When our hearts are broken by the sins of our offender—especially over and over—we typically want to do two things …

1. Hurt our offender the way they’ve hurt us.
We might say this is simply to teach them a lesson—so they won’t hurt us or others again. Maybe there’s a grain of truth in that, but that truth in it’s raw form is like a tiny shard of glass from our broken hearts that’s gotten caught, let’s say in our “shoe.” Try to go the extra mile that Christ urges us in Mt. 5:41 with that “resentment rolling around” underfoot as we travel life’s road!

2. Fix the brokenness.
This is when we try to take that shard of glass “in our shoe,” as well as, gathering all the other broken and jagged pieces of our heart that have shattered and scattered at our feet and try to hold the pieces together tightly in our hands. We think our own wisdom, effort and power can put them back together. We don’t really want God interfering here, because we aren’t sure we’ll like the way He wants to put it back together!  And the more we squeeze the pieces in a crazy attempt to “fix” our brokenness, the more our hands ache and bleed.

Last week, I provided a list of questions that would help you process the pain and gain much-needed perspective in your hurts. But even “that” can become something of an attempt to put your broken heart back together on your own, without God’s redeeming touch.

It is not a list of “to-do’s” that will free you here …

It is a willingness to release to God what is broken and damaged, because it’s in our brokenness that He creates His greatest masterpiece!

And since God is patient and wants us to learn to trust Him, He never grabs the pieces from our hands to fix them. He waits for us to lay them down.

So, how do we learn to release to God?

I believe it’s in knowing His character and experiencing His love and forgiveness daily—continually.

The more you know God,* the more you can trust Him to put the broken pieces back together. But this time …

He will turn your heart into a beautiful mosaic that catches the light and sparkles—surpassing the beauty your life held before it was broken!

And the funny thing is, the more you know God, the more you’ll see your heart as broken—not just by other’s sins—but by your own sinfulness!

And it’s in that Cross-section of God’s grace that you’ll be empowered to give forgiveness to your offender—70 times 7! (Mt. 18:22)

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 (NIV)

Be sure to join us on Wednesday when Scott Perkins will be sharing his wisdom on what it truly means to be “one flesh” in marriage.

I will be continuing in this series on forgiveness after the first of the year, so stay tuned!

What hurt and loss caused by an offender in your life feels broken and beyond God’s repair?

What false beliefs get in the way of laying it down before Him?

 *There are many ways to “know God” more completely. I will also flesh this out more in a post in January.

Click the link to read more posts in this Forgiveness Series.