I admit the Bible can sometimes be difficult to interpret and understand. However, when it comes to the command to forgive, the Bible is very obvious in what is expected of Christians. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your sister or brother has something against you leave your gift there in front of the alter. “First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift,”
—Matthew 5:23-24.

It is next to impossible to have an open heart, receptive to God’s will, if we are in serious conflict with others. God desires a sincere gift, not tarnished with unreconciled differences and past hurts. We are responsible to make sure people we have offended, or been offended by, are freed from the bondage’s of anger, vengeance, or hate.

So is anyone excluded from receiving our forgiveness? According to Matthew 5:44-48, even our enemies are worthy of forgiveness:

“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”.What a verse! Again it touches on the very nature of our incredible God who is merciful and gracious to all. We are called to be perfect, “as your heavenly Father is perfect”. Understanding that we cannot be perfect while existing on this planet, the verse is calling us to strive for Christ’s perfection. Christ’s willingness to love those who were unlovable. To care for those who were prostitutes, thieves, and yes, even tax collectors. To forgive those who most offend us. Why our enemies? God knows how much unresolved anger kills the spirit within, and designs this command to help free us from eternal regret.

No one is to be excluded from our forgiveness. Some of the greatest verses exploring the complexity of forgiveness are Romans 12:14-21. We will quote the passage at length because of their foundational quality regarding forgiveness:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live I harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary:
‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’”.We are encouraged to bless people who persecute us. To some Christians, and probably many nonChristians, this seems very masochistic. Bless our enemies! Sure, if we were Christ maybe we could pull that off, but we are human. Remember, being human means we are created in God’s image, therefore we have the capacity to pull this off. Trust in God that this humanitarian rule serves to better the human condition rather than defile it. Think of all the hate crimes that never seem to find a resolution. This idea of blessing reminds us of turning the other cheek. Evil begets evil and love begets love.

In the passage we also read, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”. When I first read this passage I imagined that forgiveness and love toward those who hurt us is painful for the perpetrator. My mind wanted to believe that loving and forgiving made evil people suffer. However, this was not Christ’s message. In further study I learned the custom of placing hot coals on someone’s head was actually a kind gesture. A surprise to me! I’m not sure how I would receive someone placing hot coals on my head. But it was a different time.

Placing coals on someone’s head was helpful because it kept the weary traveler warm throughout the cold desert nights. It was a way of honoring someone. This is why we are commanded to forgive. Remember the “Golden Rule”? We need to do for others what we would want done to us. Would we want someone to refuse to forgive us because we sinned against him or her?

1. Become soft and tender with the person. The first step is to become soft in your mind and spirit. Lower your voice and relax your facial expressions. This reflects honor and humility; and as Proverbs 15:1 suggests, “A gentle answer turns away anger …”

2. Understand, as much as possible, what the other person has endured. It’s important to genuinely understand the pain your mate feels and how she has interpreted your offensive behavior. Ask for her interpretation of what occurred. The goal is to listen and understand what your mate is feeling. Resist defending yourself, lecturing, or questioning why she did or didn’t do something. The best way to accomplish this is by using the “Drive-through Talking” technique described on p. 18.

3. Admit the person has been wounded and admit any wrong in provoking that hurt. The third step is to take ownership of your offensive behavior. A person feels valuable when she hears you admit your mistake, and sees that you understand how she feels. Sometimes this is all it takes to open a closed spirit.

4. Touch the person gently. If you try to touch someone with a spirit knotted in anger, you will find out just how deep the hurt is. The first response may very well be a stiffening or pulling away—but persistent softness expressed in meaningful touches, like the gentle massage of a knotted muscle, can go a long way toward draining anger and negative feelings.

5. Seek forgiveness—and wait for a response. The final step is to give the person the opportunity to respond to your confession. Ask if she could find it in her heart to forgive you. You’ll know true restoration has occurred when forgiveness is granted and she allows you to touch her.

Don’t you think that marrying the son of a world famous Christian marriage expert would be a good thing? I (Amy) thought so as well. But I couldn’t have been more wrong! I am not being mean, I’m just being honest. Michael and I found ourselves after 6 months of marriage at a place where divorce felt like an option. We were miserable and we could not see the light of day through all of our constant fighting and avoiding each other. I would yell and then Michael would run away. This seesaw of emotions made life and our marriage miserable ““ dare I say – horrible. We easily could have been one of those “starter marriages”, where a young couple gets married and divorced in less than a year’s time.
What was wrong with us? I would love to share all the things Michael was doing to make matters worse (but those are coming in the next chapters, a whole bunch of the next chapters but since this is a book about taking personal responsibility, I guess I should stick with how I was hurting the marriage and contributing to the brokenness and misery of our first 6 months.

You see, it all started the day I was born. Unfortunately, as you learned earlier, we are all born in to sin. This sin manifests itself in many ways. But the one way I want to focus on for this chapter is the sin of blaming. When things go wrong in marriage it is easy to look across the kitchen table and focus on all the things our spouse is doing wrong to make the marriage miserable. But reality is that we are both doing things wrong and by focusing on Michael’s brokenness, I made things worse.

One of my most favorite things to say in those first six months of marriage was, “I wouldn’t be so angry and yell if you wouldn’t “¦..” Another way to say this was, “You make me yell! I don’t want to yell, but you keep messing up!” I had convinced myself that I was a victim of Michael’s unhealth. I truly believed that I was in the right to yell because Michael was making mistakes left and right. In essence, if Michael would only behave I would not have to yell. In my mind, I was actually being forced to yell at Michael. I was not my fault, but Michael’s fault! Whew, this meant that I was as good of a person as I thought I was. Blaming Michael meant that I was less at fault for our bad marriage. The only problem was that the relief I felt for blaming Michael only seemed to make our marriage worse. This attitude of mine did not help the marriage, it hurt the marriage. The problem with sin is that everyone has a problem with it. Which means that I was equally at fault for what was going on in my marriage. I was not a victim of Michael’s unhealth, I was a victim of my own unhealth.

When we say, “It’s not my fault!”, we take on the attitude of blaming. In this chapter we want to unpack blaming and show you how it destroys the chance of a happy marriage. Let’s start our exploration of blaming with the first person to ever blame. Adam. In one of the greatest examples of blaming to ever be recorded Adam said to God in response to getting caught eating the apple, “The Woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and, yes, I ate it.” What an awesome example of blaming! The eating of the apple was the first mistake man ever made, and with the first mistake ever made man chose to blame both God and women! Very little has changed since Adam uttered the first blame. But how interesting that the first sin was also accompanied by the first blame.

As Adam was faced with his own mistake, he reached down deep inside himself and pulled out “the woman you gave me”. The God of the universe, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everything had just asked Adam if he’d eaten from the tree he was told not to eat from. Instead of taking responsibility for his action, Adam chose to blame. And not just blame, but actually accuse God of being the real culprit behind his own mistake! It wasn’t enough for Adam to simply pass blame on to his wife, he also tried to get out of trouble by blaming God! “You made her God, so if you hadn’t made this woman I would never have eaten that apple. I don’t want to blame you God, I’m just saying…” As Mike Golic from ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio show would say, “Just stop it!” Stop it. These are powerful words when dealing with the blame game. Ben Reaoch wrote a great article on blaming for John Piper’s blog. Reaoch wrote, “Making excuses like this is arrogant and foolish. It’s a proud way of trying to justify our actions and pacify our guilty consciences. And it keeps us from humbling ourselves before God to repent of our sins and seek his forgiveness.”[i]

Why doesn’t blaming work? Why did it hurt us during our first six months of marriage? Because blaming disconnects us from God and others. Blaming is a reflection of our pride. It is our pride that will prevent us from seeing the truth in our marriage. The truth that we are just as messed up as our spouse. We like to say there are two kinds of people in this world. Those people who are “normally dysfunctional” and those people who are “specially dysfunctional”. Notice how there is no one free from dysfunction. There are just different levels of dysfunction. Normal dysfunction is like you and us. Normal people trying to make their way in the world and trying to do the right thing. Specially dysfunctional people are those who do the truly evil things in life. James 1:13-15 says:

Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way.14 The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.15 Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

James leaves us with our own junk. We are never allowed to blame God or others for our actions. We must take full responsibility for how we respond to people and circumstances. When we take responsibility for our acitons we are humbling ourselves before God and man. Our marriage can thrive because we are taking on the burden of creating an environment for our marriage to succeed. We want to be happy, so we choose to be happy. We don’t allow the foolishness of our spouse’s mistakes to impact us beyond the immediate.

But why does it feel so good to blame our spouse for the problems in our marriage? We deal with this very issue when couples in crisis come to our Marriage Restoration Intensive program here in Houston. Couples come from all over the country to get help with their marriage. Almost 100% of these couples come because something is wrong with their marriage and their spouse. We can not think of a person who has come to an intensive with the attitude of, “this is what I have done wrong.” It is almost always something more like, “This is what my spouse has done wrong.” There are three main reasons why people love to blame their spouse for a broken marriage:

It comes quite natural to us. (Genesis 3:12)
It makes us feel better about ourselves
It takes the focus off our own sinfulness.

We have already discussed how blaming is a natural reaction to sin. Adam provided a great example of blaming in action. Because God created us with the freedom to choose, we could choose poorly. Blaming is a poor choice to any situation. It only leads to further problems and heartache.

Blaming makes us feel better about ourselves because we can justify our response to sin against us. When our spouse does something that is wrong, and then we choose to react poorly, we can feel bad about our poor reaction. However, if we blame our spouse for our bad reaction, we do not have to feel as bad. Unfortunately, this does not last very long because it is a flawed response. Feeling better because of blaming our spouse does not work. It actually leads to even worse feelings of bitterness and unforgiveness. The cycle of blaming does not improve our situation, it always makes it worse.

Lastly, when we blame our spouse for the problems in our marriage, it takes the focus off our sinfulness and puts it on the sinfulness of our spouse. This kind of thinking leads to us being judgmental. If you ever read anything Christ said in the New Testament, you know that being judgmental is the last thing you want to be:

“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eyes when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend,s `Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you. (Matthew 7:1-6 NLT)

Blaming does not work because it keeps the cycle of sin spiraling out of control. Our spouse will treat us the way we are treating our spouse. Jesus’ words in Matthew are so important. When we worry about the sin in our spouse we are merely highlighting our own sin! In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say that our sin is worse than the sin of the person we are focusing on. We can not waste valuable energy focusing on what is wrong with our spouse. We need to save that energy to use on our own problems. The more energy we use focusing on our spouse, the less energy we have to deal with our own stuff.
This is the reality for any person in a marriage, “It is my fault.” No matter what is going on in the marriage, we can always find something we could have done better. We are not blaming you for mistakes your spouse makes.

All we are trying to say is that by focusing on your spouse’s mistakes, you are making the marriage less happy and making yourself more vulnerable to the consequences of blaming. We need to start asking ourselves, “What could I have done differently? How do I need to change in my life to make this marriage better?”

When we can ask these questions, we are on our way to a happy marriage.
[i]http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1281_12_Sins_We_Blame_on_Others/

I admit the Bible can sometimes be difficult to interpret and understand. However, when it comes to the command to forgive, the Bible is very obvious in what is expected of Christians. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your sister or brother has something against you leave your gift there in front of the alter. “First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift,” Matthew 5:23-24.

It is next to impossible to have an open heart, receptive to God’s will, if we are in serious conflict with others. God desires a sincere gift, not tarnished with unreconciled differences and past hurts. We are responsible to make sure people we have offended, or been offended by, are freed from the bondage’s of anger, vengeance, or hate.

So is anyone excluded from receiving our forgiveness? According to Matthew 5:44-48, even our enemies are worthy of forgiveness:

“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

What a verse! Again it touches on the very nature of our incredible God who is merciful and gracious to all. We are called to be perfect, “as your heavenly Father is perfect”. Understanding that we cannot be perfect while existing on this planet, the verse is calling us to strive for Christ’s perfection. Christ’s willingness to love those who were unlovable. To care for those who were prostitutes, thieves, and yes, even tax collectors. To forgive those who most offend us. Why our enemies? God knows how much unresolved anger kills the spirit within, and designs this command to help free us from eternal regret.

No one is to be excluded from our forgiveness. Some of the greatest verses exploring the complexity of forgiveness are Romans 12:14-21. We will quote the passage at length because of their foundational quality regarding forgiveness:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live I harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary:
‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’”
We are encouraged to bless people who persecute us. To some Christians, and probably many nonChristians, this seems very masochistic. Bless our enemies! Sure, if we were Christ maybe we could pull that off, but we are human. Remember, being human means we are created in God’s image, therefore we have the capacity to pull this off. Trust in God that this humanitarian rule serves to better the human condition rather than defile it. Think of all the hate crimes that never seem to find a resolution. This idea of blessing reminds us of turning the other cheek. Evil begets evil and love begets love.

In the passage we also read, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”. When I first read this passage I imagined that forgiveness and love toward those who hurt us is painful for the perpetrator. My mind wanted to believe that loving and forgiving made evil people suffer. However, this was not Christ’s message. In further study I learned the custom of placing hot coals on someone’s head was actually a kind gesture. A surprise to me! I’m not sure how I would receive someone placing hot coals on my head. But it was a different time.

Placing coals on someone’s head was helpful because it kept the weary traveler warm throughout the cold desert nights. It was a way of honoring someone. This is why we are commanded to forgive. Remember the “Golden Rule”? We need to do for others what we would want done to us. Would we want someone to refuse to forgive us because we sinned against him or her?

Let me tell you how anger worked its damage in the life of a friend, Larry, who for nine years, was angry at me. He tried to say the anger would go away, but it didn’t.

At one time we were great friends. Then I sensed there was a wall between us. We were still casual friends, and I attributed any distance between us to the fact that we no longer lived in the same city; we now lived halfway across the country from each other. And anyway, I figured if there were anything between us, he would talk to me about it.

Well, not long ago, I was staying in a hotel in the town where Larry lives. While I was there, I got a call from him. “We’ve got to talk,” he said.

“All right,” I answered, “about what?”

“I’ve been upset with you for about nine years now,” he answered, amazing me. As he went on, I was even more appalled. “I’ve been really angry with you all that time, and I can’t shake it,” he said, his voice quivering. “I’ve tried to tell myself I would get over it in time, but it won’t go away. I think about it a lot. Now it’s affecting what I do in my job and my other relationships too. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I have to get this thing resolved. Can we meet?”

Words like that from a friend make you sick to your stomach. As Larry spoke I asked myself over and over, What did I do? What does this involve? Of course I agreed to meet with him.

We got together at a restaurant, and there the story came out, though it took about five hours. Larry cried, I cried, and at one point it got so emotional that his nose started bleeding. One messy scene! But he finally got out this deep anger he had been carrying for all those years.

The problem had grown out of a decision we had made nine years before: Together we were going to confront a guy with whom we both had major disagreements. This was a very serious situation, and we were both equally upset. We went to see the man, and when we got there, the guy said to me, “I’ll discuss the problem you and I have with each other, but I’d rather not have both of you ganging up on me.”

So I talked it over with Larry, who agreed to leave the conversation—and the scene. I remember, as we parted, telling Larry I was sorry and that we would talk later. But as things turned out, Larry thought I had sided with the other guy and deserted him as a friend. I had actually doubled Larry’s anger. I left him with his anger toward the other person unresolved and unintentionally I also added hurt to his anger.

So Larry walked away thinking, How could Gary have done this to me? We were going to talk to the man together, and he just discarded me like I’m not of any value. Yet I had never understood what I had done or how my friend felt about it until that day in the restaurant.

When I heard his feelings and how the incident had affected him for nine years, I grieved deeply. I had not intended to give more loyalty to our adversary than to my good friend.

Fortunately, our relationship was healed that day. We cried together, hugged each other, and sought each other’s forgiveness. The anger was finally drained out of my friend but not before he had suffered depression and other signs of unhappiness for nine years. And since that time, we’ve gone on to develop a deeper friendship than ever before.

Some might say that Larry was overreacting and in time would have gotten over it. That’s what he had thought would happen, but it didn’t. There are thousands of people who wish they could shake off the effects of old offenses, but the truth is, many just can’t. And because they aren’t able to get over it, the damage continues inside them, sometimes for years.

Most of us bury our anger so quickly that we don’t know what we’re doing. Then it does its sneaky damage. It often leads to our lashing out at others. Or it gets turned inward, where it can become depression. Some may pretend it’s simply not there, but it is.

In 1990 one of the world’s most famous prisoners was released from Robben Island Prison, Nelson Mandela.  Mandela then went on to win the election for President of South Africa becoming the country’s first black president!  That’s right, South Africa, which used to be known as a nation of haters because of their Apartheid government was now run by a black man.  This man, Nelson Mandela, if you allow his principles and life’s work to sink in, can truly save your marriage.  How? What I love about this post is that I do not even have to make a stretch on how to relate the ultimate work of Nelson Mandela to the saving of your marriage.

When Mandela took office I can remember wondering if he was going to go about the business of paying back all the harm done to blacks in South Africa through Apartheid.  It would make sense, right?  The way blacks were treated for generations in South Africa was disgusting, cruel, and on a level with evil.  As a white American, I can not even begin to relate or understand what it must have been like for blacks during Apartheid.  So it made sense to me that they would go after all the main leaders of the hate and punish them severely.  No mercy!

Strangely, Mandela did not promote the idea of “getting back” at all the people who were leaders in Apartheid.  In fact, he did just the opposite.  He issued the strategy of Reconciliation.  He wanted his country to move forward, no backward, and to do this he knew the only way was to forgive and reconcile with the enemy.  This is not a history post of all the details of Mandela’s policy of reconciliation, but it is important to note that his policy worked.  I’ve personally been to South Africa three different times, and I can assure you that things in that country are very different, and for the better, since Mandela took over and lead the way to lasting and authentic change.

How can Mandela save your marriage?  One word, reconciliation.  If your spouse has hurt you through an affair or lack of interest in the marriage and you decide to hold that against your spouse, then things will never get better.  If you are consistently holding the mistakes of your spouse over her head, then you will never recover and experience the joy and healing power of reconciliation.  Reconciliation is the only way to move forward in any relationship, but especially in the relationship with your husband or wife.

Reconciliation is not only forgiving someone for their mistakes it is a decision to move forward and go about the work of repairing the damage done in the relationship.  Charles Hauss had this to say about further defining reconciliation, “However, almost everyone acknowledges that it [reconciliation] includes at least four critical components identified by John Paul Lederach — truth, justice, mercy, and peace.”

Each one of the four components of reconciliation work beautifully in saving a marriage.  If your marriage is stressed out, then first start with the truth.  Keeping secrets does not grow couples closer together.  Secrets push you further a part.  When we keep secrets from our spouse, we are denying access to our full selves.  When we deny access to ourselves, fully, then our spouse will feel disconnected.  No one wants to feel disconnected.  Truth is about loving each other enough to have integrity, even when it is going to hurt.

Justice.  At first this word might feel scary.  It did to me.  But justice is not about punishment.  I am understanding justice as being more about love.  In the context of marriage, justice can be doing the right thing and standing up for the marriage even thought things are not going well.  Justice is about doing good and avoiding harm.  Justice fits with reconciliation because it moves us forward and does not take us backward toward revenge or hate.  Justice says to me, “I want this to work, so what is it going to take?”  Justice is doing good for your spouse and not punishing.

Mercy and peace are easy ones to see in the process of saving a marriage.  If you can not have mercy toward each other, you can not have peace.  What does every couple want when going through a crisis?  Peace.  But before peace we must have an attitude of mercy.  Mercy is when we decide to love our spouse even though we are not being loved back.  Mercy is about making a loud noise with our kindness, graciousness, and humility rather than our shouting, blaming, or pride.  When we are merciful, our spouse will respond in kind.  It is the natural law of human relationships.  Be good to others and they will be good to you.  When mercy is running at full speed, peace is not far behind.

Peace is the idea that you can live together in harmony and enjoy each other’s company.  Who doesn’t want that in a relationship? Peace is the goal.  Peace allows us to sit back and relax on the pleasure of our relationship.  There is no crisis in peace.  If you want to save your marriage, then spend your energy on reconciliation.  Spending energy on bitterness or unforgiveness will only make your life more miserable.  It does not have to be that way.  You have a choice through the power of one to really turn your attitude around.  If you clothe yourself in reconciliation, then you will be setting up the marriage to thrive!