Ok, so say my neighbor Jon borrows my car, and when he brings it back, he says, “Thanks for letting me borrow your car. I got into a little fender-bender, but I got it repaired and re-painted.” He shows where the dent was, and you can’t tell. The body-shop did a great job. He’s repented, and I forgive him.

But am I going to let him borrow my car again? Probably not. Yeah, he fixed it, but now my car’s been in an accident. Cars never drive quite the same afterward. The trade-in value’s decreased. Even though he fixed it, I’m feeling like I didn’t get the better end of the deal here. Interactions with other people have a scale, and in this situation, the scale’s tilted away from me.

I’ve forgiven Jon, I don’t hold it against him, but the relationship has a boundary it didn’t have before. It’s not the same relationship.

So how does Jon repair the relationship to the place it was before? That takes more than repentance and forgiveness.

So rewind. Suppose when Jon brings my car back, he says this instead: “Thanks for letting me borrow your car. I got into a little fender-bender, but I got it repaired and re-painted. While it was in the shop, I had them take out your AM/FM radio and put in a 6-disc CD changer, with a 10-speaker, surround-sound, premium sound system.”

Now can Jon borrow my car again? Absolutely! And I hope he gets in an accident! Maybe I’ll get spinners next time.

My neighbor repaired the relationship by tipping the scale back in my favor. I got the better end of the deal. That’s restitution.

That’s what it takes to repair broken relationships. A sacrifice on our part, over-and-above repentance, blessing the other person, tipping the scale in their favor, so they come away feeling like they got the better end of the deal.

When we do this, we have to look at it from their point-of-view. It has to be something that blesses them, not just something that would bless us. So ask the Holy Spirit, “Lord, what can I do to truly bless the person I’ve hurt?” Then go with your first thought – God will always answer that prayer.

And you know what? If we will make that sacrifice when we hurt others, God will pay us back and tip the scale in our favor. I’ll take that.

Kudos to John Sandford, founder of Elijah House Ministries, for this great illustration.

Today’s Action Step: When I realize I’ve hurt someone, after repenting and changing my behavior, I’ll ask the Holy Spirit what I can do to bless them, to tip the scale in their favor so they feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.

Can you relate? Have you or someone else repaired relationship by tipping the scale with restitution? Tell us in the comments or an email. And please, if you think this would help someone else, share it on social media with the buttons below.

Forgiveness can be really hard. Especially when you’ve truly been grievously and unfairly wronged. Especially when the perp is unrepentant and their bad behavior continues. But it’s so important, because our unforgiveness keeps us in prison, not the other person.

It’s a process, not a single event. It can be a long process, one that we keep going back to – forgiving again and again – layer after layer – going deeper and deeper.

One exercise that can significantly help us along in this process is re-profiling the person. No single person is wholly evil – only Satan and his demons have that distinction. So there is something good about the person. Rack your brain and find those things. If you just can’t, ask the Holy Spirit; he’ll tell you. Then write it down.

Re-profiling is not pretending they didn’t wrong you. Along with any good qualities you can find, re-profiling can include the deceptions they’re living in, and the pain in their lives that’s deceived them to act they way they do.

The goal here is to write down how God sees the other person, which is not necessarily how they are behaving, but how he made them to be. So then when we fall into bitterness, we go back and read our re-profile of them. Read it out loud – let your ears hear your mouth say it. It’s powerful.

Then you start thinking of the other person in terms of how God made them, versus what they’ve done. Because they are not the evil they did to you. Wrapping our mind and heart around that last sentence is the essence of forgiveness.

Re-profiling makes this much easier, and it’s very freeing. Try it! Let us know how it goes in the comments, or send us an email.

When someone has seriously wronged us, it’s really easy to put them in the Bad Guy Chair while we sit in the Good Guy Chair. They go together – if we put them in the Bad Guy Chair, we are putting ourselves in the Good Guy Chair. And if we put ourselves in the Good Guy Chair, we’re holding them in the Bad Guy Chair.

Getting us to climb up into the Good Guy Chair and stay there is one of Satan’s greatest deceptions. Nothing will get our spiritual growth stuck faster than sitting in the Good Guy Chair. Because the Good Guy Chair has another name – the Victim Chair. And unforgiveness holds us in it.

Here’s the deception: We don’t think of ourselves as being unforgiving. We may have even overtly “forgiven” the other person. But secretly in our hearts, we haven’t. We still consider them the Bad Guy. Our unforgiveness holds them in the Bad Guy Chair, which holds us in the Victim Chair, which arrests our spiritual growth right there. It condemns us to a life of bitterness and victimization. Who wants that?

The catch is, the only way out of the Victim Chair is to release the other person from the Bad Guy Chair. But wait! You don’t know what they did to me! It was really, really bad!!! Yes it was. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiveness doesn’t mean minimizing it to seem less bad than it really was.

Yes, they did something horrible to you. Hold them accountable for it with whatever (godly) means are at your disposal. Press charges if it’s a criminal act. Confront them (speaking the truth in love). Set (godly) boundaries so they can’t hurt you again. Holding them accountable helps them out of the deception that caused them to do that thing to you in the first place. It also protects future victims from becoming victims.

But here’s the point: They themselves are not that horrible thing they did to you. It came out of their own pain and their own deceptions that they are living under, which you probably have no idea about. That does not justify what they did, and they are accountable for it. But coming to the realization that they are not the thing they did to you is the essence of true forgiveness.

Is this ringing a bell? Have you gone through the process of forgiveness? Is this something you’re working through? Tell us in the comments or shoot us an email. We’d love to hear from you.