Forging Forgiveness (Part 2)

Part two
While I am working on the condition of forgiveness on my heart, one of the questions that I was faced to ask myself was: Why has God placed this burden on my heart?
The obvious observer would easily be able to answer this: We are called to forgive those that have hurt us in the same way that we ask God to forgive us. Yet, I think there’s a deeper, more personal reason to God placing forgiveness on my heart.
The truth is I am growing in my faith, which means that I need to grow as a man. I can no longer hold on to the pain of my adolescence. The thick burden of guilt on my spirit cannot remain, it needs to be lifted from my shoulders, especially since I am getting married and I am about to start my own family.
Since I am beginning my own family, I know that I cannot carry the burdens of un-forgiveness of my childhood into my adulthood, if I do, then I will be inevitably infecting my new marriage and my future family with the same insecurities that have plagued me all of these years.

Working through the Past
          Since it is imperative that I begin to heal these years old hurts, I need to go back to the  three sources of my pain that I wrote about in part one and I need to begin to see God’s view of my insecurities. That means I need to allow my identity to transform me by the words of Christ in relation to the insecurities that I labeled.

1. Feeling of Insignificance: While I grew up feeling insignificant to the world around me, the truth is, I am not insignificant to God. How do I know this? First off, God created me. He molded me in my mother’s womb. God gave me breath to breathe and a heartbeat. Then when I was lost in my sin, God sent Jesus into my life to free me from my sin. To further my understanding, I have learned that God continues to provide everything that I need to succeed in this life that has been given me. In my weakest times, God has shown me just how important I am to Him. It is because of that, I will learn that I am also given a significant value to the people around me. At the end of the day, my significance belongs to God.
    
   As I here thinking through my feeling of insignificance, I must always think of my father. I begin to ponder the possibility that my father also carries feelings of insignificance. Could it be possible that my father grew up in an environment where he also felt un-important and insignificant? Has that pain been compounded in his heart, creating bitterness and anger that he has been carrying throughout his adulthood? Are him and I living in a cycle of insignificance that can only be broken through the blood of Christ and the forgiveness that He offers?  

                                How can I help my father find his significance in Christ?

1. Feeling of Insecurity: Often when someone feels insignificant, they develop a series of insecurities. Yet, when my significance is found in the Christ alone, I am more secure than ever. I am secure in who I am because I am often reminded that God developed my heart, my personality and my intelligence. There is nothing that God doesn’t know about me, yet God still loves me enough to die for me to be free from sin. Therefore, I can be secure that I am a person who has a purpose. I am a person that God has a plan for; therefore, I can be secure in the calling that God has put on my heart.     
    
   Continuing to think through these steps, I once again am forced to consider my father’s feelings of security within himself. From the little that I know of my father’s upbringing and his adult years, it is easy to see that there is a lot that plagues him. I can only imagine that there is a lot insecurities that weighs on the heart of my father, whether it is feeling secure in himself as a husband, a father, a provider and a friend. I am left to understand that my father is human, which means that he feels the same feelings that I feel. Truthfully, his feelings may be more increased and more dangerous due to the fact that they’ve plagued him for so long.
    
   How can I help him find his security in Christ?
      
   
2. Feeling of inferiority: Ever since I was young I felt inferior to the friends and the family around me. Due to this, I applied less effort into my hobby and interests. I never took the time to build a community of friends that I can be real with. I grew up feeling that everyone was better than me and that I couldn’t compete. The truth is; we are all in the same boat. We are all on even ground. Through my relationship with Christ I realized that I am not inferior to anyone. I also discovered that I don’t need to prove myself to those that I felt inferior to; in fact, I can take comfort in the fact that we all are in need of a savior. We all need grace and mercy from Christ. There is no need for me to feel inferior because all people are created equal by the hand of God. To be honest, I am confident in who God created me to be. I can now stand strong in the identity that Christ has given me, even though it seems so different to those around me. I don’t need to compare myself to anyone else. I only need to compare myself to the person that I used to be before I met Christ and was drastically changed.
    
   Lastly, I think through the areas where my father may feel inferior. A burden that, I can only imagine, my father has been carrying for most of his life. This burden could have started with living in a single parent home, where my father was usually the only male in the home. Or it could have festered over the years of broken relationships and drug and alcohol issues. Lastly, all of these together could have contributed to the feelings that my father has been carrying for decades, the same insecurities that I now carry in regards to my father.
    
   How can I help my father realize that, in Christ, he is not inferior to anybody?
   

Through a few late nights of thinking through these issues, I realize that I am not alone in these feelings. None of us are alone! I honestly believe that many of those who maybe reading these words may also suffer from these insecurities. Too often they feel insignificant, they may feel insecure, or they may feel inferior. The truth is God never desired us to feel these insecurities. It is because of these insecurities, we never truly encounter God’s purpose for our life. I know that’s what I was feeling throughout my childhood and my teenage years. I believed that I had no purpose in life. I believed that I was a mistake or that my family’s lives would have been better if I were not involved.
That was not God’s truth…….

Reader’s Response
If you are reading these words and you have ever felt any of these insecurities, just know that you are not alone. You may be trying to let go of things from your past that is keeping you from fully knowing your identity in Christ, but that doesn’t mean that you are facing your obstacles alone.
Everything that we are facing can be common for many others. That means that we are part of a community. Even though the enemy tries to convince us that we walk these difficult paths alone, we are actually part of an in-depth community where we can work through our insecurities and our broken pasts together. So, while the enemy believes that he is isolating us, he is actually building a community that God can use overtake the enemy’s attempts to destroy the body of Christ.
At the end of the day we have the opportunity to hand our pain and our insecurities to our Heavenly Father. As I am going through a time of healing from my past, I am able to feel the freedom that God has delivered through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.