While studying the scriptures regarding the healing of broken relationships, I heard the Spirit of God prompt the question: “Are you hoarding or recycling?” I had to ponder this question because it didn’t seem to fit the subject matter of my studies. Yet it did.

The barriers between relationships can be built by hoarding memories of what has gone wrong, or has been perceived to have gone wrong, in a relationship. To hoard means to store something that is precious to our souls, keeping it secretive or guarded. Perhaps we have nursed and held dear to ourselves some unhappy memories, some ungodly feelings, rather privately, and have allowed them to be stored in our soul’s depository.

Recycling requires us to take that which we have stored away and allow it to be reusable to become another material. Good material for healing of relationships is recycled relationship issues that have been relinquished to the Lord for kingdom use.

The process of recycling is reduce and reuse. Unforgiveness must be reduced, that is…decomposed, and only in obedience to the Word of God. Since we have received such amazing grace from our Lord, it is fitting that we submit our soul’s relationship material to Him to be recycled into healing. Only He can take such refuse and make it into something as beautiful as reconciliation.

The question remains: Are we hoarding ungodly feelings towards another, or are we naming them and letting them go into the recycling process carefully prepared by our Lord’s atoning work at Calvary?

“And forgive us our [hoarding] debts, as we forgive [recycle] our debtors [offenses].” Matthew 6:12