How Do You Forgive When The Wound Is Still Open?Sample

  

Day One: A Lie Will Never Set Us Free (Facing our Pain)

I was in a counseling office not long ago, and the sign on the office wall quoted David Foster Wallace: “The truth will set you free, but not until it is finished with you.” The picture with the quote was of a worn-out woman having just gone through the wringer. I grinned. That seems just about right. 

If you’ve ever walked through any sort of hardship or pain or sin (yours or others), you know it’s exhausting and consuming, awful and ugly, confusing and gutting and, if we’ll have it, healing. If we surrender to the invitation to face our pain and uncover any destructive lies we’ve believed about ourselves, God, and others, and submit to the process, we will find that bits of our hearts are freer than they were, and places that we thought ruined are healing. This is what the truth does—it exposes any lie that has held us captive, tells us what’s really true, and then it sets us on a path of healing, setting us free as we go. 

What does this have to do with tangled up, messy relationships? The more we surrender to God’s invitation to face our pain, allowing Him to guide us through the process, all the way, the freer and more mature we become. As we grow up in Christ, we will trust Him more, and the more we trust Him, the more we believe that what He says about us is true: we are secure in Him, loved, cared for, and with us. When we believe what He says about us, as we replace lies with the truth, we will become better at loving other—even when it hurts, even when wounds are still open and people still function out of their wounds. 

So what exactly is this “truth” that will free us over time? Jesus is the truth, and as we read His words and attune our hearts to His ways, His leading, and His Spirit, we will be set free, over and over and over again as God tenderly works on our hearts, for His glory and our good.

Key Application: As pain rises to the surface, view it as an invitation, and ask God if there is something He wants to tell you about it.  Then pay attention.

What painful event, memory, sin, or wound have you avoided facing? Will you ask God now to help you begin facing it, confront the truth of it, and help you surrender to the healing path He would lead you down?