Pay at My Pump

Growing up in Strasburg Colorado I vividly remember going to the gas station and seeing these three labels on the pumps, “Regular” “Unleaded” and “Diesel”. That is because up to 1986 gasoline in America had lead in it. It was that year that we banned lead in gasoline. Immediately lead levels in the blood of Americans fell by 80%. But because lead is notorious for not leaving the body, those of us today 25 years later still have 625 times more lead in our blood than people did a century ago (now I know why I keep setting off the metal detectors).

Just like that lead that does not leave our body quickly, past actions can also cause present emotional harm, especially if we keep dousing memories with the gasoline of unforgiveness.

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:13-14

Often we don’t forgive because we don’t want to let them off the hook, we want them to feel the same pain we feel. Forgiving someone who has hurt us just doesn’t seem right to us. We desire to keep those levels of unforgiveness floating around in our blood, but in the end it only ends up hurting ourselves and those closest to us.

We need to ban unforgiveness, that natural reaction of hurting others because they hurt us, making them pay at the pump our escalated prices. Let me bring the price down a bit by telling you what forgiveness is not…

1^st it’s not minimizing what happened, what happened was important so important it caused pain and that pain will not go away by just trivializing it.

2^nd it’s not an instant restoration of trust, trust is an earned respect between two humans and is a valuable resource it cannot be just given once taken advantage of.

3^rd it’s not resuming the relationship without changes, there were reasons why the event occurred and those factors need to be addressed and resolved.

We cannot rely on ourselves to do the work of forgiveness. On our own we don’t possess the ability to truly forgive someone of the wrong they have done to us. But God can instill in us that ability to forgive. And for that to happen, we must give our hurt, and anger and resentment to him – we must defer the situation to God and trust that he will take care of it.

This week, let go of the white-knuckle hold on your hate and let God take it. Give the load of hurt, anger and resentment to him and allow his love to transform your heart.