CAPTURED
Ephesians 4:32
Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
I've told the story before about the elk calf that had gotten a leg caught in a wire fence. Rob and I were able to cut the wires and set the little elk free. It was a strange and joyous experience. That young elk stood next to us while we fixed that fence. We had freed him from the thing that kept him in bondage and he seemed thankful.
Many of us get ourselves entangled like that little calf and we struggle to get free and sometimes the struggle makes us feel like a prisoner... and other times we aren't even aware that we are caught in a situation.
I have several people close to me that hold grudges against someone that has passed away. To me this is a snare that holds us back from a full free life in Christ.
It reminds me of something that Cory Ten Boom wrote in her book, "THE HISING PLACE". She, her sister, and her father were Dutch Christians sent to a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jews in their house. Here Ten Boom describes an encounter with one of her former guards (who did not remember her), after a talk she had given in 1946 in Germany, on God's forgiveness, only a couple years after she had been released from the concentration camp because of a "clerical error":
The guard came to Cory telling her how happy he was that Jesus had forgiven him. Then he stuck his hand out for hers... she could not bring herself to even lift her arm up. She prayed over and over, asking God to give her the strength to forgive as He forgives. Finally, God gave her not only the strength, but also the joy to forgive him and shack his hand.
In the book she wrote a very wise and insightful thought:
"Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me" Corry Ten Boom.
How are you doing with letting hurt and pain go from others in your past. If you've not forgiven and let things go you are a trapped prisoner and you will never be fully free until you've given it up to God and follow you are holding things against
LET IT GO
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