Forgiveness: Dealing with Relational Debt
Pastor Jason Imagine our mistakes, our wrongs, our sins as debts. Now, picture your heart as a bank. When someone hurts you or harms you or ignores you, disrespects you, betrays you…it’s like taking an unauthorized withdrawal. Essentially, they have stolen from you and if it’s this wrong is going to be righted then they have to pay you back, right?
So you have a couple of options. You can:
- Deal with it
- Adjust to it
- Live in denial about it
Most of the time we say we forgive, but we really only adjust to it or deny it’s there. When I say adjust to it, I mean we adjust our lives around this debt and it becomes something that eats at us. You may blow up in anger about it from time to time. You try extracting payment for it in ways that you aren’t even aware of. Your relationship with the person who took this unauthorized withdrawal begins to center around the debt and this ends up causing a lot of damage and leading to more and more debt.
For some of us adjusting is too confrontational. So we just deny it, pretend it’s not there. We don’t want conflict so we don’t talk about it, don’t create a fuss about it. But over time denying the debt actually increases the debt until eventually you go off…exploding like a bomb!
Both adjusting and denying never deal with the debt, never acknowledge the unauthorized transaction, never end up paying anything off. They create suspicion and destroy trust. This damages not just the one relationship, but all our relationships. Because mistrust breeds more mistrust: If I cannot trust this person who I once trusted, then can I really trust anyone?
On Sunday, I reminded you of Richard Roh’s words Which speak to the damage of denying and adjusting to relational debt:
If we don’t transform our pain, we will transmit it.
The good news is that forgiveness steps in to help us transform the pain of relational debt in our lives. Forgiveness transforms the pain we experience from unauthorized transactions and relational debts.
Ok, so great! We should forgive and we get this whole relatable debt idea and how it impacts us. But how do we practice forgiveness? What do we need to do?
Well, stay tuned! Over the next 3 days I will share 3 practical steps to practice more forgiveness In your life!