Lewis B. Smedes Quotes

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver...to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not--acknowledges it or not.

Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Listen: those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go.

When we forgive someone, we do not forget the hurtful act, as if forgetting came along with the forgiveness package, the way strings come with a violin. Begin with the basics. If you forget, you will not forgive at all. You can never forgive people for things you have forgotten about. You need to forgive precisely because you have not forgotten what someone did; your memory keeps the pain alive long after the hurt has stopped. Remembering is the storage of pain. It is why you need to be healed in the first place.

It's not easy to forgive. I definitely don't forget, but I do forgive and I think that you should.

When you haven't forgiven those who've hurt you, you turn back against your future. When you do forgive, you start walking forward.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

One of my biggest lessons in life is, we heal at the speed of our forgiveness.

First, forgive. Second, forget by choosing not to dwell on that which is forgiven and in the past. We have no right to keep in front of us what God has put behind Him.

You must forgive the people who hurt you so you can get out of prison. You'll never be free until you do. Let go of hose wrongs they've done to you. Get that bitterness out of your life. That's the only way you're going to truly be free. You will be amazed at what can happen in your life when you release all that poison.

It takes a lot of grace and maturity to simply forgive, but a lot of healing takes place when you do.

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood.

Forgiveness. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment. You really are lighter. You feel lighter. You just drop that.

Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment.

It is hard to imagine a world without forgiveness. Without forgiveness life would be unbearable. Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.

Forgiving the past means remembering the love there, and releasing all the rest as the illusion that it really was.

Forgiving is forgetting, in spite of remembering.

Forgiveness is a gift to yourself. It frees you from the past, past experiences, and past relationships. It allows you to live in the present time. When you forgive yourself and forgive others, you are indeed free.

Forgiving is not forgetting. It is remembering and letting go.

The weight is off my shoulders. I don't live in the past anymore. I look forward, instead of back.

Learn to forgive fully and completely. If you want health, wealth, and happiness, you can't afford the luxury of lugging around all those unforgiven, unforgotten past events. Let them go.

When you can't remember why you're hurt, that's when you're healed. When you have to work real hard to re-create the pain, and you can't quite get there, that's when you're better.

To forgive freely, is what we owe to our enemy; to forget not, is what we owe to ourselves.

Vengeance is having a videotape planted in your soul that cannot be turned off. It plays the painful scene over and over again inside your mind...And each time it plays you feel the clap of pain again...Forgiving turns off the videotape of pained memory Forgiving sets you free.

When we forgive and let go, not only does a huge weight drop off your shoulders, but the doorway to your own self-love opens.