Most of us have been conditioned to believe we have to start a New Year with a clean slate, a fresh start, where everything from the past year is settled and we begin anew. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if we can’t solve all relationship issues and make all things right before the stroke of midnight?
Many of us experience fractured relationships where, as much as we try to repair and mend them, it just doesn’t happen, and our efforts to reconcile and fix things, a.k.a. to restore friendly relations, seem to make them worse.
Sadly, in today’s chaotic world, broken relationships and lack of reconciliation in families have been making the headlines, like Micah 7:6 explains, “For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies are the members of his own household.”
We’re seeing more and more of what Mark 13:12 describes: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”
Tragically, increasingly, we’re hearing and seeing attitudes like those first displayed in Genesis 4:9: “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”
Apostle Paul Encourages Peaceful Living
The Apostle Paul encourages us in Romans 12:18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
But what if, as much as we’re praying and trying, we’re not able to achieve it? Sadly, many of us tend to beat ourselves up when we’re not able to reconcile a relationship or situation, even believing that God is disappointed in us. But if we’ve been working towards reconciliation, God isn’t upset with us. He knows what it’s like to have efforts of reconciliation rejected.
Since Adam’s sinful fall, no one knows better about reconciliation than God, who took action to reconcile the whole world to Him. In Colossians 1:19, Paul explains, “For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.”
Paul explains in Colossians 1:21-22, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
God Created Reconciliation and Understands How It Works
Consider how God made the ultimate sacrifice, through the death of Jesus, to reconcile us with Him, yet some refuse His gracious offer and walk away from reconciliation.
So even if we receive forgiveness, forgive others, or ask for forgiveness from someone else, we can’t make reconciliation take place. Still, as Ephesians 4:32 urges, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
God understands and knows that if we are reaching out and looking to reconcile, it takes more than our efforts to achieve it. As a hospice chaplain, one of my husband’s goals is to help families reconcile in the time they have left on earth before it’s too late. But sadly, sometimes it doesn’t happen, and individuals leave this earth with loose ends, unable to tie them up before leaving.
4 Ways to Move Forward in a New Year after Failed Reconciliation Attempts
Like God, we may not see reconciliation come with people before a New Year begins, so instead of starting out feeling like failures, the following are four ways to move forward in the New Year minus the condemnation:
1. Recognize we’re only ambassadors.
Although it’s true that we are God’s ambassadors for reconciliation, He only holds us responsible for our efforts and not for the outcome.
As 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 explains, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
If we’re fulfilling our calling to cultivate and foster reconciliation in the world, we can move forward and leave the results to God. As 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 explains. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2. Rely on God’s truth.
In some cases, individuals want us to give our blessings and accept choices they’ve made that we can’t do because of our Christian faith. Not because we don’t love them but because it doesn’t line up with God’s will.
Nowadays, acceptance is seen as loving someone despite their behavior and not accepting their behavior is seen as hate. But it isn’t true, because love is more than accepting whatever someone decides to do. Love is sharing God’s truth with them and wanting His best for their lives, even if it’s not what they want themselves.
We’re to rely on and hold steadfast to the truth of God’s Word and keep praying for those who reject us because of it. Romans 12:14 urges, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”
3. Realize time is fleeting.
James 4:14 describes the brevity of life: “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
The enemy of our souls wants nothing more than to trip us up for the rest of our lives and have us focused on failed attempts to bring reconciliation to relationships rather than moving forward in our faith. But life is short, and God wants us to keep our focus on our future with Him.
Paul in Philippians 3:13-14 urges, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
4. Receive God’s comfort and rest in His love.
Broken and lost relationships are heartbreaking, but when we can’t fix them, we need to give those heartaches to the Lord and rest in His love for us. Psalm 33:22 assures us, “May Your loving devotion rest on us, O Lord, as we put our hope in You” (BSB).
More than any of us, God understands the deep sorrow of broken relationships. Scripture speaks often of God being near the brokenhearted and binding up their wounds. Like Lamentations 3:22-23 describes, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
As well, Zephaniah 3:17 comforts us with, “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing” (NKJB).
New Year, New Hope
With a new year comes new hope and opportunities to bring reconciliation to relationships and hope to a spiritually lost and broken world.
The Apostle Peter encourages us in 1 Peter 1:3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Photo Credit: ©Pexels/Alex Green
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, StartMarriageRight.com, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.
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