Have a Forgiving Heart receiving God’s Forgiveness and sharing it with others

When you’ve been wronged, becoming bitter toward your offender feels like a way to get revenge. However, this response actually harms you more than it harms your offender, because to be bitter is to be in bondage to hatred and wrath. You will experience the destructive consequences of bitterness until you choose to walk in the freedom of forgiveness.

There is no more important characteristic found in the human heart than forgiveness.

It's importance is seen in the home, community and nation. Someone has said there are "three kindred spirits in the heart -- giving, thanksgiving and forgiving. Usually where one is found, all are found." A forgiving heart is an essential quality every human being should have.

What It Means To Forgive

Forgiveness is more than just speaking the words. It must be sincere and from the heart. It must be patterned after the forgiveness God has granted to us. It must be accompanied by actions which befit true forgiveness.

Forgiveness involves a kind attitude -- abandoning all animosity and hatred. All bitterness, anger, wrath, clamor and evil speaking should be put away . We can hold no grudges. One must deny the impulse to get even and seek to do the forgiven one good.

The first person you probably have not forgiven is yourself. More people have a lack of forgiveness toward themselves than toward anybody else. They are unwilling to forgive themselves and to recognize that God says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

It has been said that “Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer”