Sermon Night Topic: Powerful Ways to Forgive Those Who Have Wronged You (cont.) Good night everyone, I hope you had a wonderful day. Tonights topic is the final part of the series entitled Powerful Ways to Forgive Those Who Have Wronged You I hope it has been a blessing and I hope that the finale is equally blessing to your soul. Questions to Ask Yourself to Help You Forgive Jim Dincalci, the author of “How to Forgive When You Can’t: The Breakthrough Guide to Free Your Heart & Mind” , has spent the last 16 years putting together methods to help people forgive. He integrates not only the effective thinking and emotional processes of psychology, but also time-proven spiritual methods and perspectives.One of the exercises he includes in his book is talking with the person who hurt you directly, if it would help you come to a better understanding of what happened. In particular, what happened from their perspective? Also, what’s their emotional intelligence? Is there something in their background that led them to take this action? He also suggests that you turn the situation around and ask yourself the following: How would an impartial observer see this? Have I done the same thing to another or to myself? Is this similar to a pattern in my family? Has something like this happened to me before? Am I reliving a situation I’ve gone through before, but with different players? What can I learn from this? Can anything positive come from this? Am I stronger or more resourceful as a result of this having happened? What do I get by holding on to this resentment? Who benefits and how? Am I keeping the situation alive by refusing to let go? Nine-Step Forgiveness Exercise This exercise is a modified version of the 9-Step Exercise recommended by the Stanford Forgiveness Project. Here are the steps: 1. Make a list of all the people you feel have wronged you in some way; write down what each one did and why it’s not OK. 2. Acknowledge that those things did happen, and that they did hurt you. 3. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you need to do in order to feel better. 4. Recognize that your distress is coming not from what happened, but from the thoughts that you have about what happened. Your thoughts are within your control. 5. When you feel yourself getting upset over what happened, practice stress reduction techniques to calm your body’s fight or flight response. 6. Another thing you can try when you start getting upset about a past experience is to ask yourself, “What am I thankful for?” Ask this repeatedly until you feel better. 7. Put your energy into looking for ways to achieve your goals, instead of wasting your energy by continuously reliving the negative experiences in your mind. 8. Know that the best revenge is a life well lived. Forgiveness is about taking back your power. 9. Amend your grievance story to include how you moved on. To conclude, I once heard an INTERVIEW with former President Bill Clinton in which he was talking about Nelson Mandela. Clinton was recalling the time in which he asked Mandela how he had forgiven those who had unjustly deprived him of his freedom for so long. Mandela answered, “I didn’t want to be in prison anymore.” When you refuse to let go of hurts from your past, you’re keeping yourself imprisoned. Here is a link to a video that may help to encourage you in your life/situation from this point on...youtu.be/FxoMbPWuk0I. May the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be with you now and forever more, amen.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 23:29:57 +0000