All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. 15 You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “ Abba, Father. ” 16 The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. 17 But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.
“Forgiving is one of the hardest things families have to do. Because the family is where we most count on being loved and accepted, it is the context where we are hurt most deeply and often. Left unhealed, these wounds eat away at our health and happiness,” writes Kathleen Fischer. Forgiving Your Family offers fresh approaches to living out the New Testament ideals in the hard realities of family conflict. Psychotherapist Kathleen Fischer identifies difficult points on the path to forgiveness in family relationships and offers guidance to work through them. She maintains that communication skills, while indispensable, are not enough—the work of forgiveness rests on faith and prayer. After discussing the meaning of forgiveness, her book shows us why, if we are to forgive others, we must first steep ourselves in God’s love and forgiveness. “Since the Bible so often uses water as a divine image, I suggest to family members who feel powerless over their rage that they imagine themselves pouring it into the ocean of God’s love, where it can be safely and compassionately absorbed.” Her book contains stories, practical strategies, and prayer suggestions.