Forgiving is Accepting

Colossians 3:13 Don’t be angry with each other, but forgive each other. If you feel someone has wronged you, forgive them. Forgive others because the Lord forgave you.

So how do you cope with people who annoy you? Do you accept them, or do you reject them? Do you get angry with them, or do you forgive them? Come on, how do you deal with the people in your life with whom you profoundly disagree?

Other people have an uncanny knack for rubbing us the wrong way, have you noticed? And we each have at least one or two of them in our lives.

Sure, we’d never want to live in a world where everyone’s the same. That’d be boring. But when it comes to other people’s foibles and failings, somehow we wish they were just like us.

Why can’t they be on time like me? Why do they have to behave that way? Why can’t they see the world the way I do? What’s the matter with them?!

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we have to agree with everyone. We’re still going to disagree – that’s life. What I am on about though is accepting each person just the way God made them, with all their strengths and all their weaknesses.

Colossians 3:13 Don’t be angry with each other, but forgive each other. If you feel someone has wronged you, forgive them. Forgive others because the Lord forgave you.

Somehow, when we start doing that, when we accept people just the way they are, it’s like forgiveness happens ahead of time. We already know how they’ll behave. We already take that into account. And that … that takes the grating edge, the rawness, out of the relationship.

In my experience that one thing – accepting them just the way they are – stops my anger dead in its tracks.

Maybe a huge part of forgiveness is simply accepting people the way God made them, even when we don’t agree with them.

After all, that’s how God deals with us.

And that’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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