Did you know that your circulatory system is fascinating? I personally believe that all of our many organ systems, which keep us alive and active, are fascinating. I marvel at the creativity of the Lord for days on end as I study the detailed care with which we were knit together. For now, let’s talk about the circulatory system. The circulatory system is responsible for carrying blood throughout your body. So what, nothing fascinating about that, it’s just blood. The intriguing thing is that the physical and the spiritual are two parts of the same whole. They are intertwined and interwoven. Let’s consider how forgiveness and unforgiveness can be likened to the circulatory system.
For our conversation, let’s define the circulatory system in these ways:
- The circulatory system consists of three main components: the heart, veins, and arteries.
- Its purpose is to deliver nutrients, oxygen, and remove waste, thereby supporting the function of all the other organs and systems throughout the body.
The heart is at the center of this system’s function. The heart beats to push blood throughout the body. If the heart stops beating, blood stops moving. Veins are responsible for bringing cell waste for filtering and removal, as well as returning deoxygenated blood from all parts of the body to be reoxygenated and cleaned. Arteries deliver nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood. Another way to think about it is that the veins carry “dead” blood full of the body’s waste and carbon dioxide, and the arteries carry “living” blood full of nutrients and oxygen.
Spiritually speaking, releasing unforgiveness and being filled with forgiveness is similar to our own circulatory system. Jesus is at the center of it; He is the heart. Without him, it all stops. We release unforgiveness and self-protection to Jesus and are filled with forgiveness that we can then share with others. Much like the “living blood” delivers oxygen and nutrients to all the parts of our body, filled with the Spirit, we can become the delivery system of grace, mercy, hope, and love to all the people we encounter.
What do you think would happen if the body’s circulatory system mixed the cell waste with the nutrient-rich blood because it refused to filter out the dead blood? We wouldn’t last very long; every system would start to shut down and die. This is precisely what unforgiveness does to our spirits. Unforgiveness is like the harmful waste being carried through our preverbal veins. If we hold onto it instead of releasing it, the unforgiveness gets deposited into every place the blood touches: our thoughts and beliefs, relationships, reactions and responses, and finally our ability to hope and love. Even Johns Hopkins found that unforgiveness will decay our spirit and stress our organ systems, wreaking havoc on our lives.
Identifying the Problem
In November 2020, Lysa TerKeurst published a book titled Forgiving What You Can’t Forget. That summer I attended She Speaks, a writers conference for women, where Lysa shared that this new book was due to hit the market before Christmas. I could not wait to read it. Probably not for the reasons you are thinking. I couldn’t wait to read it because she had suffered a great deal of hurt in her marriage, and she chose to stay and to forgive – mindblowing. But God. God used this book to highlight the vein of unforgiveness in my own heart.
Some of you may be thinking, “Easier said than done. I just cannot let it go. If you knew what they did, you wouldn’t expect me to forgive them.” If that is you, don’t bristle or lose heart. I confess that I am a very strong-willed, highly self-protective person who has also muttered that sentence under my breath.
Seeking Help
As I became aware of the unforgiveness I nurtured, I sought counsel on how to forgive from trusted advisors and other resources. Some common themes I was confronted with were:
- Forgiveness will be a natural response if you genuinely believe in Jesus. 1 Corinthians 13:6-7, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
- If you knew how much you were forgiven, you would forgive freely. Luke 17:1-6. Matthew 18:21-35
- Forgiveness is for you, not the person who has wronged you. Unforgiveness will harden your heart. Ephesians 4:31-32, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
- Forgiveness is a commandment; you simply must. Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Colossians 3:13, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
- Holding onto unforgiveness is a choice, and with every choice we are transformed either into the likeness of the Devil or the likeness of Christ. Unforgiveness transforms us into Satan’s image.
I must confess that I found most of these to be woefully unhelpful. More often than not, I felt attacked and shamed, rather than free from the burden of unforgiveness. I seriously began to question my salvation. Asking myself, “Why is this so hard for me? Why can’t I just let it go?” Maybe you have also been told a “simple” answer to a complicated question and are left feeling like an outsider. Shame is not an accusation from God. Shame is an indication that you are believing a lie about something. I have come to realize that most of our struggles begin when we have a wrong view of God or a wrong view of ourselves in God.
One Degree of Glory, to the Next
It wasn’t until someone asked, “Have you asked God what you are wrongly believing about Him or you?” that something clicked inside of me. A couple of weeks later, at church, our pastor’s message focused on repentance. For whatever reason, it struck me that when I pray (and I pray often throughout the day), I do not invite God into my day, situation, or event. I pray at God. My relationship with God lacked “withness”. Do you know what I am talking about? Do you have a friend who thinks you are their best friend, but you don’t consider them one because, despite how often you talk/see each other, there is no invitation to get into each other’s lives? There is no depth. To have a deep, vulnerable relationship, you must be willing not only to share your whole self but also to allow the other person to speak into your life and have an impact on it. Looking back on all these years, I cry out, thrash against, and believe with all my might, but I rarely allow God the opportunity to speak or show up. I say what I need to say and move on with my day.
None of the above advice or counsel is wrong; I just wasn’t rightly related to God in a way that allowed me to receive it. Remember, transformation is the Lord’s; we have no power to transform our hearts or renew our minds, which means that we also have no power to will our behavior or thinking into alignment with Christ’s. It is the Holy Spirit who unveils our faces – only when the posture of our heart is ready to receive the truth on the other side of that revelation, 2 Corinthians 3:18. The lie that I most often believe about God is that He will leave me without warning, meaning that I am not safe with Him. The lie that I most often believe about myself is that I can slip from His hand and that, maybe, I was never in it to begin with. Matthew 7:21-23 haunts me. Have you ever stopped to ask God what lies you are believing about Him and yourself?
Now, when I find myself in these places of shame or feeling stuck, I ask God two questions:
- “What lie am I believing about you, Lord?”
- “What lie am I believing about myself, Lord?”
The Wrap Up
Recently, I heard it said that when God speaks, it is reality. For example, in Genesis 1, when God said “light,” light came into being. When God said “land and water,” land and water came into being. And so on and so forth. Can we try to reorient our view of God’s words as reality? What if they are not just flimsy sounds with no form or structure, not an idea or philosophy that dies in the wind, but something as real as the chair I am sitting in? Everything changes. Doesn’t it?
After the resurrection, anytime Jesus walked into a room, He would say, “Peace be with you.” Imagine peace is a person or a place that can be touched! It fills the space. When I asked the questions above to the Lord, he said clearly, “I am safety.” In believing that His words are reality, I could instantly step into safety without clinging to a single thread of self-protection, which is the lie I hold as truth about myself (I believed that only self-protection could keep me safe). Forgiveness has become easier now that I believe that the Lord is literal safety and I am in safety. The hurt still hurts, but now my broken heart is full of compassion and empathy.
While this post is about forgiveness, this process of seeing God rightly and yourself in Him rightly can affect all aspects of your life. Perhaps it is not forgiveness for you; maybe it is anger, anxiety, gossip, or a sense of joylessness. The blood of Christ covers us so that we are seen spotless and blameless – holy in the eye of the Father. What does your spiritual circulatory system look like right now? What lies are you holding as truth? What shame has you stuck right now?
Father God in Heaven, thank you for each and every one of these readers. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit unveils their faces to see you and themselves rightly. I pray that they can step into the reality of who you are and who they are in you. I pray that the weight of this day is released and that they know how loved, cherished, and cared for they are. It is in Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.