Forgiveness

Dealing With Past Issues: Part III

We have dealt with two scenarios so far.  The first focused on a person who had wronged you and had stepped up and asked forgiveness and was remorseful.  The second scenario dealt with people in your past who had wronged you and couldn’t be found or had died without resolving the issues with you.

Now we come to the third of the scenarios.  This involves a person who has wronged you and hasn’t taken responsibility for the wrong, but you see or are in contact with.  It could be a mother, father, sister or brother.  It could be a friend or an x you have contact with.  What do you do to resolve past hurts and past issues that have never been addressed?

I was working with a young lady a few years back who could never complete a commitment she had made to male suitors.  She was very attractive and had been engaged to three different men in her life.  She would get up to the wedding date where announcements needed to be mailed and she would call it off.  She had no idea why the pattern in her life continued to manifest itself and that’s where I came in.  She came in for counseling and I began to look at her past relationships as well as her family background.  What surfaced involved unresolved issues with her father.  Her father had rejected her in the past and it caused her to pull back from present male relationships when they got too close.  She had never imagined that those issues could impact her present decisions, but she was willing to discuss them and seek to resolve them.

She called her father and asked if he would be willing to come in to deal with these issues which he willingly did for his daughter.  In the course of the sessions, she confronted him on the issues that had never been resolved between them and once he understood what his contribution was to the problem, he felt remorse for causing his daughter pain and negative feelings toward men.  He apologized for his part and asked for her forgiveness.  The result of this interaction between a father and daughter created a much more intimate and connected interaction between the two of them and she eventually found another man, got engaged, and got married.

There are a few principles in this example that are important in dealing with this third scenario.  The first principle is to go to someone who has wronged you that you can contact and speak to them privately.  In Matthew 18:15+  Jesus is speaking and addresses this past issues by saying, “If your sister or brother hurts you, go and tell them–work it out between  the two of you.  If he/she listens, you’ve made a friend.  If he/she won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again.  If he/she won’t listen, tell the church.  If he/she won’t listen to the church, treat them like an outsider.”

The first step that Jesus sets up is to go to the person who has wronged you and confront them in private.  When we have been wronged, often our thought is that the person who wronged us needs to come to us.  But Jesus says that we need to go to the person.  It’s our move.  If they listen we have won a friend.  In the example I used the daughter had gone to her father and confronted him but he either had minimized the problem or denied any contribution to the problem.  She had come to me because she didn’t know what was causing her to pull away from making commitments in a relationship.

The second step in this process of resolving past issues involves taking a witness with you if the first step doesn’t work.  Again it’s my move to seek reconciliation with someone who has wronged me.  The witness can be a friend, pastor, brother or sister, or a counselor.  In the case of the daughter she was seeking my counsel for the problem.  We had her dad come into the session and he began to take responsibility for what he had done wrong.  He saw his contribution and was remorseful and asked for forgiveness from his daughter.  She gave it and the relationship began to heal after this encounter.

What happens if the person doesn’t listen to the witness.  Jesus says that the third step is to take the person before the church.  If the person doesn’t listen to the church, that person is to be treated as an outsider.  Disconnect from them.  God uses Silence when something happens like this.

In the book of Joshua 6, there is a story of Israel beginning to take over the Promised Land that God was giving them.  God made it specifically clear what they were to take and what was contraband.  After the victory of Jericho, Achan, one of the warriors, took some of the contraband and hid it under his tent.  As you read this story, the Israelites were defeated by a very small town because God said He wouldn’t go with them or speak with them until the problem had been resolved.

In Psalms 66:18 it says that if there are things in my life that I have not dealt with (sin), the Lord will not hear me.  He chooses to use silence and not interact with me until the problems have been resolved.  It would seem that if God uses silence when problems go unresolved, it would follow that He would accept us using the same tool.  The ultimate purpose in confrontation  or silence is to get the attention of the person who has blown it and seek reconciliation.  Reconnection.

Principle

Resolving past issues involves my active participation to go to the person who has wronged my and seek reconciliation.  It doesn’t mean that it will all turn out okay.  Sometimes the person who has wronged us will never take responsibility for their part, but we can move on knowing that we did what God wanted us to do.

Dealing with Past Issues: Part II

My dad died in June 1990 and we had a good relationship when he died. There were some issues that we had to talk about during my high school years that caused disconnection for a few years. He was a perfectionist and communicated from a perfectionist expectation. I remember mowing the grass for the first time when I was 10 and was so excited and wanted him to see. He came out and said, “You missed a spot.”

I would go with him on jobs after he was done with the rural mail route to put in tile or fix plumbing. I was the one who cleaned the tools after the job was done. He didn’t see the tools I had cleaned, but saw the spots I missed.

I resolved these issues with him when I got into college, but what would have happened had he died before I was able to resolve my resentment toward an inability to ever meet up to his expectations. What happens when you have a severing of a relationship, or marriage, or parental tie and are never able to go back to them to deal with and resolve the issue?

This brings up the second scenario. What do you do with relationships of the past where you don’t have opportunity to go back to them and resolve the issue?

Some have said that you need to forgive them and move on. For those of you who have been able to forgive that person who hasn’t asked forgiveness that is fantastic? But there are those who have tried to go down this route and couldn’t put the past issue to rest. For those of you who are in this category, here is an alternative that could release you from this baggage so that you can move on in a healthy way to your present relationships.

I have a couple of questions that need to be asked. Does God forgive every sin even if we don’t ask Him? He says in I John 1:9 that if we ask for forgiveness he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins, but He doesn’t forgive us until we ask. Does God expect us to forgive others who don’t admit fault when He doesn’t? In Ephesians 4:32 it says that we need to forgive others just as God in Christ forgives us. He forgives us “If” we ask for forgiveness. Here is the difference. Jesus is ALWAYS WILLING to forgive us, but the forgiveness is not actualized until we ask for it. His death on the cross-made forgiveness available to all , but we need to confess our sins or acknowledge our sin before He forgives us.

Some will say that if we don’t forgive others, we hold bitterness in our heart. I propose that in the same way that Jesus is always willing to forgive, we can do the same by being willing to forgive someone we will never come in contact with. If they were to sit in front of you and sincerely apologize for what they had done (even if they are no longer here) would you forgive them?

This perspective is based on the premise that when we are willing to forgive others of what they have done, the willingness to forgive released the bitterness we feel so that we can move on even if we never see the person again. For those who have applied this principle to past issues with family members who are no longer here or past marital partners who have wronged them, there has been a burden that has been cut away so that they can move on without bitterness or resentment.

Some who are reading this will have questions and I encourage you to dialogue with me on this. I realize that this has not been taught in the churches for the most part, so you may have questions and I would urge you to dialogue with me on this.

Other passages to look at

Luke 17:3-5

II Samuel 11-12 David and Bathsheba; Confession/Forgiveness

Principle

Willingness to forgive those we no longer have connection with can free us from past baggage and allow us to experience the greatest potential of present/future relationships.

 

Dealing With Past Issues: Part I

When I was growing up I loved to play on the horizontal monkey bars.  It wasn’t as complex as the monkey domes are today, but it was fun to see how fast you could get across.  I have asked many of my clients to describe the often daunting process of getting across the monkey bars in their lives and everyone has a different answer.  Some have said that you need to have a purpose in getting from one side to the other.  Other responses involves being strong.  A few of my clients have said that you need to have momentum and build up a swinging action to cross to the other side.  Still others have said that you need to go from one bar to the next, taking it one step at a time.  All of these answers are right and are needed to get from one side of a horizontal monkey bar to the other.  But I always tell them, “there is still one key ingredient that is essential to carry out this feat.”  They think and think, and finally give up trying to come up with the answer.  Did you figure it out?  Do you give up?  It’s letting go of the past.  All of the answers above are right and healthy, but if you don’t let go of the past you will never get to the other side.

It’s similar to relationships that we enter seeking to find a significant person to spend the rest of our lives with.  If we don’t let go of our past issues and seek to resolve those things that are considered baggage, we will never experience true happiness in or present relationships or the ones that we are hoping to cultivate.  The principle I am talking about is letting go of the past and the tool for doing that involves forgiveness.

There are three scenarios that I would like to propose in getting rid of the past.  The first involves situations where the person or persons who have wronged you have asked forgiveness. However, we have become so mad, angry, and even bitter that we have been unable to forgive that individual.  I was talking to a friend this morning and he reminded me of a couple in that exact place.  It was 30 years ago when they were young in their relationship and the wife was pregnant with their first baby.  Within a month of her having the baby his work necessitated that he go away for two days within a 6 week period for a task he needed to do.  Both of them talked about the best time to do that and agreed that he should go quickly so that he could be back for the birth.  Unfortunately, he was gone when she gave birth and she never forgave him.  EVERYONE she interacted with from then to this present day has heard the story of her now x-husband not being there for the birth of their first child.  Even with new people she comes in contact with, she will bring up this issue early in the  conversation.  Her husband apologized often for it because he did desperately wanted to be there, but she never forgave him.

In this scenario, it is important to let go of the past, or the past will eat you up.  A principle in Matthew 18 highlights this with the story of a rich man who had a servant who owed him a very large debt and couldn’t pay it back.  The servant was going to be put in prison, but begged for forgiveness and the rich man forgave him of his debt.  He walked away a free man.  This servant has a servant himself who owed him a day’s wages and couldn’t pay it.  His servant begged him to forgive him, but he wouldn’t and threw his servant into prison until he could pay off his debt.  The rich man found out about this atrocity and called in his servant whom he had forgiven.  He said to the man, “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?”  Because of his lack of forgiveness, the master threw him into prison and made him pay off every penny of his debt.  Then it says, “If you don’t forgive others, God will not forgive you.”

It is a choice we have to say to the person who has wronged us and has asked forgiveness, “I forgive you.”  I assume that everyone reading this Jlog isn’t perfect and has blown it on various occasions.  When we blow it, we surely want others to forgive us.  Can’t we do the same for those who have wronged us and are seeking to be forgiven?

Principle

If we want to have the greatest potential for successful relationships in the future, we need to that we let go of the past and forgive those who have asked for forgiveness.