We’re looking at the way some things on the spiritual journey work
• First, we looked at the whole divine-destiny-unfolding process
• Being our truest self vs. being driven to fulfill divine whispers
• Last week we turned to looking at how this forgiveness thing works on the spiritual journey
• We began with some introductory remarks, saying that forgiveness is the hallmark of Jesus life/message
• We recounted story of the CEO who forgave indebted employee
• We saw how Jesus’ story blew minds/categories of his listeners
We saw that Jesus ended his story to Peter this way…
• this is how the spiritual life works, Peter…
• all of us come to God in a bottomless abyss of soul-debt
• God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness are so rich, so full, so elemental in the human experience…
• That they reach into that abyss and pull us out
• But, if we don’t extend forgiveness to the others who are in the hole all around us…
• Then, we put ourselves right back into that same abyss
• The hellish prison of unforgiveness is soul destruction at its worst
Grace is to be the hallmark of the follower of Jesus…
Forgiveness is the stamp, the trademark of the spiritual person…
…because the alternative, unforgiveness
…the alternative leaves us in a soul-depraved prison
We also saw that Jesus didn’t pull any punches about how easy this is
• We reminded ourselves how excruciatingly difficult forgiveness is
• Sometimes there are little offenses, and it’s tough to even forgive those!
• But sometimes, the word “offense” doesn’t cover the enormity of the wrong that is done us, or others
• And Jesus doesn’t sugar-coat this reality
• Human beings do some truly awful, truly hellish things to one another
• But even so, Jesus leaves no wiggle room on this one
• This one, he says, is an imperative
• If you don’t forgive, your soul dies
• If you don’t forgive, he said, your life will be hell
STORY: Uncle Jim
• My stepfather and mother divorced when I was 14 or so
• Leading up to his departure there was a lot of drama
• Volatile fights, attacks and counter-attacks
• When he left there was a lot of fear about our financial status
• In the end, he took care of his obligations, but there were some months right after he left of great uncertainty
• No car, no income, no money… it was scary
• Since he was my stepfather, the family dynamic pretty much pre-determined that I would side with my mother
• She was the good guy, he therefore had to be the bad guy
• And in my 14 year old brain, that was the way reality was set
In the aftermath of the drama, still in throes of the financial insecurity
• a family friend come down to San Diego from L.A.
• Uncle Jim: older than my mother, they adopted our family as grandparent-figures; a fire captain in L.A.
• They both had a significant shaping role in our lives
• Brought stability to turmoil, security for young boys in crisis
• Anyway, came down, took me for walk in neighborhood, a chat…
• So… Bill’s gone isn’t he
• Lots of drama lately, huh? Did some bad things, didn’t he? Hurt your mom… hurt you. Yep, it was pretty bad!
And you know…
• It would be pretty easy to put him in the category of a real @$$#^&*, and just hate him, wouldn’t it?
• Pause… head nodding…
• But you know Dougie… (still called me that)
• he’s gone now, he’ll probably never live here again
• And if you hate him, it isn’t going to hurt him at all
• He’ll be up in Riverside (about 2 hours away), you’ll be here in SD, and your hate won’t travel on the airwaves and get to him at all
• In fact, your hate won’t hurt him a bit
…but you know, it will hurt you a lot
And he began to talk to me about how forgiving Bill wasn’t so much for Bill’s sake, it was for mine
• How my soul, my life, my future would be affected by the posture of my mind, my heart, my soul
And that chat was a formative experience in my life… to this day
• It affected my experience of Bill
• Over the years we saw one another several times a year
• It affected those interactions
• It extracted some poison from my soul around that situation
• Later in life, I saw the picture more clearly from a 20 and 30 year old brain, and grace only deepened for Bill
But more, that chat walking the neighborhood set a life posture
• Unforgiveness, so easy to do when someone wrongs us, rarely hurts the person we intend to punish
• But it hurts us a lot
• When my mind constructs an elaborate justification for why I should punish Denise for some wrong she has done me…
• Why I should withdraw, or pout, or vent, or some such thing…
• It makes her life a little bit miserable…
• But it poisons my soul
I tell you this story for two reasons…
1. you could be Uncle Jim for somebody
• Some family, some kid, some co-worker needs you to go out of your way to care for them, watch over them
• Working w/ our kids, our teens is a powerful role
• Adopting a family, bringing over some chicken and having chat
• Being present, bringing stability when things are rocky…
• You could do that! You could be Uncle Jim and Aunt Betty
2. but the 2nd reason I tell you this story…
What Uncle Jim told me when I was 14 years old is true
• He told me the way things work around this forgiveness thing
• He told me about the hellfire Jesus talks about for those who don’t forgive
• He told me about the prison Jesus’ story referenced for Peter
• A poisoned and imprisoned soul is the outcome of harboring unforgiveness
The wisdom Uncle Jim gave me when I was 14 years old is an ancient wisdom, a universal wisdom
Now last week, I said we’d begin today to talk about how one moves toward forgiveness
• What we’ll do is spend a couple of lessons talking about 3 or 4 practical steps toward forgiveness
• Then I want to conclude with some definition work
• Last week in the 1st service, Mayumi spoke quite profoundly
• Peter was on a quest to define forgiveness
That quest to define is born of desire to keep our worlds intact
I see reality this way; my emotional framework is that way
Therefore, I set my forgiveness limits here!
Now Jesus, if you want to move the limits, that’s ok, I’ll adapt
However, I need them defined so I can work toward them
I want to be a good person, so you set the bar and I’ll try hard
• But Jesus’ way of talking didn’t lend itself to this way of thinking
• So we’ll conclude by thinking together about common ways we try to define forgiveness
• And we’ll see how those definitions protect us from Jesus
• But the we’ll look at how Jesus was trying to take us out of the ballpark, not helping us succeed inside it
This forgiveness thing… it is something we can do!
• We are made for it
• It is in our nature, because we are one with the Spirit of God at the very center of our beings
• We’ll look at how we can be that
so let’s begin…
how in the world do we forgive?
Today: #1.
let’s start by looking at courage
Courage is a critical element to the environment in which forgiveness grows and flourishes
• When we forgive, we step into something quite frightening
• And we have to take that step before it is clear that we are going to survive there
• Forgiveness is an environment that is quite hostile to our sensibilities…
• Our sensibilities tell us that…
In forgiveness-land, people become doormats, are taken advantage of…
In forgiveness-land, offenders get away scott-free…
In forgiveness-land, people become chumps, stooges, easy marks, targets; if I go there, people will think me stupid/weak…
Our sensibilities tell us only suckers sign up to live in forgiveness-land
• And on the surface, these objections seem very real
• Consequently, it is quite natural to be frightened even considering life in forgiveness-land
Further, there is the fear that we can’t make it there
• When we examine forgiveness as outsiders looking in…
• We think to ourselves: “I could never do that”
• We look at emotional landscape inside ourselves and conclude…
• I could never do that!
• I feel my rage, I feel my insult, my indignation, my resentment…
And I could never just waltz in there and forgive!
I don’t have the internal equipment to do that
And as we know, behind the fear of public speaking, and the fear of death, the next strongest fear is the fear of failure
• And so…
• Fearing that Jesus, the ancients, the Divine, are pretty insistent on this forgiveness thing…
• And fearing that we will never be able to do it
• And fearing that if we did, we’d become first-class stooges…
• We respond to the fear within us
People typically stay away from those things that frighten them
• Consequently, one of the main reasons we don’t forgive…
• We’re avoiding it like the plague
• We work hard not to think about it
• We do a masterful job avoiding it
• Like a graveyard at night, we simply don’t go there
• Like a child afraid of the dark, we simply leave the light on
And we have all kinds of nifty mechanisms that help us avoid the frightening proposition of forgiveness…
• We hold on to our anger toward the offender
• We rationalize how our offense is special…
• How it’s ok for us to live with unforgiveness because of how grave, how serious, how longterm, how egregious it was
• We look out there, and realize nobody else is forgiving…
We think of forgiveness in the same category as speed-limit
Nobody really stays at 55 or 65, do they?
So we don’t either
• Or, we get busy in order to avoid the ancient imperative to forgive
If we fill our days with other things, we can avoid those HS nudges
We can avoid our Story that has forgiveness at its center
We can just think about other things
And consequently, we stay safely outside forgiveness-land
• Safely observing those crazy people from a distance
• Wow, those people must have something I don’t have
• Wow, those people are fools, it’ll come back/bite them one day
And our justifications…
They cost us…
• Cost us, and they cost those we love dearly…
GK Chesterton Quote several years ago…
• Xnty has not been tried and found wanting, it has been tried and found difficult, and thus, it has never been truly tried
The capacity for forgiveness is inside you
• But discovering it is difficult. Very difficult
• The same Spirit that was in Jesus is in you
• The Spirit that sees beyond other people’s flaws
• That sees beyond the pain that people inflict on us
…that Spirit is within us
The Spirit that sees the preciousness at the core of other people
• That sees their value, and is able to forgive the temporary aberrations that are…
their wickedness, their wrongdoing, their transgression
this Spirit is in you!
• But it will take courage for you to discover it
• It will take valor and bravery for you to find that place in yourself
• You’ll have to take some audacious and outrageous steps
I’ve told you in the past where this has been hammered out in my life
• Lying in bed preparing to fall asleep…
• This is where I get the Divine challenges
• Especially in the early years when Denise and I would fight a lot
• I’d be nursing my hurt from some perceived offense Denise had perpetrated on my innocence and righteousness
• And then the HS within would nudge me…
Forgive Denise!
And apologize for your offense toward her, and ask her forgiveness as well
Initiate the environment of forgiveness here!
Now, these were typically garden-variety offenses
• Easy to forgive, easy to ask for forgiveness
• But man, they were tough!!!
• They were demanding!!!
• They took all the courage I could muster
• I did not want to take even one step into forgiveness-land
• Let alone live there
And to be honest, my steps were often quite tentative
• I did them, but I did them quietly, with averted eye, in the dark so I didn’t have to look her in the face
• I extended forgiveness even partially sometimes
• If I’m honest, pretty lame attempts
• But even those tentative, lame, partial steps changed me
• I began to realize I lived in this land; it was my home
• I had what it took to thrive in forgiveness-land
The courage to take the steps we are able to take, makes room for a more expansive life
• When Divine Spirit nudges you to forgive…
• When you grapple, fight, and wrestle within yourself and come out on top, and take the steps into the new land…
• When you do this, you realize there is something inside you didn’t know was there
• The Spirit of God lives in you
• And the Spirit of God is a forgiving Spirit
• You have all the capacity you need to be one of those foreign people who live easily in the land of forgiveness
So many people never realize they have inside them the ability to survive and thrive in this land that looks so hostile
• Because they wouldn’t take the small first steps
• The ones that seem so difficult, but are in fact quite easy
Again, forgiveness is at the very heart of our experience of God
• It is an essential for spiritual living
• We cannot experience God if we ignore our experience of people
• The way scripture says it is this…
You can’t love God if you don’t love God’s people
You won’t experience God’s forgiveness if you don’t forgive people
And as in all human developmental kinds of things, we start off with small steps first
• Alert to quiet nudges to forgive our spouse who hurt our feelings
• Following the prompting to forgive idiot boss making life tough
• The discipline and courage to wade into forgiving our parents when they mishandle our hearts
• The wrestling match required to forgive those who reject us
As we exercise the courage for these small things, we realize something that we will never realize if we do not
• We realize that we are made in the likeness of God
• We realize that we are filled with the Spirit of God
• And that the God-like nature within us can forgive
• We are citizens of forgiveness-land
• It’s our natural homeland
• It’s where we are born to live
• We are not foreigners there, we are residents
So, this morning I call you to courage…
• Take an inventory of those toward whom you have bad feelings
• Make a list of the small ones…
• The tweaks, the irritations, the annoyances, the exasperations
• These are the small things that invite forgiveness
But make a list of the big things too…
• Those that have crushingly humiliated you
• Those who have rejected the very essence of your personhood
• Those who have purposely inflicted emotional pain
• Those who have swindled, defrauded, or betrayed you
• Those who have put the knife in your back for their own gain
• Make a list of the big ones…
But start with the small ones…
• Start with the common, every-day blockheads, idiots, and fools
• And begin to see more than their foolishness or annoying habits
• And ask HS to help you see their intrinsic, interior worth
• That place of preciousness that comes from being in image of God
• And seeing that preciousness, ask HS to help you forgive the weaknesses
And watch…
• Often when I pray this, it’s not long before I see a “why”
• I see why they do what they do
• I get a glimpse of what drives them to act so foolishly, so annoyingly
• What the hurt was, what the interior world is telling them
• And it becomes easier to forgive
• NOTE: plug for community;
When I’m honest w/ my struggle
When I open up w/ spiritual people
They often help me get outside my own brain patterns
They often help me see some of the why
They help me step into forgiveness-land
And I often do the same for them
And after you have asked for help, courageously step out in a posture of forgiveness
• Next week or week after, we’ll talk about the very concrete actions that define a posture of forgiveness
• But for today…
Allow HS to carry you to a place of grace toward the offenders
A place that does not define the wrongdoer by his/her weakness
Allow HS to take you to a place that lets go of anger, revenge, and the need to make them pay
• Release the drive to find some kind of solace or satisfaction from your tormenter experiencing justifiable and deserved pain
Be courageous enough to take these initial steps…
• And over time, you will discover something inside you
• Something strong
• Something powerful
• Something God-like, something Divine
You are a natural-born citizen of forgiveness-land
We’re looking at the way some things on the spiritual journey work
• First, we looked at the whole divine-destiny-unfolding process
• Being our truest self vs. being driven to fulfill divine whispers
• Last week we turned to looking at how this forgiveness thing works on the spiritual journey
• We began with some introductory remarks, saying that forgiveness is the hallmark of Jesus life/message
• We recounted story of the CEO who forgave indebted employee
• We saw how Jesus’ story blew minds/categories of his listeners
We saw that Jesus ended his story to Peter this way…
• this is how the spiritual life works, Peter…
• all of us come to God in a bottomless abyss of soul-debt
• God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness are so rich, so full, so elemental in the human experience…
• That they reach into that abyss and pull us out
• But, if we don’t extend forgiveness to the others who are in the hole all around us…
• Then, we put ourselves right back into that same abyss
• The hellish prison of unforgiveness is soul destruction at its worst
Grace is to be the hallmark of the follower of Jesus…
Forgiveness is the stamp, the trademark of the spiritual person…
…because the alternative, unforgiveness
…the alternative leaves us in a soul-depraved prison
We also saw that Jesus didn’t pull any punches about how easy this is
• We reminded ourselves how excruciatingly difficult forgiveness is
• Sometimes there are little offenses, and it’s tough to even forgive those!
• But sometimes, the word “offense” doesn’t cover the enormity of the wrong that is done us, or others
• And Jesus doesn’t sugar-coat this reality
• Human beings do some truly awful, truly hellish things to one another
• But even so, Jesus leaves no wiggle room on this one
• This one, he says, is an imperative
• If you don’t forgive, your soul dies
• If you don’t forgive, he said, your life will be hell
STORY: Uncle Jim
• My stepfather and mother divorced when I was 14 or so
• Leading up to his departure there was a lot of drama
• Volatile fights, attacks and counter-attacks
• When he left there was a lot of fear about our financial status
• In the end, he took care of his obligations, but there were some months right after he left of great uncertainty
• No car, no income, no money… it was scary
• Since he was my stepfather, the family dynamic pretty much pre-determined that I would side with my mother
• She was the good guy, he therefore had to be the bad guy
• And in my 14 year old brain, that was the way reality was set
In the aftermath of the drama, still in throes of the financial insecurity
• a family friend come down to San Diego from L.A.
• Uncle Jim: older than my mother, they adopted our family as grandparent-figures; a fire captain in L.A.
• They both had a significant shaping role in our lives
• Brought stability to turmoil, security for young boys in crisis
• Anyway, came down, took me for walk in neighborhood, a chat…
• So… Bill’s gone isn’t he
• Lots of drama lately, huh? Did some bad things, didn’t he? Hurt your mom… hurt you. Yep, it was pretty bad!
And you know…
• It would be pretty easy to put him in the category of a real @$$#^&*, and just hate him, wouldn’t it?
• Pause… head nodding…
• But you know Dougie… (still called me that)
• he’s gone now, he’ll probably never live here again
• And if you hate him, it isn’t going to hurt him at all
• He’ll be up in Riverside (about 2 hours away), you’ll be here in SD, and your hate won’t travel on the airwaves and get to him at all
• In fact, your hate won’t hurt him a bit
…but you know, it will hurt you a lot
And he began to talk to me about how forgiving Bill wasn’t so much for Bill’s sake, it was for mine
• How my soul, my life, my future would be affected by the posture of my mind, my heart, my soul
And that chat was a formative experience in my life… to this day
• It affected my experience of Bill
• Over the years we saw one another several times a year
• It affected those interactions
• It extracted some poison from my soul around that situation
• Later in life, I saw the picture more clearly from a 20 and 30 year old brain, and grace only deepened for Bill
But more, that chat walking the neighborhood set a life posture
• Unforgiveness, so easy to do when someone wrongs us, rarely hurts the person we intend to punish
• But it hurts us a lot
• When my mind constructs an elaborate justification for why I should punish Denise for some wrong she has done me…
• Why I should withdraw, or pout, or vent, or some such thing…
• It makes her life a little bit miserable…
• But it poisons my soul
I tell you this story for two reasons…
1. you could be Uncle Jim for somebody
• Some family, some kid, some co-worker needs you to go out of your way to care for them, watch over them
• Working w/ our kids, our teens is a powerful role
• Adopting a family, bringing over some chicken and having chat
• Being present, bringing stability when things are rocky…
• You could do that! You could be Uncle Jim and Aunt Betty
2. but the 2nd reason I tell you this story…
What Uncle Jim told me when I was 14 years old is true
• He told me the way things work around this forgiveness thing
• He told me about the hellfire Jesus talks about for those who don’t forgive
• He told me about the prison Jesus’ story referenced for Peter
• A poisoned and imprisoned soul is the outcome of harboring unforgiveness
The wisdom Uncle Jim gave me when I was 14 years old is an ancient wisdom, a universal wisdom
Now last week, I said we’d begin today to talk about how one moves toward forgiveness
• What we’ll do is spend a couple of lessons talking about 3 or 4 practical steps toward forgiveness
• Then I want to conclude with some definition work
• Last week in the 1st service, Mayumi spoke quite profoundly
• Peter was on a quest to define forgiveness
That quest to define is born of desire to keep our worlds intact
I see reality this way; my emotional framework is that way
Therefore, I set my forgiveness limits here!
Now Jesus, if you want to move the limits, that’s ok, I’ll adapt
However, I need them defined so I can work toward them
I want to be a good person, so you set the bar and I’ll try hard
• But Jesus’ way of talking didn’t lend itself to this way of thinking
• So we’ll conclude by thinking together about common ways we try to define forgiveness
• And we’ll see how those definitions protect us from Jesus
• But the we’ll look at how Jesus was trying to take us out of the ballpark, not helping us succeed inside it
This forgiveness thing… it is something we can do!
• We are made for it
• It is in our nature, because we are one with the Spirit of God at the very center of our beings
• We’ll look at how we can be that
so let’s begin…
how in the world do we forgive?
Today: #1.
let’s start by looking at courage
Courage is a critical element to the environment in which forgiveness grows and flourishes
• When we forgive, we step into something quite frightening
• And we have to take that step before it is clear that we are going to survive there
• Forgiveness is an environment that is quite hostile to our sensibilities…
• Our sensibilities tell us that…
In forgiveness-land, people become doormats, are taken advantage of…
In forgiveness-land, offenders get away scott-free…
In forgiveness-land, people become chumps, stooges, easy marks, targets; if I go there, people will think me stupid/weak…
Our sensibilities tell us only suckers sign up to live in forgiveness-land
• And on the surface, these objections seem very real
• Consequently, it is quite natural to be frightened even considering life in forgiveness-land
Further, there is the fear that we can’t make it there
• When we examine forgiveness as outsiders looking in…
• We think to ourselves: “I could never do that”
• We look at emotional landscape inside ourselves and conclude…
• I could never do that!
• I feel my rage, I feel my insult, my indignation, my resentment…
And I could never just waltz in there and forgive!
I don’t have the internal equipment to do that
And as we know, behind the fear of public speaking, and the fear of death, the next strongest fear is the fear of failure
• And so…
• Fearing that Jesus, the ancients, the Divine, are pretty insistent on this forgiveness thing…
• And fearing that we will never be able to do it
• And fearing that if we did, we’d become first-class stooges…
• We respond to the fear within us
People typically stay away from those things that frighten them
• Consequently, one of the main reasons we don’t forgive…
• We’re avoiding it like the plague
• We work hard not to think about it
• We do a masterful job avoiding it
• Like a graveyard at night, we simply don’t go there
• Like a child afraid of the dark, we simply leave the light on
And we have all kinds of nifty mechanisms that help us avoid the frightening proposition of forgiveness…
• We hold on to our anger toward the offender
• We rationalize how our offense is special…
• How it’s ok for us to live with unforgiveness because of how grave, how serious, how longterm, how egregious it was
• We look out there, and realize nobody else is forgiving…
We think of forgiveness in the same category as speed-limit
Nobody really stays at 55 or 65, do they?
So we don’t either
• Or, we get busy in order to avoid the ancient imperative to forgive
If we fill our days with other things, we can avoid those HS nudges
We can avoid our Story that has forgiveness at its center
We can just think about other things
And consequently, we stay safely outside forgiveness-land
• Safely observing those crazy people from a distance
• Wow, those people must have something I don’t have
• Wow, those people are fools, it’ll come back/bite them one day
And our justifications…
They cost us…
• Cost us, and they cost those we love dearly…
GK Chesterton Quote several years ago…
• Xnty has not been tried and found wanting, it has been tried and found difficult, and thus, it has never been truly tried
The capacity for forgiveness is inside you
• But discovering it is difficult. Very difficult
• The same Spirit that was in Jesus is in you
• The Spirit that sees beyond other people’s flaws
• That sees beyond the pain that people inflict on us
…that Spirit is within us
The Spirit that sees the preciousness at the core of other people
• That sees their value, and is able to forgive the temporary aberrations that are…
their wickedness, their wrongdoing, their transgression
this Spirit is in you!
• But it will take courage for you to discover it
• It will take valor and bravery for you to find that place in yourself
• You’ll have to take some audacious and outrageous steps
I’ve told you in the past where this has been hammered out in my life
• Lying in bed preparing to fall asleep…
• This is where I get the Divine challenges
• Especially in the early years when Denise and I would fight a lot
• I’d be nursing my hurt from some perceived offense Denise had perpetrated on my innocence and righteousness
• And then the HS within would nudge me…
Forgive Denise!
And apologize for your offense toward her, and ask her forgiveness as well
Initiate the environment of forgiveness here!
Now, these were typically garden-variety offenses
• Easy to forgive, easy to ask for forgiveness
• But man, they were tough!!!
• They were demanding!!!
• They took all the courage I could muster
• I did not want to take even one step into forgiveness-land
• Let alone live there
And to be honest, my steps were often quite tentative
• I did them, but I did them quietly, with averted eye, in the dark so I didn’t have to look her in the face
• I extended forgiveness even partially sometimes
• If I’m honest, pretty lame attempts
• But even those tentative, lame, partial steps changed me
• I began to realize I lived in this land; it was my home
• I had what it took to thrive in forgiveness-land
The courage to take the steps we are able to take, makes room for a more expansive life
• When Divine Spirit nudges you to forgive…
• When you grapple, fight, and wrestle within yourself and come out on top, and take the steps into the new land…
• When you do this, you realize there is something inside you didn’t know was there
• The Spirit of God lives in you
• And the Spirit of God is a forgiving Spirit
• You have all the capacity you need to be one of those foreign people who live easily in the land of forgiveness
So many people never realize they have inside them the ability to survive and thrive in this land that looks so hostile
• Because they wouldn’t take the small first steps
• The ones that seem so difficult, but are in fact quite easy
Again, forgiveness is at the very heart of our experience of God
• It is an essential for spiritual living
• We cannot experience God if we ignore our experience of people
• The way scripture says it is this…
You can’t love God if you don’t love God’s people
You won’t experience God’s forgiveness if you don’t forgive people
And as in all human developmental kinds of things, we start off with small steps first
• Alert to quiet nudges to forgive our spouse who hurt our feelings
• Following the prompting to forgive idiot boss making life tough
• The discipline and courage to wade into forgiving our parents when they mishandle our hearts
• The wrestling match required to forgive those who reject us
As we exercise the courage for these small things, we realize something that we will never realize if we do not
• We realize that we are made in the likeness of God
• We realize that we are filled with the Spirit of God
• And that the God-like nature within us can forgive
• We are citizens of forgiveness-land
• It’s our natural homeland
• It’s where we are born to live
• We are not foreigners there, we are residents
So, this morning I call you to courage…
• Take an inventory of those toward whom you have bad feelings
• Make a list of the small ones…
• The tweaks, the irritations, the annoyances, the exasperations
• These are the small things that invite forgiveness
But make a list of the big things too…
• Those that have crushingly humiliated you
• Those who have rejected the very essence of your personhood
• Those who have purposely inflicted emotional pain
• Those who have swindled, defrauded, or betrayed you
• Those who have put the knife in your back for their own gain
• Make a list of the big ones…
But start with the small ones…
• Start with the common, every-day blockheads, idiots, and fools
• And begin to see more than their foolishness or annoying habits
• And ask HS to help you see their intrinsic, interior worth
• That place of preciousness that comes from being in image of God
• And seeing that preciousness, ask HS to help you forgive the weaknesses
And watch…
• Often when I pray this, it’s not long before I see a “why”
• I see why they do what they do
• I get a glimpse of what drives them to act so foolishly, so annoyingly
• What the hurt was, what the interior world is telling them
• And it becomes easier to forgive
• NOTE: plug for community;
When I’m honest w/ my struggle
When I open up w/ spiritual people
They often help me get outside my own brain patterns
They often help me see some of the why
They help me step into forgiveness-land
And I often do the same for them
And after you have asked for help, courageously step out in a posture of forgiveness
• Next week or week after, we’ll talk about the very concrete actions that define a posture of forgiveness
• But for today…
Allow HS to carry you to a place of grace toward the offenders
A place that does not define the wrongdoer by his/her weakness
Allow HS to take you to a place that lets go of anger, revenge, and the need to make them pay
• Release the drive to find some kind of solace or satisfaction from your tormenter experiencing justifiable and deserved pain
Be courageous enough to take these initial steps…
• And over time, you will discover something inside you
• Something strong
• Something powerful
• Something God-like, something Divine
You are a natural-born citizen of forgiveness-land