A week after the break-up, our pastor at church preached about forgiveness. I got annoyed and bored. Later on I learned about the positive results behind the term forgiveness. This preaching kept on running inside my head that there is something else I have to do to make things right between myself with my God, that is to go and ask for forgiveness from that ex of mine.

From there, I automatically managed to follow her trails and ask for forgiveness. Surprisingly, after all the bad things I did to her, she shared a Bible verse with me found in Colossians 3:13, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.” She looked into my eyes and asked me a question: “If Joseph, the dreamer forgave his brother who sold him to the Midianites, who am I not to forgive you?”

Finally, she fired me with another one: “If God sent his only son to die for our sins, who am I not to forgive you?” I stayed quiet without saying a word. I froze like a statue in a museum. She then forgave me after I told her how sorry I was for how I’d been treating her. From there we became friends again like a new leaf that grows on a stem after the autumn period, and invited unconditional happiness into our hearts until today.

Of course asking for forgiveness from someone whom you have wronged, and again forgiving someone who has wronged you, is not always easy to do. It’s a process like a baby who learns how to walk. At times it feels more painful to forgive the one that inflicted the wounds than the actual wounds itself. But yet there is no peace without forgiveness, and for that reason I opted to go and ask for forgiveness from her.

There are several questions that I continuously keep on asking myself every time I hear people say, “I cannot forgive someone because s/he has ill-treated me”. I think to myself, we keep on going to our churches each Sunday reciting the Lord’s prayer Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10), yet we don’t live out what we’re praying for.

Don’t we know and realise that there is a mansion full of forgiveness than a room full of unforgiving souls in heaven? Are we even completely deaf enough not to understand this sentence? Don’t we realise that God also wants us to inherit his heart of forgiveness?

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Tell us: Have you ever asked for forgiveness from someone and they refused? How did you handle it?