understand how your own rejections feel. Yours are personal
and private and seemingly impossible to forgive.
But forgive anyway. Not because it’s easy but because your
enemy gets exactly what he wants from you otherwise. Forgive
anyway. Not lightly and quickly but ferociously and fervently.
Not only for the other person but mostly for you—so you can
be free and full and whole and complete.
Sit down here with me for a minute where we can almost
clasp each other’s hands across the table, and listen to me
closely: If you feel utterly, hopelessly, intolerably resistant
toward forgiving this person or these people who’ve offended
you, don’t consider yourself a random victim. The devil is
behind this. He has ridden the coattails of your anger right into
the depths of your soul where he has carefully calculated your
demise. He’s been strategizing how to suck all the power out of
your prayer life. Out of your whole life. He’s likely the same
one who started the whole mess to begin with. The same one
who stirred up enough sin in another person to tempt them into
doing whatever they did to you, into saying whatever they
said to you, into feeling however they felt about you—perhaps
how they still feel about you, even now. Or even if he didn’t
start it, he’s the same enemy who jumped onto the bandwagon