The Life Of LuLu!: Forgiveness...

Two weeks ago, our character trait was Forgiveness. The definition for it was "Clearing the record of those who have wronged me and not holding a grudge." It's so easy to want forgiveness. Maybe there was a time you lashed out at someone for something they didn't even do. It's times like that when we want forgiveness. Sometimes when the table is turned forgiveness doesn't seem like the answer. It's a complete different story when we are the ones who need to forgive. If we feel like we have a reason to be mad at someone or upset with someone, we take advantage of it. There might even be times when we have a legitimate reason to be upset with someone. However, that's not an excuse for us to get so mad that we never forgive them for whatever might have happened. Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. There's times we do things and don't deserve forgiveness. So when those times come and we don't want to forgive others, we need to remind ourselves that we don't always deserve forgiveness either. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of a forgiving person. He died on the cross to pay for our sins. Did we deserve that? Absolutely not. He did it anyway. There's nothing anyone could ever do to us that's worse than what Christ went through for us. If you ever get so mad or upset that you feel you can't forgive, just think about Jesus and everything He has forgiven you for. In the teen girls class, one of our lessons had to do with things people have done to us that have upset us. The girls listed off several different things such as spreading rumors, saying hurtful things, lying to me, etc. We talked about how sometimes we "forgive" someone for something, but then if we aren't careful we bring it back up and then let it turn into bitterness.

Micah 7:19 says "He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."

If the Lord can forgive us and cast our sins into the depths of the sea, we should be able to do the same thing with others. Whether we feel like they deserve our forgiveness or not. We did a little activity in our class and drew a picture of things we should "cast into the depths of the sea." We also put a sign in there that said "No Fishing." Once you forgive someone for something, cast it into the sea and leave it there. Don't look for reasons to "go fishing" and bring it back up again. Jesus doesn't throw our sin back in our face. Forgive and move on!