Inspirational Quotes & Stories about Forgiveness
A moment of true forgiveness will end a lifetime of pain. Now ask God
for assistance in dealing with your past actions and reactions, and it
shall be given. Ask God to hold your heart in His hand, and He shall do
so. Ask angels to surround you, and know that they will. And with all
their assistance and support, take an honest look at how you have
reacted to your brother or sister. Ask God for forgiveness, ask your
brother or sister for forgiveness, ask yourself for forgiveness, and
forgiveness will surround you in its light.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 36-37
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
Another example of how I have untrained my ego-self and aligned myself
more with my Godself is in forgiving people immediately. Whenever
someone, even a friend said something mean to me, I immediately
responded by saying or thinking something mean in return. I'm sure that
you have joked with friends, only to cross the line where you teased
them with a statement that made everyone laugh. Everyone laughed,
including you and your friend, but deep inside you felt bad for having
made your friend the butt of the joke, and you felt that he or she, deep
inside, was hurt. There are even times when you're angry with someone,
so you choose to hurt that person with words. You use an indirect
statement that outwardly does not sound bad, but inwardly you know it
has stung the person. You could use the excuse that this is how people
interact with each other; you could say to yourself that this simply is
the way things are. I have also used these excuses. However, there came
a time in my life when saying something that could be interpreted as
hurtful by another became painful for me. I teased a friend with a
statement, and everyone laughed, including the person being teased, but
deep within I could feel his pain, and his pain became my pain. I again
had to go deep within to ask myself for a better and more peaceful way
of co-existing with my brother. Once again I clarified the goal, which
was how I wanted to react in those instances and what I wanted to say in
response to such comments. My goal became to obtain peace in such
circumstances and to extend it to all those around me.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 112-113
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
You will set yourself free from all you thought they did to you. They
need not ask for forgiveness to be forgiven. They might even believe
that there is nothing for which they need to be forgiven. That is fine.
Do not concern yourself with how they choose to experience reality, for
it has no effect on you, unless you allow it to. For something or
someone to affect you, you must first allow it to affect you.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 152
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
"Anger. It's a
peculiar yet predictable emotion. It begins as a drop of water. An
irritant. A frustration. Nothing big, just an aggravation. Someone gets
your parking place. Someone pulls in front of you on the freeway. A
waitress is slow and you are in a hurry. The toast burns. Drops of
water. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Yet, enough of these seemingly innocent
drops of anger and before long you've got a bucket full of rage. Walking
revenge. Blind bitterness. Unharnessed hatred. We trust no one and bare
our teeth at anyone who gets near. We become walking time bombs that,
given just the right tension and fear, could explode.
Now, is that any
way to live? What good has hatred ever brought? What hope has anger ever
created? What problems have ever been resolved by revenge?"
18
-
Max Lucado,
No Wonder
They Call Him Savior
Cited in You Have Chosen to Remember, p. 152-153
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
"It was at a
church in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard
at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was
the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And
suddenly it was all there-the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of
clothing, Betsie's pain blanched face.
He came up to me as
the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your
message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, 'He has washed
my sins away'!"
His hand was thrust
out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in
Bloemendaal on the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry,
vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ
had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I
prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile; I
struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the
slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again, I breathed a silent
prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give him Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand,
the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and
through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my
heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered
that it is not on our forgiveness, any more than on our goodness that
the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our
enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself."
19
-
Corrie ten Boon,
The Hiding Place
Cited in You Have Chosen to Remember, p.157-158
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
Are you interested
in reading a true-to-life life story about how I forgave my father and
set myself free from the misery and angst that have plagued me for as
long as I can remember? When I received a call that my estranged father
lay dying in the North of England, I acted on an impulse; an urgent need
to see him engulfed me and I fled to his bedside without a second
thought. I hadn’t seen him for twenty-one years due to his appalling
temper and a severe problem with alcohol. You may wonder why I went to
see him and why I made such a rash decision? Instinct I guess. But I had
absolutely no time to lose pondering on it and getting to his bedside
was all that mattered to me.
I now know that it
was the best decision that I have ever made. At the time, I
didn’t care what he did or didn’t do: I just needed to see him so I
could escape from my self-imposed prison of deeply-embedded anger. I
needed to see my father for me and me alone. I knew deep down that
something felt wrong in my life but I just couldn’t quite put my finger
on it; I knew that I wasn’t happy but where was the elusive happiness
that I was craving? I always seemed to be watching others experience joy
but it was always passing me by. I always felt hollow somehow.
Six months on from
meeting and forgiving my dying father, I can truly say I am a complete
human being. I am happy now - no longer searching aimlessly for
contentment - I have it right here in my heart, and you can too. This
feeling could have been mine all along if I had just entertained the
concept of forgiveness many years ago but I decided to hold on to the
anger, the hurt, and the pain like a fool. And how I suffered! I have
written a book about my experience and it is now available on-line. If
you are interested in purchasing a copy, please send me an e-mail - I
would love to hear from you. My e-mail address is:
RachelFlowers38@aol.com.
If everyone forgave
each other, the world could be like Heaven – think about that for a
minute - we could live in a perfect world if we all uproot hatred from
our hearts and sow seeds of love. Let’s all heal together and make the
world a better place!
-
Rachel Flowers, 2006
Now we arrive at the most important point of this example: You cannot
release an individual or situation unless you have done so with
forgiveness and love. When you express yourself through judgment and
anger, you will feel worse afterward. You will have a feeling of
incompletion, as if something still remains to be said or done. You will
carry with you the individuals or situations in which you expressed
yourself through judgment and anger. You will feel weighed down and not
know why. And they will reappear in the future. It may not be the exact
form, situation or individual, but you will re-create the environment to
allow yourself the opportunity to resolve it with forgiveness and love,
and obtain peace. Again your patterns will be repeated until you release
them with forgiveness and love.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 175-176
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
You think that by not forgiving, you hold a power over that individual,
yet now you can begin to realize that, by choosing not to forgive, this
individual holds that power over you. And to go one necessary step
further, it is not the individual himself who holds a power over you,
but those negative thoughts that you choose to hold on to that hold you
captive. You hold yourself captive. These are the thoughts you created
through your perception of the situation. This perception, which has
made you a prisoner, can also set you free, for it is you that holds the
key.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 177
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
Quiet the mind, take some deep breaths and invite your guides and angels
to be with you for the next five minutes. Completely reverse how the ego
has trained you to think. For just five minutes, bring God into the
room. Invite God to enter your heart, body, mind and spirit, and
everyone and everything you judged in the first five minutes you now
forgive, pray for and bless. Regardless of what you think they did or
did not do to you, for the next five minutes forgive, pray for and bless
them. Do this with every centimeter of your heart, with every ounce of
your body, with all the love in your soul. Ask your guides, angels and
God to assist you. Give God all your pain, anger and sadness and let it
dissolve in His light. Ask your guides, angels and God to fill all those
places within your heart that have been hurt with absolute forgiveness,
kindness and love toward the brothers and sisters you once chose to
judge. Remember, you are participating in this invitation to assist you
in understanding and acknowledging the power of your thoughts, both
positive and negative. Once you have forgiven your brothers and sisters,
once you have given and seen all the pain and anger dissolving in God's
light, begin to pray for those you once judged. With all your heart and
soul, pray for their well-being. Pray for their health, pray for their
present and future. With all your heart and soul ask God to help you
hold them. Feel yourself holding your brother or sister and feel God
holding you both. Ask and invite God to assist you from now on in seeing
your brother and sister through His heart. Ask God to completely retrain
your thought system from one based on judgment and pain to one based on
forgiveness and love. Ask God to assist you in carrying this new thought
system with you wherever you go and to let it touch whomever you see.
Offer gratitude to God. Thank your angels and guides for their
assistance, then slowly return your mind to the room.
-
James Blanchard Cisneros, You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey From
Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 191-192
Read the section of the book that this
inspirational quote comes from.
Footnotes / Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to provide accurate source attribution.
Should any attribution be found to be incorrect, the author welcomes
written documentation supporting correction for subsequent printings.
For material not in the public domain, selection was made according to
generally accepted fair-use standards and practices.
18.
Max Lucado, No Wonder
They Call Him Savior, Copyright 1998 (Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
>>
back to quote
19.
Corrie ten Boon, The
Hiding Place, Copyright 1984 (Bantam Books).
>>
back to quote
-
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