Freely Receive Freely Give

I was watching a sermon about relationships and my pastor was talking about how this married couple stayed together for 50 years. He asked the wife what the secret was to staying happily married. She said that when she they first got married she decided to make a list of her husbands worst flaws. She then said that when he did anything on that list she would brush it off and forgive him immediately. My pastor then asked what was an example of one of his flaws. She told him that she actually never made a list but when something happened that annoyed her or she saw as a flaw she would say "Lucky him that is on the list."

This is how we need to be. We need to be able to forgive people like that. Imagine how much happier we would be if we were not getting angry over everything, but rather we just let things slide. Forgiving is hard, but we will never have to forgive someone more than God has to forgive us. We all love the fact that no matter what we do God forgives us, yet we struggle with doing the same with others. We are so quick to receive forgiveness but slow to give forgiveness. We sit her keeping track of the wrongs when what we need to do is take a big eraser and erase it all, just like God does with us every morning even we do not deserve it!