How Do I forgive Myself?
Bart Blair: What if I'm able to forgive others, but I can't seem to forgive myself?
Bruce Hebel: A lot of people struggle with forgiving themselves. In fact, I think if we were to put a total of who people forgave that we coached, self is the number one. And it's also the one they struggle with the most. We just believe we need to pay more. Don't you think? It's just a little bit more difficult for us to apply the blood to us because we, again, want to pay more. It's really a struggle with the Gospel.
Toni Hebel: We don't deserve to be forgiven. We need to do something. We can't just receive the grace of God.
Bruce Hebel: Yeah, we tend to give grace to others oftentimes more quickly than we give the grace to ourselves. I think it goes back theologically to the fall and the shame that came upon us. We all know we deserve to pay. We struggle so often with the Gospel, knowing that Jesus paid everything and we don't add anything to it. We often like to say it this way: it's not Jesus paid the bill and we cover the tip. He covered all of it. And we have to believe that that's true about us. The protocol is exactly the same. It's just getting our mind set to really, really, really believe that Jesus paid for everything for me.
Toni Hebel: Well, what do you say to people — because we've had this happen a number of times — that say, but the Bible says nothing about forgiving yourself.
Bruce Hebel: Yeah, people bring that up. But he doesn't say anything about forgiving your wife technically. If you read it, he doesn't say forgive your husband, he doesn't say forgive your neighbor George who let his dog run loose in your garden. He says forgive those who wound you. Forgive as you have been forgiven.
Toni Hebel: So we wound ourselves and we need to deal with that. I know the way I think about it is that when I forgive myself, I'm just basically agreeing with God. It's just a way of verbalizing that I agree with him, that he has forgiven me. If I don't forgive myself, then obviously I am not agreeing with him. So we say, "I choose to forgive myself for" and we list the things that we've done that has wounded us. Sometimes it's when we wound somebody else that we have been wounded in the process because we realize that we have hurt someone. And so that hurts us. And sometimes we make bad choices that we are living with the consequences for. But we still will find freedom when we choose to forgive ourselves.
Bruce Hebel: Again, it's recognizing that the Gospel covers us. When we wound somebody, as she was just saying, when we wound someone else, when a husband has an affair, he's violating his covenant that he made with his wife and he's wounded the one that he's supposed to protect. And so there's a failure on my part or his part, rather, when he does that and there's a wound that comes when we fail. It's very convoluted at times in people's minds, but it really is very simple and very clear. If you've wounded someone, you forgive yourself for wounding them. If someone wounds you, you forgive them for wounding you. And if you would you, you forgive you for wounding you. Did I say that right?
Toni Hebel: You did.
Bruce Hebel: What's really interesting to me is one of the primary motivations from scripture to forgive, it comes from the Matthew 18 parable where Jesus says "the Heavenly Father will give authority for us to be tormented when we don't forgive." Now there's two reasons why he's doing that. One is we're violating the Gospel by not forgiving. We're not honoring God's grace to us by giving it this way. But we're also treating one of his forgiven ones badly. And so he disciplines us for the way we're treating one of his beloved ones. What really gets weird is when God disciplines me for the way I'm treating me because I'm not forgiving me. I'm causing my own, like almost a double torment. Freedom really comes when we say it covers everything.
And as Toni was saying, we're lining ourselves up with the Gospel and we're saying we believe that the blood of Jesus covers everything I ever have or will do. And I can rest in that because when I stand before the judge, when I stand before the the almighty God, who is a judge of the world, he's not going to ask me to pay anything because his son Jesus will come forward and say it's paid in full. This man who did so many awful things, I've already paid for it. And he has no longer any need to come to court. It's paid for and we come alongside that.
Toni Hebel: Also, doesn't the Bible say to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind? And to love your neighbor as yourself? Love and forgiveness go hand in hand. If you love someone, you will forgive them. So if you're going to love your neighbor as yourself, which means you love yourself, which means you forgive yourself. There's kind of all these steps. They're all connected.
Bruce Hebel: Yeah, it's connected.
Bart Blair: I'm going to ask a follow up question to that. One of the protocols of forgiveness is actually to bless the person that you're forgiving. And is it appropriate for me as I am applying the protocols to myself, to bless myself, to pray to bless myself? Especially if there's a situation where perhaps I've forgiven myself, but the person that I've actually offended hasn't yet forgiven me. I know that's kind of a complicated scenario. But if I've hurt someone and I've sought to reconcile and I've repented, they refuse to forgive me...I know that it's still covered by the blood and I can forgive myself, but is it appropriate for me to seek a blessing for myself in that type of situation?
Bruce Hebel: Well, in the same way it's appropriate to seek a blessing for someone who's not repented against you. They've wounded you and they've not repented and you have forgiven them and you're seeking a blessing for them. The other person's forgiveness or repentance doesn't mitigate in any way my obligation to follow the protocols for me.
So it's interesting, one of Bruce Wilkinson's most famous books is called The Prayer of Jabez. Which is back in 2 Chronicles 4:10 where it talks about a man named Jabez who was more honorable than all of his brethren. And he prayed to the Lord God, "Oh that thou would bless me indeed and enlarge my coast and put your hand upon me and keep me from evil so I don't grieve you. And God grant him that which he requested." So there is a clear evidence from there that it's okay to ask God to bless you. And if you really believe that all has been covered by the blood and someone else is not believing that, that doesn't change the fact that you've been covered by the blood and you've repented, you've forgiven. That person now is shifting chairs with you in a sense. He's now wounding you by not forgiving. So you get to now bless him as well, because you may need to forgive him in this whole scenario. But it goes back to the fact that it's okay to ask God to bless you. In fact, a father wants to bless his kids.
Toni Hebel: But the reason we do that is if we can't bless ourselves then we truly haven't forgiven ourselves, there's a block. There's something that stops us. That's when we need to go back and "Holy Spirit, what is it I need to forgive myself for? What is it I'm not dealing with? And would you reveal that to me?" Because once we truly forgive ourselves, then we can seal that forgiveness by blessing and asking God to bless us. Not in the situation, not for the situation, apart from all of it. Just unconditional blessing that we are asking in spite of.
Bart Blair: I guess in some ways it goes back to the thing that you said at the beginning, which is we feel like we're carrying the guilt of having offended someone and we feel like we don't deserve forgiveness. In maybe the same way we don't feel like we deserve to be blessed.
Bruce Hebel: So if you get to that point and you can't bless yourself, in Toni's situation that you found something else, then you may want to go back and say, did I really do this from my heart? Or I'm just doing it from my head because I intellectually know I should, but my heart is not telling me I deserve it, so therefore I kind of block it. Go to your heart and truly, from the core of who you are, forgive yourself and just say, "God, I know I don't deserve it, but bless me."
And when we're coaching someone, when they're forgiving themselves we say go big. Go big. Ask for big stuff. That really is a good sign that you really are free of it.
