We are coming towards to the end of our little series about family life, marriage, singleness, teenagers, aging relatives, young children, grandchildren, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. I hope you’ve found it helpful, even when the subject matter does not directly apply to you and your current circumstances.
I think there is so much confusion and chaos in our society caused by the steady drift away from biblical values - and so often the world’s ideas get into the church - that I think it’s essential to try and set out a Christian vision for living. If we adopt the common sense approach that we find in God’s word we will save ourselves and others an awful lot of grief.
What I want to talk about this morning is forgiveness in the family.
Actually, this applies to all relationships, but it is in family life where the fallout, when things go wrong, is greatest. In in my experience (over 20 years of church leadership) I would have to say to you that the overwhelming number one cause of pastoral problems and relationship breakdowns and family unhappiness is unforgiveness.
Why Forgiveness is Important
Whoever you are, and whatever kind of family relationships you have, and I include the wider family here, you have to make a fundamental daily choice. It’s a choice that will determine more than any other how healthy your relationships will be.
Even in the most loving families there will be times when siblings, or spouses or parents or children or even uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews upset and offend each other. It’s barely avoidable and often quite accidental. It’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when” we get hurt by others in our family.
Here is a little selection of the kind of thing I mean:
- Have you ever forgotten a birthday or anniversary?
- Have you ever promised a treat to the children, then forgotten all about it or got too tired?
- Have you ever failed to notice all the trouble someone else in the family took to treat you, only to have to have it pointed out?
- Or have you refrained from a hug from a family member because you were in the middle of doing something?
- Did you ever miss your child’s sports day or school play because of an emergency at work?
- Or were you that child eagerly waiting for mum or dad to come and watch you only to feel rejected because they didn’t turn up?
- Have you ever found yourself fighting and arguing in front of the children?
- Or, as a child, blocking your ears as your mum and dad quarrelled.
When you do get upset and hurt by things like that, and you will, you’ll need to decide if:
a) you are going to allow the pain fester away and slowly poison your relationships, or
b) if you are going to deal with it.
This is so critical. Personal hurt and personal forgiveness is one of the key areas where we have to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.
Let me try and illustrate why dealing with stored up hurt is so important.
One of the worst household problems you can have is a blocked drain. Have you ever had a blocked drain in your home? We once had one when I was a boy. The toilets took ages to flush and whenever it rained there was a foul smell all around the house.
We got the plunger out and tried it on the sinks and toilets. Nothing happened.
So we poured an acid-based product down to try and dissolve whatever was blocking the drainage pipes. That didn’t work either.
So my dad took the drain cover off and tried to fish out anything obvious that shouldn’t be there; a dead cat or something - to no avail.
So finally, we called in a professional firm who turned up in a day-glow van. They spent quite some time… drinking tea if truth be told… but eventually they sent some long rods down into the main sewer and poked around until, all of a sudden, there was a satisfying slurp and glug, glug, glug – and all the raw sewage quickly drained away.
Unresolved emotional pain in your family is like that drain. If you don’t deal with daily hurt through forgiveness it’s like you’re pouring wax, cement, lard and such like down the wastepipe over many months.
Dealing with the Issues
In Ephesians 4.26-27 it says “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”
In other words, whatever you do, don’t let a single day pass without dealing with whatever caused you hurt and resolving it before it becomes unmanageable.
The devil hates families. 1Peter 5.8 describes him as “a roaring lion, prowling about, looking to devour.” He wants to split families up and cause as much unhappiness as he can. Don’t let the devil get his foot in the door by lying awake all night with unresolved anger and festering grievances. Sort it out.
When it comes to dealing with anger in relationships, people sometimes talk about rhinos and hedgehogs. Have you heard that before? When they feel under threat, rhinos and hedgehogs do things differently. Rhinos charge and hedgehogs curl up into a ball.
Some people are like rhinos. When they are hurt by someone they want to talk about it immediately. They confront the issues.
Rhinos say things like, “I just need to say that I felt really humiliated when you were joking about me at the party.”
Some people are like hedgehogs, though. When they get hurt by someone, they tend to become withdrawn and a bit, well… prickly. Instead of dealing with the problem head on they go into a sulk. And when the person who has offended us asks “Is something wrong?” we say, “No, no everything’s fine.”
Let’s have a little show of hands. How many of you would say you tend to behave like rhinos? When someone upsets you, you let them know about it and clear the air...
And how many of you would say you tend to behave like hedgehogs? When someone upsets you, you prefer not to complain so you go quiet and stew...
They say that the population is divided roughly 50:50 on this one.
But I think there are more hedgehogs per head of population in Britain than anywhere else on earth. We don’t like to make a fuss. “Keep calm and carry on.” We love that don’t we?
Other countries have noticed this national trait as well. The Italians (who are 99% rhinos!) have a proverb that says “Step on an Englishman’s toes and he’ll apologise to you.” A German friend of mine once told me that German cafés serve their worst beer to the English because they know that they will never complain!
If you are a rhino, you’ll need to learn to express your frustrations graciously.
“I felt wound up when you turned up 20 minutes late after I specifically asked you to try to be on time.” That’s good.
“You’re always late, you never take me seriously do you?” That’s not so good.
If you’re a hedgehog, I’ll remind you of what you probably know already - suppressing your hurt emotions is not healthy because it usually leads to explosions later.
This is why Ephesians 4 goes on to say in v31 “Get rid of all bitterness… and every form of malice.” Get rid of it. Sort it out. Don’t let it fester.
And v32 says “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
In order to keep the family relationship drains unblocked there are three simple steps:
1. Talk about what has caused hurt
2. Be prepared to say sorry
3. Choose to forgive each other and forget about it
Forgiveness Keeps Trust Alive
That is God’s plan for good, healthy families and it builds the kind of trust the Lord intended for family life.
Nicky and Sila Lee in their excellent The Marriage Book (from whom I borrowed and adapted a lot of material for this) talk about trust in family relationships being like the glass in a window. What’s the glass for in these windows? The purpose of the glass is to let light in and keep the weather and noise out.
Window panes can be surprisingly tough; 4mm glass resists driving rain and howling winds and even footballs - but one hammer blow will shatter it instantly.
Trust between a husband and wife, or between a parent and a child, is equally fragile.
The trust that God designed for family life can be shattered in moments through devastating events like unfaithfulness, and angry outbursts or violence. Children are almost always scarred by marriage breakdown.
I’ve spoken to many couples who have no intention of ever getting married because of the heartache they suffered when their own parents’ marriage broke down. But it’s not marriage that is the problem. The Office of National Statistics reports that the problem is actually worse for cohabiting couples. They found that 8% of married couples split up within 5 years of the birth of their first child. The equivalent for cohabiting couples is over 40%.
The problem is a breakdown of trust due to a failure to resolve differences.
It’s challenging to forgive big traumas like emotional abuse, divorce and infidelity – as Hosea found out. God asked him to take his wife back after she had run off as a prostitute. I wonder how he felt. Well, he felt like God feels about us when we go after our idols, that’s the point of the book of Hosea.
Like a brick through a window pane, trust can be shattered through trauma. But most of the time that window just becomes gradually dimmed by a build-up of relationship dust and dirt.
We get our vicarage windows cleaned once a month. It’s amazing how quickly the dust and rain make them look filthy again. They usually need cleaning after a fortnight.
Family relationships also get messy through the accumulation of thoughtlessness.
Just as we need to regularly clean the windows, we need to make sure that little lies and small acts of unkindness and criticism and nagging don’t build up resentment.
If you never give your children an outlet to talk about what they resent, it can tick away like a time bomb and then explode in the teenage years. Children need to learn to give vent to what upsets them, learn to say sorry and to forgive.
Resentment build up in marriage can be lethal as well. The author John Taylor in his book “Falling” wrote this: “Our marriage wasn’t hellish, it was simply dispiriting. My wife and I didn’t hate each other; we simply got on each other's nerves. Over the years we each had accumulated a store of minor unresolved grievances. Our marriage was a mechanism so encrusted with small disappointments and petty grudges that its parts no longer closed.”
Once again,
1. Talk about what has caused hurt
2. Be prepared to say sorry
3. Choose to forgive each other and forget about it
If this three step process had been applied the grievances would have got resolved and the mechanism wouldn’t have rusted over.
Ending
So as I close, one more thought from Ephesians 4.17-18.
I started off by talking about the growing muddle in our society caused by the steady drift away from biblical values.
The Bible says this: “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do,” (he’s talking about people who don’t do God). You must no longer live as they do “in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Darkened understanding that separates you from the life of God, the Bible says, comes from a hardening of the heart; unforgiveness.
Are you letting the Holy Spirit soften your heart so that forgiveness and healing is flowing in your family?
Are you keeping the drains free from the blockages of unresolved hurt?
Are you regularly cleaning the windows of all that petty criticism and nagging and thoughtlessness?
If you want to ask God to give you grace to do this, ask someone on the prayer ministry to pray with you at the end of the service. Maybe you want to take a step and release forgiveness to someone who hurt you. The Holy Spirit wants to bring deliverance today.
Chains be broken! Lives be healed! Eyes be opened! Christ is revealed!
Let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 15th July 2012
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