When it comes to relationships, there’s a clear difference between good leaders and great leaders. Good leaders know how to build relationships. Great leaders know how to restore them as well.

Not every relationship soars with uninhibited freedom; most experience turbulence. When an immature leader experiences a relational setback, he tends to cut his losses and move on. But the seasoned leader says, “Not so fast.” Great leaders think twice before severing a valued relationship. They recognize that losing such bonds also means losing a piece of themselves.

For those pursuing a life of forgiveness and restoration, here are three things to remember about the nature of the conflict.

1. The enemy wants to turn something temporary into something permanent. Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, faced a series of losses that would have reduced any normal person to a pile of dust and despair. After losing her husband and two adult sons, she concluded that God was against her.

Naomi could have spent the rest of her life in deficit and sorrow. If not for the intervention of Ruth, negative labels would have kept Naomi bound.

Satan knows exactly how to leverage bitterness and alter your legacy — if you allow him to do so.

Satan knows exactly how to leverage bitterness and alter your legacy — if you allow him to do so.

2. The measure of your maturity is not your inability to offend, but your inability to be offended. We live in a diseased world of disrespect and offense. It seems as if no one has the resiliency to overlook a wrongdoing. Everything is personal.

It’s impossible to live in freedom when you’re easily slighted. Jesus predicted that some people would hate us (Matthew 10:22). But Jesus also engineered His church to withstand mockery, rejection, beatings, false imprisonment and martyrdom.

3. You have to cleanse the wound before you close the wound. The good Samaritan poured both oil and wine into the wounds (trauma) of the Jewish man he found beaten along the roadside. This kind of cross-racial compassion was unheard of in Jesus’ day.

The oil soothed, but the wine must have felt like a thousand bee stings. Why did the good Samaritan choose to confront death with pain? The wine was necessary to kill the bacteria. The same holds true for emotional trauma. God pours both truth and love in our wounded hearts. Along with the oil of God’s love that comforts, we feel the stinging sensation of God’s truth killing Satan’s bacteria in our hearts. Love closes the wound. Forgiveness cleanses the wound.

Scott Hagan is lead pastor of Real Life Church (Assemblies of God) in Sacramento, California. This article originally appeared in the April/May issue of Influence. For more print content, subscribe here.