Forgiving Ourselves Gives Christ His Victory

We suffer sometimes from what could be called "wounditis." The weapon that continues to prick us is an overwrought conscience that can find guilt under every rock, or one that won't let go.

When this happens, I turn to a story I have loved for as long as I can remember, but one I had to learn to apply in the room of self-forgiveness. It is that of the converted Lamanites who take the name "Anti-Nephi-Lehies" (see Alma 23:17). Their king gives a most beautiful speech to them as they prepare to face their brothers who have not converted and are preparing to attack them. We all know the decision that is made. They will bury their weapons and never use them again. This is certainly a wonderful story about how to arm ourselves against continuing sin. We try to make it impossible to repeat the offenses by burying the weapons of our past so that in a moment of weakness we will not grab them again. But there is another way of burying the weapons - in this case, the ones we use to wound ourselves and keep the sores of our past open and tender. I have used this story over and over again when talking with people who are struggling to forgive themselves.

Notice how the converted Lamanites described themselves! "We were the most lost of all mankind" (Alma 24:11; emphasis added). Now there is a wound that requires the balm of Gilead. They had taken life with those swords they buried. I do not think many of us would describe ourselves, no matter how difficult we find it to forgive our past actions, with that designation. Most lost? We may have done serious things, but are we the most lost of all mankind? How do you deal with that kind of wound? Three times the kind says, "It has been all that we could do...to get God to take them away from our hearts, for it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain...Oh, how merciful is our God! And now behold, since it has been as much as we could do to get our stains taken away from us, and our swords are made bright, let us hide them away...we will bury them deep in the earth" (Alma 24:11, 15-16: emphasis added).

That is the question we must post to ourselves. "Have we done all we can do?"...If the answer is yes (and it is so often when we hold on to guilt of the past), then let us give Christ His victory. Let us bury the weapons of those former actions that so trouble us instead of holding on to them and using them to continually wound ourselves. I have heard the Spirit ask me many times, "Why do you continue to draw your own sword to your own wounding? Bury it deep in the earth. Let it go." We have done all we can do, just as the woman who wept at the feet of Jesus had done all she could. If we have given the tears, and the hair, and the kiss, and the ointment, and the love, then let us go in peace, as He bids us. He is the example.

Remember, He is the Great Forgetter. Bury your weapons knowing, as the Anti-Nephi-Lehies did, that God "loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children" (Alma 24:14). The people "took their swords, and all the weapons...and they did bury them up deep in the earth" (Alma 24:17; emphasis added). That is good advice. Bury all the weapons of the past! Wisdom is always looking forward, applying the lessons from what went before. What do I know now about the fruits on the tree? What has my experience done to my heart and my soul? Am I nearer to God? Have I learned? I believe that even if we learn on the last second of the last minute of the last hour of the last day, the pains and wounds we inflict even upon ourselves will not have been in vain. Nothing learned in mortality is ever too late. And the learning continues certainly beyond the veil.

This is an excerpt from Michael's newest book Twice Blessed: The Beauty of Forgiving and Forgiveness and contains some ideas expressed in his 2015 TOFW talk about Forgiveness. Don't miss Michael's newest presentation at the Salt Lake TOFW event this November.