The Forgiving Gift - The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
The Forgiving Gift
When you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.
Mark 11:25
“Where’s my white shirt you said you’d pick up from the cleaners?” says the husband.
“I never said I’d get your shirt.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“Don’t pass the blame to me. It’s your shirt.”
“Yes, but I asked you last night to pick it up for me. Why didn’t you?”
“You’re crazy. We hardly even talked last night because you were at the game with Rick. Remember?”
“Oh, I get it. You didn’t pick up my shirt because you’re mad about me going to the game.”
“Wait a second. Who’s the one who gets mad if I’m not home to make dinner every night?”
This inane dialogue bleats on and on until, at last, one partner says, “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” In the daily grind that is sometimes marriage, forgiveness keeps it moving forward.
But for some agonizing couples, a devastating hurt—one that was completely undeserved and goes against God’s moral grain—is calling on forgiveness to do much more than that. Sometimes in a good marriage a pain of betrayal has cut so deeply that forgiveness is the only thing between this couple and their demise. It is their last hope for keeping them from their finale. Can it do so? Is it fair to ask so much of forgiveness? Yes, indeed. It is the very thing forgiveness was designed to do, to heal the deepest wounds of a human heart.
Untold marriages have been saved by little more than forgiveness. Just ask Gordon MacDonald, former pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in New York City. “I had horribly offended God and those whom I loved the most,” he writes. “They had every right to turn their backs on me and hold me hostage to anger.”aHis betrayal of his wife brought their marriage to the ragged edge of its darkest abyss and the only thing that kept them from tumbling in was his humble repentance and his wife’s brave forgiveness.b
The most creative power in the soul of any marriage is the power to heal the hurts it didn’t deserve. It is what allows transformation in the guilty party and healing in the person who has been wronged.c
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
—Peter Ustinov
a 171
b 172
c 173
The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
By Dr. Les Parrott and Dr. Leslie Parrott
Tyndale
$7.99
