After Effects

Yesterday I blogged about having the Corvidvirus and how I felt about the telephone calls my wife was receiving. I confessed I was angry about it. So I feel God is trying to teach me something.  Here is a scripture that comes to mind and troubles me in Matthew 6:15 it says: But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours. I understand why I feel the way I do. Their actions have damaged the relationship between me and them. In a way, they owe me something. There is a debt that occurred. They may not even have any idea of how I feel, but I am not sure how I would describe the base feeling. I know I felt angry but always there is something beyond the anger. I thought back to Andy Stanley's teaching on relationships and here I see the relationship between me and them has been damaged, and they may not even know it. My Bible teaches me I need to forgive. There is no other way to interpret that scripture.  I feel angry towards them, there has been a transgression of sorts. I may be the only one that knows about it. As a Christian, I need to forgive. I don't know right now if that is the only step needed to fix the damaged relationship or not. It is my step, and perhaps until I forgive I may not know what the next step is. I have prayed about it, I know the Bible enough to know just from this one scripture that to forgive is a core value of a Christian. It is not always easy.  the thing I see is how easy it is for a relationship to get damaged and one does not even know what they did to damage it. I have had a lot of trouble with relationships over the years. I see it in my family, it is like a generational curse. Another thought is we hear so much about winning. I think this is a losing proposition for me. I have to give up what is owed to me. In order to heal a damaged relationship, I need to lose. Then I think isn't that what Christ modeled for us? He gave everything, his very life for our sins. There was no win for Christ. He lost. Is this the principle that is taught in Ephesians? For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her. (NLT) Ephesians 5:25.  I think this means we lose as Christ gave up his life for the church for us. He lost.  I don't think there is a win /win situation in this. Christ lost so we could have a relationship with him. If I want to heal relationships, I think sometimes we just have to lose the debt that is owed. Maybe it is all the time. How many times have you seen a relationship go downhill because one person gets hurt and the other person may not even realize they did anything wrong and there is no forgiving of debt and it snowballs downhill. Sometimes I think we just have to lose. I feel I would do more damage by just explaining how I feel. I need to forgive. It is a core value of a Christian. God bless, LVZ.