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“Even Now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.” Joel 2: 12-13

      In my life, there are things I can honestly say I am ashamed of doing. I have on many occasions knelt to God for forgiveness over the same thing over and over. In my early walk with Jesus, I did not fully understand things as I do now and I am sure there are things I do not understand today that God will help me to learn later. The one thing I have learned is when I first asked God to forgive me of things with the sincerest of hearts, he saw my heart and he forgave me at that moment.

      The thing I did not understand in the ‘forgiving part’ and that was I needed to forgive myself. We must understand we are human and there is nothing in our lives that cannot be forgiven from God for ‘he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love’. Regardless of how disgraced we feel or horrible we think we have done, it is never too late to return to God or to ask forgiveness for.

      Then I think how hard it would be to forgive someone that has done something so horrific to me or a loved one. How could God ask me to forgive them? Is it possible I forgive them? To be honest, I personally do not want to forgive them, but I know I must forgive to be forgiven. I know it can be hard to do for there are things I have been a witness in my life that have made me feel such anger and hatred for the hurt someone has done to me or to a loved one. Then I recall the things I have done in my life that has hurt others which also hurt God and I am truly sorry for that. God looked into my heart and seen my sincerity and he forgave me.

      So if he forgave me for the things I did, is it not only right to forgive myself and others? God only knows love for 'God is Love' (1 John 4:8). He loves us more than anything in this world and he wants us to feel the Joy only he can give us. To receive that Joy, we have to forgive ourselves or that someone that has hurt us. We cannot allow the pain of this world to continue in our hearts for it removes the Love of God within us.

      So it really is never too late to ask God to forgive you, to forgive yourself of the things you have done or to forgive someone of the hurt they did to you. To live life to the fullest, forgive and allow the Love of Jesus to fill your heart and make the most of this life. Return the gift of your forgiveness to others so that the Love of Jesus be spread through-out the world as that is what God intended for it is written in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, what whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Otherwise, the sacrifice Jesus made for us on that cross will be all in vain and he deserves so much more from us than that.