How To Handle The Pain — The Negative Response To Our Positive Attempt At Reconciliation

Yes­ter­day at MCC we looked at God’s 6^th com­mand con­cern­ing mur­der and Jesus’ teach­ing on the seeds of mur­der that are planted in our heart.  The admo­ni­tion and appli­ca­tion to our anger whether it be a quick blow up because some­one has pushed our but­tons in just the right way, or the begin­ning of heal­ing from deep seated wounds that have gripped us for a long time is quickly rec­on­cil­ing our rela­tion­ships.  We need to own our mis­takes, and imper­fec­tions, and issues seek­ing for­give­ness from those we hurt as well as be will­ing to move to for­give those who have hurt us.  God desires to heal our bro­ken rela­tion­ships through His power and work in our lives.

It came to my atten­tion how­ever that I did not talk much about how to han­dle the neg­a­tive response from those we have hurt who are not ready to forgive.

Let’s just be real for this is not easy.  The quicker we deal with it the eas­ier it is for sure, hence why Jesus says go now and deal with it before it is too late.  But often the issues that sur­round anger go very deep, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to those we have wounded.  Often when we approach those we have hurt they are not ready to for­give, they are not even in a place to hear us.  That is ok.  It takes time and we need to rec­og­nize that the feel­ings of those we are seek­ing to rec­on­cile with are the con­se­quences of our poor choice in word or actions that have gone unre­solved for too long.

But here is the hope we have.  Any response to honor God in our rela­tion­ship by seek­ing peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and for­give­ness is a good thing.  It is the evi­dence of God’s work to empower us through His Spirit to do the dif­fi­cult and seem­ingly impos­si­ble.  Don’t give up on that work of God in your life.  Con­tinue to seek the Him in prayer lay­ing at His fee the feel­ings of rejec­tion, dis­cour­age­ment, dis­ap­point­ment, and frus­tra­tion.  It is ok to feel that way, and even bet­ter to bring these things to God.  This is the hon­est, authen­tic expe­ri­ence of being human, I would be sell­ing you a cheap bill of goods if I even inti­mated it would be all per­fect.  Often life is not.  But from our deep­est pain God uses it as a gar­den for His great­est work.

So what do we do to deal with these feel­ings.  First, (I will say it again) Pray, lay it at God’s feet, all of it, the feel­ings, the mem­o­ries, the frus­tra­tion, your hearts desire, your bro­ken­ness, your doubts.  We have a com­pas­sion­ate God who hears the prayers of those who seek Him.  Find a com­mu­nity that will sup­port you in this process.  We need peo­ple who will sur­round us with the truth of God’s word, the encour­age­ment of love, and will pray with and for us as we walk through the steps of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.  Keep pray­ing for those you are seek­ing to rec­on­cile with, God can move on their heart in a pow­er­ful way and often time is the only hope.

In the end we have no con­trol over oth­ers and their response toward us.  It is sim­ply our call to live as peo­ple depen­dent on God at the cen­ter of our lives, to respond to what He is teach­ing us through His word and voice in our lives, and to pray for the strength that is avail­able through His Spirit in our lives to respond to His voice.

I pray that we will all be quick to lis­ten, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  I prayer that when we do become angry that we would be quick to apol­o­gize and quick to for­give.  I pray that in the places where rela­tion­ships have been bro­ken for a long time, deep wounds remain, and anger lives; that God would work the mir­a­cle of peace by soft­en­ing our hearts and rec­on­cil­ing even the most bro­ken situations.