Forgiveness Isn't the Same as Stupid! by Jon Walker

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7 (NIV)

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you act like a doormat, allowing evil to run rampant in an abusive relationship. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you must keep taking the abuse, and it doesn’t mean you have to stay in the abusive situation.
Forgiving those who hurt us doesn’t we mean excuse their behavior. My sister says it bluntly: “Forgiveness isn’t the same as stupid!”
To echo the civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King, we need to understand the difference between non-resistance to evil and non-violent resistance. In any toxic relationship, we resist the evil of abuse without resorting to evil ourselves.
We submit, not to the abuse, but to God, who draws us into a spirit-directed response, including the establishment of healthy boundaries behind which we’re less vulnerable to abuse.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean the relationship must remain the same. You may need distance and time to trust again. You may need to wait and see how faithful the one who hurt you is in rebuilding trust.
Although it may seem you’re paralyzed in an abusive situation, you can make choices. One choice is to pray for those who abuse you. They’re in bondage to their own sins, and although that doesn’t excuse their behavior, it does give you insight into how you can pray for them. God intended these relationships for good, yet they’re stripped away by alcohol or anger issues or so many other counterfeits Satan uses to destroy true fellowship and family.

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker.