John Gunter: Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Community Church of Christ podcast. My name is John Gunter. This week, we are still in the book, 9 Common Lies Christians Believe and Why God's Truth is infinitely better. The lie we're talking about this week is I could never forgive that person.
Have you ever had someone that you really thought you could never forgive? This week we talk about what that does to you. How an unforgiving spirit really, puts distance between you and God and and brings up this bitterness that is not helpful and doesn't help us to be the people we want to be. So, again thanks for listening. We hope this helps.
Come see us sometime. Good morning again. I want to start off this morning by showing you a picture of this little book. On Wednesday nights, we are starting the study of Ephesians this week. We kinda did a background to Ephesians, last week.
But we are also gonna be studying this book as well. So even if you are not able to attend on Wednesday, I wanted to bring this to show you how small it is. You can do it. We're gonna cover 1 chapter a week. Tom Reiner does a really good job.
All of his books look like this, basically. So very concise and very good. It's 9 Traits of the Hourly Focused Christian. On the back it says, Could you be the answer to the problems you see? This is for us to kind of, re center our minds, you know, in church, we are just like we are in other places.
Sometimes we just get in a rut and become negative. And we, we are kind of the Burger King generation, have it your way. And this book is a great reminder to kind of own our own things and see how can I fix an issue? When we attended Walnut Church of Christ in Texarkana, one of the things was, if you had an idea for ministry, you better be ready to lead it. And at first I kind of was shocked by that, and then I thought, no, that's great, because then you own it.
You take it, and you take off with it. So, this is a really good book, I think you will enjoy, even if you are not able to be with us on Wednesday. Our series continues today. We are in 9 Common Lies Christians Believe. This is a book by Shane Pruitt, And, just a reminder is what we've we've covered.
If you need to go back and list of those, those are online. Lie number 1, god won't give me more than I can handle. Remember that was the lie. The the truth is that god won't give you more than he can handle or you can handle through him. It is not about us, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
It is about us relying on god. Number 2, god gained another angel. Again, one of these things that maybe you've said or had said before, when you lose someone and and that is that is just kind of all out of popular culture and and things like that. This is not out of scripture that that we turn into angels. Angels and humans are always different.
Even though at Christmas, you hear hear a bell ring, you think an angel just got its wings, that that's not in scripture anywhere. Lie number 3, God just wants me to be happy. Isn't that an interesting God is not there for us to mold into the God we want him to be. We are to be molded. That he is the potter, we are the clay, and not vice versa.
And the lie, for today, I could never forgive that person. Should be easy and nothing to think about, I think. Forgiveness is always difficult, isn't it? When you feel slighted, when you feel you have been wronged, when something very minor or very serious happens, it can stay with you, can't it? Shane in his book talks about a time when he was at a teen event, and he talked on forgiveness, and he he talked about the need for forgiveness and how we all need it and how God expects that of us and how even bitterness can kind of spring up from not forgiving someone.
Have you ever had that happen? It only gets worse. You kind of feel like you are in control and you are holding on to something. You've got power, and then that turns into bitterness, and all of a sudden it changes who you are and who you want to be. But Shane said afterwards, he said several of the kids came forward, and one girl came with her youth minister, and he said she was upset.
And he said, I had the thought, you know, she's young, she's a teenager, it's probably over a boy. You know? But then she began to tell her story. She began to tell a story that that one morning she says it's one of the best mornings she's ever had. She was, getting ready and hanging out with her mom, and so they were laughing and joking.
Just one of those mornings that went well. And as they, they got into the car and traveling, so they just the morning just kept getting better. They kept laughing. She said belly laughing, you know, the the good kind. It just brightens your day.
So as they're driving, all of a sudden, they they come and they start seeing some smoke, and all of a sudden, they realize there is a, fire, at one of their neighbor's houses. And as they get closer, they hear a couple of booms, and she instantly recognizes that that is a shotgun. And so they keep driving and all of a sudden, boom boom, and her mother slumps over. Boom again. The windshield's gone.
She looks over and realizes her mother has been shot and is dying very quickly, and she realizes she is next. And so she has to get out of the car and run. And as soon as she gets out of the car, she realizes she has been shot, she has got blood coming out of her knee, she has been hit in the knee, and all she can do is kind of crawl through the brush trying to get away. She finally makes it over to a neighbor's house. The first house she came to, she couldn't find any help, and finally got to one where she could find help and call 911 and let them know that her mother had been shot, that there was a fire, and that she had been shot as well.
Nobody knows why this happened, but a neighbor of theirs was, kind of a loner and all of a sudden for whatever reason that morning snapped. The fire that they came upon, was a fire he started after killing another neighbor of his. The side by side there that is burned was, belonged to another neighbor who was out riding with his dog when he was shot and killed. And then this neighbor drugged drugged them all, took them all into one of his sheds and set it on fire and then proceeded to shoot this little girl's mother, Ozzie is her name, shot her mother, as they came up the road seemingly to help. Now who would be more justified in not forgiving than this little girl?
As she came forward to Shane, she told this story and she said it hit me that I have been harboring this hatred for this person, who by the way, killed himself right after this. So not only could I never get an apology from him, that just stayed with me. She said, I have been harboring this for a long time. And of course it was sobering for Shane. I'm sure it's sobering for you guys as it was me as I read it.
Who would be more justified in not forgiving someone than the senseless, cruel act of just shooting someone for no reason at all? I don't think there is one. But even if there is, if you are sitting here thinking, Well, I have got a good story, we are not here to compare battle wounds, are we? We are here to declare by His wounds we are healed. And that's a different mindset.
That is a different thing than I will hold on to this grudge, and I will have power over you. Jesus, more than anyone else, has a reason not to forgive, yet He forgave all of us. Every single one. Well, the toughest verses in scripture about forgiveness, comes from Matthew 6 verses 14 and 15 from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Now, that's a problem if you'd like to hold on to that. That's a problem if you'd like to wield it and say, you know, I've got this on you, and you'll never forget this. Because what this verse does, what these verses do is make us kinda confront our own sin, not just the sin of other people, but our own sin, because I really want to hang on to that sin you committed against me, but then the rest of these verses make me look at what God has forgiven in me, and we all need that forgiveness, amen? And I need that forgiveness and I want to be a forgiving person.
And so this scripture tells me, this is what I need to do. The problem is, is that we have a lot of lies about forgiveness that kind of rattle around in our head. What forgiveness actually is or is not, is what we are going to talk about right now. Forgiveness lie number 1. Forgiveness means you have to forget.
You ever heard this one? How ridiculous is that? Can you forget it? I'm not god. Shane in this book talks about and you've seen the movie Men in Black.
Remember they had the little thing they'd stick in front of you, anybody that saw the alien? And they would flash the light and you were back I don't know how long and you forgot all that you needed to forget about that alien, right? Hopefully, you did. But that's not how forgiveness works. When you have been wounded, that thing stays with you, doesn't it?
This is not something that goes away easily or, you know, I just forget overnight. Even when someone, in in a tragic situation, as we just talked about, says, I forgive you, you are never going to forget that. That's impossible, aside from kind of some issue with your brain, right? Isaiah 535-six says, But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Each of us have has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. God knew what it meant to forgive, and he knew what it would take to forgive. They would take everything. It would take even his son dying on the cross for people who turned away from him. But God did it anyway, and we take our cues from God.
Lie number 2, forgiveness means you're condoning the actions of others. Or if I forgive them, that means it's okay. I'm saying it's okay what they did. Oh, that is a lie. That is not what you were doing.
That's never what you're doing. From Psalm 50:6, and the heavens proclaim His righteousness, and he is a God of justice. What forgiveness is doing is turning it over to God. Because when we held on to it, what we're trying to do is be judge, jury, executioner, all of that. But I know what you've done and I've got it, I'm gonna hold it against you.
When you turn it over to God, you are saying, God, I understand that you are a God of justice. You are a just God, you are the judge. It is yours. I don't know if you know, this picture is familiar to any of you. This young man's name is Botham Jean.
He is from Harding University. I got to hear him lead singing when I first moved to Harding. 1 Sunday night, the Downtown Church of Christ has a singing Sunday or Wednesday, and got to hear him lead singing. But after he graduated, he moved back to the Dallas area. You may have seen it on the news just a few years ago, but a lady who worked for was a police officer was coming home from a late shift.
And they lived in an apartment building where everything looked the same. Everything on every floor was the same other than if you put a decoration on your door or something like that. She came home one night, and, after a shift, and she got off on the wrong floor. And as she went into what she thought was her apartment, she realized it was occupied by Botham. And she thought, because it was her apartment, she thought, that she had an intruder and she ended up shooting and killing him.
I believe it was an honest mistake. People say, well, how could you not see that there was a red rug? I could do that every day and twice on Sunday. I'm telling you. I'm in my own head thinking about something else.
I could walk by, I could walk. Katie changed the, the wreath on the door. I didn't notice it. All that stuff. But in this story, one of the things that there's certainly a lot of lot of, feelings back and forth.
One of the issues that came up was, Botham's brother, Brandt, hugged this lady who killed his brother, Amber Guyger, at the trial. And some people took issue with this. I think most of it was because of race and and our history of race in the in the country where, people thought, well, she's gonna get off because he forgave her and hugged her. Well, that's not what he was doing. He felt like he needed to forgive her.
Not that he could forget. Not that he condoned this woman for killing his brother, but that he needed to let it go and give it to God. And I don't think there's any more of a touching picture than that right there as they both cried together. And certainly neither one of them wanted to be in that situation. But that is a picture and a story of forgiveness that I think we need.
Again, not forgetting, that can't be done, not condoning, that's not what is happening, but forgiving and giving it to God. Forgiveness lie number 3. Forgiveness means you have to be a doormat. That is not what forgiveness is either. We could, in an unhealthy way, forgive someone so many times that we are enabling them, that we are allowing them to treat us as a doormat, to keep doing the same thing over and over.
That is not forgiveness. That is enabling. Forgiveness is again turning things over to god. This scripture here, 1st Corinthians 16 13, be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong. There's scripture all over, Old Testament and New to be prepared, to stand, to to notice, to watch, to be ready.
That you don't just stand and accept and be treated as a doormat, but again, you be courageous, be strong, be there. You can forgive someone and not allow them to abuse you. Okay? That is the thing. You don't forgiveness does not mean I need to keep letting you abuse me.
That is not a healthy understanding of of forgiveness or even an understanding of forgiveness. That is something completely, other. Forgiveness is giving it to god. Lie number 4, forgiveness means you have to be close friends again. I think this goes hand in hand with forgetting.
Well, if I could somehow forget it, maybe we could be close friends again. But on some of those things that we deal with, we are just not going to be close friends again. You have fallen out of friendship with people, maybe not intentionally, but as you have moved, it's a weird circumstance. We just had, our seniors graduate. It's a weird I remember it being a weird transition for me.
You know, one day you have to be in high school and you better be there, and the next day you better not be there because you're too old. And and the same thing happens between, you you know, as you graduate college. Right? You have all your friends, you have this this this culture environment, all of a sudden it's gone. And you have to do something else.
And you fall away from people that I haven't talked to the best man in my wedding in a long time, because he lives in North Dakota now, and I moved south. Do you believe that? He went from Arkansas to North Dakota, I went from Arkansas to Southeast Texas. It just happens. But certainly, when something major happens in your life where something needs to be forgiven, this does not mean that you have to be close friends again.
Matthew 10:16, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Jesus, in this moment, is saying, listen. There's a lot going on in the world. You need to understand it.
You need to be as shrewd as snakes. He doesn't say you need to be a snake. You understand the difference? You be as shrewd as snakes. You understand how the world works and how people act and how people live.
He says, You be innocent as doves. You understand what he's saying there? It does not mean I grew up around a person who, they're I think in their family, they just teach people that other people are out to get you, so you need to get them first, that way you get ahead. And I, for the life of me, have never been able to wrap my mind around a mindset like that. But that's the way they all are and I can't understand it.
That is being shrewd as snakes. Okay? That is being a snake. Don't do that. Be as shrewd as snakes, but be as innocent as doves.
Forgiveness lie number 5, forgiveness comes from an apology. This may be one of my toughest ones. Because I feel like I feel like if I have wronged you, I will apologize for that. The problem is, you may think I need to apologize to you, and I don't feel like I needed to apologize. Right?
Yeah. We are all in that circumstance. One time I was dealing with a person who had really slandered, actually my church growing up. And I had a conversation with them on the phone, and they had said something very publicly that just wasn't right. And throughout this conversation, we keep going around and around, and he said, What do you want me to do?
I said, I just want you to apologize. And the guy said, you have my number, if anybody wants to talk to me, they can call me. And he would never apologize. And that sat in the pit of my stomach for a long time. I'm not happy to say that.
But I couldn't let it go, I didn't let it go, I could let it go. I shouldn't say that. I couldn't let it go. I could. I could give it to God, but I didn't.
I held on to it. But the idea that forgiveness comes from an apology is just not right. Forgiveness comes from forgiving someone. Again, giving it to God. It does not require an apology.
Ephesians 4:32, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, again, this part that hits you right in the face, just as in Christ God forgave you. If that's the kind of forgiveness you need, then you need to give that same forgiveness. And number 6, forgiveness is based on the actions of others. If they will only start acting this way, I will forgive them. You ever given out those requirements?
If we can change this, if we can change that, that is a lie. We need to forgive. Remember, forgiveness is not focusing on that other person. Forgiveness is about your relationship with God. Period.
What we do in this, again, is we focus or we fixate so much on the other person that this bitterness and all the other feelings that come along with it keep us focused over here as if something was being helped by that and it never is. Forgiveness is not based on the actions of others. Hebrews 12:15, see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. That is not you, patrolling someone else. This is you looking inward.
This is you looking at your actions, your heart, the way you treat other people and saying, okay, I am not going to allow this to grow up, to blow up more than it is. I have said before, and I think you guys have laughed at me, you ever been so mad at somebody you you realize later you couldn't remember what it was, what it was about? You I've walked around the house before, and I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was mad about something, and it took me a minute to remember. And every time, every single time that happens, I think how ridiculous is it that I can't even remember for a minute what it was, but I still have this feeling in the pit of my stomach and I think that's that's part of what this is, is we allow these things to kind of take over our lives instead of letting them go.
This is our responsibility right here. Make sure that see to it that no one falls short of the grace of god and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. And forgiveness lie, number 7, our last one for the day. Forgiveness is easy. I've seen people forgive very quickly after something has happened that it just crazy circumstances, you think, how in the world I need some time to forgive?
Forgiveness is not easy. I think it's borderline impossible without the help of God. Because just like anything else, it is not about, again, us pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, but giving it over to God and saying, God, I don't want to feel this way anymore, I don't want to hold this against this person anymore, I want to forgive them. God, will you help me in that? Our prayer so many times is focused inward when it should be asking for help outwardly.
God, will you help me? From Luke 137, for no word from God will ever fail. Other translations will say, with god, nothing is impossible. That's what we need to remember. That's what we need to remember.
That you may be sitting here right now thinking about that person and what they have done to you and how there's no way I could ever forgive them. And maybe 1 or multiple of these lies are in your mind as to why. Well, I can't until. Well, I won't because. And what you need to do is rely on God, that His promises do not fail, that nothing is impossible with God, that I can give it to him, that I can draw strength from him, that I can forgive a person that I didn't think I could forgive because all it's going to do not forgiving, is going to make you a bitter person and draw you away from God.
And I don't think because you gave your Sunday up this morning that that is what you want. You gave your Sunday up to come here and to sit and to be around other people, to draw encouragement, to sing together, to draw encouragement from God's Word. I don't think that what you want from this is to have a worse relationship with God. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to die for you. That's how much He loves you, understanding how much He had to forgive you.
I believe we can handle forgiving our brothers and sisters. Let's be honest, most of those things we need to forgive aren't that bad. Certainly, when you compare it to other people, I don't know how I'd react if someone killed my, my brother. I hope I would hug them in the courtroom. Do I think I would do that?
I have no idea. But I'll tell you one thing, I'd be on my knees praying to God that he would take that that feeling away from me because I can only imagine with some of the little things that I get upset about what I would feel in that moment. But let's give those things to God. Let's be better people. Let's move closer to God and forgive.
And that's not a theoretical exercise today. I'm asking you to forgive. When the word forgiveness came on the screen this morning, I know some of you thought of somebody immediately. Forgive them because God forgave you. We're gonna offer a invitation song right now.
If you need the prayers of this church, come alongside you in your forgiveness. We'd love to do that. If you'd like to put on Jesus in baptism, what a great day to do it. Would you come as we stand on that as we?