I had a vision of a living prayer chain. First the background: dear friends were telling me about a situation very much like one going on in our own lives. Someone they love has a grown child who is entangled in a desperately painful situation that child shouldn’t be in in the first place. Perhaps you have close ties to someone who is “in a relationship with” an alcoholic, or a crack addict, or someone who is abusing them—the list is…
Life can get complicated, especially when you are trying to unravel the emotional damage that has bound you up in a tangled web of pain. Just imagine the confusion and fear a fly must feel when caught by a spider’s web. Sometimes the more you struggle with it the worse it seems to get! Forgiving others is only one piece of the nexus of pain that can get stuck to us when we have been hurt and abused. If we want to get free,…
Is this you? (It was me.) I meet many Christians who believe that God forgives them, but who really can’t forgive themselves. We padlock our own hearts with unrelieved blame and regret. It doesn’t have to be this way! In my experience we find it hardest to forgive ourselves over two kinds of sins: a) if we have deeply hurt someone we truly loved, or b) if we have wrecked our own life path with no visible means of remedy.…