Struggling to Forgive

Linda L. Isaacs, M.D.

While they were stoning him, Stephen … fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Acts 7:59-60

I spent my youth feeling angry and bitter. When I was 30, I discovered the Bible. I came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and that through Christ my sins could be forgiven. What relief! What joy! And yet I struggled to forgive others. I read the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant so many times (Matthew 18:23-35), but my mind still returned to dwelling on how others had hurt me. Many of these hurts were trivial, compared to sins other Christians told me they had forgiven; nonetheless my heart clung to bitterness.

Then one day as I read the book of Acts, I was caught by Stephen’s prayer as he was stoned to death. He did not pray for help forgiving his attackers; he did not quantify the relative pain of stoning versus crucifixion, and lecture himself to forgive as Jesus did. Instead, he named what was happening as sin, and prayed that it would not be held against the mob.

Inspired by this, I started to pray that the incidents triggering my bitterness would not be held against the perpetrators, identifying sin but no longer trying to quantify or downplay it. I used this prayer for everyone, from close relationships to the person who barged ahead of me in a line. I prayed that when those who had hurt me came before God, God would have forgotten any act committed against me. I imagined films of their lives in which the sections with sin against me had been erased. And as I did this, bit by bit, my bitterness resolved and my heart found peace.

Originally published by The Upper Room on March 3, 2019, with an accompanying blog post.