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June 29 - July 20, 2025
grace gives us the assurance that it’s safe enough to soften our fearful hearts, but it is the truth that will set us free (John 8:32). Grace and truth are kept together throughout Scripture (John 1:14, 17). If I only offered you grace, I would be shortchanging you on what it truly takes to heal. While the truth is sometimes hard to hear, God gives it to us because He knows what our hearts and souls really need. It is His truth that sets us free.
My ability to forgive others rises and falls, instead, on this: leaning into what Jesus has already done, which allows His grace for me to flow freely through me (Ephesians 4:7). Forgiveness isn’t an act of my determination. Forgiveness is only made possible by my cooperation.
WHAT YOU GIVE UP: the right to demand that the one who hurt you pay you back or be made to suffer for what they’ve done. God will handle this. And even if you never see how God handles it, you know He will. WHAT YOU GET: the freedom to move on.
Forgiveness is a command. But it is not cruel. It is God’s divine mercy for human hearts that are so prone to turn hurt into hate.
Forgiveness is a complicated grace that uncomplicates my blinding pain and helps me see beautiful again.
“In the gospel of John, there were only two recorded healing miracles of Jesus in Jerusalem. One showed us a new way to walk. The other showed us a new way to see.”
(vv. 14–16, 20–21 NLT) While I can look forward to eternity one day, I don’t have to wait to live out my heavenly citizenship. I can bring heaven to earth today by living in such a forgiving way that my choices line up with God.
“And whatever my feelings don’t yet allow for, the blood of Jesus will surely cover. Amen.” That’s how forgiveness is both a decision and a process. Each offense requires a marked moment of releasing the unforgiveness that threatens to hold us hostage and hold us back from moving forward.
Love needs depth to live. Love needs honesty to grow. Love needs trust to survive. When starved of depth, it flounders. When deprived of honesty, it shrivels. And when trust is broken, love is paralyzed.
In this world, loss makes us grieve as it should. But this isn’t the whole story. At the very same time we grieve a loss, we gain more and more awareness of an eternal perspective. Grieving is such a deep work and a long process, it feels like we might not survive it. But eventually we do. And even though we still may never agree on this side of eternity that the trade the good God gave us is worth what we’ve lost, we hold on to hope by trusting God.
Whole, healthy people are capable of giving and receiving love. Giving and receiving forgiveness. Giving and receiving hope. Giving and receiving constructive feedback. Giving and receiving life lessons tucked within the harder things we’ve been through. We have to get to the place where the pain we’ve experienced is a gateway leading toward growing, learning, discovering, and eventually helping others. But
Though you believe it’s protecting you and making your world better, it’s ugly and sharp. And nothing about it is healing your heart. It’s time to call it what it is and start clearing it away. You can take what’s not broken from among its piles. Not everything is awful inside your memory files. You must empty enough so you can shift from griever to receiver.
It’s for the sake of your sanity that you draw necessary boundaries. It’s for the sake of stability that you stay consistent with those boundaries. This is the atmosphere you need in order to walk out a relationship that requires forgiveness seventy times seven without your grace being abused or your heart being destroyed.
God loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time.
With prayer, I’ve expected too little of God and too much of myself. I’ve expected an infinite God to reduce His vast ways of doing things down to only what I can think up and pray for.
When Jesus taught us what to pray each day, His first request was for daily bread. But isn’t it true that bread took on many different forms in the Bible? Sometimes it looks like a loaf from the oven (Leviticus 2:4), other times like manna from heaven (Deuteronomy 8:3), or best of all like Jesus who declared Himself as the bread of life (John 6:35).
And in the end, maybe it’s not what God is working on but how God is working in us that matters most of all. So, pray what you know to pray. Pray what you need to pray. Pray all the words and let the tears flow into sobs and demands and frustrations and doubts mixed with hope. But then let the faithfulness of God interpret what you see.
This softening was good for me. Hardened hearts have such a propensity to get shattered. Soft hearts don’t as easily break.
And when God allows things that soften and till us, we must remember it is for us, just like it is for the farmer’s land. The farmer knows what is good for the ground just like God knows what is good for the human heart. They both see such potential for new life, new fruit, and new, beautiful beginnings.
Mark 9:50: “Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another” (ESV). This doesn’t mean being “salty” in the slang way of saying being offended. It’s the opposite. It’s letting our Christlike attitude be our flavoring and our preservative of peace, both to fellow Christians and to the world. This truly is possible, but only if we surrender our offenses daily, keep our hearts swept clean of bitterness, and remain humble even when we are hurt. And
The Lord’s Prayer reminds us what the human heart needs every day: we need God, we need to be forgiven, and we need to forgive. Forgiveness is supposed to be as much a part of our daily lives as eating and sleeping.
You’ve got much too much going for you to be stunted by anger, haunted by resentment, or held back by fear. Grow into GOD’S GRACE by giving it kindly and accepting it freely. Throw your arms up in victory and declare, “I’m FREE TO FORGIVE so that I can live!”
