Restoring Damaged Relationships
The other day, one of our boys built a large house out of toy building blocks. It was magnificent, it had a driveway, a garage, even trees growing on the roof. Another one of our boys, playing in the room, for some unknown reason felt the urge to kick the house down. That precipitated loud screams and yells from the first boy who proceeded to chase his brother through the house until he tackled him. The screaming brought me onto the scene, I pulled the two wrestling participants apart and calmed everyone down. I got the true story and asked the boy who kicked the house down to say he was sorry. The second boy forgave him, they hugged each other and went back to playing together. The animosities of a few minutes before were forgiven and forgotten. Wouldn’t it be great if adults forgave each other that easily?
However, as adults, when someone has wronged us, we often find it easy to hold a grudge. We may say things like, “I could never forgive them for what they did to me.” Or we may say, “I can forgive but I can’t forget.” Maybe, we just keep an internal record of wrongs, keeping score as the relationship deteriorates. When wrongs have been done in a relationship and they remain unreconciled, you have a damaged relationship. If those wrongs continue being unreconciled, if new wrongs are added to them, eventually the relationship may be completely destroyed. In addition, if you are the one who has been hurt and you have not practiced forgiveness, your own life will be destroyed, spiritually, emotionally and often physically. Damaged relationships are serious business.
God wants us to learn what to do to restore damaged relationships and to learn how to release ourselves from the grip of unforgiveness. Here’s the basic principle from God’s Word. NLT Colossians 3:13 You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.
Take a quick inventory of your life. Is there anyone in your life who you hold a grudge against? Is it possible for your mind and emotions to be released from the pain of what someone else has done to you? The Bible teaches that it is possible, through the power of forgiveness.
To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 27, 2005 message entitled Restoring Damaged Relationships
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Related posts:
- Forgiving When It’s Hard
- Relationship Damage Control
- Jesus’ Instructions on Relationships
- How To Restore Broken Relationships
- Why Relationships Are Important
Dear Pastor Dan,
God bless you.I have a question. My son-in-law has done something several times which have hurt me deeply. I tried to forgive him, and never talked with him about the hurtful things he was doing, knowing that he would just lie and deny that these hurtful things he did ever happened. I thought I had forgiven him until one day under great stress, I got angry and said some awful things about him, not knowing that he was someplace close by, unknown to me, and heard it all. Now neither he or my daughter will probably ever want to talk to me again. (my daughter has a problem with co-dependency and will back him up on anything, even disregarding anything her family says about her husband). I apologized for my un-Christian behavior, but i feel I’ve lost my daughter forever. What can I do? She only looks at her husband’s side of the story and believes him.(he physically hurt one of my other daughters once, and tried to have a relationship with another one…it hurt so much but my daughter who is married to him said she won’t believe me or anyone unless we produce evidence. Thankfully my other two daughters managed to forgive and move on but I feel like I’ve made a mess of everything because of one day I said some terrible things when my family has always known me to be more Christian than that. I really feel judged by my daughter and son-in-law. i live in another continent, by the way, so it’s not so easy for me to go to their house to try to restore damage. (this happened when visiting my family after four years. I still live with my two youngest daughters (I have 10 children, most are grown up)I do volunteer work, so as you see, i have a big reputation to live up to.
Sincerely, Jan
P.S. please pray for the relationship with my daughter to be restored, and if possible, with my son-in-law too.
Please pray for my ex girlfriend Angie. She dumped me and she is a recovering alcoholic. She wont speak to me and is very mad at me. I dont know why.