Unhindered Forgiveness

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that's simply because this thinking brain that controls our thoughts is way up here in an area of the brain called the granular isocortex it's about 8 layers of brain in the frontal cortex of the brain. But when we've been through hurt and pain the brain wants to protect us and keep us from experiencing that pain time and time of again and further it wants to help us to survive.

So, what happens is that the brain encodes everything around us that was there when we went through trauma pain, heartache, and causes us to relive/ react in very similar ways as to when the first pain had occurred.

When we are hurt because of that pain I always describe it in counseling it's like going into the doctor with the knife in your chest and ask him the doctor to heal you of the heartache. And when the doctor says OK, we have to put you under you've got to go through heart surgery in order to remove this knife safely and then you object and say no no no heal me while leaving the knife there. Friends, that is unforgiveness. It is holding on to the hate the anger the pain all the feelings that you are justified to feel so that you can hurt the other person. And when we hold on to all of that hate and anger and we never forgive we just take more and more and more on we become so reactive that we are all of a sudden triggered into anxiety and depression and hurt and we started to heal that hurt with different means maybe it's by eating maybe it's by drinking, maybe it's by shooting drugs or snorting a line.

At the very root of all of this hurt is a spirit of unforgiveness and when we become so reactive, we kind of look (This) the nutty professor going through acupuncture so that he doesn't feel hungry anymore. We end up like a pincushion of hurt and all it takes is one brush with another person and we are back into debilitating reactions.

(Backpack Object Lessons Using weights, label them with things we struggle to forgive, Some basics are traumas, physical, emotional and sexual as well as smaller things like hurt feelings).

There are things that we pick up and hold on to because they're too painful to let go and then there are other things that we just don't let go. When we refused to forgive, we carry those things with us every single day. Maybe there are huge things that we don't know how to forgive, it could be sexual trauma, childhood abuse, physical abuse, or the loss of the loved one especially by suicide or just too early and we blame God for it so we're not even willing to forgive God. Maybe we blame ourselves for the things that happen. And so, we go through life not knowing how to forgive and we keep holding on to more and more things and so the hurt becomes unbearable, and it holds us back from doing the things from living the life that God wants us to live.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.