Forgiveness

I am not sure why I am being lead to write about forgiveness but I always do what God wants me to do and so here it goes:
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I am not a perfect person by no means, I fail God each and everyday and one of my biggest human faults is forgiveness. I am not one that likes to hold a grudge but it does happen, and when it does it makes my heart hurt. I don't care who you are or what your situation is at one point or another in your life you are going to be faced with having to forgive someone for something that they have done to you that has really hurt you. And trust me it is one of the hardest things that you have to do. Why? you may ask, well because the human side of us lives in a world that is wicked and a place where hate seems to rule over love in so many cases.
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But we have Jesus on our side and so even though it may not be the easiest thing to do we can still bare it because He helps us.
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Let me give you an example from one of my personal experiences. I recently left a church that I was raised, married and had raised my kids the first part of their lives in. There were some problems in the church and when I brought those problems up to the proper people I got my feelings hurt. Now mind you I probably could have done it in a different way or better way, but I didn't and I know that it had to hurt the people that I brought it to's feelings. But the reaction I got from these people shocked me, it was much different then what I had imagined it would be, rather than them being understanding they bit my head off. I ended up leaving the church and to this day I am still shunned by some of the members there. Now I got bitter over this, and I know that having the feelings of anger that I had for these people was wrong, but I thought that it was justified LOL well I was wrong.
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God started dealing with my heart and showing me that the feelings that I was having were not Christian. I know that I had to have hurt these people by bringing up their faults but I felt that I was doing the right thing, I guess they felt that their reaction was the right thing, I think if we were all honest about it, then we would all have to say that we were wrong and very unchristian like, and I include myself in a big way there.
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I stopped and thought about how Jesus must been treated, He was perfect no faults what so ever but human people saw Him differently, they made up faults about Him and treated Him so badly. But rather than Him getting angry He forgave, and forgave and forgave some more, I stopped and thought about that and it amazed me, how wrong I was to have the feelings of anger that I had for these people. I prayed, oh how I prayed and I begged God to give me forgiveness in my heart, because I knew as long as I had this bitter anger in my heart then I could never truly serve Him in a way that He wants me to.
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Now mind you this is not something that happened over night it took allot of time for me to come to terms and deal with my anger. But PRAISE GOD it did finally happen, God helped me to be able to forgive them. OH WHAT A WONDERFUL GOD WE SERVE!!! Now I am not going to lie to you, there are still days when I see some of the people that hurt me so badly and my mind wants so much to say something bad about them, or it wants me to get angry again, but my heart steps in and says no, you are a child of God, a representative of Christ and He would not react like this, and after I pray about it, God gives me back that peace in my heart.
Now I am not saying that your situation will turn out the way mine did, only God knows that but I will say that until you give it all to God and ask Him to help you deal with it, then you will not be able to get rid of it on your own. I fall on my knees daily and ask God to get me through all the trials in my life and He has never let me down. I praise Him when I am happy, I praise Him when I am sad, and I praise Him when I am angry, and you know when I forget myself and focus on His love for me, it makes all the bad things go away.