Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
I sat on my bed and I was finishing the homework for my weekly Bible study on discipleship. The Scripture in Matthew 5:44 said that we are to “love our enemies” and the question was posed, “Who is your enemy?” I honestly could not think of one person. But then, the next question was this, “Who has hurt you?” Okay, well, that’s a different story. I was able to jot down quite a few names, and the first person on the list was the dental surgeon who performed my son’s surgery, the surgery which ultimately ended his life. In the next step of our homework, we were instructed to spend some time in prayer, praying for and interceding for the names of the people we had listed, those who had hurt us. This was easy for me to do, since the Lord had been putting this particular person on my heart and in my prayers for the last 10 months.
As I was driving to work I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur entitled “Forgiveness in the Day of Rage.” As he was speaking, he said these words, “Unforgiveness imprisons people in their past. As long as you refuse to forgive offenses and the offenders, you are shackled to their offence. As long as you refuse to forgive, you keep the pain alive, in fact, you pour gas on the wound.” I knew it was no mistake that the Lord was speaking to my heart right there and then. He had gently been calling me to forgive this doctor who I have held personally responsible for the death of my child.
Ephesians 4:31-32 says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.” There is no greater calling for a believer than to imitate our Lord. We are called to be living testimonies, sanctified and set apart from the rest of the world, and to live our lives as an act of worship to our God. The reason for our existence here on the earth is to bring glory to our Creator and to become more and more like our heavenly Father so that others who may never darken the doorstep of a church, or who may never crack open the Living Word of God, would be able to see Him in our countenance and in our character. The very purpose of the sanctification process is to grow more and more into the likeness of the Lord while serving Him here on this earth. A believer’s life is designed to reproduce godliness as modeled by our Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose image we have been recreated through our new birth. However, there are certain stumbling blocks that will hinder our ability to live out a life that is fully glorifying to our Father, and those stumbling blocks are sin.
It was no mistake that the Scriptures I was looking at in the morning were all tied together with the sermon I was listening to on my way to work. The Holy Spirit was speaking to my heart and telling me that I must get rid of my bitterness and my anger toward this person who had hurt me and who I felt robbed me of my child. I knew I must remove all of the hate that had turned into bitterness, all of the anger that I have harbored in my heart toward this doctor these past years. When that “putting off” is accomplished, then I must “put on” forgiveness, compassion and kindness, I must clothe myself in His divine nature, His holy character, His abundant love, His everlasting peace, and then, and only then, will I able to walk in the freedom of being an imitator of God, a living sacrifice and a fragrant aroma to our Lord. And that is exactly what I did. After years of harboring unforgiveness in my heart, I finally sat down and penned a letter to the dental surgeon. When I dropped it in the mail, I knew my Lord was so incredibly pleased and it felt good, really good, to finally close this chapter of my grief journey by letting him go.
– Melody
