5 Ways to Extend Forgiveness to Broken Family Relationships This Thanksgiving

Although it may seem obvious, pray and ask God to help you extend forgiveness. We are obligated to forgive even when we don’t feel like forgiving. However, Jesus is our best model of someone who forgives easily and is slow to anger. When Jesus was on the cross, he was stripped of his deity and was in every way a human being. I can only imagine how he felt when people shouted malicious accusations and insults at him. He may have been tempted to hurl insults back, but instead, he went to the Father: “Forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.” Because of Jesus’s deity, he forgave the people for false accusations and wrongful death.

Go to God and ask him to help you forgive. Ask him to soften your heart and allow him to help you see them through his eyes. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal anything regarding those people that will help you to forgive. Sometimes, knowing people’s stories is enough to help you extend compassion and grace rather than anger and wrath. It also helps when people treat us unfairly. However, staying mad at someone when you’re on your knees praying for them is difficult.