Sticks & Stones 2 – Will Past Hurt be a Foundation for Growth?
One of the stones in our lives that are different but common is being hurt by someone else. These hurts can be a weight that we sometimes do not even realize we are carrying. It may seem that we are handling the weight and out of nowhere we get knocked on our butt and all that hurt comes crashing in on us again. I was thinking if we looked at the life of Joseph for a minute we might see a way to drop this particular rock.
Joseph was born the eleventh son of Jacob. Jacob favored Joseph over his other sons and it began to wear on the older brothers. One day when they were in the field the brothers talked of killing Joseph and getting rid of him. As they were talking Joseph comes up and they grab him and throw him in a pit. They could not decide whether to kill him and as they argued a slave caravan came through and they decided to sell Joseph so his blood would not be on their hands. They took his coat and told his dad that a wild animal must have killed Joseph.
In Egypt Joseph is bought by a man named Potiphor who has a wife who takes a special interest in Joseph. She makes advances and Joseph resists. One day she decides she has had enough and grabs Joseph, but when he runs from the room she yells rape and he is thrown in prison. In prison he meets a wine taster and a baker who had displeased the king. The two have a dream and Joseph tells them what it means. In a few days the dreams come true just like Joseph said. He asks the men to remember him to the king, which they do not do.
The king has a dream and no one can tell him what it means, and then the man remembers Joseph telling him his dream. He tells the king and is released from prison and works the plan the dream showed him. He is promoted to second in the kingdom of Egypt and when the famine hits the kingdom has grain to trade with the entire world. I know, I know what does this have to do with forgiving hurt? I’ll get there just keep reading.
Joseph’s family needs grain so Jacob sends the boys to Egypt to and the boys have to ask Joseph for grain. Remember the last time they saw him he was young. It has been years and he is the last person they would expect to see. Joseph recognizes his brothers and it hits him. That rock drops on his chest and he clears the room and weeps. Maybe he had forgotten, I mean not really. How could you forget that your brothers sold you to slave traders? He has a choice to make. He can get the ultimate revenge on them for his hurt. He hides who he is from them, but eventually he reveals himself and they are scared to death. Joseph decides instead to forgive and let them go.
He decides to drop the rock instead of carrying it with him from that day forward. How did he do it? How could he look at his brothers and say, “What you meant for evil, God used for good.” Amazing words when you know his story. Let’s take a look at the two things we can do with people who hurt us.
We need to change the way we think about the people who hurt us. Being a follower of God requires that we change our thinking about several things. One of them is being hurt by others. The Apostle Paul talks about this in the book of Romans. “If someone does wrong to you, do not pay him back by doing wrong to him. Try to do what everyone thinks is right. Do your best to live in peace with everyone. My friends, do not try to punish others when they wrong you, but wait for God to punish them with his anger. It is written: “I will punish those who do wrong; I will repay them,“ says the Lord. But you should do this: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. Doing this will be like pouring burning coals on his head.“ Do not let evil defeat you, but defeat evil by doing good. Romans 12:17-21 (NCV)
God wants us to change our thinking from seeing these people has hurtful and see them as simply people who have made a bad choice. In fact, God wants us to good to those who do wrong to us. It means not to be mat to be walked on, but to be aggressively forgiving others and to stand up for yourself. We have to decide if we want to be weighed down by the weight of not forgiving others. Will you not go out of your way to pay back a hurt? Can you say their name without a sweat breaking out? Will you decide to drop the rock?
Secondly, changing your thinking about the stone of hurt can give you a foundation to build on. Our hurts can become a weight or a foundation by how we choose to think about it. It is to change not how we feel about others, but how we view a hurt that we sometimes nurse for years. Peter writes to believers and says, “Do not do wrong to repay a wrong, and do not insult to repay an insult. But repay with a blessing, because you yourselves were called to do this so that you might receive a blessing.” 1 Peter 3:9 (NCV) What if we change our thinking from that hurt becoming our story to it being a part of our story that helps us build a better life? You do that by realizing that forgiving leads to a blessing for us. We stuck because we think it is letting them off the hook, when really it is us taking the hook out of our mouth and swimming free again.
When we realize that a hurt may have scars and pain but that leads to growth and healing. Dropping the stone of hurt will lead to a straight back, more life and a chance to be better than we were before we changed our thinking. So the truth about forgiving others begins when we change our thinking about hurts. They are not “Our Story”, just a part of our story. Don’t let a hurt stay in your arms and hold you down and back from the life you could live.