All In The Family (Part #5)

Ephesians 4:31-32

My wife has given me one of the greatest gifts anyone could ever receive on numerous occasions during the course of our marriage. It’s not a gift that can be wrapped in paper and a bow tied on top. Nor is it a gift that can be measured monetarily, because it is a gift of invaluable worth. Even though this gift is of inestimable value, it can be described with just one word and it is a gift every married spouse needs to experience at times and must be ready to give generously in their relationship. Apart from this gift you may make it through life together “till death does you part,” but you will never have the fulfillment and joy that God intended your marriage to provide. You see, marriage was never meant to be a life-long trial to endure, it was meant to be a daily joy to experience.

Before I tell you about this gift, I first need to give you a little background to our marriage so you’ll understand why this gift means so much to me. As many of you already know, my wife is as close to being a “saint” as any person I have ever known. (None of us gets to Heaven on our own good works, so I’m speaking poetically here when I speak of her being a “saint.”)

I, on the other hand, feel as far from being a “saint” as any person on earth and can’t even imagine being described by that term...except for what the scripture teaches about the grace of God that makes us all saints positionally in Christ Jesus. Consequently, living with me is not always easy!! I tend to be selfish, critical, fussy, stubborn, exact, and a whole lot of other descriptive adjectives I’d rather not mention (since my wife won’t tell you, just ask my sisters and they can fill in the remaining details). I seek every day to be the person God wants me to be and always ask for His help. But, I often miss the mark...more times than I like to admit. However, through all of the years of our marriage, my wife has never failed to give me forgiveness for my many shortcomings, even when I didn’t ask her to forgive me.

You see, that word “forgive” and the practice of forgiving one another is one of the most precious gifts you will ever receive from your spouse over the course of your years together. Granted, she’s had a few “come to Jesus” meetings with me at times. And, I have occasionally been persuaded to see the error of my ways...but she has NEVER failed to forgive me or hold a grudge from our past over our present or our future!

In marriage, you have to learn how to forgive and move forward from the painful moments that can’t be redone. I often tell young couples coming to me in preparation for marriage that if you hit a snag in your relationship, don’t just hope it eventually goes away. If the two of you cannot sit down and work it out together, then call me and let me help you find a solution. Too many people come for marriage counselling long after their marriages have become a giant, tangled mess that is seemingly impossible to untangle. We need to learn to resolve things as quickly as possible, forgive one another, and move on!!

Some of the evidences of people holding onto unforgiveness are:

• Angry Outbursts
• Bitter Spirits
• Hateful Words
• Vindictive Actions
• Lonely Experiences
• Bad Judgment
• Physical Illness

There was a survey done in 2003 made up of 200 married adults dealing with forgiveness in marriage.1 The research showed how one’s ability to forgive others directly affected a couple’s marital satisfaction and personal well-being. In fact, it appears that as much as one-third of marriage satisfaction is related to forgiveness. Not only does the ability to forgive impact the marriage relationship, it was significantly related to personal emotional distress. As people forgave, individuals reported fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and fatigue! (1Peter J. Larson, New Forgiveness Research, Jan 27, 2003)

There is a cute story about a couple that had been married 60 years. Throughout their lives  they had shared everything. They loved each other deeply. They had not kept any secrets from one another, except for a small shoebox that the wife kept in the top shelf of her closet. When they got married, she put the box there and asked her husband never to look inside of it and never to ask questions about its contents. For 60 years the man honored his wife's request. In fact, he forgot about the box until his wife grew gravely ill, and the doctors were sure she had no way of recovering. So the man, putting his wife's affairs into order, remembered that box in the top of her closet, got it down, and brought it to her at the hospital. He asked her if perhaps now they might be able to open it. She agreed. They opened the box, and inside were two crocheted dolls and a roll of money that totaled $95,000. The man was astonished!

The woman told her husband that the day before they were married, her grandmother told her that if she and her husband were ever to get into an argument with one another, they should work hard to reconcile, and if they were unable to reconcile, she should simply keep her mouth shut and crochet a doll. The man was touched by this, because there were only two crocheted dolls in the box. He was amazed that over 60 years of marriage, they apparently had had only two conversations that they were unable to reconcile. Tears came to his eyes, and he grew even more deeply in love with this woman. Then he asked about the roll of money. "What's with this?" he asked. His wife said, "Well, every time I crocheted a doll, I sold it to a local craft fair for five dollars."

Well, forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean always keeping your mouth shut. And, it’s important that you understand a few other things it doesn’t mean, as well. For instance...

1. It doesn’t mean denying the reality of your pain.
2. It doesn’t mean condoning the action of the offending spouse.
3. It doesn’t mean subjecting yourself unnecessarily to the same offense again.      

Biblically defined, forgiveness means:

• To let go of, to send off or away, to release.
• This Greek word is used of shooting arrows.
• It is used of loosing a ship into a sea.
• And, it is used of releasing a person from a legal obligation such as a job or a debt.

In the NT you find the Greek word for “forgiveness” used in the following ways:

• Matthew 13:36  --  when Jesus had finished speaking the parables He “sent the multitude away.” So...forgiveness means to send away!
• Matthew 27:49  --  when Jesus was hanging on the cross He cried out in agony and those watching said to “Let Him alone.”  So...forgiveness means to let something go!
• Mark 7:8  --  Jesus accused the Pharisees of “laying aside” the law of God and replacing it with man-made traditions. So...forgiveness means to lay something aside!

It is also important to remember that forgiveness is not a matter of your emotions, it is an act of your will. It is a choice a person makes!

Author and counselor, Dr. Jay E. Adams writes, in his book, From Forgiven to Forgiving, “…Forgiveness is not a feeling; forgiveness is a promise. Never forget that fact. It is one of the most stupendous facts of all time. When our God forgives us, He promises that He will not remember our sins against us anymore…How can God, who knows all things—past, present, and future—ever forget anything? How can He forget our sins? He doesn’t… Someone may ask, ‘but doesn’t it say that He won’t remember our sins?’ Yes, it does, but that’s not the same thing as forgetting them…You see, forgetting is passive and is something that we human beings, not being omniscient, do. ‘Not remembering’ is active; it is a promise whereby one person…determines not to remember the sins of another against him. To ‘not remember’ is simply a graphic way of saying, ‘I will not bring up these matters to you or others in the future. I will bury them and not exhume the bones to beat you over the head with them. I will never use these sins against you.’” (Jay E. Adams, From Forgiven To Forgiving, pg.18)

If we dig a little bit deeper we learn that forgiveness in marriage means...

1. Releasing the offending spouse from any obligation to you created by his/her offense.

One author writes, “To forgive is to accept within yourself the consequences of the sins of others. It means to accept the pain, the problems and the burden that comes when someone sins against you…This is what God has done for us.” (Cf. 1 Peter 1:18-19)

And, this is precisely what we must do with our spouses when we are hurt. It isn’t that we approve of their actions, attitudes and/or words, but we willingly absorb the pain and leave any recompense to God. I suggest that this is only possible when you believe that God is keeping the only record that matters and He is far better at justice than you are at vengeance.

Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8; cf. Proverbs 10:12)

The reality is that no matter what you demand from your spouse to make amends for their offense, it is unlikely that you will be satisfied with their offering.

There was a pastor who was approached by a friend about an investment that was sure to bring double his money in just six months. After some convincing the pastor agreed to invest a considerable amount of his own money in the venture. As you might expect, the deal didn’t pan out and the pastor’s friend said he would return the amount of the initial investment to the pastor. One week passed and no money. Two weeks and he hadn’t heard anything. When he would drop by his friends’ office he was always in a meeting and couldn’t see him. He failed to return any of the phone calls made by the pastor. Each day for six months the pastor went to his mailbox to see if he would receive the money that day. It dawned on him one day that he was more concerned about the money than was his friend and so he decided to try and reach his friend one more time, only this time for a different reason. The pastor was startled at first when his friend answered the phone and then he said to him, “I know that you probably don’t have the money to repay me so let’s consider the debt cancelled and resume our friendship together.” The pastor admitted that after his conversation he was finally able to get on with his life and stop the mailbox vigil.

It’s time for some of us to stop going to the “mailbox” every day, looking for what was taken from us through the hurtful thing our spouses did or said. Instead, we need to put the emphasis back on the relationship and leave the rest for God to sort out.

Forgiveness in marriage means...

2. Resolving to have a positive attitude toward the offense rather than a negative attitude toward the offending spouse.

Gary Thomas has written an interesting book entitled, Sacred Marriage, that I recommend to people sometimes. It is not a book about building a better marriage, but rather, it is about deepening your relationship with God through marriage. In it he asks and answers the question, “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”

That is a powerful question that few husbands and wives are willing to grapple with in their relationships. Most of us believe that the only purpose God has for marriage is to make US (!!) happy. However, many times the things we experience in marriage, even the painful hurts, are tools God is using to make us holy...if we allow Him to do so.

Gary Thomas writes, “...If we’re married, the fact is we’re also married to someone who is fallen in some way...We can respond to this “bitter juice” by becoming bitter people or we can use it as a spiritual discipline and transform its exercise into the honey of a holy life. In this fallen world, struggles, sin, and unfaithfulness are a given. The only question is whether our response to these struggles, sin, and unfaithfulness will draw us closer to God--or whether it will estrange us from ourselves, our Creator, and each other.” (Sacred Marriage, Pgs. 176-177)

We have to look at the the hurts in our relationships and ask, “God, what are you teaching me and how do you want me to respond?” If you can focus on what He is doing in your life through the pain, then it becomes easier to avoid developing a negative attitude toward your spouse. The more you focus on the hurt, the less holy and more hate-filled you become.

Forgiveness in marriage means...

3. Recognizing that the offending spouse is precious to God and deserving of love.

Everybody needs to be loved, even if their actions and attitudes seem to cry out for vengeance and retribution. The reason people hurt others is often because they are hurting within themselves. When we begin to take God’s attitude toward our offending spouses, it can be miraculous how quickly God can transform the other person’s life.

On December 7, 1941, Mitsuo was the commander of the Japanese Air Force that led the attack on Pearl Harbor.

There was an American bomber by the name of Jacob who was eager to strike back and the following April 18th, he flew his B-25 bomber called the “Bat Out of Hell,” on a dangerous raid over Japan. After dropping his bombs he became lost in heavy fog and when his plane began to run out of fuel he ejected into enemy territory. He was taken prisoner, tortured, threatened with imminent death and for almost two years suffered cold, hunger and dysentery.

In May of 1944, he was given a Bible and told that he could keep it for three weeks. Scarcely sleeping, he started reading in Genesis and read the Bible through several times, memorizing key passages. On June 8, he prayed to receive Jesus Christ as His Savior.

Matthew 5:44 became a critical text for Jacob as he began to treat his guards differently. Gradually his hostility toward them evaporated, he prayed for them and sought opportunities to witness to them. All the while he said that he noticed that their attitude toward him also changed as they slipped him food and supplies.

After the war Jacob returned to Japan as a missionary. He had copies of his testimony printed and distributed in the country and he planted a church in the very city he had bombed.

One day a man asked to see him at his home. His name -- Mitsuo. He had been led to Christ after reading the testimony of Jacob and the two men became the dearest of friends.

Take as your model the Lord Jesus Christ when it comes to forgiveness. There is nothing about us that could have made us worthy of God’s love. We were His avowed enemies, yet He sent His Son to love us anyway. Literally tens of millions have come to understand that underserved and unmatched love and it has brought forgiveness, totally transforming them for all eternity.

Learning to love your spouse even when he/she isn’t very lovely makes your love like that of Christ. It may be just the thing that will transform them into the kind of spouse you can spend the rest of your life loving.

Closing:

Try to keep in mind, forgiveness is not an event, it is a process. The more deeply you’ve been hurt, the longer it may take for the strong emotions to subside. But, remember that forgiveness isn’t about how we feel at any given moment, it is a promise we make to our offending spouse that we will not bring up their offense again to them or to others. It is a commitment that you will not allow yourself to dwell on the hurt in your mind, turning it over and over again.

Listen one more time to the words of author/counselor Gary Thomas, “We get married for all sorts of reasons. ‘Because it gives us an opportunity to learn how to forgive’ probably doesn’t top the list of most honeymooners, but the spiritual practice of continually moving toward someone provides an excellent context in which we can practice this vital spiritual discipline. Sin in marriage (on the part of both spouses) is a daily reality, an ongoing struggle that threatens to hold us back. You will never find a spouse who is without sin. The person you decide to marry will eventually hurt you--sometimes even intentionally so, making forgiveness an essential spiritual discipline...One time I spoke at a staff retreat for an Episcopalian church at a small Roman Catholic lay order’s retreat center. The chapel was very small but very distinguished, and I poked around a little shortly after I arrived. I saw a confessional in the back so I opened the door and was startled to find, of all things, a file cabinet...Sometimes that’s what marriage is like: Our spouse has confessed sins and weaknesses to us, and we’ve kept every confession in a mental file cabinet, ready to be taken out and used in our defense or in an attack. But true forgiveness is a process, not an event. It is rarely the case that we are able to forgive ‘one time’ and the matter is settled. Far more often, we must relinquish our bitterness a dozen times or more, continually choosing to release the offender from our judgment.” (Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, Pgs. 167, 169-170)

Take this prescription the next time your spouse hurts/offends you. The pain probably won’t go away immediately, but it’s a place to begin releasing and reconciling with your spouse.

• Remember that your hurt pales in comparison to Christ's suffering.
• Don’t keep a list of your spouse’s offenses; instead, make a list of the kind/loving things he/she has done.
• Stop and thank the Lord for the love and and forgiveness you experience from Him every day.
• Pray for your spouse even though he/she has hurt you deeply.
• Look for an opportunity to show the love of Christ to your spouse.
• If an offense must be confronted, choose the right moment to discuss it calmly and respectfully.
• Before you fall asleep at night, quote to yourself repeatedly from the Lord's Prayer these words, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."