Betrayal is one of the harshest realities of living in this world. Anyone could betray you. Your parents, your family, your best friend, siblings, pastors, and friends. No one is immune to it, and the hurt feels like an invisible knife in your heart.
It’s hard to understand why the closest people you thought you knew would betray you. It could make you feel cheated, stupid, even confused. We live in a fallen world, and the nature of man is unfortunately imperfect at its core. This is why every single person, even your pastor, is prone to betray you. We unfortunately can’t put our trust in man, but we can put our trust in God.
Betrayal is painful and needs to be processed; no amount of preaching can make it hurt less when it happens, but we can handle it God’s way and be free from its pain. Betrayal leaves a wound and, if not taken care of by God, becomes detrimental. Just like a physical wound, it can become infected, almost causing a part of you to rot and become unusable. This is why betrayal, like a physical wound, must be treated. Betrayal can happen to you, but it does not need to define the rest of your life.
Keys to dealing with the wound of betrayal.
- Don’t hide it from God. God is interested in every part of your life – literally. You can bring your pain to Him and ask Him to help you deal with it (Isaiah 54:5). Don’t wait until the pain starts to overflow into other parts of your life. Don’t suppress it. Engage it. Be honest with yourself and the Lord about how you feel, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you deal with it. It is God’s will that you prosper and be in good health, even as your soul prospers (3 John 2). Your soul is where the wound of betrayal would like to stick, but the Lord is interested in your soul prospering and being healthy. If He is interested, He surely wants you to come boldly to His throne and obtain help to overcome the pain (Heb 4:16).
- To overcome betrayal, ask God for His perspective. God’s perspective is the ultimate perspective (Isaiah 55: 8 – 9). One thing I have had to deal with is not being afraid of God’s perspective. Hear me out: sometimes we feel like God wants us to just let go of the pain, and letting go of the pain will somehow mean that our hurt was never acknowledged. At least that’s the only perspective that I was taught growing up. But I found God actually agrees that what was done was wrong, or at least that your pain is real; he wants you to know that He sees it and knows that it hurts, that’s why He wants you to come to Him in the first place (Heb 4:15 – 16). In the space of coming to Him, He would like you to see what He sees in spite of the pain. If you can journey there with God, you will be on your way to healing.
- Forgive the one who betrayed you. Forgiveness means deciding not to seek penalty for the wrong done to you (Matt 18: 21- 35). In the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matt 18: 21- 35, we see in verse 30 that the unforgiving servant, though forgiven of a much larger debt, decided to throw his fellow servant in prison for the debt owed him. It was shocking because when we weigh the scales of his debt and the fellow servant’s debt, his debt is much greater. It was like he forgot how much he had been forgiven and wanted his pound of flesh. Unfortunately, that caused him to also go to prison, where he was not only imprisoned but tortured. This is what unforgiveness looks like in the spirit. It is self-imposed torture over nothing compared to how much God has forgiven you. God wants us to leave the judgment of what was done to us to Him and release the people who offended us so he can heal us.
- Find ways to serve as you go through your healing. Joseph, one of the prominent prime ministers of Egypt, was betrayed by his brothers into slavery. He experienced one of the worst betrayals anyone could experience. Yet one thing he did was honor God at every point, even when he was in the valley of his life. At every step, he found a way to serve where he was, even fresh out of the betrayal at Potiphar’s house. It was this heart posture that eventually led him to the manifestation of what God planned for him, irrespective of what seemed like a setback due to his brothers’ betrayal. If you walk your healing journey with God with a heart of service, God will lift you in due time.
Betrayal is not the end of your story if you can submit it to God.