Ep 12: How Faith, Mercy, And Letting Go Free Your Mind

We unpack forgiveness through scripture, stories, and practical steps that free the mind and guard the heart. Faith, prayer, and perspective guide a process that cancels the debt without denying the harm, turning painful memories into fuel for growth.

• Luke 6:37 as the foundation for forgiveness 
• Faith in Jesus and grace as the model 
• A business betrayal story and mental freedom 
• Forgiveness as canceling the debt, not forgetting 
• Praying for those who offend us 
• Managing pride, offense and perspective shifts 
• Seventy times seven and not keeping score 
• Hard cases, boundaries and long timelines 
• Why revenge fails and inner work heals 
• Action steps to start forgiving today

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Transcript

Welcome And Theme: Forgiveness

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome back to the Road Travel. Thanks for taking a little time to join us today. We we hope that we're finding you on a road that you're traveling as you join us on our road. We we are traveling and have traveled as we share a different topic each week, each episode, and kind of um the road we've traveled with that topic that we share. And so we hope that we can kind of give you some guidance and give you some examples from our imperfect life to show you that kind of all of our lives are imperfect, and it's just kind of the road we travel. So we're just here to help you on that road as we share some verses with you, share some experiences with you, and try to share some applicable ways that we can apply the word of the Bible to our everyday life. So I'm your host Aaron Degler, and along with your host Alan Hugator, as we share those thoughts and things with you on the road traveled. So today I think we're gonna start with a scripture. Yes. Okay, we're gonna dive into one of the big things uh I think all of us experience, which is are we able to forgive and forgiveness?

Scripture Foundation From Luke 6:37

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Lack of ability to, lack of desire. I guess some people have the desire to want to be forgiving to others, you know. But to overcome that emotion of whatever you felt like you got violated, you got hurt, whatever they've done to you, for you to be able to overcome that and truly forgive them. So I'll read a scripture here from Luke 6 and 37. Judge not and you will not be judged, condemn not and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Repeat that. Forgive and you will be forgiven. So if we forgive, what do we say? We will be forgiven. So we ask we sin against God, and we ask for forgiveness there. And we're told in scripture that if we ask, that we will be forgiven through his grace. Our sins are forgiven and overcome through Jesus Christ. So that means that our faith has to be in Jesus Christ and and the one and only servant God that we have for this to be accepted and for us to be forgiven. Our faith, not by our words, but our faith is what allows it to be forgiven, for God to forgive us, because we have faith in him that he will do his promise. He promises he will forgive us. Jesus died for our sins, but if we don't believe in them, I mean truly believe that they exist. He's a living God, they exist in us. Jesus walked on this earth. I believe all of this. But if we don't have that faith right there, forgiveness is out the door. Jesus died for our sins. We have to have the faith. Keep coming back to it. God promises He'll forgive us. But we have to have the faith in Him. And the Holy Spirit is here within us to help us with our struggles here on earth.

Personal Story: Business Hurt And Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Because I think, like many of us, when we talk about forgiveness, it is a very challenging thing. I mean, we do talk about, I think we hear about forgiveness in the Bible that you know we're supposed to do it. We we pray for forgiveness. Um I think we're probably much quicker to pray for it and ask it to receive it than we actually are to give it. A number of years ago, I was getting together a business deal, and we were kind of got to the point where we're talking about, you know, kind of how things would look, percentages, all that kind of thing, how how we would divide that up. And in that, in that meeting, they basically told me that I brought no value to that business. And it was tough to sit there and listen to somebody tell you you bring no value to that business. And it really it really bothered me, and it really made me angry and mad. And and it probably took me well over a year to get over that. And because they don't understand, they don't know. Why would they do that? All those questions that came into my mind, like why would I forgive them? Because what look what they did to me. And as I thought about it, and it was uh it was a really a good business, and and I thought people would benefit from that business. And I thought we were gonna go into business together because I thought the business was good, and I thought people were gonna benefit from it. And if if I wasn't able to forgive, then it was gonna get in the way of me helping other people. And I and I kept thinking, well, they should do this, they should do that. And as I as I worked through it that year, I began to think that I didn't I didn't need them to apologize, I didn't need any of that for me to offer forgiveness. For me to offer forgiveness, it had because it was taking up a lot of my mental space. Even through the year, it's taking up a lot of space. And I doubt they thought two things about it. But for me, and I thought forgiveness wasn't about letting them off the hook. For me, it was about freeing up my mental space to be able to move forward. And that's a business that I still encourage people to use and do because it helps people. And I realized that if I couldn't forgive, I was gonna get in the way of people having things that would really help them, would make a difference in their life. And I didn't want to be that person that got in that way. But it had nothing to do with them coming to me. It was all about me, and I never said, you know, hey, I forgive you. None of that. It was all about working it through in my heart, in my mind, to understand that it wasn't about them, it was about my attitude and how I viewed the situation. And I had to kind of let that go.

Why Forgiveness Frees Your Mind

Praying For Those Who Offend Us

SPEAKER_03 7:13

You think they really knew that they offended you? And I don't I don't think they did to that extent. So often that happens. Someone, I have said things and as I always say, they come out wrong lots of times when I say something, and I've offended people, and not even with zero intent. My word choice is terrible lots of times. And might have been in joking fashion, but but it offended them. And so for them to retaliate against me, as we all want to do, I'm going, what did I do? What did I say? I've had that happen with me and my wife a time or two. What did I say? You know, but I offended her, or I said something to someone, a friend of mine, and well, they took offense to it. So why so we we're so easy with our feelings laying out here to take offense? But if they had retaliated at me, like maybe my wife came back at me and I'm not picking at her, but I didn't even know what I'd done. She wanted to bite my head off or get even with me or call me a bad name or whatever, you know, and and but did that really gonna make her feel better? No. So often we want to retaliate, just when something like that happens. You made a great point. It's for your peace of mind, not theirs. Forgiving is to help you clear your mind, get it out of the way. You're it's holding you back. That out in front of you, wanting to retaliate, wanting to get even with people, that's in front of you, and you have to deal with that instead of okay, they didn't mean it or it don't mean nothing to me, really. They didn't really hurt me. Get it out of the way where you can go on with life. How can you have peace with that in front of you? You know, so here we go to God with it and we pray for our enemies. It says to pray for your enemies. Those people may not be your enemies, but they offended you. So we pray for those people. I've had numerous times, and it's such a hard thing to do that I end up praying for myself because I'm not with the pure heart of really asking for their forgiveness, you know, to God forgive them for what they've done against me, or God help me forgive them, or I'm gonna forgive them. Because I let myself, my own pride, stand in front of me. But it's to clear your mind, my mind, whenever someone's done that and we need it out of our way, to go on with our life, not affect us, you know, in any manner mentally. It's get it aside, set it aside. Well, the Lord, I do not know in scripture where it's at, but he says, if you truly ask for forgiveness of that sin, he thinks of it no more. It is out of his, you know, you don't bring that up ever again. Unlike some elephants in our world that never forget anything we've done, and they want to bring something back in front of us that we've done 40 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever. But he thinks of it no more, and that's what we need to do with forgiveness. Whatever that person, however they offended you, you know, why do we carry our feelings on our sleeves so easy or whatever? And they could have really done something bad. I'm not playing light here, but they could have really done something bad to you or a member of your family. I've had some real struggles with maybe not what someone's done to me because I'm a little more calloused, but when they go to hurting a loved one, they get pretty up on edge. My old hair stands up on the back of the neck, and I want to bite at them or something. And I have prayed, a good family friend of mine, not only friend, but family. Someone has offended them, and he was wanting to go and approach them and all this. And so I didn't, I went, I told him, I said, I prayed for that person. You done what? I said, I prayed for them. I prayed for them to change and not be that kind of person. And when they were they was coming at you, I prayed that they would see the light that they were wrong and trying to tear you down. But I said, I prayed for that person. I said, Yes, I prayed for you also. But I said, I prayed for the person that offended you. God help this person. Help them see the light, help them be more like you. Help them come around where they don't offend more people, where they don't do things, hateful things against someone else. And but it is very, very hard to forgive. You won't never always you won't forget what happened in that situation. You won't forget it. Take it as a learning experience that you grew from it and that you learned how to forgive them and say, hey, you know, maybe they didn't know exactly what this, how hard it would hit you. But let's talk about the word forgiveness for just a moment. You know, what is forgiveness and and and why do I need it in my life? Forgiveness means to wipe the slate clean, to pardon, to cancel a debt. I had a guy get to me for quite a bit of money one time.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

It was a lot to me.

Defining Forgiveness: Canceling The Debt

SPEAKER_03 12:28

And I won't never forget what he'd done. But I said I don't like the word ignorance, but sometimes they don't even they're so ignorant they don't even realize what all they did do to you. And it was kind of I even took it like he he made a comment like, well, you can afford to take the loss I can't. It's kind of like your deal. It's because I can afford to pay pay the bill, and you didn't, but but I have prayed on that a lot, and it's not easy to overlook that. But you know, you have to pardon them, pardon whatever they've done, and and a lot of times it is because they don't realize or they don't know how deep they've cut you or how bad they've hurt you with their hatefulness or their words. But when we wrong someone, we seek their forgiveness. Think about when you've wronged someone. I'm sure every one of us has said something somewhere that has hurt someone's feelings. But when when we seek for their forgiveness, like with my wife, for example, I've said something and boy, I don't want to, uh I feel bad. So I go to her and I apologize for the relationship to be restored is what I'm after. But when I'm doing a wedding, I tell them to be real cautious about what they say to each other because words you can't retract them. You can only ask for forgiveness for those words. But you can't retract words. No matter how cutting they are, how brutal. When you get in a heat argument with someone, and you know, those words, they'll remember them. And you can't take those words back. And words is probably as much as when we offend someone as when you know some other ways, but it's something to do with a word. But we want to restore that friendship. But forgiveness is not granted because a person deserves to be forgiven. Well, maybe those guys didn't deserve to be forgiven because of what they said to you. But you forgive them for your reasons. I can't tell you why to forgive them. But you chose to move on with your life, to wipe that away, to not have that step in front of you as an obstacle. But you forgiveness is not granted because a person deserves to be. I think that holds us back lots of time. Well, they don't deserve that. They deserve this punishment, or they deserve this that I can do to them. Because we think we let them off the hook if we forgive them. Exactly. But that's not what we're doing here. That's not why we're granting forgiveness to let them off the hook. They still done it. They know most of the time, a lot of times, they know when they have done something. I don't let them off the hook. No one deserves to be forgiven because of our actions, our words. Forgiveness is an act of love, mercy, and grace. Okay, so it's hard for us to think about love and forgiveness whenever somebody's done wrong to us. But God says to love thy neighbor as thyself. You know, mercy, okay. They didn't really understand what they were saying, how it came out, what it would be. Grant them a little mercy there and grace. Well, I don't know how I can give grace to anybody. God gives grace to us, but that's the way he forgives us is through grace. But forgiveness is a decision to not hold something against another person despite what they have done to you. More or less, no matter what they've done to you, you have to forgive them. You need to forgive them. No matter what they've done to you.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And that's a hard, hard thing to do when because we've either been physically hurt, um, we've been emotionally hurt. And that's a very challenging, um, as we say you need to. But some listening may be going, I I don't think I can. And it may be a process as we we talk about, it may be, you know, something small, maybe within a few weeks you can. And there may be times when things happen that takes years. Yes. And I and I think and as as you talked about forgiveness and and how that all goes, it all starts in how do we view the situation. It all starts with our thoughts. Of, as I look back over my year, it it I had to think through it. I had to work through it, take different sides, different perspectives. What's the pros? What's the cons? What's is it affecting me? How is it affecting me mentally, emotionally? What all those things have to be taken into consideration. And it's really the process of working through all those steps. So again, it can be a long process. Um, as we say, forgiveness, if somebody hurts you, it's not, well, in a month you should have already forgiven. It's not always that simple.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

I don't want to bring up nothing, but a lot of times it's something that someone may have done. It was an accident through a driving wreck, you know, or I hate to bring it up, the drunk driver might have hurt, killed someone in the family, you know, things like that. Child gets whatever happens, and I have not had that disaster, thank God. But I can see how hard it would be to forgive someone of that action. So it it can be really, really, I mean, not only just words, but actions can come around, and there just seems to be no way that you could really forgive them for what they've done. But yet, when we ask God to forgive us, he says he will. If we truly have faith in him, and we have faith in him, we have faith in Jesus. So when I ask him to forgive me, I think he does. And just about every time I pray, I ask him to forgive me of my sins. So I'm gonna go ahead and ask every listener for just a moment here, if they'll think about this way. I want you to ask God to forgive you for your sins or for whatever reason you're asking him to forgive you. Something usually is sinned against him, the same way you forgive others. So you're gonna ask him to forgive you. I'm gonna just use me for example. I ask God to forgive me the same way I forgive others. Well, if I'm not forgiving them, then how's God gonna forgive me? If I say, well, I'll forgive you, but I'm gonna put this little right on top. But this. Or I'm doing the best I can in forgiving you. Well, God, you're just gonna do the best you can in forgive me? Or are you gonna forgive me?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

So so how's it how's it make you feel going to God on a daily basis or a weekly basis, asking for forgiveness, knowing there's places in your life that maybe you still haven't offered forgiveness?

Hard Cases: Big Wounds And Patience

SPEAKER_03 19:52

It's come up pretty regularly. And I have overcome some of that. I have forgiven some people because of. Maybe they didn't realize how cutting at their words were. I just use a little in here. Forget it. That was their ignorance. I know I said I've been guilty of it. I hope that someone forgives me when I've wronged them. But it will make, it makes me think about my lack of forgiveness in some situations. When I sit and pray asking for forgiveness. Because then I go, well, it's not that I feel guilty, but I go, do I really believe my words here that God I'm asking you to forgive me when I have not forgiven this person? This situation.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And part of that is all still working through forgiveness. It's we have to have communication with God to be able to work through our forgiveness. Whether we're asking Him for forgiveness for us, or there's those in our life that we need to forgive, we still have to, He still has to include in that conversation. Because we still need advice, we still need guidance, we still need understanding. We still need because I think sometimes I had this happen the other day over just a goofy thing. My alarm uh went off about I it went off at 2.50 in the morning. I hit snooze, you know, five minutes later hit snooze, I hit snooze three times. On that third time, I I I said a quick prayer says, Lord, give me discipline today. And in that, I just no more finished that give me discipline today, that I had a thought of I've given you three opportunities for discipline. There you go. And and so I think sometimes in that communication, our answers come up in a thought that we've never had before. That, oh, well, I never thought it about it from that person's perspective. I never thought maybe they didn't have that intent. Or maybe they did have that intent, but it wasn't necessarily aimed at me. I was just in the pathway. So I think sometimes when we we have to include God in that conversation, in that prayer for forgiveness, because it can be a thought, it can be an idea, it can be somebody else coming into our life that says something to us that we go, oh, I never thought about that. Or I didn't see it that way. So I we, you know, when we go and ask for forgiveness, we also have to be including him in that conversation of giving forgiveness.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Well, I ask him for strength because I end up praying for myself, because I know I'm not praying for, I'm not asking for forgiveness or praying for this person, saying, I will forgive them. Lord help me forgive them if I don't have purity in my heart, meaning I will forgive them, or I want to forgive them, or I want to show this love and mercy that we spoke of.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

And and when when you pray for strength, I think this happens often. When we pray for forgiveness, we pray for strength, for patience, for calmness, all those things. We automatically think we're gonna be stronger. But I think sometimes he gives us, it's like I go to the gym and go, man, uh go if I'm a trainer and somebody comes to me, hey, I want to get stronger. Okay. I'm gonna give you some hard things to lift so you can work on getting a little stronger. And I think sometimes we we get, God, I asked for strength and you give me all this stuff. Why are you doing that? Again, because it he wants, he is making us stronger, and in that process we will become stronger.

Faith, Prayer, And Perspective Shifts

SPEAKER_03 23:33

A lot of the little challenges that we face every day is God's way of developing our strength, our character, letting us see truly maybe ourselves in the reflection of some of those things that we are challenges. I call them challenges during the day that uh that we encounter that if you'll just open your eyes to that moment, not get all twisted off one way or the other about this challenge, and just kind of like say, take a deep breath and breathe and look and see. Usually it's not as bad as the challenges we first think it is. And then, second of all, what did I learn from this? How can I improve my walk with the Lord because of this challenge? What's my opportunity here? Exactly. Exactly. You know, so you're right. I I mean I have to pray for a lot, but he's given me a lot of opportunities. You know, in Matthew 18 and 22, I believe it was Peter was asking, you know, Jesus about how many times he should forget, forgive, excuse me. And Jesus said, not, he said seven times, and he said, not just seven times, but seventy times seven. Figure that out. That's 490, right? That's a bunch. That's a lot. You can't even remember keep counting 400, you know, if you want to sit out here and try to go through 490 times and saying, I forgive you, it's nearly impossible to get there. You know, any but why do we become offended so easily? What is our weakness, our character flaw of do are we that weak a people? Am I that weak a person that when somebody says something like you said, might not even be directed at me? And I go, Well, you jerk, you got offended real quick. Want to be a redneck, throw my chest out, you know. And but why do we why are we so offended? We should be more secure than that. We're Christians, we walk with God. What can these words really hurt us?

SPEAKER_01 25:53

That maybe sometimes the offense that we got offended shows a weakness in us. Exactly. And and we don't always want, we get upset because it's not something we want to face in ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

That's the truth. You have to face a lot of those things. And again, it's to help us grow character, and that will get us putting our faith more in God. The more faith you have truly in God, the stronger you'll be able to resist these little words from someone here and won't be as easily offended. And even when someone challenges maybe your relationship with God, they don't know. They're being judgmental. And in a scripture that I read a while ago, it says, Do not judge, or you will be judged. When somebody wants to question your relationship with God, we all need to have a stronger one. We read scripture, we study, you know, to build our relationship with Him every day. But so when somebody wants to challenge that, just smile and say, it's a lot stronger than you think. Whether you want to say it out loud or you want to say it inside, just think about your relationship with Him if someone wants to challenge your relationship. I've had it challenge mine before. You know. Oh, you got such a great relationship with God? I've got a lot more of one than you think I do. Maybe I'm not showing it well enough. I mean, I will admit that. But there's where the judgment comes in. It's when someone challenges your relationship with God. They don't know, but don't get offended by it. Think about it. Okay, I need to work on it. Or yeah, I've got one. It's a little stronger than you might think it is. I'm able to control myself now because of my faith in God.

Strength Through Trials And Daily Challenges

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Maybe I need to show it a little bit more. Maybe there's something I need to do that would lead them to believe that. And it's not getting mad at them, but like, hmm, what do I need to do different? Maybe, maybe is that a do I need to reflect on that? Do I need to and I I think those when I say how do we how do we forgive? Um, I I think it starts with our thoughts and we and our and our communication with God and our our prayer life and how do we work through that? Because we we do need his help to work through those things.

SPEAKER_03 28:24

I've heard it about how do we expect God to forgive us if we can't forgive others. Think about this. We've sinned against God infinitely more than anyone's ever sinned against us. Think about how many times you as an individual, whoever's listening, that you've sinned against God. I mean, I have some time today, some matter, some thought, some one pure as it needs to be. And I'm 66 years old, so that's a lot of years that I have done something. So I have done it so much more against him than anybody else has ever done against me. And yet I expect him, because he promised me and he will do it. If he made a promise, he will forgive me. So I can get forgiven for my sins if I believe in him. But yet we're supposed to forgive others if we expect him to forgive us. But nobody can sin against me any more than I've sinned against God. It's pretty deep for me.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

And if we have that expectation of God to forgive us, we need to have that expectation that we are going to forgive others. I think it's probably our challenge to each of you today is where is there some areas in your life that you haven't offered forgiveness? Remembering that it's not about the other person to let them off the hook. It's about us internally, about releasing that emotion that's tied to that incident. And there's some really big things that happen in people's lives that are very challenging to forgive and let people go of that. And so the challenge is whether it's big or small, and we're not saying it's gonna happen in a week or two weeks or a month. Maybe it'll take years. It's a process. But can you start working on that forgiveness today?

SPEAKER_03 30:31

And it may start with a thought. I just thought of another one I need to work on. While you were saying that, I just thought of another one I need to work on. So there's probably multiple ones that we have throughout our lives, but another one just came to mind. I'm not going to share it right now, but it's one that I need to work on. So there's a lot of them I think we all have to be more forgiving. Interrupted you.

Seventy Times Seven: Not Keeping Score

SPEAKER_01 30:57

No, it it I mean, and and that's that's I mean, that's exactly what hopefully others have had though that I I oh it just went into my mind, just like you did, that that that's that's our challenge, and that we take action. And I always try to share that when we take action, it doesn't mean we have to physically be doing something. When we take action, it starts to think how do we how do we actively do that in prayer? How do we actively think about our perspective of the situation? How do we actively think about the other person, the other events? All those things are taking action towards us about forgiveness. And I think the most important thing to remember about forgiveness is it's not about the other person, it's all about us. It's about us being able to forgive and no longer having emotion tied to that, so we can move, move our life forward. I think sometimes forgiveness, that thing that was happened to us, happened in a moment or happened in a season. But we spend a lifetime dwelling on it because we can't let it go. And so that thing becomes our prison because we can't let it go. We can't forgive it. So we live in that thing over and over and over. And so whatever happened in a moment or a season now has us for a lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

I've never heard of an incident when someone's done something to someone and it left a hole in them that revenge was ever able to fill that hole. So we've seen story read stories, we've we've heard stories, we've seen movies, and never did revenge ever fill and replace that hurt that was put on that person. So revenge is useless. It does not heal, replace, fix anything. It's hard not to think about revenge. It's a human nature deal of some kind, but I've never heard of it. Oh, well, I'm good now. Mm-hmm. I don't think about it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

We talked about our last episode was about an inside job. And that's truly what forgiveness is.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

It's an inside job, and that's up to us to forgive and work through that, just as God has forgiven us for our sins.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Exactly. Talk to me to close a word of prayer.

unknown 33:26

Yeah.

Taking Offense, Pride, And Growth

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Everyone joined me. We come to you for answers and we search through the Bible and through other ways of trying to find answers. And Lord, as as we look into forgiveness, we all know that we fell short on forgiving others. And we're pulling on you for strength, Lord. Lord, I ask you to be with everyone is is as they open up their hearts and find ways to forgive others as we've asked you to forgive us. Lord, we have faith in you and Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Lord, we come to you at this time in his holy name. Amen. Amen. This is what episode is this? 12? Number 12. Okay. Now we're going to continue to do these. And so I've had a little inquiry or two about when they come out, how often, things of that nature.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

So they come out every other Tuesday. Um, so you'll find a new episode every other Tuesday. You can find us on YouTube, The Road Travel. Those are up every every other Tuesday. And then anywhere you find your podcast, The Road Traveled, you can subscribe on YouTube or anywhere you find your podcast. That's the best way so you don't miss an episode. So they get notification by being subscribed. Notification. Yeah. Then you'll know when the next ones come out that way. Okay. They come out every other Tuesday. That way you don't miss it. You can either watch our good-looking faces at the bunkhouse on YouTube or just listen to our wonderful voices on anywhere you get your podcast. And so it's our hope that we have found you on your road that you're traveling, and that we our goal is always to walk side by side with you on your road by sharing a little bit of our road and our challenges and some of our successes, that some of those may help, not to be boastful or bragging, but just to show and share that we have those struggles and that we can overcome. Sometimes we overcome together. We always are able to overcome with the Lord as our co-pilot, which is always the best thing. So we just hope that you you find value in our road traveled, and that we find you on your road travel, and that you share with family and friends, either YouTube or podcast. So thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you down the road.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

We're real line.