Forgiveness is Paramount

After food, clothing and shelter the next most important blessing received at the Gospel Center Rescue Mission is forgiveness.

Food, clothing and shelter nourish the physical, while forgiveness nourishes the person's spiritual, psychological and social well being. Without forgiveness life is rarely worth living.

Clients need to experience the forgiveness of God, forgiving themselves and being forgiven by others.

Forgiveness raises the terrible clouds of doom and lets the sunshine of love into an addicts life. Cleansing occurs. Hope returns. Things seem possible again that were long ago dismissed as impossible or not worth the effort.

Like every Christian, I am personally grateful for forgiveness, especially spiritual forgiveness in my own life. The Rescue Mission client's first need for forgiveness is usually expressed in their need to seek forgiveness from a wronged relative or to be able to forgive themselves. In the process they discover forgiveness originates with God. The greatest revelation is to learn that God in Christ has already forgiven them. All that remains is for them to accept it. The next revelation is realizing that if God can forgive me and all of my past, perhaps I can forgive myself and forgive others. Perhaps those I have hurt will even forgive me.

So, you can see that forgiveness opens the floodgates. The dirtiness of a person's past flows away; ultimately into the deepest part of the ocean, never to be resurrected again by God in Christ or by obedient fellow Christians and often not by the significant others in the addicts life.

The first phase of change is complete. A new life is begun!