The Lookout Weekly Podcast
This podcast contains the weekly messages from Church of the Lookout in Longmont, CO. The Lookout is a Spirit-filled, Christian church that is following Jesus into a life of awe-inspiring love.
The Lookout Weekly Podcast
Family Blessings Pt. 6 :: Forgiveness
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Thanks for joining us today as you listen to a portion of the message recorded at Fine Life Church in Boulder, Colorado. If you'd like to connect with us further, you can visit us online at www.finelife.com.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. You are our hope. You are our hope. You came. And you rescued us. You pulled us back from the brink. You made us acceptable. You set us free from shame and guilt and fear and death. And instead you brought love. You brought kindness. You showed us your goodness. And you do that every day. How good it is. How good it is to be able to call on your name. How sweet it is to know that you've walked the ways we've walked. And you know what we're experiencing. And you lift us above that. Thank you, Jesus. There's no circumstance bigger than you. There's no power greater than you. You're so good. We just praise your name. Praise your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Karen, could you come up? Welcome. Karen up, she's got something for us today.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to apologize for not being articulate before I start. During worship this morning, um, God brought my attention, reminded me of a um series that I've been listening to on um God being with us in the midst of our storms. And this person who gives these talks was saying that we need to know that God has never said he would leave us. He's never, there's no reason for us to believe that he would not be with us in the midst of the storm. And while we always ask, take it away from me, he promises he will be in the midst of the storm with us and he'll walk through it with us. He has promised us that he would never forsake us and he would never leave us. So this was brought to my mind this morning while we were worshiping, and this the song that we've just sung came to mind, and all I could remember of the song was that in the silence of the grave, the roaring line, he roared. And um, he roared life. And I think what God really wants me to share is that he doesn't want us to have a mantle of being victims or weak or sorry for ourselves in our storms. He wants us to take on the mantle of that lion, he wants us to take on the mantle of being a warrior and standing strong as we walk through that storm, knowing that we are not alone. We have the lion that roars, that roared from the grave with us.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Amen. We're gonna pause for just a moment here. Um, you know, about a little more than 400 years ago, a poet named John Dunn wrote something, a line that's come down through the ages, and what it was is he said, no man is an island. All of us are part of the main. And the death of one diminishes us all. And the reason I bring that up is in this last week we've seen some 40 people killed in mass shootings. And undoubtedly, those events will bring a lot of how comes? How come this happened? And what about what about can we do this? Can we do that? I'm not talking about that this morning. What I'm talking about is this in this last week, many, many more than 40 people lost a father. Or a mother, a child, a sibling, a co-worker, a friend, a parent. When this kind of thing happens, it touches so many lives with such a terrible shadow of trauma. All these people went to Walmart or they went to the arts district in uh Dayton, and they plan to come home. Probably many plan to be in church this morning. And they're not making that trip. Something intervened here, and we leave that to the sovereignty of God. But what we care about is those that are left behind, and that's who I'd like to pray for this morning. Will you join me in prayer? Holy Spirit. You're our advocate, you're our counselor, and you're our comforter. And this morning, our hearts go out to all the people whose lives have been impacted by this terrible thing. All to those who are bathed in tears this morning and disappointment and fear and hopelessness, Lord. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you would come, that you would bring the comfort of heaven to everyone who's touched by this, to everyone who sees it on the screen and thinks that could have been me. To everybody involved, we ask for a release of comfort over this entire nation. We ask that the eyes and hearts of people would turn to you and you would call them to Jesus. Because that's the real answer. It's Jesus. So in the days and weeks ahead, help us to remember to pray for those whose lives have been devastated by this. To lift them up, to lift their families up, to lift their circumstances up, that they would see you. Everybody said. Amen. Amen. Okay. Usher is could you come, please? It's time to receive the offering. And um. I always love this. This is like, I don't know, maybe for some of you it's a point of pain. For me, I love it, man. It's it's such a great chance to be able to honor God for all that He's done for us. And that's the Spirit. It's not about duty, obligation, any of those things. It's just about honoring for what we've received. So if you would, and we give in many different ways. We always say this. You can text, you can go online, you can set it up in your bank account, or you can bring it here, you can put it in the box in the back of the room. Whatever works for you, because whatever works for you works for God. So if you would, take your gift if you have it with you today. And let's pray. Lord, you told us to not worry about what we're gonna wear, how we're gonna live, what we're gonna eat. You told us all those things will be taken care of by the Father who sees us. And so, Lord, today we don't give with a sense of fear or a sense of reluctance or a sense of concern. We give with a sense of joy. And so, Lord, receive these gifts and bless them in your name. Amen. Amen. About um, gosh, 15 years ago, sixteen years ago, I was at this dinner in Longmont with a whole bunch of students from Ninth Hour. And some of you'll recall we had a leadership training school here called Ninth Hour. And many of the people who lead in our community today are graduates of that program. It's a really amazing the fruit that that program bore. And at the dinner I met this lady, and her name was Sarah Hargedeim. And uh I'd never met Sarah before, uh, but over the years I've had the opportunity to see her and to see some of who she is. Um I think by vocation, Sarah is a teacher. Uh Sarah and Joe have led a house church. They still lead a house church, an amazing house church. And this church is not just vine life people, okay? It's a broad, diverse group. Sarah and Joe have been to the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. They've prepared themselves. And I think Sarah is one of the most amazing teachers. Now, you check me out on this because Sarah, would you come up, please? Welcome, Sarah.
SPEAKER_03On now. All right. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Um I'm excited to be here, and I do feel like the timing is really key for what God gave to me. I sensed this message several months ago, and Luke kind of expressed, hey, this is awesome, but I don't know what the timing is for it yet. And I got a couple more layers of revelation as we've been in the midst of this um series on family for why the timing is now for this particular message. So I think it's what God's up to. Um, so I'm gonna pray, and then we will jump in. And the way that I've been praying this week over each person that would be here today is, Lord, um, would you give me your love for them? Because out of the overflow of my heart, my mouth will speak to them. And I am carrying you guys this morning in the place where the Lord is inviting us into deeper vulnerability and deeper intimacy and deeper unity when all of those things can be really scary. So I carry the hearts of every place that has felt unsafe. Hear, Lord, that your love for those places would be deposited into me and that that would be released in this message. Your love for our hearts and our broken hearts would minister this morning. That's what we want in Jesus' name. Amen. So I'm gonna start by reading um if a little portion of Ephesians 1 that we've been in, and we're gonna zoom in on one part of it. And so it says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise for spiritual blessings in Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment. And this is key right here. This is kind of the so that place to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. This is for the sake of unity. And the part that I want to zoom in on this morning is the forgiveness of sins. Uh, we get really used to that phrase. Um, and it's really like such a loaded phrase. Uh, because I think it's like that kind of familiar language, right? That we can get used to saying something like that and really needing to pause and unpack what does that mean for unity? What is the forgiveness of sins? If that's what he gave us for unity, what does that actually mean? And we've been talking about how doing family in the church is different than doing family elsewhere, right? We've got um the places where we've been given sonship and adoption, and that we're called to have a different level of standard for doing family. And that's what some of these previous messages have been speaking to us. But I also want to speak to the fact that if unity and family is what we're after here, then the forgiveness of sins has to look different. And how do we unpack what that means for the standard in the family of God? It's important to know that forgiveness of sins often looks like kind of like our ticket out of hell, right? That's kind of like the thing that had to happen so that we could go to heaven. But really, what he's saying here is that forgiveness of sins is for the sake of unity, it's for the sake of relationship and connection. And what happened on the cross when he said it is finished and all debts were paid was that the veil was rent. So the prophetic act of the forgiveness of sins was intimacy into the Holy of Holies. It was unity, it was relationship. So forgiveness of sins is not the end, it's the means to the end of relationship, intimacy, unity, and connection. And this isn't just about our forgiveness of sins with our stuff, okay? We're gonna explore what this looks like in the forgiveness of sins for sins that have been committed against us. Family is really beautiful. It's where we get to have empowering places, it's where we get to be called into who we are, but it's also ripe with opportunity to be really hurt. And so we think of opportunities like maybe, you know, some we haven't had any point of connection in terms of people inviting us over for a long time. We reached out and we didn't get a phone call back. Um, we found out someone was gossiping about us behind our backs, or that there's been judgments about how we showed up. Um, even things as serious as like abuse, neglect, even within our own biological families, there's all these opportunities for sins against us. And when that happens, it's our initial reaction to put up guards and to put up walls to keep ourselves safe, right? So we put ourselves out vulnerably in our family, whether it's the family of God or our biological family, and we're hurt and we're wounded, and we say, no, that's not safe, I'm done. And there is an immediate breach of unity. There's an immediate breach of connection and safety within our family. And typically we kind of keep that place as a way to protect us. But if we're learning how to be in a different standard in this family, we actually have to respond differently when it comes to that breach of safety and that breach of connection. And what I believe God is inviting us into is keeping our love on in vulnerability in the midst of being really wounded. But there is a way to do that inauthentically, and there's a way to do that authentically. And a lot of us choose really inauthentic ways to keep our love on. We've been taught religious structures and religious nomenclature for doing this. And what I want is what I want to focus on is that we cannot ignore the nature of God and our nature in the midst of being in injustice towards us. When we have been hurt, victimized, ignored, or abused, there is something in our very nature that says that's not okay. So if we invalidate that, we're invalidating something in our nature. So it's that's not an authentic way to show up. So I want to look at a couple scriptures that focus on so if we're to reflect God's nature in the midst of family, if he's our father model, what is he like in the midst of justice and injustice? So the first scripture I want to go to is Isaiah 42, 1 through 4. Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on the earth. So we know that this is a reference to Jesus and how Jesus would show up on the planet. And what's important to note here is that we knew Jesus would be in a New Testament model. So it was going to be important, even in the New Testament, that there was justice. Jesus was actually going to fulfill something about injustice and justice. And sometimes it feels like we do this kind of Old Testament thing where there's just a ton of grace in the New Testament, and we don't really know what to do with the law and justice and wrongdoing, right? But what we have to own is that God said the nature of my son was that there would be just things moving. There doesn't get to be injustice anymore because of who Christ is and the family. That's what my sonship is going to bring. And then we know that in Hebrews it says the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his nature, upholding all things by his powerful word. And we carry that name, right? We know that we carry the name Son. And so if we're carrying that nature of justice, I can tell you that authenticity for you is gonna show up like a need and a desire for justice. And that's okay. We're gonna unpack more of that and what that looks like. So let's look like let's look at another scripture in Psalm. Psalm 9, 7 through 12. The Lord reigns forever, he has established his throne for judgment, he rules the world in righteousness and judges the people with equity. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you. Sing the praises of the Lord enthroned in Zion, proclaim among the nations what he has done, for he who avenges blood remembers he does not ignore the cries of the afflicted. He does not ignore your cries when you have been afflicted. That's really important in a family culture. Because if you're gonna stay in unity and vulnerability with those around you, you're going to have to be okay and validated and seen in your cries of affliction. It will be hard to keep your love on in a family that you don't get to carry this nature for I you told me you made a promise that there would be justice. You made a promise that you would hear my cries when I was afflicted. You're carrying that in your DNA because you're wired like God. We know we're created in his image, and you carry the DNA of his son. Okay, so he wants to bring freedom to those who have been afflicted. What does that mean when you've been victimized in the family, when there's been abuse or trauma, or there has been sin committed against you? You. The part of you that carries God nature, God's nature, knows and feels this and cries out for justice as well. So I want to look at the parable of the persistent widow because there's two ways to kind of unpack how do we do this? How do we do this authentically when it feels so unsafe? Um, so it's in Luke 18, 1 through 9. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, In a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, grant me justice against my adversary. For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night, will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Okay, I always thought this was such a weird question at the end. Because he's saying, Okay, there's going to be justice, I'm going to grant, there's been a sin against her, I'm gonna write it, I'm gonna correct it, but will there be faith? And that, like, why is faith connected to that? Why is faith connected to the process of justice being granted? And why does the Lord wonder will there be faith on the earth to perceive the justice that I am giving? Right? That seems like what is what is the linkage there? And as I started to unpack this, um there is an injustice against us and we've been victimized or we've been hurt, the bottom line is something was taken, something was robbed, something happened that shouldn't have, or something didn't happen that should have. That is not not real. That is real. And so we we we don't need to dismiss the reality of that need and that cry in our heart. Um, and this creates this lack of safety, right? We know and we feel the debt, but in this place, we're often told forgiveness is a choice that you make. You choose to forgive that debt, you choose to forgive that grievance. And I would like to push back today and say that in the midst of this parable, I believe God's showing us that forgiveness is not meant to be an act of your choice and of your will, but of your faith and the nature of the judge. So the second thing I want to explore, so that's important because what it comes back to is not necessarily um the outcome. And the Lord told asked me, he said, Sarah, why do you think that I left out the part of what happened for the widow? And why didn't I speak to what happened to her afflictor? Like, what consequence did I throw down, and what like justice did I do? And you know, you're kind of always like, I don't know why. And he said, because a lot of people perceive that justice will come in the outcome. Um, but really, where the widow felt justice, this is what he said, because she didn't feel justice in the midst of an outcome. She felt justice in the midst of being seen and being heard by the judge. Forgiveness is an act of faith because it won't necessarily feel like punishment or payment, but it will feel like being heard by the judge. So it's a shift in a paradigm that says I'm not necessarily going to lock into what justice will feel like in an outcome, but I do get to have faith that the judge is gonna see me. The judge is gonna hear me and know me here. Know what I've been through, know that there was something taken. The judge will know that I have been hurt and there is a debt on my behalf. Now we know the nature of our judge is to meet that place, is to say, I do care about justice for you. I do care about you feeling seen and heard in the place where something was taken, where you weren't known, where you were mistreated. He's not invalidating that. He's validating it, not necessarily through a punishment or a consequence, but in a place where you're seen, you're known and you're heard in the midst of what happened to you, in the midst of your abuse, in the midst of being victimized, and and and in the midst where it hasn't been safe in your family, whether it's here or in your biological family, right? Um, so let's look at how I want to look at one more um scripture on how this piece of like justice, faith, and righteousness are so interconnected in scripture. And this is Romans 3, 21 through 4.8. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known. So here's what's important: apart from the law. The law will not cut it for you to feel justice. And your choice to obey the law to forgive will not cut it for you to feel justice. It will not bring the righteousness that you're looking for. It's gotta happen apart from that, okay? But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness, this way of things being made right, is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. See, this is the thing. That when sin happens against us, he's not just going to let it go. That's good. That's good nature, right? That's a good judge. It doesn't mean that we're looking for like prison for 20 years, right? But it does mean we're looking for. Have you heard me? Have you seen what happened? And that's the part that I was carrying you guys all week. Just like places that have not been seen, places that have not been heard or known, that you're you're coming to the judge and you're like, Will somebody see me here, please? And he does care about it. Um he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works, no, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith, and guess what? That means a person who has sinned against you will be justified by your faith in the nature of the judge. Do we wait, where was I? This includes a person who Oh yes, okay. Or is it the or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too. Since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith, do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all, rather we uphold the law. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. Okay, that's good news. It's really good news for us because we screw up a lot. It's also really good news for our family members, because they screw up a lot. And so we get to hold this space where we get to be known, we get to be seen in it, we get to have some level of the judge justifying it for them, but not through a consequence, through our faith in his nature, in what he's like for us. So we're gonna watch a quick video. It's actually not super quick, but it's amazing. It's it feels quick. And then I'm gonna come back and we're gonna kind of tie it all together and do an encounter time to kind of talk through how do we actually apply this way of thinking about justice and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_04In the summer of 2016, I did the sensible thing. I quit my cushy job at a hedge fund to write a play about my family's murder. I told my friends and family that this was about art, but in truth, I was on a spiritual vision quest. I was seeking closure to a relationship with someone that I barely knew, the kid who killed my mother and brother. He was my friend's younger brother, a kid from our neighborhood. He came over a handful of times to raid our family snack cabinet. My mom actually used to wave to him from the van and say, He's going through a hard time. I just want to make sure he knows that I see him. He broke into our house a couple of days before Christmas looking for some stuff to sell for cash. When he came across my brother Jim asleep on the couch, he panicked, shot him, and fled the scene. Then he realized he forgot his coat. By the time he came back, my mom had found Jim. Because he knew that she recognized him, and to quote him, because she wouldn't stop screaming, he shot and killed her too. He is currently serving back-to-back life sentences in a prison in southwestern Virginia. Over the course of the next seven years, I somehow managed not to hate him, but my grief and trauma did something a little bit weirder. He became a non-person to me. He wasn't a person, he was the face of all evil. He was the twister that came through and ripped up our house and threw it in some hellish version of Oz. But not a 17-year-old boy, or I realize now, a 24-year-old man, a man who came of age in a cell if he came of age at all. And as I sat down to write the villain of my play and my life, I realized I had a name, some fractured childhood memories, a briefcard document, and nothing else to go on. So I went to the source of all answers, Google. I Googled his prisoner ID number, and uh that's when the internet sucker punched me in the face. Two-thirds of prisoners in his penitentiary spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in 8 by 10 cells with slats for light. Conditions are so bad that in 2012 the entire prison went on a hunger strike. And as I scrolled through case after case of human rights violations at this prison, suddenly he became a person to me again. I remember the first time I saw mom and Jim's bodies in the funeral home, how my hand recoiled when I felt the small destructive supernova that the bullet made in the back of Jim's skull. My mom's face just collapsed in on itself. Not her, just flesh and bones in that black dress we'd bought at Kohl's the week before. Those were my most painful memories. But when I pictured him beaten, starving, crying out in a dark cell, yeah, that was somehow just as painful. And I realized it was because we were still connected. That steel tether of trauma that he hooked into my side when he killed them was still there, and I had been lurching against its pull and dragging him through the mud for the past seven years, whether I knew it or not. And it was with a little horror that I realized that he may have killed them, but I chose to keep us connected. And so after winning through all the options, I mean literally every option at my disposal, I realized the only way to get rid of this dude was to forgive him. That was a real bummer of a conclusion to come to. Because the truth was, I thought that I already had forgiven him. I told my friends I forgave him, I told my family I forgave him, I even said I forgive you in the national news. So if saying someone, saying you forgive someone is not the same thing as doing it, why was this guy still hooked into my side, dragging me around, making me do dumb things like quit my job to write a play? Turns out there is no fake it till you make it in forgiveness, even though that's exactly what society expects us to do. So how do you forgive effectively once and for all? That question started in another Google rabbit hole. And then the theological rabbit hole, and then the psychiatric journal and medical journal rabbit hole, until finally my poor husband came home to a frantic wife, Ferrell, just pacing the apartment, spewing statistics about forgiveness. Like, did you know that there are 62 passages in the Bible with the word forgive and 27 with the word forgiveness, and not a single one tells you how to do it? They just think how great it is. It's like the Nike of spiritual gifts. Just do it. And then there's this Dr. Wayne guy over here who says, to forgive, we've just gotta let go and be like water. What does that mean? My husband approached me very cautiously. Sweetie, what you doing? Trying to forgive the kid who killed my family, but nobody will tell me how. Oh, there are endless five-star historical Yelp reviews for forgiveness. The sales pitch is fantastic, but literally, what do I do? I think I was asking the wrong question, starting with how, when really what I needed to know was why? Why forgive? Why do it? And that's when I discovered that most of us are forgiving for the wrong reasons. Some victims, like me, try to forgive right away because it's the right thing to do. But if we're honest with ourselves, there's only three reasons a victim forgives automatically. One, you think that forgiving quickly will make you a good person. That's an easy mistake to make, right? If forgiveness is good, a good person should forgive right away. But in all my research, I actually didn't find a timeline for forgiveness. Everybody was just really desperately urging us to get around to it because they knew we didn't want to. Even Jesus, when he talks about turning the other cheek, isn't talking about forgiveness. He's talking about nonviolence. There has to be a middle ground between letting someone off the hook right away and going full on eye for an eye on them. Two, victims feel a lot of pressure to forgive from everyone else. It can come from your friends, from your family, from the media, from mixed-up religious messaging. But the truth is, everyone wants you to forgive quickly so that they can feel more comfortable and they can move on. That's a crappy reason to do anything. Three, you think that forgiveness is a shortcut to healing. You think if you skip to the end of the story, you can bypass all the angry, vulnerable, messy healing crap. Spoiler alert, that one will come back to bite you in the butt. For me, it was all three reasons. I want to be a good person, I love pleasing other people, and I hate the vulnerable, angry, messy healing crap. But it turns out that forgiveness is such a potent force that none of those reasons were strong enough to make it stick. Just like love, if your motivation is selfish, even a good selfish thing like healing, it will collapse in on itself like a dying star. So why do it? Why forgive? It can't heal you. It won't save you or the other person, it can't make you a good person, at least not all by itself, because that's not what forgiveness is designed to do. Forgiveness is designed to set you free. When you say I forgive you, what you're really saying is, I know what you did. It's not okay, but I recognize that you are more than that. I don't want to hold us captive to this thing anymore. I can heal myself and I don't need anything from you. And after you say that, and you mean it, then it's just you. No chains, no prisoners, just the good, the bad, and the ugly of whoever that person was from the start. Our culture thinks that vengeance is freedom, but it is a total prison. Any act of violence, whether it's emotional or physical, is this weird twisted form of intimacy. That's why the Greeks said that a death by a good man was a good death. Think about it. Every time somebody thinks about my mom and my brother, they think about the fact that they're not here. And then they think about the kid who did this. That one act of violence actually bound the three of them together in etern people's minds for eternity. When we choose vengeance, we're actually signing a blood oath to chain our story to our enemies for the rest of time. Forgiveness is the only real path to freedom. But to get free, you have to get super specific about what exactly it is that you're forgiving. Because you cannot forgive something that didn't happen to you. In my research, I came across this idea from Judaism that hit me in the chest. In Judaism, the family can't forgive murderers because they were not killed. They can only forgive the pain, anguish, and grief that the loss caused them. This was a total jackpot moment for me. I had to compartmentalize my damage. Not what happened to mom and Jim, not what happened to my family, not what happened to society, what happened to me. This is why justice often feels really cold for victims. It's justice's job to assess what is owed. And it is the criminal justice system's job to assess what is owed to society, not to victims. It is up to us to get really clear individually on what we are owed. You can't forgive your father for beating your mother. You can only forgive him for how sad, alienated, and angry that made you feel. I couldn't forgive him for killing mom and Jim. I'm still here. I had to assess my damages. The wedding that I had without the two of them, the parts of me that my husband and kids will never get to understand without knowing the two of them. The way my life was supposed to start at 22, and he broke it. My inherent sense of safety and belonging, which I gotta be honest, I don't think are coming back. Those are my damages. Most of us avoid forgiveness like the plague because we do not want to look at our wounds. Wounds are scary, they are nasty, they are icky. It is why most of us look away when we donate blood. It is way easier to take all of that emotion and channel it into rage at another person. And I gotta be honest with you, I say, do it. Thought this would be about forgiveness, huh? It's an important part of the process. Anger is important. It is the fire that cauterizes our wounds and lets them scar over and heal. Too much anger, and yeah, you'll get third-degree burns. But without a little bit of heat, you'll never scar over and you'll never know exactly what happened to you. And if you don't know what happened to you, you can't know what you're forgiving. But once you know what's happened to you, it's time for some good old-fashioned justice. Sorry? I married a Texan. So what injustice's name am I owed? An apology? An explanation? A front row seat to their torture chamber? Maybe. Not the last part, but maybe you are owed those things in general. And nine times out of ten, if you ask for those things, you will get them. Which is why forgiveness is not the right thing in most situations. Forgiveness is only right when waiting for what we're owed comes at too high a cost. In all those years, with that guy chained to my side, I got a Lot done. I went to grad school. I married a wonderful man. I started a career that I honestly really love. But I did it all a little more slowly. And I wasn't just dragging him along, I was dragging my mother and brother in the process, twisting the three of them up together in those chains. And pretty soon, that little posse started to crowd me out of my own body and my own experience. And one day, losing myself in order to punish him and keep the two of them alive felt like too high a cost to bear. It was there in that crossroads when I knew what had happened to me. I knew what I was owed. And I decided that choosing myself was more important than being right. That's when I was ready to forgive. So I stepped away from Google and I didn't ask any more questions. And I wrote him a letter. I tore unused pages out of my mom's journals, actually, and I wrote. I told him that what happened on December 19th, 2008, was not okay and would probably never be okay for either of us. But just because it wasn't okay, that didn't mean he owed me anything. Not an apology, not an explanation, not his role as my villain. I told him that I hated to be reduced to one thing that happened to me one day. I yearned to be more, to be whole. And I didn't think that I could do that if I looked at another person and reduced him to one thing he did one day and made evil with some of his parts. I told him that I wished him a lifetime full of healing and that I forgave him. And then without thinking, I plopped that letter into a mailbox on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and church. For the first ten steps, there was this lightness of being. And then that lightness started to feel like the lurch in your stomach when you hit a spiritual tripwire. My chest unwound, it burst, and suddenly I was alone with myself. I mean, really alone, giving birth to a stranger, saying hello to a girl that I hadn't spoken to in seven years. Sometimes I miss him. Not him, the monster that I created. Things were a lot harsher in black and white, but they were a lot simpler when I had a villain to fight and more familiar. As long as he was around, mom and Jim were never that far away. They were characters just off stage, waiting in the wings, the rest of us on stage talking about them. But my story was about the three of them, always. To get free, I had to get clear on exactly what contract I was shredding. But once I did that, I found myself alone, center stage, in the spotlight, with endless possibilities. Real forgiveness has to let go of all expectations. You can't expect a certain outcome. You can't expect them to reply. You can't even expect to know who you're gonna be on the other side of it. Forgiveness is really tricky. It is one of those tools that is only properly wielded when we have healed just enough that we have nothing left to lose. If you're still hemorrhaging in pain, it is too soon to forgive. If you can't roll up your sleeve and show me your scars and tell me exactly what happened to you, it's still too soon to forgive. But it's never too late to let go of your villains and reclaim yourself. And if you're ready to let it all go, the grief, the pain, the anger, the trauma, and you're open to finding out who you are instead of always trying to prove yourself. I gotta be honest with you. All this forgiveness hype is legit. Ten out of ten, five stars would highly recommend. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so there's a couple parts that I want to speak to because um one of the things that she does really well is highlighting the process of forgiveness by including grief. You get to be bummed out by what happened. The persistent widow was clearly bummed out enough to go again and again and again, I am I am not okay with this. Something needs to be seen and known here. So that is a really important process and a step of the process is grieving that thing that did or didn't happen, or that debt that is there. The second component that she does really well is that you have to name the debt. You really do have to get clear about what was the injustice to you, what happened. And again, there's there isn't that fake it till you make it with that, right? That's what she says. There's no fake it till you make it with forgiveness. If there was that, we wouldn't have needed the cross. We were doing our best to fake it till we make it with the law and righteousness, and God was like, oh, this is not working. We need justice, but we need it through Jesus, and we need it to through perceiving who Jesus is going to be for us in the midst of being abused, victimized, and hurt. And you know that. There's a part of you that because you are wired like God, you know that you need to be met and seen and known that way. So what we're gonna do is a ministry time that revolves around the process of permission, identifying your debt, and perceiving who God can be for you. Now, what's different for us in the family of God is that she says there's a point where she perceives that the debt might not be paid, right? She kind of articulates a couple different places where she's not totally sure that there's gonna be care or that it's gonna be covered. The good news for us is that the cross paid the forgiveness of our sins and the forgiveness of the sins that would be committed against us. So the debt has been paid on their behalf for us. So that's a kingdom-family perspective that we do get to know that somehow the debt that is owed to us was paid. However, it there's a good chance it's not gonna look like consequences or expectations or things that we might be looking for. So a lot of times we'll use this model in inner healing. And when people have, when we come to people who are stuck in the midst of abuse or trauma, we'll often ask, okay, in the place of forgiveness, there may have been a moment where you chose to forgive, but did you authentically get to actually own what happened? And so we walk people through an encounter where they get to identify, are you genuinely still bummed out about this? And you have permission to feel that hurt and that wound. And with the help of the Lord, you get to identify what's the injustice, what's the debt, what do you feel like you still need to be seen or known or heard in. And the second part is that there gets to be a way that Jesus shows you on the cross how he paid that debt for you, how he's gonna meet you in the midst of that hurt, and how he's gonna cover that injustice. So I want to give you a really concrete example. I was doing ministry with someone, and they had had a series of family members who had navigated addiction and sexual abuse, and their childhood had reflected that environment. So there was really a place where this person had intellectually said, I know my parents were doing the best they could, right? So they're they're off the hook. They were doing the best they could. But really, when I got to the feels place, I was like, Yeah, but are you still hurting here? And it was like, Yes, right? I there was things I needed that I didn't get, and there were things that happened that shouldn't have happened. And we began to name that place of lack of safety, lack of being seen, lack of being cared for, abuse, right? That those things happened. And then I we asked the Lord, okay, in the place where there are these debts, how are you paying for it? How are you bringing justice? And she got the most beautiful picture of the Lord grabbing her hand and taking her through a museum of her family lineage. And there were all these portraits of her family members and frames in this museum. And the Lord made all of the frames of previous family members silver, which was redemption, that he was redeeming the generational line. And then starting with her, the frames moving forward were gold. That there was gonna be promise into her family lineage for a different way of showing up. And so he ministered justice not through punishment for all those things that happened, but through a picture of who he was gonna be for her in her family line and her lineage moving forward. So that's what we're looking for. It's not just a consequence, it's that place of being seen, known, and heard. So you have a piece of paper, and the do you? I said that, and do you have them? Okay. So there's some questions on here. And this is sort of like a concrete way with the how. How do you do this? And a lot of the questions that we'll start with are what happened to you? What didn't happen to you that you needed to have happen? You really get in touch with that piece and own it. What was robbed? What's the debt? What did you need? And um is the uh is there the other part? Because you you go through figuring out what the debt is. Mine doesn't have the final question, but the final question after you perceive the debt and the gap is who is Jesus going to be for you in the midst of that injustice? Is that one on there? Okay, I might not have written that down. So that'll be the second component is that you get to go with what you needed and the injustice and what happened, but then you get to meet the nature of the judge in being seen and known and heard. Does that make sense? Yes. So we're gonna put on some music, we're gonna do it for like five minutes, and you're gonna ask the Lord about a situation with a family member, with a person, where you are perceiving that there still might be feels and hurt. Not that you've intellectually forgiven, but that you can feel, I'm still not seen here like the persistent widow. And you're gonna ask the Lord to begin to show you what is the debt that you perceive? What are you still needing, and what is the injustice that is still there? And then we will move into as you perceive that and you really can say, This is what it is, then you ask the Lord, who are you going to be for me here to cover this and pay this debt so that I can authentically know that there has been justice, that I have been seen and heard and known. And I guarantee you releasing forgiveness in that way is true freedom. It's not just that white knuckle will to forgive place. Okay. So we're gonna put on a song just for five minutes. I'm gonna bring us in and for closure after that, and I'll kind of give you some next steps that you can do as you go away to be with this process in a kind of an ongoing, authentic way. Um Lord, I hear you saying for such a time as this, in terms of there's been things that have happened in our family lines, whether it's through the family of Christ or in our biological families, that you've been waiting for a long time to show up like the judge for the persistent widow place here. And so I pray that you would release that now over hearts. Give capacity to show up vulnerably for intimacy. Give capacity to show up vulnerably for intimacy right now in Jesus' name. I am gonna make sure that the second set of questions is posted somewhere so that you know how to bring in the encounter piece. Um, there were a few things that I discerned in terms of words of knowledge. For some of you in the room, you're mad at God and you need to forgive him. And that can seem like a really weird concept, but you actually have to be really honest about what you feel like he hasn't done or been for you in his nature and have him reveal an encounter and promise for you there. But you've got to get honest that you're mad first and that you you have unforgiveness towards him. Some of you have unforgiveness towards yourself, and you actually are holding yourself on trial. And then the third one is some of you need permission to be mad first. Uh, I definitely felt a religious place that was like, oh, but I know this, oh, but I know this, oh, but this. And you have to be able to get really vulnerable first and really own just the honest places where you're hurt and bummed out. So moving forward, um, feel free to meet with someone and do this work with another person. They can help talk you through that place or even coming to the ministry here. Um, sometimes there's a prophetic act that you can do that the Lord will show you as part of your encounter. She wrote the letter. There might be something else that ministers a prophetic act. And then some of Renee Brown's material on vulnerability is also really an amazing place to say, why do I need to keep my love on? Why do I need to keep vulnerable in a way that I can keep unity going? But I can tell you, you won't have family without safety. And you won't feel totally safe without knowing who God's gonna be for you in the midst of hurt and injustice that happens in the family. So we just have to own that so we can move forward together authentically. All right, so I'm gonna pray and um we'll we'll close it, and I'll be up here in front as well for ministry to kind of process any questions or anything that comes up. So, Lord, I I thank you that this is just the beginning and that what you're after is relationship. You're after us being able to keep our love on to stay connected as a family, even in the places that are so incredibly painful and it feels unsafe. And so I release this place of you being a good judge over every heart here so that we can keep our love on with the ones that we are doing family with. In Jesus' name. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Amen. Well, let's stand. Ministry team. The ministry team is going to be on the two walls here, and I think we'll have some things on the screen that uh we're being shown that there needs to be prayer for. And if that's you, uh be sure to go see them. Um you may have something that you'd like to pray about and go before the Lord that's not on that screen. That's okay. Go do it anyway. Okay? So bless you guys. You have a fabulous week, and we'll see you next Sunday.
