V180
V180
Word4Today Daily Bible Devotional

by Bob and Debby Gass

‘I will restore.’ Jeremiah 30:17 NIV

There are no painless, foolproof guarantees; healing a relationship involves shared effort and risk. I have to trust that ultimately you’ll forgive me and put the offence behind you, and you have to believe that I’m sincere about changing. Healing wounded relationships is a two-person job. Your job is to work at trusting me again, and mine is to provide you with evidence that I’m trustworthy. When we do that we invite one another’s co-operation, encourage each other and shorten the distance that separates us. Making a relationship work means deciding you have real and positive options, and both committing to them.

If your betrayal of trust caused the wounds, you can make your own job easier by becoming more accountable. By voluntarily keeping your partner in the loop about your schedule, without their having to quiz you, you graduate from being the bad guy to becoming a full-fledged team member, pursuing a mutual game plan so you can both win. By agreeing to self-police, you also remove the resentment one partner feels when the other one monitors them. In other words, it relieves them of the dirty work of micromanaging you, and spares you the humiliation of feeling like you’re always under the microscope.

On the other hand, if you are the wounded party you can make your friend’s job easier by letting them know you value the relationship enough to make it work by keeping up your end. Tell them you appreciate their efforts. When healing a relationship becomes the main focus of both partners, and you include God, who said, ‘I will restore,’ it will happen!

SoulFood: 1 Sam 20:30–23:29 Luke 24:25–35, Ps 60, Pr 22:7–11

word4today an adaptation of The Word For Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright 2024

V180 Logo

Tap here to get this reading each day directly in your inbox

Select Specific Day

SMTWTFS
« OctDec »