Luke 17: 3 Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. 4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
I don't know about you, but this has always been a difficult thing for me to do. I still remember the person who said that I didn't look pregnant when I was near my delivery date. For some, that might have felt like a compliment. For me, it felt like she was saying that I just looked heavy like usual (I hate using the F_ _ word). It hurt my self-esteem so much!
I remember being left off of teams, was the last one to be selected, and left out of groups. I used to feel there was something wrong with me, like I had done something wrong to have people ignore me or neglect my feelings and opinions. It wasn't until much later, I realized it was because I was heavy all that time. It probably wasn't until I had lost all the weight and started finding that people included me in things, asked my opinions, and acted like they mattered. I had to do a lot of prayerful soul searching to figure it out, but realized the weight loss made a difference in peoples interactions with me. Once I realized this, I was angry with those people who now paid attention to me and treated me nicely when they ignored me before.
This Bible Passage reminds me that I need to be a Forgetful Christian, forgetting and letting go of past experiences and forgiving others regardless of what they did or didn't do, the same way that Christ forgives me. Luke 17: 3 Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. 4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
Since this is an example of the positive influence God has made on my walk with Christ, this may not reflect the whole meaning of the Bible verses.
