Forgivness

Did you know that there are physical health benefits tied to your willingness to forgive people? RELEVANT Magazine published an article reporting on recent scientific studies that show that people who are forgiving can actually jump higher and hike steep hills with greater ease than people who are unforgiving.

Likewise, the studies RELEVANT cited showed that holding a grudge can cause weight gain, elevated blood pressure, and difficulty forming new memories.

Jesus is very straightforward when He teaches us to forgive others (see Matthew 6:15), so how do we become forgiving people?

Paul offers a practical strategy when he writes his letter to the Colossians (3:13):

“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”

There’s a guy named Dave Ramsey who leads a course called Financial Peace University. Ramsey breaks his course into seven baby steps that he claims will help people obtain financial peace.

Ramsey’s first baby step is: Create an Emergency Fund. Ramsey instructs his students to put $1,000 in the bank and leave it alone unless there’s an emergency.

An emergency fund, Ramsey explains, actually eliminates emergencies. Would-be emergencies are downgraded to just hassles when you have an emergency fund in place.

For example, if it’s the middle of July and your air conditioner breaks down, and you have no emergency fund, that’s an emergency. But if your air conditioner breaks down and you have money to pay someone to fix it, that’s just a hassle.

Let’s go back to Paul talking about forgiveness in Colossians:

“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”

Make allowance.

Just like Ramsey tells his students to have an emergency fund for unexpected expenses, we need to have grace and forgiveness on reserve for when people offend us.

Paul is telling us that even if we don’t need to forgive anyone right now, a time is coming when we will.

Having an allowance of grace ready can downgrade dramatic, bitter situations into ones where we exercise the power of God through the act of forgiveness.