I was born in 1960, in Cape Town, sunny South Africa, into a Jewish family, the youngest of three children. My father was South African and my mother British. They were first cousins and both of their grandparents, left their homeland Russia and went to Great Britain but one brother decided to go further on to South Africa and he settled there. My father had a gift for music and the piano was his main instrument. He studied classical music at the university but jazz became his first love. He became a member of a band and was probably about twenty years old when he travelled with the band to England and met my mother for the first time who was in her late teens. It was love at first sight. My grandmother was not impressed. She had been searching for a suitable mate for my mother, a man who would be a decent husband and provide well for her daughter and she had been forcing my mother to go out with various men in whom my mother had no interest at all. My father was a thin, scrawny young man at the time, a travelling musician playing piano with his band in who knows what kind of places and he was absolutely not a suitable option to my grandmother's way of thinking. Seeing that my mother and the other two children were emotionally abused, my mother was terribly unhappy at home and my father became her saviour. She ran away and they lived in a hotel on different floors and prepared to get married. Being terribly poor they could not afford a usual kind of wedding with all of the works. Although they both looked very smart, there was no flamboyant, white wedding dress and white shoes for my mother. I recall their black and white wedding photo, the only one; my father tall and thin looking very neat in a smart suit and my mother who had a natural, exceptional beauty was stunning, in what I think was a satin dress that may have been purple, holding a bouquet of flowers. It was a close-up so you couldn't see the smart black shoes that she was wearing but she kept them and when my sister was a teenager she found my mother's wedding shoes and discovered that they had come back in fashion! They had some friends at the wedding but no parents, and because they were so poor they couldn't afford to have a special reception. They could only invite their guests to the smartest place in town for a cup of tea and cake. My parents went back to live in South Africa and my father's parents persuaded him to lay down his beloved music and get into the building business instead, in order to provide a comfortable home for his family so his piano playing took a back seat and he kept at it just for a hobby. He didn't play the piano often when I grew up but I do recall the occasions when he did play with such spontaneity and ease. He had a great talent and I regret that he did not make music his profession. Even in his last years of life, his playing though rusty, was still beautiful. By then he had no piano. They couldn't fit the grand Steinway into the lift or up the stairs when they moved to Israel, so it remained in the foyer for three weeks until it was sold. When I moved to Israel, I hadn't heard my father play in several years because he had had to flee South Africa when I was a teenager but I recall the odd times in later years when at a concert featuring various musicians, he would make an appearance, playing beautifully, cheered on by his good friends, having had the opportunity to practise on some hotel piano. I had shown musical interest as a child so my parents had hoped that I would follow in my father's footsteps but that was not to be. I took piano lessons for ten to twelve years and although having some talent and a good ear for music I was not drawn to classical music and I found it torturous to have to be forced to practise when it was the furthest thing from my mind. But God didn't allow those years and hours of investment to be wasted and although I only have a very mediocre talent, I love to worship the Lord by playing the guitar and singing and I now lead my family in this every evening and have also on occasion played and sang together with the worship leader in my congregation.
As difficult as beginnings often are, my father worked long hours and they were very poor but a time came when the business began to pay off and long before I was born they were already living a life of ease and comfort. I grew up with a servant in the house which was, and perhaps still is, normal among many Jewish people living in South Africa. That may sound like I was fortunate but I regret that I never had to lift a finger to do anything around the house as today I feel at quite a loss in the area of tidying and cleaning. It's not in my blood and nor was I trained. But I was certainly extremely fortunate to have a beautiful childhood. Aside from my brother fighting and teasing me, far more prominent are the clear memories I have of feeling full of joy and being content with the world around me. The relationships were good and there was little sign then of the dysfunction that would later appear from the time I became a teenager. My family was not religious and I don't recall any mention of God though Pesach and the Jewish New Year were big celebrations with extended family. We were all sent to a Jewish Junior school where we learnt Hebrew as well as Torah, (the first five books of Moses) Jewish history, and Jewish laws and customs and we also celebrated the Jewish feasts at school. Every morning, the whole school would assemble outside to say prayers, the Sh'ma Yisrael, (Deut 6: 4-10) in Hebrew-which I couldn't understand, and then we would sing one or two beautiful Hebrew songs afterwards. But no-one in my surroundings was especially religious and I never came across anyone who had to wear religious clothing or any such thing. I felt as free as a person can be who has no religion at all.
My sister who is eight years older than myself, gave me the pure love which only an innocent child can give and raised me on her own made-up fairy tales with lots of encouragement about good behaviour, and rewards which always followed as promised. I felt greatly loved by those around me, also the fairies, and I believed too that God who was above all, loved me and was watching over me. The pure love which I received and the naive belief that I had, spurred me on to be well behaved and to live my life to be pleasing to all those around me, including the fairies and God. I believed every word of those fairy stories and they also had a wonderful effect on me, as if they were a preparation for my later walk in faith with God. I believed with my whole heart and courageously confessed my belief to those around me without seeing proof of what I was believing. For instance, my sister told me that the fairies lie on the clouds and were watching over me and it would make them happy if I should wave to them. So I would wave to the clouds, knowing that some people were thinking that I was crazy but I did this in faith, believing that this was pleasing to the unseen world. Some people may think of this as being blaphemous or in some way not right but it had the effect of giving me a good basis for my later faith in God and a willingness to be made a fool for Christ in spite of what others may think. Because of what I experienced, I would even go so far as to say that in those early years I tasted of what the bible calls ''the peace that passes understanding." Phil. 4:7. I recall times of experiencing great peace and joy and I can imagine that God was smiling down upon me.
After the age of ten, all of this faded from my life in a very gradual way without me sensing the disappearance or feeling crushed that this unseen world was not real. I have no scars in that respect. I just appreciate that I was so fortunate to have had a wonderful childhood. But as I entered my teen years, the peace and harmony also began to change. I did not handle well the transition of coming into an adult world and I felt self-conscious and unconfident, totally lost and bewildered. Overnight I slid headfirst into a severe depression which lasted a few years and my parents did not have the wisdom to know how to help me. I gradually adjusted to teenage life but as I adjusted the relationships at home got out of hand because teenagers change, their friends change and relationships change and this especially had an impact on my relationship with my mother. There were several problems but perhaps the worst was that my mother did not trust me, nor the world around me. She was extremely overprotective towards me, stifling my inner growth. I know that to a large extent, the problems had to do with a curse on her side of the family (due to her grandparents seeking regular counsel from a spiritist), as well as the abuse she had suffered growing up in her home. I suspect too that her need to overprotect me may, to some extent, have been helped along by a trauma that I had caused her when I was a child.
I recall the evening when we had a party in our home. Being the youngest, I hated going to bed early every evening, having to leave the hubbub of family life. Lying in bed, I would continue to hear the sounds of animated chatting or perhaps my father playing the piano. I felt shut out, wanting so much to be a part of whatever was going on in the lounge and I was never tired at bedtime. On this particular evening when the party was in full swing, I suddenly sensed at a certain moment that my mother was about to come looking for me to send me to bed. Being only about five years old and not knowing any better, I decided that I would go and hide. I found a brilliant hiding place behind a door in the living room where the party was being held and watched through a crack in the door as the happy party quickly turned into a frantic search party. Although people were searching high and low, no-one approached my hiding place. The police were called, relatives went out into the street to search for me, others were looking underneath cars and I watched through a crack in the door as all of the people walked in single file through the passage in our house, thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny. I was eventually found about two hours later when someone caught my eye looking through the crack in the door and after expressing my fear of the police coming for me, I was quickly sent to bed with the comforting words that the police hadn't been called and I had nothing to worry about. I was fortunate that on the rare occasion when I did something wrong as a child, my parents were gentle towards me because I honestly did not realise the severity of what I had done. I only recently heard from my brother that my mother was in a terrible state of shock and was being encouraged to sit down and drink sugared water in the hopes of calming her down.
Aside from the difficulty a parent has of letting go of their youngest child, I can imagine that this incident left a heavy dent in my mother's heart who could not face letting me go out when I was a teenager. There were other severe relationship problems but this particular issue was the cause of tremedous havoc. I was fairly innocent and just wanted to have some fun with my crazy friends but the strife was never-ending as I struggled for my freedom. A terrible atmosphere of hostility grew between my mother and myself and the situation snowballed over the years. There was never a normal discussion about anything and life at home became a hellish warzone. When I wasn't with my friends, my bedroom was my sanctuary where I would lock myself up to shut out the torment. I know too that I was causing great pain to my mother but I was powerless to stop what was going on and I never understood what the problem was or why it was happening. My heart became so tortured by the situation that I began to think of murder. I was simply desperate to somehow put an end to this excruciating pain, to have peace, and a will and a life of my own. I must have fantasized about murder for months and at a certain point I knew that I had to stop. I realised that murder could turn into reality if I did not stop and this was not a logical solution to the problem. But being so desperate for a solution, I began to consider suicide. No cry for help! I couldn't take any more. I considered this carefully but there was just one problem. I wasn't sure if there was such a thing as heaven and hell and I didn't want to take a chance and find myself in hell because that would not solve the problem of suffering. I decided to ask a friend if she believed if we go to heaven or hell when we die. She said yes. Well, I was not prepared to take any chances so suicide was out. But I had to do something. I was at the end of my rope! I decided that the next time my mother shouted at me, instead of shouting back I would keep quiet and then instead of the shouting lasting ten minutes, it would be over within two minutes.
I didn't have long to wait. My plan worked and it was over very quickly. But that caused another problem; without shouting back I now found myself in twice as much pain as before. Listening to the shouting and accusations without defending myself was as if a sword was being driven through my heart. By defending myself previously, it was as if the sword could only go in to a certain depth but now it went in all the way, slicing further into the searing wound. I locked myself in my room to cry, desperate for a solution. Perhaps I could go to the guidance teacher in school for help. She was available for anyone and any kind of problem but then, what would I say? I didn't understand what the problem was? How could I ask for help if I didn't know how to explain what the problem was? I figured that this problem was too big to be solved by any human. Then I looked up to the ceiling and thought about God. I had believed in Him as a child but I didn't really know for sure if He was real. Nor could I understand why we had life especially seeing that there was so much suffering in the world. But I knew that if God were real then He was the only one who could help me, for surely I reasoned, only supernatural help could get me out of this mess. But the question was-- did He really exist? I then recalled the words I had heard my father utter two or three years previously when just 'by chance' our family had had a quick discussion about God.
"I'm not an atheist," he said. "I'm an agnostic! If someone can prove to me that God exists, then I'll believe in Him".
As I recalled his words, a determination rose up inside of me and I said to myself, "I WILL believe in God until someone can prove to me that He doesn't exist." As I said this, I suddenly became aware of sin in my heart. I became acutely aware of the fierce hatred that I had in my heart for my mother and it was disgusting and foul in my own eyes. Suddenly it wasn't important to me what had gone on in the relationship or what she had done--that was between her and God. I just knew that my hatred was unnacceptable to God. So, although I'd never heard of the sinners prayer or the word repentance, I repented. I asked God forgiveness for my hatred, my fears and any other sins or weaknesses that may have been lurking in my heart. Next, I thought it fitting to look at my life and consider all of the good things that I had and give thanks to God for that. I gave thanks to God for my friends, my house and my security and whatever else I could think of and I realised that even though I was in severe, emotional pain, that my life was not all that bad. And lastly, I thought it was fitting to ask God to bless whomever I could think of at that moment--my mother, family and friends. I believe that the Holy Spirit led me into this as I had had no example before me in the area of repentance. So three things I prayed about: forgiveness of my sins, thanksgiving and blessing for those in my life. And three things followed:
The first is that within what was probably a few days, without having spoken to anyone about what I was going through or without receiving any information from any source, I suddenly became aware that I knew, without any doubt, that God was real and that He loved me. I knew that there was a purpose to life (though I didn't know what it was) and I knew that there was a reason for everything and that nothing was for nothing. Perhaps you could say that that day I became aware of faith that had been born in my heart and I believe that it materialized from my having taken a step in faith by praying to God.
It had not occurred to me to ask God to intervene in my big problem. Perhaps that is because I was too overwhelmed by my sin and getting right before God, yet in His great mercy He dealt with the problem and it took me about eight years before I realised that the second thing that happened was God turning the world upside down, just for me. The second thing that happened is that something unexpectedly happened in my fathers business and he immediately had to flee the country, not knowing how long for, or if he would ever be able to return again to South Africa. (He went back for a holiday for the first time about seven years later, and continued to do that yearly till he died). My parents had had it in their minds for years to leave South Africa sometime in the future because of political reasons, and they had already spent time looking into the possibilities of immigrating to various countries but nothing concrete had yet materialized. But now, where an instant decision had to be made there was only one option that was open and that was Israel which was and remains an open door to anyone who is Jewish. So Israel was the destination and became home to my parents and later to me, for many years. My parents had a good relationship with each other and it was unthinkable for my mother to live without my father, so she had to join him, but what about me? The counsel she received was that the teenage years are the worst to move to a foreign country, for social as well as educational reasons. At almost seventeen, I was a bottom of the class student and it was obvious that I would never be able to successfully finish another two years of school in a foreign language, nor integrate well on a social level. It was decided that I would continue to live at home with my sister while my mother went to join my father in Israel and I would join them when I was finished school. Being so overprotective, I have no doubt that it was unthinkable for my mother to leave me, yet she knew that she had no choice. To me this was unbelievable; a dream I'd never imagined had come true! Not only had God caused my parents to flee from home but also out of the country while I could remain and continue to live freely as I wished with all of my material needs taken care of. Suddenly I could do what I wanted without any pressure, free from restrictions and free from strife. Though my relationship at that stage with my sister was also not good, about 90% of the pressure fell off me. I was suddenly freeeeeeeeeee and absolutely ecstatic!! I made up for those lost years--there was no stopping me. Like a bird being let out of a cage, I wasn't just flying, I was doing summersaults in the air. It wasn't all too innocent but I wasn't badly bad either. I'll spare the details but I know that it was God's will for me to live in freedom for a while, to stretch my wings and fly. And I had no idea that the things in the world were worldly and were not God's will for me. In His wisdom, He allowed me to be totally free without any restrictions and those revelations of worldliness and the importance of separating myself to Him gradually came some years later. Meanwhile, I made good use of my own free will and life became a fantastic party for me. I made up for all of the years that I had felt incarcerated.
There was a third thing, which I believe was a result of my initial prayer, a prayer which I continued to pray for many years every evening before I went to sleep. While lying in bed at night, I would recall scenes of the most painful things that I had experienced with my mother. I let it play out like a movie in my mind and at the most painful point I would pronounce forgiveness towards her and acceptance of what had happened. Even though I still didn't know anything about Jesus and was not born again, I believe that this was led by the Holy Spirit and see it as a gift of the grace of God because in later years I was never able to forgive again with such ease but rather had to battle through and strive to forgive. But at that time, it just seemed to flow and I received a great deal of emotional healing by working through it in this way. Yes, it was painful and I would be crying but I was driven to do this and I felt clean and relieved afterwards.
This is how I lived my life up until the age of twenty, without my parents and enjoying my newfound freedom while continuing to search for God and the meaning of life and praying to Him before I went to bed every evening. And a few years later, I discovered Jesus.
Luke 15: 10
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To start off with, a person must have the will and desire to believe that God exists and sometimes, as in my own case, even a desperation to believe. This is what causes us to take a step in faith and in that way a 'seed of faith' is born. A good example from the bible is that of the woman who came to Jesus to ask for healing for her daughter who was possessed by demons:
This woman had a determination that was born out of desperation. She did all in her power to receive God's mercy, and Jesus proclaimed that she had great faith! I believe that God engineered my circumstances and that He does that for all those whom He seeks. Like a clockmaker, he knows what makes us tick and brings us to the point where we will call upon His name. This is what we can call 'taking a step in faith' but it is just as much God's doing as it is ours.
As we read the first chapter of how God worked in my life, it is wonderful to see how God is more than willing to enter into a relationship with sinners. What a merciful God! Till today, I still consider myself a murderer and yet that didn't deter God in pursuing me! In fact, that is why He did pursue me-because He seeks sinners in order to cleanse them and give them a new life and He has mercy towards the weak and needy. What a privilege it is to be cleansed from sin and to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I feel extremely privileged that God has led me, revealed Himself to me and offered me His grace and mercy which extends forever to every person on the face of this earth. But of course His grace, mercy and blessings are conditional. We need to have ears that will hear His voice of conviction and be more than willing to turn away from our sins.
I am not just talking here about the sin of mankind in general but rather the need to recognise that you are a sinner. Do you see something or several things in your heart or life that you can say is disgusting and unacceptable to yourself and therefore to God! Are you suffering with a heavy load on your heart because you know that you are guilty? Are you ashamed of yourself because of your sin? Do you hate that sin with the same hatred that God hates your sin? Do you hate your sin with such a passion that you will do all that is in your power to destroy it? If not, then pray and ask God to reveal your sin to you and to convict you with a heavy conviction. Pray and keep on praying! Do not give up! This issue will decide if you receive God's forgiveness and approval so that you can spend an eternity with Him, or otherwise spend an eternity far away from Him in never-ending darkness. Perhaps you have a problem with this because you cannot recognise ever having done anything bad in your life. Nevertheless, we can never be righteous enough to save ourselves. As it is written:
If you know that you are guilty before God because of a specific sin or sins and you are greatly weighed down by it, then that is true conviction. God has been at work in your heart and that will lead to true repentance.
Repentance is when you know that you have done something wrong. Literally you turn around and walk back. I have a picture in my mind of someone who went walking in a forest and stepped onto the wrong trail and has gotten lost. To get out of the mess he will have to stop, turn around and walk back the exact way he came until he comes to the place where he went wrong and then walk in the right direction. This is the way it is when we know that we have sinned. We will become so burdened by our sin that the only way that we can get relief is to confess our sin to God and ask Him for mercy and forgiveness and then we need to take steps to walk back in the right direction. We may even be too weak to walk in the right direction in our own strength and we will need to pray and ask God to lead us and make us able. Are you burdened with your sin? Then repent and receive God's forgiveness and mercy! As well as repenting we need to recognise that Jesus came to earth to suffer and die for us in our place and God raised him again from the dead. The punishment that we should have received, Jesus took upon himself. We should have been punished for our sin but Jesus was punished in our place. The following verses show that God will indeed punish, unless we repent.
In the Old Testament an animal would have to be sacrificed--blood would have to be spilt in order for God to forgive us our sins.
But now instead of having to slaughter an animal to die for our sin we can receive God's forgiveness through faith by acknowledging that Jesus took our punishment upon himself by dying for us. His blood was spilt for us, once and for all.
[12] he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. [13] For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, [14] how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [15] Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.
What is this Old and New covenant spoken of in the above verse? The Old covenant is the Law of God that demanded that an animal be slaughtered and its blood would make amends for our sin. The New covenant is accepting by faith that instead of an animal being slaughtered, Jesus suffered, died and was raised from the dead, taking our punishment upon himself. The death that Jesus died should have been our death but his blood was shed once and for all and whatever punishment we deserve, he has taken that upon himself. Interesting to note is that the above verse is from the Old testament and is one of many prophecies of what was to come.
We are greatly privileged! In fact I think that many believers have a problem finding the words to express just how greatly privileged we are. We who deserve hell will instead go to be with our Loving Lord when our time on earth is over and we can enjoy a foretaste of that by experiencing his presence of love, joy and peace by abiding in Him. And this is just a tiny drop of what we will receive in heaven! Imagine a taste of one dew drop of His life on earth if we turn to Him but in heaven there will be a never-ending ocean of His glorious presence!
One more thing I want to make clear is that the conviction of sin is not something that just happens once. If we are walking with God then we will experience it often because God wants us to learn to conquer our sins so that we will become like Jesus. As long as He convicts us we need to repent and by doing so He will raise us up to be overcomers, transformed into the image of Jesus. We will learn to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh and we will experience greater and greater joy in our lives through overcoming because we are in the process of being loosed from sin that has bound us and defiled us. We are being set free from Satan's domain and being loosed into God's domain.
An interesting point in my story is that I did not yet know anything about Jesus! I had only a Jewish background when I grew up and the name of Jesus was just a name that I associated with the 'Christian religion' but although I was not yet born again I had a very real repentance which was a stepping stone to my later believing in Jesus as God's son and being born again of the Spirit. Repentance was not something that I could have planned or had been coerced into doing by someone else. This was solely God's doing. He was at work in my circumstances and my heart. If we don't experience God's conviction, it is our privilege to pray and seek God and ask Him to show us how terrible our sin is, for without a true, personal awareness of our sins we cannot repent and have a relationship with God because a Holy God cannot commune with a willful sinner or with someone who doesn't recognise their need for Him. Seek Him with all of your heart!!
Another important point in my story is the need to forgive. Jesus said:
Do you want to be forgiven by God? Check your heart! If you bear any grudges or bad feelings towards anyone then it's important to forgive that person to ensure that God will forgive you. In fact, it's clear in the next two verses that God will forgive us in exactly the same measure that we have forgiven others. I want to be forgiven by God, not less than 100% so I know that I need to forgive others no less than 100%.
Bitterness is the fruit of unresolved anger, pain and unforgiveness and I have noticed in myself and in others how it affects all relationships, defiling all those coming into contact with the person who bears a grudge, whether the grudge is fresh and conscious or something ancient and forgotten that has been buried in the heart. We need to search our hearts from our beginnings till today and learn to practise forgiveness. This is totally unnatural and impossible without the grace of God but we are privileged that we can call on His name. In John 15:5 Jesus says that we can do nothing without him and in Phillipians 4:13, Paul says that we can do all things in Him who strengthens us. So forgiveness is possible if we turn to God.
You may cry out, "How can I forgive this person who has committed such evil against me? You have no idea how they have harmed me!! They don't deserve to be forgiven!!!"
You are not condoning someone by forgiving them. But by not forgiving someone it is as though you have bound that person to you with ropes and whether or not you are conscious of it or not, you carry the heaviness of their weight on top of you wherever you go, whether you lie down to sleep or wake up to go to work. By forgiving that person you are severing the ropes and freeing yourself from their awful weight. By not forgiving another, you are punishing yourself far more so than the other person. You are playing God! Let God be God! Allow Him to be the righteous judge.
Only God knows what each one deserves and He will vindicate the righteous and punish the ungodly. We are not fit to do that. It is our job to forgive and to allow God to be God. Remember too, that if you are walking your life out with God, no-one can harm you, but you will harm yourself if you allow yourself the luxury of bearing a grudge.
Instead we need to pray for the person who has hurt us. Firstly, this is healing for us and secondly they need our prayers. I always pray that God would convict the other person where need be so that they will repent, not for my sake but for their sake, to receive God's blessing and approval in their lives. For my own sake, I pray that God will enable me to forgive others even if they do not ask for forgiveness or even if there is no change that I am aware of on their part.
Some people are angry at God that He allowed them to suffer such unjust suffering. "Why did He not intervene and instead allow me to be a victim to a horrible crime"!??
God will not interfere in the will of man. That is His golden law. But He will come to us and deliver us when we cry out to Him. He delivered me when I called out to Him and countless others can also testify as to how God delivered them when they called out to Him.
"He is not fair!!" you say.
You are right, He is not fair. If God was fair He would have sent us all to hell! Instead He sent His son to suffer and die for us so that we can spend an eternity in His glorious presence. We certainly do not deserve that!
I am reminded of Corrie Ten Boom. Her father had a clock shop and together with her sister they lived on top of the shop. During the second world war, they hid Jews and anyone whose life was in danger, in their home. At a certain stage they were discovered and were sent to a concentration camp. Corrie's father and sister died there but she survived and when the war ended she spent the remainder of her years spreading the gospel and telling of her life experiences and faith in God. One time after talking about her experiences and faith to a gathering of people, she noticed someone who was a German officer from one of the camps that she had been in, no doubt guilty of who knows what. This man came towards her smiling with his hand outstretched to shake her hand. She had to make a split second decision to either turn away in unforgiveness or to forgive him and offer him her hand. In that split second, she prayed and asked God to give her His forgiveness for that man and as she did so, she held out her hand to him and God's peace flooded her heart. Victory!! Let us seek to give others the forgiveness that God has for them and us. I just found the story here on the net, told in Corrie's own words. It is such a blessing to read it!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/boom.html
Some people may recognise their need to forgive yet have a terrible struggle in this area. It may be a matter of striving to get there which can take a long time. Later in my life, I found it much harder to forgive and in certain issues it took me several years to come to a place of forgiveness. The important thing is to keep on going and not to give up! It may also be that some people need the help of counsellor. If you are not sure, then pray and ask God to lead you in your situation. For people who are not receiving counselling I have written here a few guidelines about forgiving:
1) Ask God to guide you through the process, to enable you to forgive.
2) Tell God all about your anger, pain, hurt, sadness etc as if you're talking to a friend about everything that has happened.
3) Confess your judgemental attitude before God and name it. You may feel furious and wrathful, scornful, righteous, arrogant, resentful, hateful, bitter etc. This is a judgmental attitude where you put yourself in a superior position to the person who hurt you which is sinful in God's eye. Confess that; name your bad attitude/s and ask forgiveness from God.
4) Go through painful scenes, play it through your mind like a movie and pronounce forgiveness.
5) Ask God to heal you and make you whole.
6) Give thanks to God for all of the good things that you can think of and
7) Ask God to bless all the people in your life, especially the one you're forgiving.