“If I were your enemy (devil), I’d use every opportunity to bring old wounds to mind, as well as the people, events, and circumstances that caused them. I’d try to ensure that your heart was hardened with anger and bitterness. Shackled through unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is his design to “outwit” you—to keep you not only bruised and bleeding but unable to experience any power in your prayers or intimacy with your Father (God). Nobody needs to tell you how bad you’re hurting from the injustices in your life. Even people who’ve suffered similar abuses or offenses as yours could never completely understand how your own rejections feel. Yours are personal and private and seemingly impossible to forgive. But forgive anyway. “Now if anyone has caused pain,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, referring to a matter that had grown divisive in the Corinthian church he was addressing, “you should rather turn to forgive” (2 Cor. 2:5, 7). Listen, God knows how to deal with sin. Our sin, their sin. When you choose to forgive someone, you’re not wiping their actions away as if the bad things didn’t happen; giving people a free pass from the harm they’ve caused. You’re just sparing yourself the burden of working two extra jobs—being judge and jury for how justice is meted out in this situation. Why not let someone relieve you of the pressure—Someone who actually knows what He’s doing? And Someone who’s just waiting right now to talk with you about it? His forgiveness, my friend . . . is freedom. Genuine freedom and renewed fervency are waiting for you on the other side of forgiveness. And the forgiveness you don’t have any desire to give right now can be amazingly enabled through prayer.”