Forgiving What You Can’t Forget: A 5-Day ChallengeSýnishorn

 DAY TWO

When Unchangeable Feels Unforgivable

VERSES: Romans 12:19–21, 1 Peter 5:7, Ephesians 6:11–12

Unchangeable can feel unforgivable.

When someone takes something you will never get back. When the outcome seems so final you can’t get your bearings for how to go on. When they hurt you so deeply you fear you’ll never feel normal again.

With a grief that’s so consuming from all these painful situations, it’s completely maddening to think forgiveness should apply here. What would forgiveness even accomplish?

I understand this question. I’ve wrestled with it myself. And while I will be the first in line to raise my hand and admit forgiveness is a hard step to take, it’s also the only step that leads to anything good. Every other choice—including the choice to not do anything and remain where we are—just adds more hurt upon hurt. Here are a few truths I've been learning to hang on to in my heart when I'm struggling to step toward forgiveness.

1. Forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge. (Romans 12:19–21)

Revenge is you paying twice for a hurt that someone else did to you. You may think it will make you feel better in the short term, but in the long term it will always cost you more emotionally and spiritually than you’d ever want to pay. The only thing your revenge will do is add your wrongdoing on top of theirs.

Forgiveness doesn’t let the other person off the hook. It actually places them in God’s hands. And then, as you walk through the forgiveness process, it softens your heart. The peace from forgiveness is more satisfying then than revenge.

2. Our God is not a do-nothing God. (1 Peter 5:7)

I was recently participating in a Q&A session where someone in the audience asked, “How can God just do nothing?” The pain in her question was deep. Gracious, do I ever understand what that feels like. When you are suffering so much that each next breath seems excruciating, it’s easy to start assuming God is doing nothing.

But we don’t serve a do-nothing God. He is always working. It may be a slow working miracle. It may look different than what we expect. But God loves us, and He is always doing something. 

3. The enemy is the real villain. (Ephesians 6:11–12)

Yes, people do have a choice to sin against us or not. And certainly, when we are hurt, the person hurting us may have willingly played into the enemy’s plan. But it helps me to remember that this person isn’t my real enemy. The devil is real and on an all-out assault against all things good. He hates the word “together.” And he especially works with great intentionality against anything that brings honor and glory to God.

Oh, friend, the heartbreaks you carry are enormous. And your desire to undo some of what has been done is so very understandable. It’s okay to carry both the desire to want things to change and an acceptance that on this side of eternity they won’t change. You can carry both. You can honor both.

Adding truth into our perspective makes even the unchangeable, forgivable. None of this is simple. These aren’t truths to simply read through, but sit with. And sit in. Until we can dare to walk in it. Live it out. And maybe even one day declare it as a truth we’ve decided to own.

RESPOND: 

Look back at the three points about forgiveness. Which one did you need the most? Write out the verse that goes with that point and spend some time both meditating on it and memorizing it this week.