Forgiveness
I have said the words, I have prayed about it, and I still feel exactly the same toward them. Have I actually forgiven anything?
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel prophesied to exiles in Babylon who had already tried obedience by willpower and watched it fail spectacularly. What God promises them is not a better effort but a transplant: a heart of stone traded for one that can feel again. It is his work, and it takes time. If your will is currently running ahead of your feelings, that gap is not proof that you are a hypocrite.
“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”
Jesus finishes the parable of the unforgiving servant with the phrase 'from your hearts', which is usually where the anxiety comes from. But look at the story he has just told. It is about a man who understood the size of his own cancelled debt and then went out and throttled somebody over small change. The test is the direction you are travelling, not the temperature of your feelings.
A path forward
Keep doing what you decided even while it feels false. Feelings tend to follow repeated choices rather than lead them.
Pray for one specific good thing in their life this week, by name. It is the hardest prayer there is, and it changes the person praying it.
Ask the honest question: are you still trying to make them pay, through a comment, a silence, or withheld warmth? That answer matters more than what you feel.
Closing verse
“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”
- 1 John 3:18
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