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Key Bible Verse: "I—yes, I alone—am the one who blots out your sins … and will never think of them again" (Isaiah 43:25). Bonus Reading:Psalm 4:1-8

Corrie ten Boom had been unable to forget an atrocity committed against her while in a concentration camp. Although she'd forgiven her offender, thinking about the injustice she'd suffered was robbing her of sleep years later. She asked God why.

"His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. 'Up in that tower,' the pastor said, nodding out the window, 'is a bell rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on ringing, slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. The same goes for forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, old angry thoughts may keep coming for a while: the ding-dongs of the bell slowing down.'

"So it proved to be," Corrie said. "There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations. But the force had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether."

—Robert Jeffress in When Forgiveness Doesn't Make Sense

My Response: Are my resentful thoughts diminishing in frequency and intensity?

Thought to Apply: When God forgives He forgets. He buries our sins in the seas and puts up a sign on the shore saying, "No fishing allowed."

—Corrie ten Boom

Adapted from When Forgiveness Doesn't Make Sense (WaterBrook, 2000) by permission.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

I'm tired, Lord, of being governed by grievances. Please show me how to break loose from vindictiveness.

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