FORGIVENESS

Unlocking The Prison Door

PART TWO

Matthew 6:14-15 AMP For if you forgive others their trespasses [their reckless and willful sins], your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others [nurturing your hurt and anger with the result that it interferes with your relationship with God], then your Father will not forgive your trespasses.

                                                               Corrie ten Boom with Billy Graham

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian watchmaker and later a writer who worked with her father, Casper ten Boom, her sister, Betsie and other family members to help many Jews escape the Nazis from the Holocaust during World War ll by hiding them in her home. She believed her actions were following the will of God. They were caught, and she was arrested and sent, with her sister Betsie to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her most famous book, which was also made into a full length feature film, "The Hiding Place" - is a biography that recounts the story of her family's efforts and how she found hope in God while she was imprisoned at the concentration camp.

Betsie ten Boom's health deteriorated while there, and she died on 16 December, 1944. Corrie ten Boom was released ten days later due to "a clerical error." She found out later that all the women in her age group were sent to the gas chamber a week after she was released.

In 1947, she returned to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

After speaking at a church in Munich on the power of forgiveness and God's promise to forgive our sins when we repent, and to "cast them into the depths of the sea," the solemn faces stared back at her, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence and left in silence.

Suddenly her attention was drawn to one man - one moment she saw the overcoat and the brown hat, the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

This was, in fact, one of the cruel German guards at Ravensbruck, who had sought to make the lives of the imprisoned women a misery.

He did not recognise Corrie, but he told her he had become a Christian, and discovered the love and power of God to forgive him for all the sins he had committed, and he told her he was moved by the illustration she had portrayed of God casting all our sins into the deepest ocean.

He then stated that he knew God had forgiven him, but asked Corrie if she would forgive him. Her first reaction was of a sense of her hand freezing at her side at the thought of shaking this man's. In her heart, she knew she had to forgive him, that it was not a matter of feeling she could forgive, but of obedience to the Word of God.

Finally, she put out her hand to put it into his, knowing it was an act of the will, not the emotions. As she did, an incredible thing happened. She said in her own words: "the current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes." 

She then said: "I forgive you,brother, with all my heart!" Corrie said she had never known God's love so intensely as she did then.

Corrie ten Boom discovered, as each one of us must discover, that forgiveness is a daily choice we make, whether we feel like it or not. There will always be people and situations where we need to show forgiveness and extend grace, when others have hurt and offended us - as most surely we will others.

TO BE CONTINUED

If you would like to know more about becoming a Christian, and God's power to forgive you of your sins, and the power to forgive others, go online to www.vision.org.au This is the online home of Vision Christian Media. Click on the "Grow your faith" tab at the top of the page, then "Looking for God?" God Bless!