I was teaching in a Bible college not too long ago, and a young girl was assigned to look after me. She was beautiful, godly, and bright. She was a chartered accountant and was putting herself through college while keeping her career going. At the end of my week, I was eating dinner with her and teased her about not being married. ‘How did you escape?’ I kidded her.
She didn’t reply for a moment; then she said hesitantly, ‘I was married.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said. And I could tell it was. It wasn’t all right that her husband had walked out on her in a particularly cruel way, but it was ‘all right’ in her heart. It was well with her soul. Peace like a river flowed there. She had been able to let go of the terrible wrong done to her. What was more, the Lord had helped her to look at the future as God’s future for her, and she insisted on seeing a better day ahead. True love from God keeps you from being discouraged.
‘But you don’t know how my spouse treated me,’ an abandoned man once told me. ‘Let me tell you…,’ he began.
But I stopped him. I knew it would not help him to tell the sad story one more time. I have observed what someone has said: ‘Some people destroy their relationship by writing everything down with the ‘pencil of memory’ but never take anything off with the “eraser of forgiveness.” ’ In contrast, my young friend had been busy with her eraser!
This young woman at Bible college shared very few of the salient points of her story with me. She gave me the bare bones and spared me, and herself, the details. I knew she had left a multitude of information out of her brief account, but she refused to wallow in self-pity, and she had not kept an account of every sin. She had forgiven him. Not that he had sought for forgiveness, but she stood ready to say, if he ever did get around to asking her, ‘I forgive you fully and freely as Christ has forgiven me.’
What’s Hanging Around Your Mind?
Years ago my husband was on a missionary trip to a primitive tribe. When he and the missionary he was travelling with arrived late in an isolated village, there was nowhere to stay for the night but the witch doctor’s house. It was not surprising that they had a fitful night! All the ominous paraphernalia hanging from the high grass roof fascinated Stuart.
‘What are all those objects hanging down!’ he asked the missionary.
‘That’s his bookkeeping system,’ he replied. ‘Whenever someone in the village offends him or hurts one of his kids, he hangs an object of some sort up there to remind him of the wrong done to his family. It would be a terrible thing if he ever let himself forget what they did.’
‘How primitive,’ I hear you saying. ‘No wonder we need to send missionaries to these primitive tribes.’ But wait a bit! How much garbage have you and I got hanging around the roofs of our minds? Do we go to sleep determined to remember everything and wake up determined never to forget anything? Love doesn’t keep a running record of someone else’s wrongdoings. It’s funny, no one ever forgets where they bury the hatchet.
Love is slow to anger and quick to forgive. My friend set out to forget the details of her husband’s rejection and abandonment. She was equipping herself for ministry, and I knew the Lord loved her for it. She was truly a girl after God’s own heart!
So how can I bear the grief and pain of rejection or betrayal without it destroying me? And if I have been so badly rejected, how can I ever love again? Well, that is what the love of God does so well in us and through us. In a spectacular way, love bears all things. Love loves again and again and again! That’s how love behaves.
But it will take time, so give yourself time. If you have been hurt, you need to:
- spend time healing. Don’t rush into another relationship too soon. Give yourself a chance to get well.
- spend time ‘minding your mind.’ Concentrate on the things that have been good – good memories, for example. Paul said, ‘Fix your thoughts on what is true and honourable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8). You mind your mind, and God will mind your heart!
- spend time revisiting your theology. Remind yourself of the promises of God. God loves you. God forgives you. God provides for you. God has plans for you. God is with you. God will give you help. God will empower you.
- spend time being quiet. Love grows in quiet places. Wait on the Lord. Refocus your attention on your personal relationship with Him rather than your personal relationship with others.
- spend time reading the Word of God, not just snatching a few verses of Scripture as you dash out the door into the rest of your life. Bask in it. Soak it in. Drink it in. Read, mark, and inwardly digest it. Let the Word of God comfort you as only the Word of God can. Just give yourself time.
After giving yourself time, you will find love growing inside you, and with the growth of love, forgiveness. You will find yourself discovering the ability to cope. Love ‘bears all things,’ Paul says (1 Corinthians 13:7, NKJV). And what is more, it always protects the one it loves.
Love doesn’t always seek to expose the bad stuff. It covers over the ugly in someone’s life. That’s why love doesn’t gossip. Gossip sees to it that some-one’s faults are kept in the news; love refuses to do that. Proverbs 10:12 says, ‘Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love covers all offences.’
In fact, love refuses to drag the skeleton out of the closet. It buries the past and refuses to rob the tomb. – From Love that Lasts by JILL BRISCOE
“Love buries the past and refusestorobthetomb.” |
