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Like anything other discipline forgiveness is a skill you can practice and get better at.
Supplemental Content:
The response to this series was very encouraging. It was amazing to see people in the community and online interact with the material and share stories of struggle and forgiveness in their lives. Out of those stories a number of questions emerged and so we've decided to put together some additional content to address ideas that weren't touched on fully in the series.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Hey, Jeremy here. So on Sundays we've been in this series called Ashes and the focus has been on forgiveness. But over the course of that four part series, there are a number of things that we didn't get to talk about. And there were a number of things that came up during questions after the services that we wanted to put together some supplemental material to address. And so that's what some of these series are going to do is to give you an ongoing conversation that you can continue to participate in as you walk through forgiveness in your own life and try to do that in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:And the first thing that I want to say is this. During this series we talked a lot about forgiveness and we talked about it as a practice or a discipline that you could learn, that you could put into your life. And I know that's language that not everyone is always familiar with when it comes to forgiveness. We often think of it as something that just happens to us or something even that we pray about and sort of supernaturally God helps us to forgive in a moment. That happens of course, but there is another level to that.
Speaker 1:In the series we talked about how forgiveness isn't a moment, it's a process. I also want to say this, it's a discipline that you can learn and you can get better at. And so a couple things here. If you have found yourself throughout the course of these conversations realizing that there's bitterness, there's unforgiveness, and you're struggling to let go. I want to encourage you, The more you work at this, the easier it will get.
Speaker 1:It will become more natural to you. And here's why that's really important. Because what you practice, what you discipline, what you get good at in downtime or when you're not stressed out, that becomes what you default to when stress hits you. So there's all kinds of ways that a fence hits us and we either hang on to it, we let go of it. Small little things that happen in our lives.
Speaker 1:And the better we get at brushing that off, setting it aside, processing it, leaving it behind. When small things offend us or small things hurt us, that will be the default that we'll go back to when there is a really hard offense. A really deep pain that we have to work through in a healthy way. And so I want to suggest that all the times you practice forgiving when a coworker offends you or when someone on the bus cuts you off. Something like that.
Speaker 1:That's actually going to help you when you face into something more difficult down the road. So start with that. The second thing is this. If you need some practices, here's what we can do. One of the things we talked about in the series was getting away from high minded abstract concepts and thinking in very tangible metaphors.
Speaker 1:And the biggest metaphor we used was this. To set your pain down and to walk away from it. To leave it behind or to send it away. Well one of the things you can do when you need to forgive somebody is actually physically to walk through a process that reminds you of that or in some ways memorializes that. So here's one thing you can do is take a piece of paper and write down who has hurt you.
Speaker 1:Exactly why that hurt so deeply. And why you're choosing to leave it behind. And actually leave that writing behind somewhere. Don't leave it out in public or somebody's going to find it and they're going to pick it up. And that's going to cause a whole another set of hurt and offense and a cycle of that.
Speaker 1:But what you could do is maybe physically take it outside in your backyard and bury it somewhere in the ground. And maybe you could take that piece of paper and actually light it on fire and let it burn up and leave those ashes behind. And maybe if you're a journaler, you could have a special book in a journal where you write these things out, but then you close that up and you put it on the shelf and you know that you're not going to go back to that book again unless it's to write down something new that you're leaving behind. Again, keep that in a safe place so that it doesn't cause any more hurt. But what this does is it helps us in a very tangible, physical way to memorialize this process that's happening in our heart.
Speaker 1:That we're taking that pain, we're setting it down, and we're saying that it's not going to define us going forward. If the more you do this with small or medium sized hurts and offenses, the more this will become natural and instinctive for you when bigger offense comes your way. That's really important because you're not meant to carry around old wounds and old hurts forever. Again, there's a time to do that. You need to process them.
Speaker 1:You need to name them. And sometimes you need to carry them for a season. But there comes a time where the most healthy thing that you can do is to set that down. Maybe that'll help you. Again, of forgiveness as a discipline.
Speaker 1:Think of it as a practice. And the better you get at it, the easier it will become. And so if you're struggling with it right now, here's my encouragement. It does get easier the more you practice this.