Danni,
I am going to step out there and share something personal with you that will testify of God's love and peace and a fine definition of forgiveness.
I was raped when I was 4 months pregnant years and years ago. I had nightmares for a couple years nearly every single night. Immediately I became recluse and a mute. I didn't talk much at all to people because I lived in fear and shock.
Then God presented His Son and I accepted.
After 2 years of getting a bit better in social settings, I still was VERY careful and avoided talking to any males. The nightmares were still there though. I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to deliver me from these nightmares and the fear that still was in my life every time I was around any male person.
Then I heard a message on forgiveness and the power of it. I then began praying that God would help me forgive my biological dad for ditching us as kids and then playing severe mind games with us growing up. That's what I thought I needed in my life, but it was very clear in my mind that God wanted me to forgive the man that raped me.
At first avoided the thought, but it kept coming back into my mind and wouldn't go away. It wasn't too long after that God revealed to me that even though what the man had done to me was wrong, sinful, hurtful -any word you can describe the action, but that Jesus died on the Cross for exactly what that man did. That the cross was also offered to this man as well.
When I forgave him, the nightmares stopped. Very simple. Very to the point. No question in my mind that God was speaking to me about forgiveness.
Remember that once you forgive, there is always a test to follow.
A couple years later, God put it on my heart to move back 7 miles from where this guy raped me.
At first I said No way Jose`!!
I even bargained with God. I told him that if it WAS Him speaking to me, that it was God that put it on my heart, that I would open the bible, read the first story I came across and that would be my answer.
Much to my chargrin, I opened directly to Matthew Chapter 2.
You can read it for yourself and will find that Joseph was told my an Angel of the Lord to take Mary and Jesus to escape King Herod's killing of every child.
Further in scripture, The Angel of the Lord told Joseph when to go back.
The point of all that was to say that I left that town to get away once the courts found the guy not guilty after the long ordeal of a mistrial and then with proof he had previous convictions in another state, they let him go because he lacked an education and I was the "new girl" in town. (I didn't have any evidence of integrity so to speak)
So when God spoke to me to move back, I was scared, but it was a true test of my faith.
I also believe that God tells us to act in wisdom. We did a public search for this man in that town, and he was no where to be found. The mother of his child even said she didn't know where he disappeared to.
Needless to say, God had my back. I lived there for 8 years before I moved again.
Remember that forgiveness is the giving up the right to punish someone of their wrong doing.
God says in his word that He's got our back on this one!
Trust Him!!
:shade:
