The sad and tough fact is that we live in the kind of a world where decent people hurt each other, and where bad people can hurt us a lot. And sometimes what somebody else did to us seems so unfair and hurts us so deeply that it lodges inside of our soul like an indigestible lump.

God invented forgiveness as the remedy for healing hurts we don’t deserve. He tried it on us. It was his way of coping with hurts that we caused him that he never deserved. And he invites us to try it on one another, coping with hurts we didn’t have coming through the surprising, the unexpected, the revolutionary power of forgiving.

A great Jewish philosopher echoed sometime ago when she said, “The only remedy for the irreversibility of our histories is the power to forgive.”

Maybe you think there are a lot of ways. She says there is only one remedy for the pains of the past that we cannot undo — the power to forgive.

And I know from my experience with people that sometimes their hurts are so deep, and the pain is so intense, and the memory is so sad, that it simply doesn’t seem fair.

I spoke with a lady this morning who had been hurt as badly as any daughter could be hurt by an abusing mother, and she finally came to the conclusion that if she didn’t do something to begin forgiving, the abusing mother would go on abusing her in her memory as long as she lived. Is that fair?

Another question that they ask me is this, “Can you really do it? Isn’t it too hard? Isn’t it psychologically too difficult? Shouldn’t we rather just try to understand and forget it?”

And I say, “Yes, it’s hard. It's probably the toughest trick in the whole bag of human relationships.”

The first one is this: Don’t forgive because someone tells you it’s your duty to forgive.

I have never met a person yet who forgave another human being because she felt it was an obligation. Don’t do it because you have to. Do it because you want to. And when you think about it, you will realize that wallowing in the bilge of your own hate and resentment and pain is not nearly as much fun as dancing on stage to the melody of healing freedom.

Ask yourself what you really want. Do you really want to stew? Do you really want to develop ulcers? Do you really want to be hurt continually in your life? Or do you want to be free of the hurt you never had coming in the first place?

Wait until you want to and then God will give you the power.

Here's another hint: Don’t force yourself to do it fast.

Forgiving is tough. Forgiving is hard. God can do it in a single swoosh, but you’re not God. The first thing to remember in forgiving is that you’re not God. It takes time.
Here's another hint. Don't wait for the other person to come to you to say, “I’m sorry.”
That may never happen. The person who hurt you may be dead and gone. The person who hurt you may have moved away. The person who hurt you may not believe that be or she hurt you unfairly. He may never come back. And then the question is, “Do you want that person to have such control over your life that by his or her refusal to say ‘I’m sorry’, you’re stuck with your pain?” I just can’t imagine anything more unreasonable than to inflict pain on yourself that you don’t deserve just because somebody doesn’t come and say “I’m sorry.”

If they come — wonderful! If they don’t — take a solo flight to freedom and heal yourself with the power that God gives you to forgive.

Here’s another hint — don’t demand a Hollywood ending.

Some people think that every time you forgive somebody, it has to end immediately with an embrace, and tears flowing down your cheek, and then you love each other and are better friends than you’ve ever been before. That may work sometimes but it doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to.

This is going to be my last hint: don’t forgive too much.

Don’t try to forgive too much at a time. God can forgive wholesale. We need to forgive retail — one thing at a time. Be concrete. Don’t try to forgive people for what they are. Don’t try to forgive people for being slobs or unkind or cruel people. Forgive them for what they did to you last Thursday. Write it down. Be specific. Be concrete. Stick to one thing at a time.

I find in my life that most of the jobs that I do can be handled more successfully if I section them off, if I don’t try to think about doing the whole job. If I’m writing a book, I get paralyzed if I think I have to write a whole book. Sometimes I get stymied if I’m trying to write a whole chapter. But if I take this paragraph and this sentence one at a time, finally something happens. And the same is true in the game of healing ourselves.

Well, I’ve offered to you some hints — five of them.

Don’t force yourself to forgive too quickly. Take your time. God has patience. So can you.
Don’t do it as a duty. Do it because you want to.
Don’t wait until the other person repents or says she is sorry.
Don’t demand a Hollywood ending to every time that you forgive.
Don’t try to forgive too much at a time. Be concrete. Be specific.

When you forgive somebody who hurt you, you ride the crest of love’s great wave.
When you forgive somebody who hurt you, you walk in stride with God.
When you forgive somebody who hurt you, you set a prisoner free and then you discover that the prisoner you set free was you.
When you forgive somebody, you begin to heal yourself first.

Hope this helps you in handling some hurts in your life and moving forward to unleash your true potential in the coming days.!!