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I have felt a growing conviction that I had to share this with you.
I feel as though there is something that God wants to deal with in several people… he wants you to break through to the next level, but he has to take you past this big barrier in your life.
That barrier is Bitterness & Unforgiveness.
Let me take a little survey: How many of you have had conflict with members of your family?
Families are wonderful. . . but they can really be a pain to live with. Words get said, people get hurt and before you know it, you feel like the comedian who said:
“Who can ever forget Winston Churchill's immortal words: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills." It sounds exactly like our family vacation.” (Robert Orben)
Even when really do love the other person, we try to show it in a way that they don’t understand, and people get hurt:
“To prove his love for her, he swam the deepest river, crossed the widest desert and climbed the highest mountain. She divorced him. He was never home.” (Rose Sands, The Saturday Evening Post. )
If you’re a teen here, you might know how this guys feels:
How to Overcome Past Hurts in Your Family
There’s not a single one of us here that has not been hurt at sometime by someone in our family. It might be something very small:
- You were the brunt of a family joke.
- You were criticized.
It might be something from the past:
- You’ve been made to feel inferior your whole life.
- Your parents were abusive.
- Your parents loved their drugs more than they loved you.
It might be something from the present:
- He can’t let you be right.
- She can’t let you forget.
- He won’t take responsibility.
- He stays out late, forsaking his family.
- She spends without thinking of everyone else.
It might be something very serious:
- One partner had an affair.
- One family member has been abusive.
It seems like with all the blended family relationships these days (divorces, remarriages, stepchildren, his/hers/ours children) that there’s even more opportunity for hurt and bitterness!
Here’s the statement you’ve got to remember:
The only way to get over past hurts is to forgive.
3 things I want you to believe:
1. No matter ___how much____ there is to forgive, ___you can____.
Luke 7:41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
43 Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
The implication of this story is clear: Your family bond and family love can be stronger than ever if we will practice forgiveness!
2. Trying to get back at the other person will not satisfy you.
Proverbs 20:22 Do not say, "I will pay back evil"; Wait for the LORD, and He will save you.
“Whoever opts for revenge should dig two graves.” (Chinese proverb)
“. . .not forgiving someone is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies)
3. If you won’t forgive others, God can’t forgive you.
Matthew 6:14-15 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
George Herbert said, “He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass.” (T. T. Crabtree. Ed. The Zondervan 2001 Pastor’s Annual. Howard S. Kalb. “Forgiveness.” Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001, p. 306).
A lot of people misunderstand what forgiveness is & what it is not:
And I say this … with a tremendous sense of love and empathy and compassion and hope for you. But you need to forgive that person or those people who have wounded you most deeply. …
Because I think many Christians do not rightly ascertain what forgiveness truly is and is not, and so I’ve got a long list for you:
1. Forgiveness is not approving or diminishing sin.
It’s not saying, “Well, it’s okay. Nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes a mistake,” or, “It’s not a really big deal. Worse things have happened.” No, it is a big deal! It’s so big that God died for it. So don’t dishonor the cross of Jesus and approve or diminish something that required the death of God.
2. Forgiveness is not enabling sin.
I see this frequently with wives who misunderstand submission. “Okay, the husband is the head of the home, he’s supposed to lovingly lead.” Great. He’s supposed to lovingly lead by following Jesus, and if he’s not following Jesus, the wife shouldn’t follow him because her ultimate allegiance is to Jesus and the first job description of the wife is to be a helper. And sometimes husbands are foolish. They make stupid decisions financially. They make reckless decisions spiritually. They buck godly, spiritual authority trying to correct them. And in the name of forgiving them, the wife comes along and enables him. She just is complicit in his rebellion and sin and folly.
You can forgive someone without enabling their sin, participating in it. You can have a friend or a family member who is an addict, for example, you can forgive them without enabling them. Forgiving is not enabling. Forgiving can even include confronting and rebuking, and sometimes it must.
3. Forgiveness is not denying a wrongdoing.
“It didn’t happen. I forgot all about it. I just moved on. I pretend like it never happened. I didn’t let it affect me.” That’s not true. It’s not the denial of a wrongdoing. Forgiveness is not denying that you were sinned against.
4. Forgiveness is not waiting for an apology.
Some of you say, “I will forgive them as soon as they say they’re sorry.” I hate to break it to you, some people are never going to apologize. Some people are going to continue in their destructive, rebellious, and foolish life course. Some people will be stubborn and religious and self-righteous and they’ll never confess or admit. Some people will move away, you’ll never speak with them again. Some people will die before they articulate repentance. And so you forgive them before they apologize.
5. Forgiveness is not forgetting.
This is one of the great Christian myths. “Well, we forgive and forget.” No we don’t! You can’t forgive and forget. You can’t. You were raped, molested, abandoned, beaten, abused, cheated on, betrayed, lied about. “Forget it”? You can’t forget it. It’s impossible. And some will appeal to Bible books like Jeremiah, where it says that God will remember their sin no more. And they’ll say, “See? God doesn’t remember our sin.” And let me tell you this, God does remember our sin. He’s omniscient, he’s all knowing, he forgets nothing, he knows everything. Right? It’s not like God’s in heaven going, “I forgot a whole bunch of things.” He would cease to be God.
What does it mean that God remembers their sin no more? It means that God chooses not to interact with us based upon what we’ve done, but instead interact with us based upon what Christ has done. It means that he chooses to see us as new creations and he chooses to work for a new future. It means that at the forefront of God’s thinking toward us is not all of the sin that we’ve committed, but all the work that Jesus has done for us and in us and, by grace, will do through us. But it’s not like God has no idea what you did yesterday. He forgets nothing.
And I see this sometimes in counseling, where one person will sin against another person and they’ll say, “Well, you shouldn’t even remember that.” It’s impossible. I had one situation recently. I looked at the husband, I was like, “You slept with her best friend. She’s not going to forget that ever. Now, she can choose not to interact with you in light of that. She could choose to forgive you. She can choose to not be stewing on that every minute of every day and seething. But she’s never going to forget that this happened because it was cataclysmic.”
6. Forgiveness is not ceasing to feel the pain.
Just because it hurts doesn’t mean you’ve failed to forgive. It still hurts. Some of you have had horrible things done to you. Horrible things done to you. With all sincerity, I’m sorry. And it would be so cruel to say, “Well, if you’ve forgiven them, it shouldn’t hurt anymore.” Well, sure it does. See, we don’t hear in the Bible that all the tears are wiped from our eyes until the resurrection of the dead in the final unveiling of the kingdom. It means people are crying all the way to Jesus. It still hurts. It’s okay for it to bother you.
7. Forgiveness is not a onetime event.
It’s not like you forgive someone and it’s over. Sometimes, they keep sinning, so you need to keep forgiving. Or sometimes you forgive them, but there are emotional moments where it feels fresh.
There’s one woman that I know, her husband committed adultery on her. And he earnestly repented and she honestly forgave him and they have sought biblical counseling and they have worked it out. But she confesses there are times, sometimes even at church, where her husband is doing nothing wrong, and it’s been some years, that she’ll just see him talking to another woman, maybe even a mutual friend, and just the sight of him with another woman causes her to feel all of that betrayal again and it rises up in her soul. And she needs to forgive him again for what he did in the past. Sometimes forgiveness is something that is regularly required.
8. Forgiveness is not neglecting justice.
You can forgive someone and call the police and have them arrested. You can forgive someone and testify against them in court. Romans 13 says to obey the government. They’d say, “I thought you forgave me.” “I do. I forgive you. But you’ve committed a crime. You’ve broken the law. And so these are the consequences.” If you’ve stolen, you need to pay it back. If you’ve lied, you need to go tell the truth. It’s not a neglecting of justice. You can forgive and pursue justice.
9. Forgiveness is not trusting.
I hear this all the time. “My dad molested me. He said he’s sorry. Can he babysit my kids?” Answer? No way. No way. “My boyfriend or husband hit me, but he said he’s sorry. Should we just pick up where we left off and keep going?” No way. See, trust is built slowly. It’s lost quickly. Trust is built slowly.
Those of you, now hear this, I’m your pastor who loves you. Let me put an airbag around this. For those of you who are naive and gullible, trust is to be given slowly, lost quickly. Some of you give your whole heart away and never take it back. Give it away slowly and if someone sins against you grievously, trust has to be rebuilt over time. It’s not trusting. It’s not trusting. Some people can be trusted in time with fruit and keeping with repentance after they’ve gotten help. Other people should never be trusted because the risk is simply too high. This is particularly true with children who are vulnerable. We need to be exceedingly careful with who we trust.
10. Forgiveness is not reconciliation.
It’s not that you’re friends and you hang out and everything’s okay. You’re close and it’s back to normal. Not at all. It takes one person to repent. It takes one person to forgive. It takes two people to reconcile. That’s why Paul says, “In as much as it is possible with you, seek to live at peace with all men.” Here’s what he’s saying. Do your best, but you can’t be at peace with everyone. But if it doesn’t work out, make sure it’s their fault, not yours. Right? It takes two people to reconcile.
This is where I’ve got a friend right now who’s in the midst of a divorce because she is acknowledging her own sin, her husband really is the problem, and she’s saying, “I love you, I forgive you. If you’ll meet with counselors, if you’ll submit to the authority in our church, I extend a hand to you and we can reconcile and save this marriage.” He’s saying, “No. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I don’t think I need to listen to the pastor. I don’t need to meet with a counselor. I don’t need to listen to anyone. It’s your fault.” There will be no reconciliation. Not with a man like that. Repentance takes one, forgiveness takes one, reconciliation takes two.
Forgiveness and Justice
Now, in hearing this, some of you, like me, will have strong sense of justice. You say, “But if I forgive them, where’s the justice?” Justice comes, friends, ultimately from Jesus. Either they will come to faith in Christ and you will get your justice at the cross, where Jesus’ blood was shed in their place for their sins as Jesus’ blood was shed in your place for your sin, because Lord knows we’ve hurt people too, or, if they remain unrepentant, your forgiving them does not mean that they are ultimately forgiven.
They’ve sinned against you and God, and as you forgive them, you’re leaving them to Jesus. And if they live in a state of unrepentance and they don’t come to Jesus for forgiveness, they will stand before Jesus in the end. And they will be judged and sentenced to the conscious eternal torments of hell to suffer forever for all of their sin, paying their eternal debt to the living God.
So, in forgiving someone, we are not neglecting justice. We’re leaving it to the perfect judge to enact perfect justice, either at the cross or in hell, but either way justice will be served. And we forgive in light of that.
4 steps to forgiveness:
1. Give up your right to get even or punish.
Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge, my friends. . . for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.’” (NIV)
This is the ESSENCE of forgiveness!
Forgiveness is not feeling better.
It’s not feeling great waves of warm feelings for that person.
It’s not forgetting what was done to you.
It’s not giving up legal action, although you may choose to do that.
FORGIVENESS is releasing the right to do anything to get that person back. I’m not just talking about killing them or beating them up or stealing from them. I mean that I can’t:
- talk about them, so that everyone knows.
- withold something from them that they love.
- remind them continually to make them feel badly.
- Plant seeds in the kids’ minds about him.
It means I give up my right to get them back in ANY way.
2. Go and make it right.
Matthew 5:23-24 "Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
There are very few things like a good old-fashioned apology to make things better!
The word “be reconciled” indicates a complete change. Not that we’re going to be instant best friends, but I’ve done whatever was necessary to put that relationship back together.
3. Make a choice to change your actions.
Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, rage, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all hatred.
Ask yourself: Have these words described the way my family and I have interacted in the past?
bitterness, rage & anger, clamor - literally means “shouting”, evil speaking, (talking badly, putting others down, gossiping,) hatred. If they have, I’m asking you today to make the choice to change that! God can give you the ability to make that change – you don’t have to keep on living that way!
Here’s something you need to know about your brain: It’s made up of cells that are connected together in little places called “synapses.” Every time a thought travels down a certain path, that path gets stronger. Eventually, a RUT develops in your mind, and you start automatically thinking those thoughts.
You’ve been used to responding in a certain way. . . I’m asking you to get your mind out of that old rut, and choose to respond in a new way. Break that old thought habit, and think in a “forgiveness” way instead!
Are there things you need to stop doing that remind you? Are there things you need to get rid of that keep it before you? Are there thoughts that you’ve been thinking that you need to banish from your mind?
4. Never stop forgiving.
Matthew 18:21 Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"
22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”
Back in those days, it was traditional to say that you had to forgive three times. . . Peter thought he’d be extra spiritual and double that – and then even ADD one to it. (“Boy, Jesus sure ought to be proud of me!”)
But Jesus once again turns traditional thinking upside down and says, “No not 7 times – 490 times!” In other words, more times than you can keep count of!
Forgiveness and Justice - Some of you have a strong sense of justice. You say, “But if I forgive them, where’s the justice?”
Justice comes from Jesus. Either they will come to ___faith__ in Christ and you will get your justice at the cross, where Jesus’ blood was shed in their place for their sins (like yours!) or they will be judged and ___sentenced to HELL suffer forever for all of their sin, paying their eternal debt to the living God.
In forgiving someone, we are not neglecting justice. We’re leaving it to the perfect judge to enact perfect justice, either at the cross or in hell, but either way justice will be served. And we forgive in light of that. – Mark Driscoll
Here’s what I want you to do:
Action:
- If you have had bitterness against someone in your heart, I want you to ask God to forgive you right now.
- I want you to write down on your paper one person you will call or talk to before this day is over and ask forgiveness.
- I want you to write down on your paper one person you will give forgiveness to right now.
___________________________________________________
HANDOUT
___________________________________________________
Going to the next level spiritually means leaving behind some things by forgiving people who have hurt you.
3 things I want you to believe about forgiveness:
1. No matter _______________________ there is to forgive, _____________________.
Luke 7:41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
43 Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Lord, let me always be more amazed that I am _______________________ than that I have to forgive _____________________.
2. Trying to ___________________ at the other person will not ___________________ you.
Proverbs 20:22 Do not say, "I will pay back evil"; Wait for the LORD, and He will save you.
“Whoever opts for revenge should dig two graves.” (Chinese proverb)
“. . .not forgiving someone is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” -Anne Lamott
3. If you won’t forgive ________, God can’t forgive ______.
Matthew 6:14-15 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
“He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass.” George Herbert
Here are 10 things forgiveness is NOT:
1. Forgiveness is not _________________________or diminishing sin.
2. Forgiveness is not __________________________ sin.
3. Forgiveness is not ____________________________a wrongdoing.
4. Forgiveness is not waiting for an __________________________.
5. Forgiveness is not ____________________________.
6. Forgiveness is not ceasing to feel the ____________________.
7. Forgiveness is not a ________________________ event.
8. Forgiveness is not neglecting legal __________________________.
9. Forgiveness is not ________________________________.
10. Forgiveness is not ____________________________________.
4 steps to forgiveness:
1. Give up your right to __________________________.
Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge, my friends. . . for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.’” (NIV)
2. Go and _________________________________.
Matthew 5:23-24 "Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
3. Make a choice to _______________________________.
Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, rage, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all hatred.
4. Never stop ________________________.
Matthew 18:21 Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"
22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”
Forgiveness and Justice - Some of you have a strong sense of justice. You say, “But if I forgive them, where’s the justice?”
Justice comes from Jesus. Either they will come to ________________ in Christ and you will get your justice at the cross, where Jesus’ blood was shed in their place for their sins (like yours!) or they will be judged and ________ ____________________ to suffer forever for all of their sin, paying their eternal debt to the living God.
In forgiving someone, we are not neglecting justice. We’re leaving it to the perfect judge to enact perfect justice, either at the cross or in hell, but either way justice will be served. And we forgive in light of that. – Mark Driscoll
