Forgiveness

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Colossians 3: 12-14

Is perfect harmony really achievable for a married couple? Well if the bible says that something is possible we should definitely believe it. We must also follow the directions the bible gives for finding this perfect harmony, and sometimes that can be challenging.

Remember on your wedding day, you thought there was no argument too big, no habit too annoying, that you could overlook almost anything. Well now it’s been 10, 30, or 50 years later and you may have been wrong on your wedding day. There are definitely some things that are hard to get over, hard to forget, and hard to overlook, and the things you once thought were cute are now sort of annoying.

Good thing God knew we would need some help in this area, that’s why when we surrender our lives to Christ and become believers, the holy spirit helps to develop kind and compassionate hearts within us that we can forgive one another. The problem is we hear confusing world statements like “forgive and forget” which throw us off. Forgiveness doesn’t always mean that we will develop amnesia over the situation. We are able to forgive some pretty difficult, but also emotionally scarring events. You can forgive someone but still have some emotional healing to do and stuff to work through and that’s okay. Just because you need time for your emotional wounds to heal doesn’t mean you aren’t able to forgive the person in the meantime. Forgiveness is not, saying that what the person did was okay in the first place, or letting them off the hook. It does not mean that it erases all the hurt it caused. It just means that you can start moving down the road to a healthy marriage the way God intended it to be.

Think about Christ up on the cross for us, think about all the physical and emotional abuse we poured out on him, and how he still forgave us and died for us. If Jesus did that for us at our worst, what can you forgive your spouse of that you have been holding on to? Just start with an apology, whether you are in the wrong or not, I’m sure your behavior over the situation was less than pleasing to God so find something to apologize for and do it. Even if your spouse has nothing to say after that, let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting in their hearts and things will begin to move. Don’t let barriers come between you and your spouse. Satan is already doing a great job of that, don’t give him a helping hand.