Sunday's Lesson was chapter 34 in the Joseph Smith manual.
In RS we talked about what goes in to forgiveness. We discussed the who, what, when, where, and why of forgiveness. We discussed the difficulties we all face in forgiving both ourselves and others. There were many comments- and I know we didn't get to all of them, so comment away- enjoy!
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Hey guys, so I discovered a cool new thing- how to embed pop-ups on the page, so if you scroll over who, what, when, where, and why you will see more information.
ReplyDeleteSo, for the first time since I created the blog, I am so excited that it exists (ok that sounds totally wrong for what I am actually trying to say) but I am excited because there were things I wanted to say yesterday, but that there was no time to say. . . so I guess my invention (not really an invention) is paying off. So here is what I wanted to say:
ReplyDeleteWhen we were talking about forgiving God, and how it is a necessary step we didn't really go in depth about it. I was thinking about why we need to forgive God, because its true, he is perfect and he never wrongs us, because he knows what is best, and yet, we often do feel wronged by him. I thought of Elder Bednar's talk about offense. He talked about taking offense, and how there really is no such thing as being offended, but rather that we choose to take offense. I thought about that in reguards to God, and that often we take offense to something God does, though it may actually be for our own benifit.
Thinking about the concept of "forgiving God" incites in my mind the truth that forgiving should happen on our part not because the other person is wrong, but because we are wrong in feeling anger and offense. I should not forgive as a way of making the other person's wrong right. Instead, I should forgive to make my heart right. By not forgiving others, I am letting a poison fester in my blood and a tumor grow in my heart. It grows, it festers, it fills with the disease of anger, hatred; feeling hurt, offended, wronged, dealt with unjustly. Thinking about it just fills us with poison.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought, "how can we dare to say we need to forgive God? He is perfect, lacking of all blame." But I now realize that my need to forgive someone does not indicate their guilt. Instead, my need to forgive only indicates that I have developed wrong feelings and attitudes as a result of another's actions, whether they be good or bad. Forgiveness is a desire to heal our own hearts. Indeed, forgiveness is a part of repentance:
A USEFUL FORMULA
Forgive = A type of repentance. Repentance has two parts, then. R = r + f
R = Repentance (the over-arching concept)
r = repentance of my own wrong actions
f = forgiveness, or repentance of my attitudes towards others' actions.
Stephanie Hatch