Hate

There is much to be said about forgiveness and the impact it has one each life. The Bible holds hundreds of examples of people who have experienced first-hand, being forgiven of wrongful deeds: King David, Peter the disciple when he denied knowing Jesus three times, the woman caught in adultery, Paul who murdered hundreds of Christians before his conversion, Cain who killed his brother Abel because Abel's sacrifice was accepted and Cain's was not are just some to name a few who experienced the forgiveness of God in their life first-hand.

The sole purpose behind the come of Jesus Christ as a human was that He died as an atonement for our sins. He hung on the cross in our place. By all rights, WE should be the ones hanging on the cross. After all, Jesus was WITHOUT ANY SIN, but we were born into sin, yet it was Jesus who died and it is us who live.

If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 1 John 1:8.

For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Romans 3:23.

In eating disorder recovery, you might discover that you have difficulty identifying and expressing your emotions. Perhaps you stuff your feelings because they make you uncomfortable or you simply have never learned what to do with them. But as you find ways to identify and express your emotions, this can help you in your eating disorder recovery.

You may have grown up in a home where you didn't feel it was safe to express your feelings or perhaps you met people later in life who gave the impression that you should not show your emotions with them. Maybe others have been angry or critical toward you regarding the expression of your feelings. Your parents may have been so uncomfortable with emotions themselves that they never learned healthy ways to express them so they were never able to model this for you. It may be that they were okay with emotions, but for some reason you still got the impression that you should keep your feelings to yourself.

Obie-HostIt is my great pleasure to introduce to you today Yvonne Ortega.She serves on the Board of Directors of Christians in Recovery and leads her own ministry which she will tell you about. Today she will be speaking on Forgiveness.

Every time Yvonne leads a workshop we are all greatly blessed by her insights. Let us open in prayer.....

Heavenly Father,
We pray for our workshop leader Yvonne today.Anoint her with the Holy Spirit. Give her Your words of wisdom to share with us --
words of healing. Open our ears, hearts and minds that we are teachable and also open to the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus we all pray. Amen.

Yvonne will speak for several minutes and then we will have a question and answer period where you will be able to ask questions. Yvonne, you now have the floor!

Yvonne Thank you.
What does it mean “to forgive”?
It means to give up feeling angry or wanting to punish, to show mercy, to pardon.

Countless adults have told me they can’t forgive themselves. One woman had an abortion and said, “I’m a murderer. I can’t go back to church.”

An alcoholic lost his wife, his children, his job, his car, and his home. His children refused to have anything to do with him. He said, “It’s all my fault for drinking like I did.”

A married woman got drunk and had sex with a male acquaintance. She was beside herself with shame and guilt.

A man fell asleep at the wheel and hit a guardrail. His daughter was thrown from the van and died. He was overwhelmed with grief and beat himself up repeatedly for the loss of his daughter.

John 8:12 NRSV
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life."

I am by nature probably more like a chicken than any other animal on the planet. I like to wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the sun. In the winter, I like to sleep for long periods of time in the darkness and in the summer, I am up with the light and energetic until the darkness comes. For me, all this is is a quirk of physiology or training or something. It makes it difficult for me to entertain others long into the night because I begin to drop off after nine, but other than that, it is simply a personal eccentricity. We all have them.

I was right on the cliff-edge, ready to fall, when God grabbed and held me. Psalm 118:13, The Message.

Rage-filled and loathing self, I was in a battle and determined to destroy myself. Not the self. My entire being. I did not know Christ within me, the Hope of glory! In my own eyes, I was evil. Unable to control my temper, ashamed, and drowning in a sea of self-created guilt and pity, I wanted out. I stepped to the precipice and looked deep into the darkness with longing to never again see the light of day. But when I jumped off the edge into the night, I found my cry answered by the Voice of Love and Grace, and my fall was broken by the gentle hands of Jesus catching me in His arms; He has held me close to His heart ever since, promising to never let me go! Praise be to Him forever! Alleluia! Amen!

Understand how to let go of emotions in productive ways. Remember there is always an underlying reason for deep-seated anger. Once you realize why you become angry, take the needed steps to heal yourself from within so you can be a better communicator and express yourself in productive ways rather than in violent ways. Pray about your anger. Sincerely ask God to help you understand better ways to express yourself and to not allow your emotions to control you.

Anger never resolves issues. If you live with an angry spouse you should learn to detach so the anger won’t gobble you up with it. Anytime you retaliate with angry and abusive words back to an angry person you’re fueling the fire. Simply walk away. You want to put the fire out, not rekindle it. Anyone who lives with an angry person needs to learn how to emotionally detach from the anger. Don’t let the abuse control how you feel or control what you do, or control your behaviors.

Anger is a normal emotion everyone feels at times. But unbridled anger can be disastrous for the alcoholic/addict and their loved ones. If anger is allowed to get out of hand it can even trigger a relapse.

Identifying the Problem
If you are an addict or alcoholic frustration and anger can be caused because you may feel your rights are being ignored or your needs are not being met.

I saved my marriage when I finally gave up trying to be in control of my spouse. We all think that once we get married that we can change our spouse to be what we want them to be, or we may even think they will change on their own, but what faults bother us about the person we're thinking of marrying will only become bigger faults after the wedding. It's wrong to think we can change people or control them to be the people we want, and if we think like this before the "I do's" were going to be in for a big surprise.

After marriage if we dwell on the faults of our spouse it will only make us feel more superior to them, and then we start to justify reasons why we should leave them, or worse why we should have an affair. People think like this – they really do! I have my share of wives and husbands that tell me they think they married the wrong person. Can an attitude get any worse than that? I don't think so. We must always come back to the long-suffering that God talks about.

According to John Bevere in his book,The Bait of Satan, the bait of taking offense is the number one trap that the enemy – Satan – sets for Christians. And the closer the relationship between the people involved in the offense taken, the deeper the wound and the deeper the offense, as seen in the depth of David's suffering when he expresses his suffering after being betrayed by one near and dear to him in Psalm 55: