Got Baggage? | The Lies That Keep You Stuck | Part 2 | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

GOT BAGGAGE? 
The Lies That Keep You Stuck | Part 2 
Senior Pastor Keith Stewart
May 3, 2026

What if the very thing keeping you stuck isn’t your past—but what you believe about it? This Sunday, we’re tackling the lies that make forgiveness feel impossible: that it excuses wrong, erases consequences, or forces you back into unhealthy relationships. The truth is far more freeing—and far more powerful. If you’ve ever struggled to let go, move forward, or make sense of the hurt you carry, this message is for you. Join us in person or online for Got Baggage? – Part 2: The Lies That Keep You Stuck.


Discussion Questions

OBSERVATION (Understanding the Text/Message)
 
Opening (Engagement)
 
When you hear the word “forgiveness,” what is your immediate reaction—and why?
 
Which of the myths discussed in the message do you think is most commonly believed in today’s culture?
 
Scripture & Understanding
In Genesis 50:20, Joseph clearly names the wrong done to him. Why is it important that forgiveness does not deny the seriousness of sin?
 
How does Galatians 6:7 help clarify the difference between forgiveness and consequences?
 
In the parable from Luke 15, what was the older brother afraid of—and how does that reflect our own hesitation to forgive?
 
Reflection (Personal Application)
 
Which myth about forgiveness have you personally struggled with most?
 
Have you ever confused forgiveness with one of the following: minimizing, excusing, reconciling, or forgetting? What happened as a result?
 
Is there a situation in your life where you’ve withheld forgiveness because you feared it would let someone “off the hook”?
 
Reconciliation & Boundaries
 
The message states: “Forgiveness depends on me; reconciliation depends on us.”
Where have you seen that distinction play out in real life?
 
Why is repentance, restitution, and rehabilitation necessary for reconciliation—but not for forgiveness?
 
Have you ever felt pressure (internal or external) to reconcile when it wasn’t wise or safe? How did you respond?
 
Deeper Work
 
The message described three levels of confession:
“I’m sorry I was caught”
“I’m sorry I was wrong”
“I’m sorry for what I caused”
Why is the third level so critical for rebuilding trust?
 
What does it practically look like to “not weaponize the past” in a relationship?
 
Closing (Action Step)
 
Is there someone you need to forgive right now? What is one concrete step you can take this week toward releasing that burden?
 
If you’re not ready to forgive, what would it look like to begin praying, “Lord, make me willing to be willing”?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

We're continuing in the series I started last week. Before we get into it, let me just say, you know, if you're visiting Spring Creek for the first time, we're glad you're here today. Sit back, relax, enjoy the service. We never do anything to embarrass or single out a guest when they're here with us. You know, probably one of the most common comments I get after a service when somebody's come for the first time is I can't believe you never passed an offering plate. I just want you to know in 36 years, we've never passed an offering plate in this bit in this church. But that's not because we believe giving to God's unimportant. Giving to God is important. It's an act of worship. So many of us, what we do is you'll notice that there's giving boxes by the exit doors you can put in. If you have cash or check, you can do that. Some of our people have signed up so that their giving is automatically deducted week by week from their paycheck. And some people like myself, we just text to give. Literally, the church text number is 96995. And we text the word give to 96995, and it gives you a way that you can give by credit card or debit card. You can set up recurring giving or just do one time. But giving is an important part of what we do as a church family, but you're just not required to do that. And we certainly don't pass a plate to make people feel bad if they can't give something. So I hope that you'll continue to support the church in your giving and watch as God continues to bless that and make of this church what he means it to be. This message I'm calling the lies that keep you stuck. We're talking about baggage, baggage from our past, the things that keep us tied to our past. As we get started, would you just bow your heads with me and let's pray? Father, this is a special day for us because we're we've had this great opportunity to sing praise to you and be reminded that we're not what other people say we are. We are who you say we are. And so, God, I thank you that we've been reminded of that truth. And I pray now that as we move into this message, that you would help someone today be released from a past they cannot change, be released from hurts, be released from trauma, be released from the kind of things that have happened to them that they find themselves unable to stop thinking about or release in their spirit. I believe, God, that you're already here, that you're already at work, and that you're going to work in this service today. In Jesus' name, amen. So we began this series by looking at the reality that most everybody that you meet is carrying some sort of baggage. That baggage, whether we say we cling to it or it clings to us, is it does affect extract a heavy toll on each and every one of us. We looked at this last week physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and psychologically. It has an impact on who you are. But not just that, we wrapped up last week's message by talking about Jesus' most extensive teaching on forgiveness in all the gospels. If you ever miss a message around here and you want to check it out, or if you're thinking, hey, I wonder if Pastor Keith or the other pastors have ever addressed a particular topic, we have a YouTube channel. We'll put it up here on the screen right now. If you scan that QR code, it'll take you to our YouTube page. And on that page, you can search by any message title or any topic you want, and you'll find all kinds of teaching on there to address maybe the thing you're dealing with right now. Last week's message was called the weight of the past. Now there's no question, really no question at all, that forgiveness is the way we lay down the baggage of the past and move into the future that's been crafted for us by God. But even with that said, there are a lot of people who are reluctant to embrace forgiveness, even people who resist it. And that's based largely on lies and distortions that society has fed us about what forgiveness is. So let me explain. There's not many Americans, Christian or non-Christian for that matter, who have a coherent biblical view of forgiveness. This was a study done not long ago that found that only 4% of the American population understands forgiveness, and only 5% of all Christians could separate fact from fiction about forgiveness. Now that's one of the most discouraging truths I've ever come across as a pastor, because what that means is the average person, whether in church or out of church, is not practicing regular forgiveness either of themselves or other people, and therefore their past, the things that hurts have been done to them, they still cling to them to this day. So the Christian community is virtually no different than their non-church-going counterparts when it comes to understanding what forgiveness is all about. Very few people in America today understand what forgiveness is or even how it works. Listen to this finding from Life Wave Research. Six in ten Christians say they can identify someone they're struggling to forgive. That's the majority of us. But there's also this 23% say there's someone they can't forgive. So the majority of our saying we're struggling with forgiveness of somebody, and then about a quarter of us say there's somebody in my life right now, I can honestly say I can't forgive them for what they did. This is the reason people balk at forgiveness today. In fact, one of the ways that society has even made this problem worse is through something we call cancel culture. Cancel culture is uh marked by an extreme lack of mercy and forgiveness. In fact, in some circles, it's seen as practically virtuous to destroy those people with whom we disagree. Now, God forbid that it could happen to any of us, because if it does, you're done with. No hope of redemption, you're canceled in the eyes of society. There are some things that are looked upon today as unforgivable, no matter what a person may say or do afterwards. You would find that you'll be, there's nothing you can do to appease the anger that society has toward you. You're cut off from redemption in their mind. Now let me be clear about this. There are some things that people have said and done that are egregiously offensive and evil, and for which repentance is necessary and justice must be served. There is no defense for certain actions. So I'm not trying to minimize the truth that what we say and what we do has consequences. Of all people, Christians should understand that. But I want to point out that today we've swung to this extreme position that practically relishes twisting the knife to make it hurt as much as possible in order to make someone pay dearly for an offense. Mercy is seen as weakness, an excuse, a way of justifying the evil that was done. So we think if I forgive somebody, I'm just letting them off the hook too easily. And we've seen what this has done to society. It's taken problems and made them exponentially worse, so much so that sometimes a person who's been victim of a cancel culture have gone out and killed themselves. And those things should trouble us deeply. That there's such a pile-on effect, this unmerciful attitude, this total lack of forgiveness that someone would think of destroying their own life. So God help us remember, whenever we're tempted to withhold forgiveness, that we ourselves stand in constant need of it. David wrote this in the Psalms If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness. In other words, a world without forgiveness is an unimaginable and cruel world. So even though we are living in an increasingly vindictive age, as Christ followers, we know that the only way forward is to give the gift to others that we ourselves have received. We've been forgiven by God. We should be conduits of forgiveness to others because there's no future without forgiveness. Guilt and grievance will consume our culture, it'll consume our families, and it'll consume our own lives. So to get to the heart of it all, we need to ask the question: why does society resist this idea of forgiveness? So I have some questions for you as we get started. What does it mean to forgive? I mean, the moment you hear that word, what associations do you make with it? For some of you, you're thinking doormat. If I forgive, I'm a doormat. Some of you might be thinking it's letting someone off the hook. Some people will say unfairness, injustice, forgetting, letting bygones be bygones. What I want to do today is take on the myths that are out there. They're popular. Maybe some of you in this room believe these myths, but they're lies, they're distortions, they come from our culture and not from God's Word. This message is all about dismantling those myths. So each of my main points is a lie. The first one is this forgiveness denies the seriousness of sin. That's a myth. When you forgive someone, you don't have to think of some excuse that kind of lets them off the hook. What they did to you was wrong. You don't have to lessen that in order to forgive it. Now there's a great example of this in the Old Testament. You remember the story of Joseph? It's in the book of Genesis. His brothers were indescribably cruel to him, so much so that they plot to kill their own brother. They're going to kill Joseph. At the last minute, they have a change of heart and decide instead to sell him into slavery. Well, years later, the family gets reunited in Egypt, and Joseph ends up forgiving his brothers for the awful things he did to them. But let me tell you what Joseph didn't say. He didn't look his brothers in the eye and say, you know, you're probably just having a bad day. You know, I probably had it coming to me. He doesn't say anything like that. Instead, he speaks the unvarnished truth. He tells them to their face, this is the way it was. He says, You intended to harm me, God intended it for good. So Joseph basically says, your intentions were bad, your motives were messed up, you did wrong by me because what you did was intended to cause me harm. Joseph is not sugarcoating it, he's telling it like it is. You see, forgiveness is not a denial that a wrong took place. Real forgiveness never denies the seriousness of sin. It's true even with God. You know, the blood of Christ can't cleanse you from an excuse. It's our sins that need to be forgiven. It's our brokenness. It's this belligerent attitude in our own hearts that we're going to do life apart from God. That needs to be forgiven by God. So forgiveness is not saying to someone your offense was no big deal. It was a big deal. Forgiveness is not saying that it didn't hurt because we know it did. When you minimize wrongdoing, you cheapen forgiveness. So sometimes, maybe in families, you'll hear somebody say, Well, you know, that's just Uncle Bill. That's the way he is. You just have to accept him like that. Or parents might say to their kids, oh yeah, we may have been way too harsh on you in our discipline while you're growing up, but you turned out fine. Statements like that, they minimize offenses and they damn the people who experienced them to staying locked into old wounds and past pains. Because minimizing sin doesn't make it go away. It makes the one who experienced it feel crazy, like, why is this still hurting me? Because they know it hurts. And they don't want to be around the person who hurt them. So when we minimize hurt, the victim ends up being re-traumatized and feeling bad about themselves because they can't get beyond it or forgive it. What you need to remember is this: minimizing wrongdoing just re-victimizes the victim. Some of us in this room, we had parents who were abusive. Some of us had parents who were alcoholic or addicted. So others had parents who were absent. As an adult, you may look back and understand that your parents parented you in the way they were parented. In other words, they did to you what was done to them. That may make it more understandable, but it doesn't make it excusable. It doesn't let them off the hook. It was still wrong. Bottom line, forgiveness, and this is important because I see this all the time, especially in the Christian community, forgiveness is not psychoanalyzing the people who've wronged us. It's super common. We think if I can figure out what made them do what they did, it'll be easier for me to forgive them. Let me be real frank with you. There's some things you're never going to figure out why it happened. But here's the important thing about forgiveness. Forgiveness is not saying I don't feel the pain anymore because now I understand it. That's not what forgiveness says. Forgiveness says I do not feel the need to hold on to your involvement in my pain anymore, even if I never understand it. So understanding and forgiveness are not the same thing. You may never understand why it was done to you what was done, but you don't have to understand it to forgive it. Here's another big myth that society pushes out there that forgiveness releases people from consequences. Now, those of you who've lived in the Metroplex for some time probably remember when Hurricane Katrina happened. When that happened, of course, you know, the city of New Orleans was filled up like a fishbowl. I mean, water just inundated the city as the levees and dams broke. Well, what that caused was just a lot of people to flee Louisiana to come to the Metroplex. And we had dozens of families that came to Spring Creek Church. In fact, at the time, we helped demand the evacuation center for the city of Garland, the relief center, all that. We helped to house some apartments for folks coming in. But a lot of people, because they left with just the clothes on their back, they lost their home, they lost their families, they lost their relationships, they lost their jobs, and they came here in search of a new beginning. And when they showed up in the Metroplex, some of these evacuees, like I say, they found a home among us. And one is was a young man that I'm going to call Timothy. That's not his real name. He became a regular around here. And he was fun to be around. He was a real talkative kind of guy, kind of goofy. He volunteered to help out with any kind of things that were offered. And he was open about the fact that he had issues with mental illness. In particular, he was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic. Now, Timothy had been on medication for some time to address this illness. The medication seemed to be working for him well because he was such a likable guy when he's on it. He had an uncle back in Louisiana that was a charismatic pastor who told him he didn't have enough faith, and if he had faith, he could go off his medication, God would heal him. The moment that Timothy went off his medication, his personality dramatically changed. Dramatically. His Facebook became filled with the public floggings of everybody he disagreed with. And I became very concerned because he started lashing out at people at church. And he's putting this all over Facebook, and it's just obvious he's he's out of control. So I sent him a private message. I didn't even post this on his public page. Sent him a private message that said, Timothy, there's a better way of dealing with these problems than what you're doing. That was it. That was the sum total of my message. Well, when I did that, my message caused him to lash out at me. And he wrote a multi-page letter, a manifesto, about how he was going to kill me and my family. Now I never read the letter. The staff suggested I didn't, that I shouldn't read it. Evidently it was vile, it was explicit, words and images that would have been hard to get out of my mind. Of course, we immediately informed law enforcement and got out the threat against me and my family. I should mention that in this same letter, Timothy also threatened the life of the president of the United States. So when law enforcement was informed, they informed the Secret Service, and the Secret Service showed up at Spring Creek. And they wanted to know Timothy and where he lived. Long story short, Timothy was arrested, he was convicted, he did prison time. In fact, a few years back, I was contacted by the special victims unit asking me or telling me that he was about to be paroled, released from prison, and if I had any objection to that, I should show up at the courthouse on such and such a date and time and I could object to his release. I didn't go and I didn't object. Now here's the deal. I forgave Timothy a long time ago. In fact, when I was preparing for this message, it was really at the last minute. I remember I thought, oh, well, you know, I've got a real injustice against me, too. And you'd think that somebody threatened to kill you would really stand out. But it doesn't because I didn't rehearse it and I didn't nurse it and I didn't keep it close to my heart. I had a real threat against my life, a threat that was so strong that he was convicted for it and went to prison for it. What he did was wrong. What he threatened was evil. But forgiving Timothy of what he said about me and my family is different from releasing him from the consequences of his actions. And he was still responsible and he was reckless for the threats that he made against me, my family, and the president. Forgiving him didn't mean not holding him account for his crime. The Bible teaches this: do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, they will also reap. By the way, this is also true in the way God forgives, isn't it? God forgives the eternal consequence of our sin. But that doesn't mean we're not held to temporal ones, to ones that are bound to this life. Sometimes what we do has real implications and consequence for this life. So what I'm saying is, you can forgive a family member for stealing from you, but they may still be required to pay it back. A parent may forgive you for being inappropriate with their child, but you may still do jail time and be branded a sex offender for the rest of your life. Forgiveness doesn't release a person from the demands of justice. So never equate consequence with forgiveness. They're not the same thing. Christian forgiveness does not mean we forgo civil or legal consequences for an offense. And there's nothing wrong with someone seeking justice in a matter that requires justice. Here's a third myth that gets in the way of forgiveness: that forgiveness lets people off the hook too easily. Now, by the way, this is a big issue in one of the most famous stories in the Bible about forgiveness. It's a story most everyone here knows. It's called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Now, this story is about a father with two sons. The older son, the responsible one, he stays home. The younger son is rebellious. He wants his inheritance before dad dies, and he wants to go off on his own. Well, we hear this story and we read this story emotionally, but we often don't read it economically and legally. And I want to give you a different perspective on this. This right here in the story, nothing new to it. I want to point out some things that maybe you haven't paid attention to before. The way it worked back then, when it came to inheritance, is the eldest son always got a double portion. So what that means is if you have two boys, you split the estate into three portions. The older brother gets two, the younger brother would have got one. So he's getting only a third because the older brother gets a double portion. Does that make sense? So when this dad, when he's asked by his younger son, hey, I want my inheritance now, then dad has to sell off a third of his land, a third of his cattle, a third of his belongings, convert it to cash, and give the money to his son, which he does. Now you remember the story. The story goes that the son gets the money, goes to a far country. The Bible says he wasted in riotous living. He's hooking up with women, he's partying, he blows through all the money really quickly, hits the bottom block, you know, he hits the rock bottom, and when he hits rock bottom, remembers his dad is good, he decides to go home. Well, this is where the story gets most interesting. The older brother, when he hears that his younger brother has returned, is ticked off. I mean, he is angry, off the charts, angry. It was bad enough when his brother left, it ripped apart the family, but now that he's returned, the older brother is afraid of an injury on top of everything else. He fears that dad is going to forget the inheritance arrangement. He fears that in the name of forgiving his brother, dad will be tempted later on when he's ready to die to divide up the estate again. See, the younger brother had already received his inheritance in full and spent every penny. If dad welcomes him back and restores his sonship, does that mean that when dad passes away, the older brother, who all this stuff is his now, that he's going to be asked to divide it up and lose even more? Does that make sense? That's what he's afraid of. And dad's going to address that. Listen to this. So he answers his father when dad says, Hey, your brother's here, let's go have a party for him. He answers his father, look, all these years I've been slaving for you, and I never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But with this son of yours who squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you killed the fatted calf for him. Now listen to Dad. This is great. My son, you're always with me, and everything I have is yours. Now you got to hand it to this dad. He's wise enough to understand the fear that's beneath his son's anger. I've told you this many times. Anger is a secondary emotion. It's never the first thing you and I feel. Anger always comes out of hurt, fear, or frustration. So whenever you see somebody that's angry, you need to ask yourself, what's hurting them? What are they afraid of? What's frustrating them? Well, Dad sees the son and he's off the charts angry. He says, What's my son afraid of? And he realizes it's the inheritance. He's thinking that he's going to have to go through another injustice, and in the future, he's going to lose even more of the estate to his irresponsible younger brother. And what does Dad say? Everything I have is yours. Dad has not forgotten the arrangement. Dad knows that everything, that homestead, the land, the cattle, the house, everything that remains belongs to the older brother, and he wants to assure him of that. So dad is not forgotten. Forgotten. Dad knows that everything at the family homestead belongs to the elder son. It will one day be his inheritance and his inheritance alone. Dad's not going to re-divide the estate. He's not going to create a new injustice for the elder brother in the name of forgiving the younger one. So dad speaks to his son's fears first. The younger son has spent his entire inheritance, and that's sad. And in the coming days, he's going to have to come to terms with that, that he's got nothing. And he's going to have to rebuild on his own. The father said, though, now's the time to celebrate his return because he was dead to us, and now he's alive. In other words, this is the day we forgive your brother and we let all those bad feelings toward him go because your brother's genuinely sorry. We need to welcome him back home. Now, one day, and probably not in the distant future, the young son's going to have to place, face all those unpleasant realities that he's broke and he's going to have to save for the future. The point of the story, though, is the older brother is us. We're afraid. We're afraid if we forgive, we're just asking to be hurt all over again. That if I forgive, it's like wearing a kick me sign. That I have to give up my rights and I have to invite even more pain back into my life. But even here in this story, the most amazing story of forgiveness in all the Bible, it reminds us that forgiven people still have to live with the reality of their choices. Because forgiveness is not about creating new injustices. Forgiveness is about creating a new beginning. And that leads to this next principle. This is again, it's a myth. Forgiveness requires me to reconcile. There are all kinds of people who wonder if I really forgive somebody, do I have to invite them back into the relationship? In other words, does a battered woman have to sign up for round two? Does a husband or wife who've been cheated on, do they have to say, yes, we automatically have to reconcile? If a business partner robs you blind and you forgive them, does that mean you've got to turn the keys over to the business to them again? It may be one of the most important things I say today. Forgiveness depends on me. Reconciliation depends on us. Let me show you how the Bible emphasizes this in the book of Romans 12. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. As a child of God, I do desire reconciliation. If that's possible, it's one of the best possible outcomes. But reconciliation is not entirely up to me, is it? I can do my part, like the Bible says, as far as it depends on me, but without an equal commitment to reconciliation, it's never going to happen. Remember this: it only takes one to forgive, but it takes two to be reunited. Forgiveness has no strings attached. Reconciliation has several strings attached. So think of it like this: reconciliation requires three things. Number one, repentance. So repentance is genuine sorrow, a change of heart, and a change of direction, brokenness over their sin. Without repentance, a person's foolish to seek reconciliation. I can forgive somebody who never says they're sorry to me, but I can't be reconciled to them unless they're genuinely sorry. So repentance is one of the signs of reconciliation. Second, restitution. Now, restitution is about meaningful actions that accompany repentance. One of the best examples of this in the Bible is Zacchaeus. So this is Luke 19. Jesus has an encounter with a dishonest tax collector named Zacchaeus. I've told you before these tax collectors were notorious cheats. They were empowered by Rome to collect taxes, but oftentimes what they did is they collected above and beyond the taxes to line their own pockets. And that was Zacchaeus through and through. Zacchaeus has an encounter with Jesus, becomes a different man. Previously, he made his entire living ripping off other people. Now he's singing a different tune. So listen to what he says. Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount. Now, if you were one of the people that was cheated by Zacchaeus, and all of a sudden you find out he's come to know Jesus, you might think, oh yeah, sure, right, you know. But when he says, I'm going to pay you back four times what I stole from you, you might think, hey, you know, this guy's decent. You know, maybe something's really happening in him because he's willing to make amends. This is a big part of 12-step recovery, you know? That once people go through and they they do their business with God and they and they get their junk out in the fourth and the fifth step, another step is to make amends. That if I've done you wrong in some way and it's cost you something, to the best of my ability, I want to make that right. I want to make us whole so that you can believe that when I say I'm sorry for the things I've done, I really mean it. The third component in reconciliation is rehabilitation. So for reconciliation to happen, again, we're not talking forgiveness. Reconciliation, everybody wants some level of assurance that this is not going to keep happening. That this person not only sees their issues, but they're getting help. They're growing, they're finding out what made them make the choices they make. Forgiveness doesn't require reconciliation, period. Full stop. There's always conditions on reconciliation. You can forgive somebody that you feel like you can never have a relationship with again. That doesn't mean you're unforgiving. Sometimes it means you're smart. Or to be reconciled, you have to be able to see what you need to see. That leads us to this. We set limits on abuse, not on forgiving. Now I want to say a word about manipulation because this is real common and it's happened to me, it's probably happened to you too. Sometimes people do bad things in relationships. They hurt the people they're supposed to care about. When that happens, they might even say they're sorry. But sometimes these people have big expectations of the people they hurt, as if they could just carry on as if nothing happened. And sometimes they make demands to that end. Why do you keep bringing that up? I said I was sorry. You're supposed to forgive me like what God said. You must not be a Christian. That is sincerely one of the most manipulative things to come out of somebody's mouth. In other words, if an offender tries to manipulate the one they hurt, they're making demands about how they should be treated because they said they were sorry. If someone is doing this to you, I want to show you something really important about confession. I learned this years ago. It was important in my own recovery. There's three levels of confession. The first one is, I'm sorry I was caught. We all know this one, right? The crocodile tears last as long as the spotlight does. The moment they're caught, you know, it's oh yeah, I'm sorry. And they're saying the right words, and you think, man, is this going to last? Are they sincere? Second level, we like that one a lot better. I'm sorry I was wrong. At least they're acknowledging the fact, not just that they were caught, but they really did something that was wrong. And for most of us, that's where we stop. That's enough. We say, yeah, yeah, they said they were sorry, they were wrong. But a true confession, a confession that heals, is what that last one. I'm sorry for what I caused. No one sins in a vacuum. When I sin, there's a fallout from that sin. When I sin against you in particular, it makes you look at me in a different way, doesn't it? You don't believe the words coming out of my mouth anymore. Trust has been shattered. And a person who's sincerely sorry, not just that they were wrong, but for what they caused, is going to make strides to make sure that you know they're a changed person. Now, this was really helpful to me. This was like 33 years ago now. Brenda and I were going through a lot of trouble. I had hurt her a great deal through my anger and things like that. And when I started therapy and started even getting anger therapy and all that, she just did not believe that I was changed. And she kept throwing it in my face. And everything within me wanted to say, hey, I have changed. And look at this, and I don't even drive the same way, and all this kind of stuff. But I realized I had hurt her in such a way that now she saw me through glasses that had been tinted by my pain. And my therapist at the time told me, Keith, it takes on average three years for our spouse to believe we've changed. I said, three years? Man, I was thinking a couple months, right? But but they've they've seen us make new resolutions. They've seen us say, oh, I'll never do that again, only six months later to do it again. They need several lamps around the counter. In fact, I think that Brenda was an overachiever because she won like four or five years out of me to say, has he really changed? Is it really different between us? Because I have a lot of things that still make me react to you in a certain way because I always fear the other shoe's gonna drop. And if I was taking responsibility, not just that I was wrong, but for what I caused, that means owning the fact that I needed to rebuild that trust because I was the one that broke it. I was the one who made her see me in that way. It's one thing to say, I'm sorry I was caught. It's another thing to say, I'm sorry I was wrong. But the people who are sincerely broken will say, I'm sorry for what I caused. I caused you to see me in a different kind of way. So when you've hurt someone, you're not in a position to make demands. You're in a position to prove that you mean what you say. The final distortion that often gets in the way of our ability to forgive others is we think forgiving and forgetting are synonymous. In fact, it's a common phrase, forgive and forget, right? We've been taught in our church that we're to forgive and forget. But you do know that statement is nowhere in the Bible. The truth of the matter is this: it's impossible to erase from your memory, mentally or emotionally, the things that have happened to you. In fact, the greater the trauma, the greater the pain associated with that memory, the more deeply it's embedded and the harder it is to dislodge. But yet this belief is persistent. And numerous believers have bought into this one hook, line, and sinker. Some even think this is the way God forgives. That God forgives and forgets. But when the Bible talks about God forgiving and forgetting, he's talking about something else. He's talking about not holding our sins against us. So let me address this, because there's two verses that are often cited that seem to support this thinking. And on the surface, I'll grant you, that's what it sounds like. Psalm 25, Jeremiah 31, first Psalm 25. David is praying, do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways. According to your love, remember me, for you, Lord, are good. So David is asking God, don't remember my sins. Forget my sins, please. And then this verse from Jeremiah, for I, this is God speaking, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. So we're taught, hey, God doesn't remember our sins, but the fact is, God does remember sins. God knows everything. This is what it means to be omniscient. He knows everything about the past, present, and future. So God doesn't have heavenly amnesia, he doesn't have Alzheimer's that causes him to forget everything that we've done. What you need to understand about this word remember in the Bible is it's more of a legal or judicial term. When God says he doesn't remember what he's saying in this context, like I remember your sins no more, I'm not gonna bring up your past as leverage against you. I'm not gonna use your past to continue to punish you. So as a child of God, I never have to worry that one day I'm gonna stand before God and God will say, you know, I said I forgave you, but I've been thinking about that. And I just can't let you into my heaven. Bye-bye. That's not gonna happen. God's not gonna leverage my sin against me. So God doesn't forget sin when he forgives it. Just consider this one simple fact: God is the author of Scripture, right? He inspired the whole Bible. The God who inspired the Bible remembered that David committed adultery. Remembered that Rahab was a whore, Moses was a murderer, Abraham was a liar, Paul killed Christians, Peter denied the Savior. All these stories are recorded in the Bible because God inspired them, because God remembers them. In the same way, you can't erase from your memory what's happened to you. Forgiveness is a choice to let go, to not bring it up anymore, to not rehearse it in your own mind. Use it against the offender in future arguments, hold it against them in any punitive way. It's to not weaponize their past. It's not forgetting what happened, it's letting go of it as a weapon. So, bottom line is this there is no such thing as forgive and forget. It's actually better to say, forgive and be wiser. Now, hopefully, over time, the details associated with certain incidents will begin to be lost for you. I mean, just like my story with Timothy. I almost didn't remember that story to include it because I don't rehearse it. I don't go back to it. There's no reason to go back to it. I forgave that young man a long time ago. Now, I told you in the first message, bitterness remembers details. It remembers details because it's rehearsed. It's gone over it in your mind again and again and again. If you have something to forgive and you forgive it, there's no need to rehearse it anymore. So you let it go. As a result, over time, you lose touch with certain details associated with that incident. So we don't always remember details, but we should always remember the lessons. David Augsburger said it like this: forgiveness is letting the past go, letting the future come, and letting the present be. So we don't want to commit the details of what happened to us to memory. Instead, we want to commit the lessons to memory, the lessons about protecting yourself, the lessons that set limits on abuse, lessons about healthy boundaries around your body and your sense of self, learning to pay attention to red flags. Those are all great learnings. There's a pastor, her name's Nancy Collier. She said it like this, I don't have a slide for it. It says, forgiveness is in part a willingness to drop the narrative on a particular injustice. To stop telling ourselves over and over again the story of what happened, what this other person did, and how we were injured, and all the rest of the upsetting things we remind ourselves in relation to this unforgivableness. It's a decision to let the past be what it was, to leave it as is, imperfect and not what we wish it had been. So uh about three weeks ago now, uh Pastor Jessica did a message, an excellent message, and she was talking about uh uh Cori Ten Boom. And you might remember the story of Cori Ten Boom. She and her family were hiding Jews during World War II to save them from the Holocaust. Well, they were found out, and when they were found out, they too were sent to a death camp. Cori Ten Boom has written several great books. One of them was called Hiding Place. In the hiding place, she talks about a guard that had really done her terribly and really hurt her and great injustice. And she eventually forgave that guard, but she said that it would still come to her mind, and at night when she lay down to sleep, she'd get kind of stuck, like a broken record, on that track and kept going over it again and again in her mind. It was contributing to her sleeplessness. So she went to see her pastor to tell him about the sleeplessness. And her pastor said this, I love this advice. He said, Up in the church tower is a bell which is run by pulling a rope. He said, But you know what? After the ringer lets go of the rope, the bell keeps swinging. First ding, then dong, slower and slower until the final ding, and then it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. We stop pulling the rope. So once you let go of something, don't be surprised that you continue to hear that bell ring. Don't be surprised that there are sometimes things that will come to your conscious mind that you weren't really thinking of, but they're just there all over again. At times like that, we remind ourselves, God, I've chosen to forgive this. God, I chose to let it go. You know, years ago, I've told you this story before years ago. I was 16 being careless with a pocket knife, and I stuck it deep into my hand. I was actually cutting some frozen hot dogs, and a knife slipped through the hot dogs, and I stuck that knife right into my hand. And it was deep. But it runs down my thumb and into my palm. That was oh my. 50 years ago. But let me tell you something. If I pick up something with this hand and it's heavy, or I have to spread my palm, I try to pick it up, I feel the stabbing all over again. You think, well, Pastor Keith has a scar, why would you feel it? I'll tell you why. Scar tissue doesn't stretch. And it's right at a place in my hand that needs to stretch. So when it has to stretch, it hurts. It hurts like the Dickens. So I'm reminded I have a scar. Well, sometimes in life, the pains that have happened to us, they're like scars on the soul, scars on the heart. And most times, especially after we've forgiven something, we never think a thing of it until our life is under stress. And under that pressure, we're reminded that there's a place where our heart should be able to give, and it doesn't quite give because there's a scar on the heart. And that scar tissue reminds you that you've been hurt before. But when you get a reminder like that, you don't dwell on the hurt. You dwell on the healer. You dwell on what God has done for you. So forgiveness is all about letting go of the emotional consequences of the hurt. It's about refusing to rehearse it, to reinforce it in your mind. It's about letting the past go into the past forever. So forgiveness is not denying the wrong. It's not about removing the consequences, it's not about restoring the relationship or erasing the memory. It's about releasing the debt and refusing to weaponize the past. Now, some of you have been hurt and hurt very deeply. And God says you don't have to minimize that. It was not right what happened to you, it was wrong. God calls it like it is. But at the same time, you're struggling to let it go. You need to let it go, but you're struggling with that. And I told you last week, one of the best prayers I know was taught to me by my spiritual director. Lord, make me willing to be willing. Make me willing to be willing. If you pray that to God, God, I don't have the willpower within me to stop this and let it go. But if you would make me willing, God, I'll do it. Make me willing to be willing. You pray that kind of prayer to God, God will supply the willingness. Second thing, some of you are in a position where you have hurt somebody. Maybe somebody really precious to you, whether it's a parent, a spouse, a dear friend, a child, someone was hurt by you. Be understanding, not demanding. Understand that there may be consequences for the choices you made. Understand that you've damaged trust with that person. And it's on you to rebuild it. God is with you in this. God is for you in this. He wants you to work to see that relationship healed. And he can do it, just like he did in my marriage. He can do that. But you need to demonstrate to that person or persons that you really sincerely are not just saying you were wrong. You take responsibility for the things you cost and you're willing to do whatever it takes to build that trust back. The final thing, and this is maybe most important of all, some of you want to forgive, but you just have no clue where to get started. And in part, it's because you haven't received the forgiveness of God. It's hard to give other people what we want. It's hard to give out other people. And where you should be experiencing this amazing joy knowing that God has forgiven you completely for everything you've ever done, everything you ever failed to do, for choosing to do life apart from Him, God has forgiven our sin debt in Jesus Christ. And just like the story that Jesus told in the Gospels about we've been forgiven this great debt, how could we ever hold other people's debts against them? If you experience the forgiveness of sins, what you discover is what God pours into you that flows out of you to other people. That there's no person who has a great and healthy relationship with Jesus Christ who thinks that hanging on to hurt is the way to go. That we know that we've got to give to others the same release that God gave to us. So wherever you may be, whether you are struggling with forgiving, whether you need to seek to rebuild with somebody that you've hurt, or whether you need to experience God, this would be a good time to call out to Him. Let's pray. Father, I just want to thank you that we've had this time in your word to be challenged about the truth, because so many people inside and outside the church have no idea what forgiveness is really about. And because we don't understand it, and because we accept these myths from society, a lot of us feel like we can't even do it because we've been taught the wrong things. We think it's about automatic reconciliation. We think it's about minimizing that hurt. We think it's about letting people off the hook too easily. We think it's about all these things that just get in the way of doing the business of forgiving. So, God, I would pray that someone today would say, God, I don't want to live this way anymore. This baggage is heavy. It already exacts too great a toll on my life as best I know how. I'm just praying, God, make me willing to be willing, be willing to let it go. God, supply that willingness in me because I don't find it in myself. And God, for anybody here who's hurt somebody, hurt somebody they love and care about a great deal. May today's message show them the path forward. That God, this is more than just about owning the fact that we were wrong. It's about owning the fact that we caused damage and we're responsible to rebuild that damage. So I pray, God, that you would just give them courage and give them hope and to let them know that you're for them, that you're with them, that you'll help them every step of the way. And the beauty of seeing that reconciliation happen will be one of the great trophies of your grace in the future. And God. For anybody here who doesn't know you in a personal relationship, help them to pray this simple prayer in their heart. Jesus, I want you in my life. I believe you died for my sins. I believe you rose again. I believe that I can be forgiven by you. And that's what I'm asking you to do, that you would forgive me completely for anything and everything I've ever did and everything I failed to do, for choosing to do life in a self-styled way apart from you. Forgive me, God. Find a home in my heart, in my life, and help me now to grow as a Christian. I'm taking the first step by surrendering my life to you. Help someone to pray that today. In Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all.