ourselves. We must ask ourselves, “Why do I make cutting remarks to another person? Why do I make demeaning remarks about them?” We must also ask oursel...

Contempt is so painful To be dismissed, disregarded Questioning instead of dignity Accusation instead of personhood I have felt its sting and hollowness As have you, my Jesus Help me hear the needed m...

Even in our moments of doubt, our lack of faith, and the blindness which means we fail to see God amongst us, God is still at work. God is still healing. God is still forgiving. Even when you fail to ...

In Scripture, remembering falsely or forgetting entirely is often associated with an absence of gratitude. One of the saddest judgments passed on people in Scripture is that they didn’t remember God’s...

Pastor: O wise and wonderful God, in our quick temper and selfish pride, we have not followed your example—you are slow to anger, abounding in love, and show steadfast faithfulness to your children. ...

Merciful God, in baptism you promise forgiveness and new life, making us part of the body of Christ. We confess that we remain preoccupied with ourselves, separated from one another. We cling to destr...

We know mistakes were made.

Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha...

Heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace to confess our sin. We have been selfish instead of generous; we have been proud instead of humble; we have held grudges instead of forgiving; we h...

Although an ungrateful heart is not an offence in itself, still a name for ingratitude is regarded as baser, more odious and more detestable than a name for injustice.

All: O Lord, you declare that the forgiven person is blessed, that the person who has no deceit is blessed. We confess that we have had deceitful hearts, deceitful tongues, deceitful thoughts, and dec...

Gracious God, forgive us for the opportunities we’ve wasted. You’ve placed us in the perfect situation to help raise other people up, so they would be equipped to follow you. But we squander those opp...

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

Loving and forgiving God, we confess that we find it easier to follow the crowd than to follow you. We seek the praise of other humans, rather than seeking to give you joy with our faithfulness. When ...