Getting Past the Pain
Reconciliation Dynamic
If I have a brand new car with 20 miles on it and park it in the parking lot and you carelessly come driving in and smash into the side of it, doing $8000 damage, you and I are going to have a problem with our relationship!
Let’s suppose that just such a thing happens and you are unemployed and don’t have any insurance. Let’s say you come to me contritely and say, "Rick, I realize that in my carelessness, I have wronged you terribly. Will you forgive me?" If I say, "Yes," who pays for the damages?
I do! You go free!
Forgiveness is never a receipt given for a debt paid in full. If you come to my house and, in a lighthearted moment, break a priceless family heirloom that cannot be replaced, and I say, "I forgive you," who bears the loss?
I do!
This Sunday I will be teaching about the Reconciliation Dynamic. We’re going to look at critical concepts like Sin, hardened hearts, and broken hearts. I’ll be showing you how you can determine if someone really has a broken heart through the their "Say So" and your "See So". But most important of all I’ll be giving you the critical pieces to reconciling broken relationships - in your home, at work, and with your God.
The best news is that no matter how deep the wound and how profound the pain you can be restored and the relationship can be made new!
God made you and I to be Friends with Him
When God made mankind there was an agenda. There was motive. God wanted someone to love.
You can see it in the account of creation in Genesis 1-3. Everything was made for man and everything was good – except his being alone. So God created woman. Now that lead to problems but here in this passage we see the foundation of friendship between God and man.
They walked together and talked together - until the pain started. The pain started when sin began.
Sin causes separation and pain
Isaiah 59:1-2
Sin is a wedge that drives a barrier between people. Sin is rooted in self and personal desire. Sin has the effect of focusing on you instead of them and that creates pain. Real pain.
Between God and man
Between man and woman
Between parent and child, sisters, brothers, associates at work. Sin damages and destroys relationships.
Guilt comes out of Sin.
The Indians concept of conscience was described as a square peg with sharp edges that turned when ever there was sin. If you sinned long enough without changing the sharp edges wore down and there was no longer any pain… This is the hardened heart.
How we respond to guilt is important. Reconciliation cannot happen if the heart is hard.
My first ministry I met a man who was the song leader. He had kind of a arrogant – look at me – attitude. I didn’t really pick up on it but my wife sure did. She warned me that something wasn’t right with this man and about a month later we discovered he was having an affair.
I talked with him about the decision he needed to make about the guilt of sin he was feeling – either to allow himself to grow cold and hard or to become a broken hearted man.
Pharoah hardened his heart – this is a decision to reject God and turn from him. Eventually this becomes a permanent condition – Hell is eternal separation from God – we choose it by hardening our hearts.
Broken Hearted
God wants our hearts to break – not to be harsh but so that we will feel his pain – that is what guilt is – pain. Emotional and at times even physical
David writes in Psalms 38:
LORD, don’t correct me when you are angry.
Don’t punish me when you are furious.
2 Your arrows have wounded me,
and your hand has come down on me.
3 My body is sick from your punishment.
Even my bones are not healthy because of my sin.
4 My guilt has overwhelmed me;
like a load it weighs me down.
5 My sores stink and become infected
because I was foolish.
6 I am bent over and bowed down;
I am sad all day long.
7 I am burning with fever,
and my whole body is sore.
8 I am weak and faint.
I moan from the pain I feel.
God loves and tenderly cares for the broken hearted…
Look at 1 John 1:8-9.
This isn’t a one time thing… this is written in the greek present tense which describes continuous action.
Repentance is a Godly sorrow that leads us back toward the person and away from the sin. But repentance by itself doesn’t restore the relationship. It just starts us on the road back to a friendship with God.
What must come next is forgiveness – and that depends on the injured party. Without forgiveness there can NEVER be reconciliation – NEVER EVER.
Forgiveness is a decision
Say you kick me in the shins – hard – seven times in a row. I’m supposed to forgive you? That’s tough – but that is what we are called to do.
Understand that forgiveness is the refusal to prosecute. It is the granting of a pardon. It is not forgetting and it is not a matter of being a patsy and getting hurt over and over. The seventh time you come around me with your steel toed boots I’ll have shin guards from the nearest hockey team on – promise!
Jesus made the decision
Look at Jesus on the cross… Jesus forgave the soldiers even though they weren’t asking for forgiveness
Forgiveness is about you – not the other person.
Forgiveness is the decision to stop replaying the hurt over and over in your mind and heart. Anger is redirected pain. Resentment inwardly directed pain. And forgiveness is letting go of the pain.
BTW: Forgiveness benefits the injured party every time and only benefits the hurtful party when they are repentant.
Remember no more – Forgetting happens when the say so and the see so match!
"I, even I, am the One who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins."
Here the Bible says that, in forgiving us, God is promising not to remember our sins. That word "remember" in these verses is the Hebrew word ZAKAR. According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, ZAKAR means "to remember, to think of, or to make mention of." It is used in Genesis 40:14 when Joseph asked the cupbearer who was about to be released from jail to "mention" him to Pharaoh and get him out of jail.
God wants to be your friend so much that he made a way to come back to him. It begins with the repentance when we say that we are sorry and want to change. FORGETTING HAPPENS WHEN WE THE SAYSO AND SEESO MATCH. This is especially true with us – when there is a broken relationship between husband and wife or parent and child there must be first the SAYSO then the SEESO. Only with the seeso do we forget the sin.
Forgiveness comes with the sayso. Trust comes with the seeso.
Does this come easily or without cost. Absolutely not. Forgiveness is an expensive idea.
A lot of people think that God used an innocent third party (Jesus) and punished Him for our sins. But that is not forgiveness! Morally and justly the sins of one cannot be transferred to a third party. It must be settled between the two involved!
If you wreck my car, would it be right for me to go out and wave down a passing motorist, haul him out of his car, and beat him up for what you did? That’s ridiculous!
That is why in the Bible Jesus is called "God with us." That is why He is shown to be God in the flesh! Jesus was the very God of the universe, hanging on the cross, willingly absorbing in Himself every wretched miserable result of sin that we have done against Him!
Hard? You better believe it! Costly? Absolutely the costliest! Did we deserve that kind of sacrifice from God? No!
Don’t talk to me about sacrifice! Going to church isn’t a sacrifice. Helping others is no sacrifice. Returning a tithe isn’t a sacrifice. Giving an offering isn’t a sacrifice – none of this is in the face of what God has done for us. He became a man and then died on a cross so that our sin could be forgotten
Now, since God has done that for us, He asks us to do the same for others. What right does God have to ask me to forgive you for wrecking my new car?
He has every right because I wrecked a lot more. And He forgave me!
The following article comes from the April 22, 1997 issue of Family Circle Magazine.
Chris Carrier wrote it:
Friday, December 20, 1974 was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. I was 10 years old and excited about the upcoming holiday as I got off the school bus that afternoon. A few doors from my home in Coral Gables, Florida, a man came up to me, introduced himself as "Chuck" and asked if I would help him with the decorations for a party he was hosting for my father.
Thinking that he was a friend of my dad’s, I agreed to go with him.What I didn’t know was that this man, whose name was actually David McAllister, held a grudge against my family.
He had been employed as a nurse for an elderly relative, but had been fired because of his drinking.
After I agreed to accompany him, he drove his motor home to an isolated area north of Miami, where he stopped by the side of the road and stabbed me in the chest several times with an ice pick. He then drove west to the Florida Everglades, walked me out among the bushes, shot me through the head and left me to die.
Fortunately the bullet passed behind my eyes and exited my right temple, without causing any brain damage.
When I regained consciousness six days later, I was unaware that I had been shot. I sat by the side of the road and was found by a man who stopped to help me.
Two weeks later, I described the person who had assaulted me to a police artist, and my uncle recognized the resulting portrait as that of David McAllister. He was brought in, along with other suspects, but for some reason I wasn’t able to identify him.
Unfortunately, the police could not obtain any physical evidence to link him to the crime, so he was never charged.The assault left me blind in my left eye, but otherwise uninjured, and with the love and support of my family and friends, I went back to school and resumed my life.
For the next three years I lived with tremendous anxiety. Most nights I would wake up frightened, imagining I heard someone coming in the back door, and I’d wind up sleeping at the foot of my parents’ bed.
Then when I was 13, all that changed. One night, during a Bible study with my church youth group, I realized that God’s providence and love, having miraculously kept me alive, were the basis for my life’s security. In His hands, I could live without fear or anger.
And so I did. I finished school, earning a bachelor’s degree and a master of divinity. I married my wonderful wife, Leslie. We have two beautiful daughters, Amada, who is 2, and Melodee, who is almost a year old.
In September of 1996 Major Charles Scherer of the Coral Gables Police Department, who had worked on the original investigation of my case, called to tell me that 77-year-old David McAllister had finally confessed.
Blind from glaucoma, in poor health, without family or friends, he was in a North Miami Beach nursing home. I
visited him there.
The first time I went to see him, he apologized for what he had done to me, and I told him that I had forgiven him. I visited him many times after that, introducing him to my wife and girls, offering him hope and some semblance of family in the days before his death. He was always glad when I came by. I believe that our friendship eased his loneliness and was a great relief to him after 22 years of regrets.
I know the world might view me as the victim of a horrible tragedy, but I consider myself the "victim" of many miracles. The fact that I’m alive and have no mental deficiencies defies the odds. I’ve got a loving wife and a beautiful family. I’ve been given as much
promise as anybody else, and ample opportunities. I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways.
And while many people can’t understand how I could forgive David McAllister, from my point of view I couldn’t not forgive him. If I’d chosen to hate him all these years, or spent my life looking for revenge, then I wouldn’t be the man I am today, the man my wife and children love.
Friends with God depends on you – turning and God forgiving. God already did his part. Now it’s up to you.
Today is the day…
