Being Free From Offences And Learning To Forgive

One of the things that I have come to realise over the time is that unforgiveness is a punishment that someone inflicts on themself for the sin, crime, or offence of another person. Bearing unforgiveness in your heart has a very negative implications on oneself and can affect their mental health, physical body, emotional well-being and their overall health negatively. There are some conditions that a lot of people go through now that can remotely be pointed out to heaviness of the heart as a result of unforgiveness. The truth is that when you let others go, you are also letting yourself go. So do not hold people down in your hearth - learn to forgive.

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I remember how a friend narrated the dangers of unforgiveness using his own experience to buttress the fact. Someone; a very close friend of his, did something to him that he never expected from anyone especially from him. So the act made him broken and he bore the offence for him for long. Living in the same neighbourhood was tough for him because each time he saw him, his heart would boil because of the unforgiveness. This kept on going and it started affecting him negative and even got to the point of making him emotionally down.

My friend who used to be a jolly good fellow started tilting towards sadness and this began to tell on his relationship with others. It was not long and many other aspects of him became affected negatively - his emotions, health, mental-wise, psychologically, etc. When all these were happening, he noticed that he was not the person he used to be and he traced the change to the unforgiveness he has for his friend. He made a resolution to forgive him and cleared him off his heart. As soon as he made the resolution and stuck to it, he began getting better. His joy came back, and every other part of him that was lost to unforgiveness was restored.

One of the easiest access to enter a state of depression and sadness is to bear grudges and unforgiveness in your heart for someone. Sadly enough, some people that you are bearing the grudges for have moved on, whereas you are the one still punishing yourself. In fact, some of them may not even know that they have offended you, and you may just be bearing an illusion of the offence that you assume. It is worthy to note that offence will definitely arise due to many reasons like differences in opinions, belief, thoughts, personality, etc, but you should also learn to forgive. It does not mean that you marked the offence as good, but it means that you have lived above it.

When someone offends you, if you can, talk it over with the person and iron out your differences. If not, then move on. That you have forgiven someone's trespasses or offences does not mean that you should give them free access to your life, nor does it mean that you should take the person back as your friend. After all, forgiveness is a core mandate to humanity, but friendship is basically subjected to individual choices and preferences. More so, when you discover what normally predisposes you to offence which ultimately leads unforgiveness, you can just avoid it. For example, if going to somewhere or hanging out with some sets of people will open you up to offences, then for the sake of your greater good, you need to cut them off.

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One thing to also know, which will help you to learn how to forgive others is to first forgive your own past errors. If you still hold your past mistakes against yourself and still sulking in regrets over them, you will not effectively forgive others. If you want to have ease with forgiving the people that have offended you, then start by rendering yourself the same forgiveness. You have to know that the errors of the past and your misdeeds are passed and you cannot edit them. In fact, no amount of sulking can bring the past back so that you can undo what you have done. What you should do is to learn from your actions of the past, forgive yourself for the wrongs, then move on. With that, you can apply the lessons of the past to the present and the future, so as to become a better person.

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