A thought by Andy Stanley (2015-01-06) from his
book, The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating (p. 91). Zondervan.
Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
What Andy is dealing with here is the last part
of verse 5 in 1 Corinthians 13 (NLT) which says, “Love…keeps no record of being
wronged.” He talking about people who
are record keepers and he is saying that love doesn’t do that.
Does your spouse do that? Did you have a parent who did that? Do you do that? That isn’t love, that is a relationship killer
and that is a power play. It’s not love.
Andy says, “Love chooses not to keep dousing the
present with the past. Besides, it doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t move the
relationship forward. If one of your parents was a record keeper, I suspect you
gravitated relationally toward your other parent, didn’t you? Whose influence
were you most open to? The filer’s or the forgiver’s? Who did you feel closest
to? The filer or the forgetter? Funny how that works. Nobody gravitates toward
humiliation. The path to influence is paved by acceptance, not truth.”
He continues, “A person can be exactly right and
end up exactly alone. Filers can always justify their truth telling, but
eventually they will truth the life right out of their most valued
relationships. You don’t want to be reminded of your failures. Your love
interest doesn’t want to be reminded either. So stop with all that.”
Now he adds, “Do behavioral dots need to be
connected? Do patterns need to be examined? Sure. By request only. By a
counselor. By a friend over coffee. But not by a spouse or significant other.
Filing doesn’t foster love. Forgiving and pretending to forget are your best
bets for sustained romance. I say pretending because, well because, there are
some things we won’t ever forget. But there’s no point in bringing them up.”
That is very good stuff. In other words, don’t rehearse it, release
it. Let God have it, let Him work on it.
So what is it that you need to forgive and
pretend to forget?
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