Reconciling Broken Relationships – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Making things right with someone you have wronged or someone who has wronged you is not easy. But when things are right, the joy overwhelms even long years of pain. Today, more practical steps to take to reconcile with another person. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, they say Rome wasn't built in a day and that it takes time to reconcile a broken relationship. Would you agree? And you know, Dave, I would even take that a step further and say that there are some times when you cannot reconcile. I remember being at a conference and mentioning that and giving examples, and it was so freeing for a number of different people who came to me later and said, we have this situation where we've tried to reconcile but it's not working. True, you can try, and there's no guarantee that you'll get the result that you want, but your own conscience will be clear. In my book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience, one of the chapters has to do with impossible people.

Some of you married an impossible person. How do we navigate all that? This is the second to last day that we're making this resource available for you. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOfferer.com. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. The book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience.

Go to RTWOfferer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Don't neglect this opportunity. Wouldn't it be wonderful if your conscience were cleared to walk with joy in the presence of God? Well, I'm following Gary Chapman now. Number three for him is this. How can I make it right? How can I make it right? Now, there's some things you can't make right, but there are other things that you can, and one of those things is what we call restitution. You know, in the 19th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, there's a very interesting story of a man by the name of Zacchaeus, who was a small man, and so he goes up the sycamore tree to see Jesus going by, and Jesus just, apparently from our standpoint, arbitrarily says to him, hey, Zacchaeus, come down from the tree.

I'm coming over to your house. Now remember, he was a tax collector, and tax collectors did not have a good reputation. They really did not.

99% of them made the other 1% have a bad name, let's just say. I think that that floated past you far too quickly. And so Jesus is there, and Zacchaeus evidently believes on Jesus, and he says, half of my goods I'm giving to the poor, and if I defrauded anyone, I'm going to pay them back fourfold. And you know what the next words of Jesus were? Jesus said, salvation has come to this house.

Yeah. You have been converted because of the fact that you have understood the principle of restitution. Now you don't always have to repay five times or four times, but whenever possible, repayment should be made. Let me give you a couple of stories. Here's a man, for example, he's a Christian, and all these stories are true, by the way. Most of them did not happen here in this church, but they are true stories. He loves God, he comes to church, but he was injured in a hunting accident. But when he filled out the form on workman's comp, he blamed it and said that it happened on the job.

Why not? You get a check every month, and you get paid basically for the rest of your life, worker's comp. His pastor found out about it, and this was another pastor, a friend of mine, and he said, you know, that's sin. You have to deal with it. The guy said, do you think I'm crazy?

If I were to go to the workman's comp and I were to explain to them what I did, I could be put in jail. I'm not going to jail. All right. But he comes to church. He wants to sing some of the songs that we sang this morning about Christ alone. Christ is all that I have. He's a saved man. He wants to worship God. But there it is.

So how are you able to worship God getting a fraudulent check every month because you lied and you defrauded the workman's comp? Well, I just bungled along. Yep. Let me give you another example.

John Claypool, 1975. He's a teenager. He kills a neighbor and his wife and for no other reason than to just see what it's like to blow somebody away while he lives with it. He gets married.

He has a couple of children. His wife divorces him and then he gets a Bible and he begins to read and he becomes a Christian. Now the question is what is he going to do? He said it was as if God said to him, if you want my full blessing, you can't have this without confessing it no matter what the consequences are. So he turned himself over to the authorities, was sentenced to second degree murder. I don't know if he still is in jail, but he was given a jail sentence, but I have the actual transcript of what he said and I'm summarizing it for you. He said, I am freer in jail than I was when I was out of jail. The fact that this finally was taken from my conscience, which I could not bear because you go to bed and you think about it, you wake up and you think about it, you put it out of your mind during the day, but during lunch you think about it. And now that all was gone because he had come clean. He said, within the confines of this jail, I have found a freedom that I didn't have when I was out of jail.

Restitution, honesty, desperately wanting to be fully right with God. Let me tell you another true story. Rebecca and I know a man who's very wise. Now he's also old. Sometimes wisdom comes with age.

That's why some of us aren't as wise as we might be someday because we're too young. But let me tell you, here are two teenagers from Christian homes kicked out of a school because of misbehavior and the suspicion that they were into pornography. So he invites them to his house and says, come live with me because he has a redemptive mindset.

He wants to redeem those boys. Well, they come over and they bring their suitcase and he goes up and says, you can stay in this room and I want you to open your suitcase. Well, we can't open the suitcase because we don't know where the key is. Well, that's okay.

I don't have anything to do. I can sit here while you're looking for the key. A little while later, the phone rings, he leaves and he comes back and lo and behold, the key was found and all of the stuff was put throughout the room, the few things that they had. And so he says, okay, where is it? Where is what? Where is it you guys?

Goes under the bed and there's their stash of porn. It was a very wise guy. What he said was, look, here's what we're going to do. First of all, we're going to burn it. Now he was in more of a rural area where you could burn things and that's what should be done to trash. You burn trash. So he said, we're going to burn it, but before we do, we're going to add up the cost of all of these magazines and see what it comes to. And he said, he told Rebecca and me that it was near $300.

So they burn it. Then he says, I have work for you to do. He said, I'm going to put you to work. You're going to work for me and I'll pay you something, not a lot, but enough because you are going to earn that money, that amount. And when you have that amount, we're going back to the convenience store where you did the stealing.

So within time, the boys earn back their money, the amount of money that they had stolen, and they go back and they tell the owner, look, this is the money that we are bringing back for the stuff that we stole from your back room. And the man is smitten in his conscience because, and the wise man, the older man who is with him said, do you really want to be corrupting boys like this? And he said, no. He said, even my wife told me I shouldn't be selling this stuff.

He said, I'm not going to sell this stuff anymore. But just so that you finish the story, these two young men are missionaries today and they aren't just missionaries. They actually had at least in one instance, a mission organization. So my friend today, when you are dealing with teenagers or those who are older or those who are younger and you're thinking of restitution and taking care of the issues, always think redemptively because we serve a redeeming God. And blessed are those, blessed are those who have the wisdom to know how to restore.

Well, all right, now let's go to number four in Gary's book. I want to change. This is now repenting.

I want to change. And we've talked so much about sin and repentance before God and the previous messages. So I'm just going to give that to you as number four and then go to number five. Ask, can you forgive me? Can you forgive me? Can you find it in your heart to forgive what I've done? Whenever possible, it is very important that the person whom you have offended, the person that you hurt be able to say, yes, I forgive you.

That's important in relationships. Now, maybe they won't be able to forgive you. Maybe they'll say, no, I can't. The hurt is too deep or I need more time. Or they may be one of these toxic persons who are never going to offer forgiveness.

But whatever, what you are seeking is the forgiveness that should be extended to you, hopefully, if you ask for it. You know, there are so many situations. Can I tell you another one? True story. This woman comes to us and here's her story.

Okay. She and her husband have three or four children. He leaves, runs off, gets married to the woman of his dreams. But now the children are in school and they have various events that they need to attend to and are involved in. And he as their father wants to participate in their kids' education and their children's work at school and so forth. So he comes to his ex-wife and says, well, why can't we just be friends?

I mean, can't we just go out together after the play and, you know, I know that I'm with my new wife, but why can't we just enjoy, you know, each other? Let the past be past. In this instance, I wrote him a letter.

I wish I could find it because I believe that God gave me very specific wisdom for him. I said, you know that your ex-wife wants exactly what you do. She also wants to be able to go out and let the past be past, but she can't act as if nothing happened. Never any asking for forgiveness.

Never hint that maybe he did something wrong or offended her and betrayed their marriage and destroyed their relationship. Oh no, let's just pretend that it's all okay. You know, I mean, let bygones be bygones. Let the past be past. Not so fast.

Not so fast. What I'd like to do is to give you a couple of bottom line comments here as we apply this to ourselves. First of all, asking for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness begins with receiving forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness begins with receiving forgiveness. And so if you're listening today and you don't know that you've been forgiven by God, some of you say, well, I've confessed my sins.

Well, I'm fine. But what you need to do is to receive Christ as savior because confession only takes care of past sins. You need a relationship with God that will endure forever. And that doesn't happen just through confession.

We explained that in a previous message. But isn't it wonderful to know that God is a redeeming God and the God who knows all about us and all of the details invites us. And as we get to know one another and our sinfulness and our proclivity.

I don't think I've used that word in years, but it seems to fit here and our proclivity. So our proclivity to sin. We exercise the same grace that we have been shown in Jesus Christ our Lord.

That's the standard and that's what we must do. Now, Gary Chapman tells a very sweet story in his book that I have to repeat. And that is that his little granddaughter came over to their place. I think her name was Davy Grace and she was about five or six. And she asked whether or not she could have some stickers. And her grandmother told her, yes, you may have three stickers. She knew the drawer in which they were any three you want, but only three. Well, pretty soon stickers began to show up all over the house.

And so they went to her and they said, you know, you were told that you were only to have three stickers. You disobeyed grandma. And the little girl began to cry and she said, I need somebody to forgive me.

I don't care who you are. You and I need somebody to forgive us. And thank God that in Jesus Christ, he sent somebody to forgive us. And he can cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If you've never received Christ as Savior, that's the beginning point. And then you can talk about reconciliation. Secondly, we will reconcile. We will reconcile when our desire to be right with God.

This is absolutely critical. I hope if you're writing, this is the place to write. We will reconcile when our desire to be right with God is greater than our pride and our reputation. When the hand of God is really on us, we will reconcile when our desire to be right with God is paramount. And that's the stuff of revival. The early seventies in Canada, there was a great revival that swept Western Canada. I actually wrote a book about it, though it is, that book is out of print now. And the great way in which the revival caught the attention of the world was all the people who were coming back to make things right.

I mean, the Canadian equivalent of the IRS was being sent checks unasked for. You had people going back to stores. You had all of these things happening because God was working mightily and the world was definitely convicted.

I mean, I'm thinking of my own sister-in-law who went back because a 99 cent bag of potatoes was on the bottom of her cart and it wasn't seen. And now she goes to the manager and confesses. And he says, either it's my lucky day or something's happening in this town. You're the second person that has come to me today to confess. Well, something was happening in the town because people were so desperate to be right with God. They said, even though my reputation, you see the reason that God blesses people who reconcile, you know, in Matthew 18, it says we're two or three are gathered together.

There am I in the midst. Why does Jesus say that there? It's not talking about a prayer meeting though he is there.

He's talking about reconciliation because it is the final way in which God humbles us. And who of us has not been humbled because we've needed to confess. I can think of many instances.

I'm going to tell you only one. And that was in when I was in seminary, we had to go to the chalkboard. This prof had us and we had to write out some Greek verbs over here and you know, the various forms of the verbs. I was never good at languages. I liked the philosophical, big idea theology.

Now that's better. But the guy next to me, whose name was Paul, who's a missionary today. I knew that this guy knew Greek. He had a facility for languages. So I just stepped back from the board a bit and I saw his thing and I wrote it down later on in seminary a week or so later.

Forget the timeline. We're having communion. And during this communion service, the Holy Spirit so convicted me because of my cheating.

I'll tell you when the service was over, I beat him to his office, waited for him and said, I want you to know today that I cheated. And he was very forgiving because he knew that the temptation being on a chalkboard close to somebody else is great. But I think of another man who taught me chemistry actually in high school. He was a person who was in church as often as the pews. I mean, they were there all the time as a family. He taught Sunday school. He was in the leadership of the church. But when he graduated with a master's degree years earlier, he had cheated on a term paper.

I won't go into detail how the cheating happened. From our standpoint, it wasn't that big a deal. But he said that when he walked across the stage to receive these honors, it was as if his feet were as heavy as lead. But he received the honor, worked in the church for 20, 30 years. But now the Holy Spirit was working and he was going to really pray to God for his daughter.

I mean, just not a little God bless her. I mean, this was and the Holy Spirit seemed to say, Henry, don't bother. Why would God say don't bother? Henry, you're regarding iniquity in your heart. There's something that you need to make right.

And then you come to me and pray. He went back to the university, confessed what had happened. And he was willing even if they took his degree away, because the desperation of wanting to be right with God was more powerful than his own humiliation as to what he went through.

I'll leave you with a final comment. Sometimes we must risk it all, particularly our reputation. Sometimes we must risk it all to have radical transformation where we simply say, for the good of my conscience, for the good of God, so that he can bless me abundantly, I will take care of this, no matter the cost.

Some of you need to take care of things. And you may not know exactly how, maybe you can receive counsel from someone whom you respect and is wise to walk you through it. But blessed are all those who have a conscience free of offense before God and before man.

You can't straighten it all out, but you can straighten it out to the best of your ability to be free. Father, help us. We ask Lord Jesus that as this word goes out, there are all kinds of people dealing with you right now, all kinds of issues that are coming up. We ask, Father, that whatever the cost may be, we may humble ourselves broken in your presence and be willing to say, Lord, whatever, whatever. Oh, Father, do that.

Even as I've experienced conviction in my life, bring that to all who have outstanding issues. We ask in Jesus' blessed name. Amen.

Amen. Wait a moment now before we close this prayer. Would you talk to God for just a little bit?

What did he speak to you about? Are you going to follow through? Are you going to say, God, by your grace, I'll do it? How many of you here in the sanctuary today would raise your hands and say, by God's grace, I'm going to do what God showed me? Do you see those hands? Yes. It's wonderful to see all through the sanctuary.

Balcony, folks, you're not exempt. Do I see your hands? Look at that all over. God help us to do what you show us in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you. You know, my friend, I wish I could sit down with you personally and have a talk about your past, about the injustices that you have received in your life and the injustices that you have done to others so that together we might discuss a path forward.

But I can't do that. But I do have a book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience, where I discuss these matters. And this is the second to the last day when we're making this book available for you. I love it when people connect with us. Someone says, I was in a bad mood on the bus home because I had a fight with my husband that morning. I began to listen to Running to Win, where you spoke about relationships in the family, forgiveness and love. I came home and my heart was full of love. We resolved our differences.

Well, that's why Running to Win exists. It exists for transformation of life. For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you. Here's what you do. Sure hope that you have a pen or pencil next to you. You can go to RTWOffer.com.

That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And I'm going to be giving you that contact info again because remember, this is the second to last day we're making the book available for you entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience. Deals with forgiveness before God, but also before others. Deals with impossible people.

What do we learn from them? How do we navigate that? Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com.

Of course, RTW offers all one word. Or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. The devil tells believers many lies to get us into the bondage of having a defiled conscience. Next time, how to combat those lies and walk in victory. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.