Treat your social adversaries and enemies today the way you will be glad

you did should you become good friends.

After all, who knows how God will use us down the road if once and for all we set our social adversaries and enemies free - and never look back.
The refusal to forgive even ourselves (let alone others) leads to countless
ailments. Lack of forgiveness is aging; it puts lines on faces before they should
come. In some cases it means sleeplessness.
What inspires the world most is changed lives for which there is no natural
explanation. To the Spiritual person the supernatural seems natural.
- Jackie Pullinger
Jesus can take every human beings sinful pasts and make it work together for
the good and do it so brilliantly and beautifully that we will each be tempted to
say that: This is the way it was supposed to be. Let the past be past at last.
Peoples Biggest Fears about those who have wronged us or we only think
have wronged us.
a) They will not get caught or found out .
b) Nobody will ever know what they did.
c) They will prosper and be blessed as if they did no wrong.
Grace is getting what we do not deserve (Total Forgiveness).
Mercy is not getting what we do deserve (Justice).
Graciousness is shown by what we dont say, even if what we could say is
true.
a) Forgiveness is worthless to us if we can not forgive ourselves.
b) Do not let anyone know what someone said about you or did to you.
c) Do not let anyone be afraid of you or intimidated by you.
d) We want them to forgive themselves and never feel guilty.
e) God will let them and us save face .
Saving Face means preserving another persons dignity and self esteem.
It is not only the refusal to make another person feel guilty, it is providing a
rationale that enables what they did to us look good, rather than bad. It also
means hiding a persons error from people, so they will not be embarrassed.

We have a duty to protect others from their greatest fear.

I must never tell what I know, never cause my offender to feel fear, never make
them feel guilty, never hope they will loose face and I must never reveal their
devastating secrets. And, I must keep this up as long as I live.
Peoples greatest fear is Being Exposed. When I ponder the sins for
which I have been forgiven, it is enough to shut my mouth for the rest of
my life.
Total Forgiveness involves Additional Elements:
a) We will pray for them to be truly blessed.
b) Praying for Gods unconditional Spiritual and material blessings to rain on the
lives of our offenders.
c) Keep no records of wrongs in our thoughts, and we will be less likely to expose
such records with our words.
Judging:
On the matter of judging, we learn that it is always counterproductive. When we
judge someone else, most people have very good, yet very misguided
motives. What people are often thinking is: What I want to do is offer this
person information, advice and counsel, so that they straighten their lives out.
Clearly, it has the opposite effect. Sooner or later, it always backfires. The other
person will become offended, and situations at hand are never resolved.
FORGIVING OURSELVES - TOTALLY
The person living in fear is obsessed with the idea of punishment. This means at
least four things:
a) The person who lives in fear is already punished by this fear and is truly living
in quiet but very real torment.
b) The person is in fear of being punished by God (this is never a valid fear).
c) The person in fear is always punishing himself or herself through their own
behavior.
d) The person who lives in this fear always wants to punish others.

How To Forgive Ourselves Totally

One of the reasons we have difficulty forgiving ourselves is that Satan is working
behind the scenes day and night. His chief weapon is accusing us, making us
feel guilty, telling us how bad we are, how unworthy and how stupid we are to
believe Gods promises. That is his job. Never forget it.
He points the finger at us. He keeps a record of wrongs, has a memory better
than ours and will remind us of things we thought we had forgotten.
Satan has one goal: to bring us down and keep us from pure joy.
Remember, he does not want us to forgive ourselves. Jesus does want us to
forgive ourselves.
The devil knows that his time is short (Rev. 12:12). He knows his final destiny
(Matt. 8:29; Rev. 20:10). The next time the devil reminds you of your past,
you remind him of his future.
Jesus Corrects and Disciplines only Those He Loves:
If God never disciplines us, it is ominous that He lets us get away with stuff that
is wrong. This would be a very BAD SIGN. God does not discipline those who
are not His own. In other words, He does not ever punish is own, but
disciplines only those who are already His.
If someone comes to us or to our attention (if we have been allegedly or in fact
caught in sin or other deceptive behavior, so to speak), we should never resent
them, but fall to our knees and thank God that He cares so much for us as to
caution us through people, and restore us.
If you have in any area of your life, a real, relentless, genuine enemy someone
who is not a figment of your anxiety or imagination or even a common and
simple social adversary, you should see yourself as sitting on a mine of twentyfour carat gold.
Not everybody is that blessed! But, if you have been truly blessed in that way,
take it with both hands. You should take this persons picture, enlarge it, frame it
and thank God every time you look at it. This adversary, should you handle him
or her correctly, could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Patrice Barry
163 W. Patison
Street
Port Hadlock, WA
98339

Patrice:
This is a short and easy read.
These are other excerpts from the book, Total Forgiveness.
It is a fabulous daily Meditation.