Control. We want it, we fight for it, and we don’t like to give it up. At our core, we live our lives in response to what we can control and what we can’t. We fuss and fume for our rights. What happens when they’re violated? We feel unheard, unwanted, and unneeded. Our wounded hearts cry for retribution.
Many of our battles with unforgiveness come because we experience loss of control. We can’t control someone’s choices no matter how hard we try. The struggle with forgiveness lies in this hidden problem many of us carry around and that’s control.
We think that if we hold onto our unforgiveness, it shows that we still have control. It almost feels that if we let go of control over the situation that we condone the action that wounded or offended us in the first place.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we’re saying what happened to us is okay. Forgiveness means that we entrust our heart, lives, and the people in it to a God who knows all things, holds all things, and sees all things.
But this is the thing with control and unforgiveness. When you withhold forgiveness, you’re allowing anger, bitterness, and resentment to control you instead of the Holy Spirit. You’re actually giving unforgiveness the power in your life that God deserves.
If you want to experience forgiveness towards someone, then look to surrendering your need for control in the relationship. I’ve found the greatest freedom I’ve ever experienced is in surrender. You don’t surrender to the pain, but you surrender the pain in your heart to a good, good Father.
Everyday we are presented with the opportunity to practice surrender in order to forgive. Your kid calls you names and blames you for their problems. Your parent demands payback for raising you. Your coworker throws you under the bus. Your spouse betrays your trust. All of these hurts and wounds challenge our need for control over an expected outcome.
You don’t expect that your child blames you for their drug addiction. You expect your parents to raise you without strings attached. You expect camaraderie among your coworkers, and you never ever expected that the person you exchanged vows with would betray you.
But these things happen. People disappoint us and don’t live up to our expectations. No matter how hard we try to control the outcome of our lives, we cannot. And underlying the unforgiveness is an anger because we didn’t have a say into any of those things that hurt us.
And so we hold onto our unforgiveness because we’ve had control stripped away from us and, by golly, we’re not going to be caught unawares again.
But we will. It’s what makes life an adventure. And wouldn’t it be better to go through life with a forgiving heart so we can see life for what it is? An opportunity to know God and make him known.
There’s very little we can actually control. We can’t control someone else, we can’t control natural disasters, and we can’t control our boss’s response to our work. We can control our responses and that’s it. Unforgiveness and control leads us into a defensive attitude towards life, and an offended spirit takes root in our hearts.
Even if we try and be all things to all people, some people will reject us. We can’t control the outcome of every decision. That drunk driver might be in the wrong place at the wrong time and our lives are broadsided and changed forever.
Control. We long for it. We think we need it. But forgiveness comes when we surrender control. It’s when we submit our hurts, our circumstances, and our disappointments to God that we find forgiveness is possible.
It’s in the surrendering where we find the impossible to be possible.
The Takeaway for Forgiveness
One of the roots of unforgiveness lies in our need for control.
Don’t surrender to the pain, but surrender the pain to God.
You control your response to the ups and downs of life.
All too often I focus on the evidence of unforgiveness in my life rather than the forgiveness. I’m familiar with the indicators of unforgiveness because I know them well. I know the messy battle of wrestling with what I know to do and how I end up acting.
I know the struggle of saying I’ve forgiven someone, and then the very real evidence that proves I’ve still got a ways to go. And then there are those moments in time that feel like delicate spun glass, filled with crystal clarity that God has worked a miracle. Forgiveness so real that you feel only love and zero residual effects of the offense.
Fully formed forgiveness does three miracles in our hearts.
The most epic story of forgiveness is found between a man named Joseph and his eleven brothers. Jealousy left unchecked and unforgiven causes behaviors that lead to life-long regret. Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him, but ended up selling him instead. Then they covered up their malice by telling their father he was dead and “proving” by drenching Joseph’s cloak in animal’s blood.
Time passed and Joseph’s journey led him to entrusted slave to the pit to entrusted prisoner to second in command in Egypt. Could he have cultivated bitterness, hatred, and revenge in his heart toward his brothers? But how could his trust in God have grown if he had? I think in the deepest of his hearts he wrestled with his emotions and the dreams God placed in his heart.
Submitting and surrendering to God won. Forgiveness reigned in his heart.
But lurking in his brother’s hearts was doubt. Could this brother of theirs that they hated really and truly forgive them? Was it a show for their father’s sake?
And in the finding we see the three miracles that forgiveness brings to our hearts.
It leaves the righting of wrongs in God’s hands. Joseph asks them, “Am I in the place of God?” You see, God doesn’t want us to take revenge. He wants us to leave other’s actions and responses in his hands. We miss out on God’s redemption for our own hearts when we allow ourselves to be consumed with revenge. Our hearts grow hard and we see nothing but our rage, which makes us rage at others and, frankly, causes us to behave in ways that wound. Leave the righting of wrongs to God. He will make all things right in his time and in his way.
To see God’s plan in man’s malice. God used hate-filled intentions to bring Joseph to a place where many lives could be saved. Joseph saw, by God’s grace, a larger picture than what he lived. He trusted God with his heart and life even when he couldn’t see how it would work out. You can too. You may only see and feel the hurt caused by another’s choices or actions, but ask God to give you a glimpse into how God is using the wound. Maybe he’s growing compassion in you or the ability to forgive. And that maybe you’ll get to share your story with someone who needs to hear how God worked good out of bad.
To repay evil with practical affection. Joseph ends Genesis with kindness. Kindness is love in action. He acted kindly toward his brother and their families. It’s one thing to speak words, but it’s an altogether different thing to act kind towards someone who meant you harm. Remember my story from a couple of weeks ago? Even though my heart pounds with the memory of the pain, I can show kindness.
Let forgiveness work it’s miracle. It’s a process and some days you won’t feel like you’re making any progress. Rather than turn away from God and the person, turn to God with your hurt and pain and let him move in you and through you. The first step is declaring forgiveness. The second and third and fourth and so on, is embracing the process. And then it becomes real. Let the process transform you as love transformed the Velveteen Rabbit into a real bunny.
I like to think I’m a forgiving person, that my thoughts and words are kind. But I find myself struggling to overlook the offense. It’s as if the enjoyment of holding onto a grudge is more enticing than the glory God promises if I overlook an offense. Or I say I forgive, but then struggle to say the right things, or think good thoughts or even be around said person. I know I need to forgive, but the hurt is so great and so I struggle.
Physical wounds don’t heal instantly. Our blood clots to stop the bleeding. New skin replaces burnt skin. Bruises transform from mottled purple to chartreuse to gone. Our bodies heal, but it’s not instantaneously.
Forgiveness is a process, not an option, and we’ll get into that at a later date. For today, let’s talk about the process.
We need to forgive. Overlooking an offense doesn’t mean we don’t recognize that the offense happened, it means we address the hurt in our heart and extend forgiveness.
But how do we recognize that the offense has taken root as unforgiveness? By looking at our behavior toward the memory or person that caused the offense.
Blame is an indicator of unforgiveness
Relationships with others is like a dance. And when one person gets their toes stepped on or is wounded, we want to blame someone. Someone I called friend accused me of ungraciousness and judgmental behavior. She took my words and twisted them into something ugly and walked away from our friendship. It was a like a stab in the back with a vicious twist of the knife.
Women friendships became liabilities for me. I didn’t trust women to be good friends, and I second guessed each word said. Every conversation would replay in my head as I agonized if it would be or could be interpreted wrong. The fact that I blamed her for my inability to participate in other friendships indicated my struggle with unforgiveness. I knew I needed to forgive and I did so because it’s what I was suppose to do, but I struggled to live it out. Blaming her became my excuse for not growing into the woman God wanted me to be.
Punishment is the second indicator.
In our unforgiveness, we withhold our approval and acceptance of the other person. We punish them through snubbing them or talking about the situation to other people forcing them to choose sides or we promote division by telling a biased version of the situation. Or we rail against them in our minds and fill our thoughts with revenge.
Forgiveness is a process.
Forgiveness is a process. That’s not to say that we should justify our unforgiveness, but there’s a difference in our behavior when we’re in the process of forgiving or just not forgiving.
When we’re in the process of forgiveness, we often feel fake because we’re behaving in a forgiving way, but we’re still dealing with the hurt, which makes it seem that our forgiveness isn’t real. I don’t know about you, but it’s harder to forgive someone who’s close to me rather than the driver that stole my parking spot in the mall. We live in relationship with people and we can’t run away to the wilderness until we’ve full forgiven the person.
So we live with this tension of the process of forgiveness. We need to learn to recognize when we’re in the process: choosing behaviors that demonstrate godliness such as mercy and grace versus when we really haven’t forgiven at all with behaviors of blame and punishment.
“And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Mark 1:4
John the Baptist preached the baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sin. To repent means to turn from your sin. I am sinful. You are sinful. Withholding forgiveness is sinful. To blame or punish someone is sin. And when we turn from unforgiveness to forgiveness, we experience a washing of our soul. God washes us clean and gives us the strength to behave in a forgiving manner while He walks us through the process of forgiveness. This is a life being transformed.
Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
When you live in community with others in the process of forgiveness, you experience the power of the Holy Spirit guiding you. You get to see and experience the difference of being led by your flesh or led by the Spirit of God.
The Takeaway
The two identifiers of unforgiveness: Blame and Punishment.
Recognize that forgiving someone is a process and submit to the process.
