This December, we’ve been learning how to confront our inner Scrooge with God’s amazing grace. Today, we’re addressing the topic of reconciliation. Perhaps this Christmas season, you have a broken relationship in your life that needs mending: Whether that’s with a significant other, a friend, a co-worker or family member. To start, you should know forgiveness and reconciliation are two sides of the same coin: Forgiveness is between you and God, and must come first. Then, you can start the process of reconciliation: Which means repairing a relationship faced with hurt.
5 BIBLICAL STEPS ON HOW TO RECONCILE A BROKEN RELATIONSHIP
When you think of making peace in a relationship, does someone specifically come to mind? If so, why don’t you give them the gift of reconciliation this Christmas? While it may feel impossible now, with God’s guidance, you can take brave steps towards repairing your broken relationships. To help you get started, below we’ve compiled 5 biblical steps to guide you on your reconciliation journey.
#1) Own Your Specific Actions And Attitudes: First, you can own your specific actions and attitudes. The thing is, sometimes you have to initiate. If you need to, write down what you must confess so when you speak it, the ownership you take is genuine. While you may not be able to change the past, this is a step that God can use to transform your future.
#2) Don’t Make Excuses: After owning what you did, the next step is to refrain from making excuses. See, reconciliation requires you to be vulnerable. While it is human to want to get defensive, when you hurt someone, you have to own the hurt you caused.
#3) Accept The Consequences: Then, after you confess without making excuses, you’ll need to accept the consequences of your mistake. While it’s great to take the first step towards reconciliation, sometimes these conversations just do not go as well as you would hope. That’s ok. Reconciliation is about rebuilding trust. So while it may take time, you can come into the conversation ready to accept the consequences of what you did so you are prepared if the conversation doesn’t go the way you hoped it would.
#4) Make It Right: After all this, if the person you want to reconcile with doesn’t respond well, you don’t have to give up right away. Even if they put boundaries on your relationship, you can try to make things right. See, when you are transformed on the inside, it can help lead to reconciliation on the outside. Think about it: What action steps can you take to help make things right in your specific situation?
#5) Ask For Forgiveness: Last but certainly not least, there is something powerful about humbling yourself to actually ask for forgiveness. While you may feel like you’ve been asking this in each of the previous 4 steps, actually saying it out loud can be a powerful factor to help in the reconciliation process.
TAKING YOUR NEXT STEP
Now that you know the steps, it’s time to take action. Remember: You can’t change your past, but God can transform your future! While we were still enemies of God, Jesus reconciled Himself to us through his life, death and resurrection. With His Holy Spirit living in you, now you can take a bold step towards reconciliation today!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
To learn more from Liquid Church’s A Christmas Carol series, check out these resources:
- MESSAGE: Overcoming Offenses - In part 1 of this series, learn how to confront your inner Scrooge with God’s grace by letting go of past hurt done to you by others. Click here to watch.
- MESSAGE: White Christmas - In part 2 of this series, watch Pastor Tim Lucas preach a message on what biblical forgiveness is and how it is not just forgiving and forgetting others.
- ARTICLE: How To Overcome Offenses - This blog post goes along with part 1 in this series. Click here to read if you want to dive deeper.
- ARTICLE: How To Forgive Someone When It’s Hard - This blog post goes along with part 2 in this series. Click here to read if you want to dive deeper.