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May 16 - The Freedom of Forgiveness · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:03
  Hey guys, it is May the 16th and I'm with Bill as the freedom of forgiveness, the stone,
• 0:10
  Ripple One Practical.
• 0:12
  Forgiveness often begins as a decision before it becomes a feeling.
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  Willingness opens the door even when the heart is not fully ready.
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  Today I will choose to forgive even as my emotions have not pulled us.
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  I will release the need to hold on to the offense or demand repayment.
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  Forgiveness may start small, but it must start.
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  Ripple Two spiritual.
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  As I bring my willingness before the Father, the Holy Spirit does the deeper work within me.
• 0:43
  Following Christ who forgave even in suffering.
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  I learn that forgiveness is both received and given.
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  Over time, what I felt impossible becomes a source of freedom and of peace.
• 0:55
  I saw you open your Bible.
• 0:57
  Where are you open to, buddy?
• 1:00
  Oh, well, I have different places that I'm looking at here.
• 1:03
  I'm just in the Gospels, and I will eventually move back into 1 Corinthians.
• 1:12
  Well, you know, man, and this is new information to me.
• 1:16
  I know it's not new information to some people.
• 1:19
  But, you know, in Matthew 6, 14 and 15, I think it's very important right after the Lord's prayer, right?
• 1:28
  Because the word that says, and I think it should have been added to it, it says,
• 1:32
  if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
• 1:39
  But if you don't forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
• 1:43
  And so that, you know, makes me think about page 67 in the big book, right?
• 1:48
  I thought it was everybody else, and that's as far as I ever got.
• 1:51
  Yes.
• 1:52
  But when you come into that flip, right, that on page 67 where it says, you know,
• 1:59
  same tolerance, patience, and pity, I would give a sick friend, right?
• 2:03
  Yeah.
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  But wasn't I?
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  Didn't other people?
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  Didn't you?
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  Yeah.
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  Give me tolerance and patience and pity.
• 2:10
  I did.
• 2:11
  You said, can I go to a treatment center that has testosterone?
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  And then I hung up the phone.
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  And now we're sitting here two years later.
• 2:20
  Yeah.
• 2:21
  And that's a cool thing.
• 2:24
  I thought so.
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  I thought it was a great move myself.
• 2:27
  Well, I mean, but like, you know, to think that's how things happen.
• 2:30
  But for that not to happen, this would never have happened.
• 2:33
  Right.
• 2:33
  Absolutely.
• 2:34
  So that kind of goes back to what we were just talking about, is that humiliation turned into humility, right?
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  Because the things that I think are so bad are the things that actually make my life so good now.
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  And because of that, if I would have wished any of that away, then my life wouldn't be what it is today.
• 2:53
  So you're into some seven-step stuff, some seven-step prayer, take away my difficulty to stand my way of being useful, right?
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  And so those difficulties or those humiliations are the one things that have made me useful.
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  So the way I'm with you, I approach that.
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  So for me, when I talk about forgiveness from the 12 steps, the place that that starts is absolutely on page 66 and 67.
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  Right?
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  Because the new angle, so the old angle, the old angle that I had was perhaps the world and its people were wrong.
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  Right.
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  And to conclude they were wrong as far as I ever got because they dominated me.
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  And the reason they dominated me is because I demanded that they love, comfort, and understand me.
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  And then later on down the page on 66, it says,
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  we were prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle.
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  And that's where we start to look at the sick man prayer.
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  Bill specifically points out this was our course.
• 4:03
  And our course is to forgiveness.
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  It's towards forgiveness.
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  And, you know, in the St. Francis prayer, it says, better to forgive than to be forgiven.
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  So what we're talking about there is human forgiveness.
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  And we have a certain amount of ability to do that.
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  But when we take it from the 12 and from the big book.
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  Right.
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  And we move it into the big, big book.
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  Right.
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  Then we're talking about radical forgiveness.
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  But do you not think like, you know, and I've always,
• 4:33
  because I think when I hear people talk about, you know,
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  I forgive that person, right?
• 4:38
  Well, that's all in my head.
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  That's not an action.
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  Does that make sense?
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  Like, you know, forgiving, you know, I could sit in my,
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  I could sit in my house and forgive somebody all day long.
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  But for some reason, that resentment's still there.
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  Right.
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  Yeah, sure.
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  I mean, it's happened.
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  It's been true to my life.
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  That's as far as I ever got.
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  What if I pulled hair out of your beard?
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  What do you mean?
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  Well, what if I pulled hairs out of your beard?
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  Then you'd pull hair out of my beard.
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  Oh, you'd be willing to forgive me for that?
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  Well, then I'd have to think about all the times I called you old and not to forget, you know,
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  What if I hit you in the head with something?
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  Then I'd get mad.
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  What if I spit on you?
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  Then I'd get mad.
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  Yeah?
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  What if I hit you with something 700 times on your back?
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  Then I'd get mad 700 times on my back, and then I'd be mad.
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  What do you mean?
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  What if I then gave you a tree to carry?
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  Oh, you're going in that direction, right?
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  What if I gave you a tree to carry?
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  Right.
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  And what if I, when I got to the tree, I nailed you to it?
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  And what if I told you that during that whole time,
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  that this is what I was thinking?
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  love is patient
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  love is kind
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  it does not envy
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  it does not boast
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  it is not proud
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  it is not rude
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  it is not self-seeking
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  nor is it not
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  it is not easily angered
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  it keeps no record of wrongs
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  love does not delight in evil
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  but rejoices in the truth
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  and it always protects
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  always trusts
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  always hopes
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  and always perseveres
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  and that's the love
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  Christ had for us. For you.
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  Yeah. And for me. And for me.
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  Yeah. And for her. Absolutely.
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  While he was having hairs from his
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  beard pulled out. Right.
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  While he was having the crown of thorns fashion
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  he shoved on his head.
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  And I don't know if you're familiar with Jeremiah Johnston
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  but he's been on a couple podcasts lately
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  where he has a picture of what the crown of thorns
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  looked like. Yes. And it's not
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  the nice little crown of
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  burrs, briars that you see
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  you know, little wooden crown
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  it was a cap
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  with three-inch thorns in it that they shoved on his head.
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  Yeah.
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  They shoved it on his head, and they hit him 700 times.
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  And the entirety of that time, he took no judgment.
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  He forgave all of them.
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  He said, forgive them for they know not what they do.
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  So, but we're talking about forgiveness also as well, like facing people, right?
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  You know?
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  Yeah.
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  Well, you have to be willing to forgive in order to accept forgiveness.
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  Right.
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  And that's the whole purpose of the 67 and 68, or 66 and 67, is the beginning of forgiveness
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  starts on those two pages.
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  Yeah.
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  For people that are working the 12 steps as a plan, a design for living, that's where
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  that starts.
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  And it only starts there, right?
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  Because it only starts as 83.
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  Right.
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  Yeah, it only starts there.
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  But we have to understand is that, you know, I think for me, like, whenever I think about that, this was our course, what that is, is it's helping us recognize that as in equal measure, I have the same divine spark as you have.
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  And that's the goal of that particular thing, is that I would pray for you.
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  And then I would ask that you get the help that you need and that I get the help that I need or whatever that I show you the patience, pity and tolerance.
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  I would cheerfully grant a sick friend.
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  Right.
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  How this person offended, how can I be helpful, you know?
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  But, you know, man, whenever I think about forgiveness, man, I just go right back to my faith.
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  And I think to myself, when that was happening and he knew me, he knew what we would be doing right here and right now.
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  Right.
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  That's fundamentally, I have no, I know that in my heart.
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  It's not even a belief.
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  It's an absolute, oh, you want to fall back.
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  But fundamentally, I know that that is my truth.
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  And that allows me to have and extend to the best I can a level of forgiveness to people around me.
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  Because I certainly would hope that they would extend some level of forgiveness to me because I'm going to make mistakes.
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  Not very many, but I do make mistakes every now and then.
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  And every now and then I'll even admit to them.
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  But there's a lot of mistakes I make that nobody ever knows about.
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  And they're personal mistakes inside my own head.
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  Maybe I didn't live up to something I needed.
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  And nobody got hurt or nothing wrong, but it was just maybe thoughts.
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  Exactly.
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  Because those thoughts that come up that I'm not in necessarily control of.
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  I think the reading today from Don M. is an absolute masterpiece on exactly what we're talking about.
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  And it talks about the future conversations so they would turn out the way I want.
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  When I relapse into concern with how I sound and whether people are going to love, comfort, and understand me satisfactorily,
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  my relationships jump the track every time.
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  And that's the old angle of approach, is for me to be concerned about whether or not people are going to love, comfort, and understand me.
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  and the new angle of approach is that I try to live by a way where I love, comfort, and understand others.
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  Right, or I like page 104, 105, in the 12 and 12, right, I'll come up that early.
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  We discover that we do receive guidance for our lives just about the extent we stop making demands upon God
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  to give it to us on order in our terms.
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  Almost any experience at AA will tell how his affairs has taken remarkably
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  and unexpected turns for the better as he tried to improve his conscious contact with God.
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  You know, and I've found that to be true in my life, right?
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  You know, it doesn't matter what I do.
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  Like, I could do all the things in the world, but for some reason,
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  when I build this relationship over here and do everything necessary,
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  And for some reason, I think the big book gives me the tools to do that,
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  to sweep away the things that's blocking me in between me and God.
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  And so as I'm doing that, I get a new experience.
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  And that new experience, I kind of like the way it's wrote on page 65.
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  It says, no, that's 66.
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  It says, you know, for the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of the spiritual experience.
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  So growing that consistently, and that would go back in the humiliation, humility, right?
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  Am I willing to go get humiliated, you know, by saying, hey, man, I messed up?
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  Because it might not be humiliating to them, but it could be humiliating to me.
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  Especially, I mean, someone of your stature, right?
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  You got some years in the deal.
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  You can't tell, just like you said just a second ago, right?
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  I hardly ever mess up.
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  You know, how cocky, right?
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  How cocky.
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  And so, but when you come down to it, you're like, man, because that's got to be harder then, too, right?
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  And the bar's certainly higher.
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  Yeah, in your mind, isn't it?
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  Yeah.
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  Because look at me.
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  Yeah.
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  And then, like, when I got to go say I did something like this.
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  Yeah.
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  It's like, wow.
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  Yeah, I had to make amends after one business meeting one time because I said I made a comment about the promises.
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  and it didn't, for me, I thought it was funny,
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  but I thought at the backside of it,
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  some of those people were offended by my comment.
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  Yeah.
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  And I went and made personal amends
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  to each one of those people
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  that was in that business meeting.
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  And I did it on the basis
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  because people, because to your point,
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  I do have some time
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  and I have been around a while
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  and people may hear me say something
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  and that may take away from their ability to hear the message.
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  And I have to be very careful,
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  more careful than a guy that's been around six months or a year or five years.
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  My actions and my words have to be consistent with one another.
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  And if they're not, then people will look and go,
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  well, look at this.
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  This is what happens.
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  Right.
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  You know, this is what happens after some period of time.
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  But, yeah, but, I mean, man, again, though,
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  I mean, for me and especially where forgiveness is,
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  I mean, it starts there, like you said,
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  On the 66, and I think it's important to point out that at the end of the fourth column, the very last sentence is,
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  we admitted our wrongs and honestly, and are willing to set these matters straight.
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  So it immediately points us to the eighth step and ninth step, which is the step where we go out to our fellows and try to make things right.
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  And so that's why I understand forgiveness, as we understand it through the 12 steps, to start on these two pages.
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  We're actually a part of the whole inventory.
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  But, you know, I don't even think I can add anything.
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  Unless you got any more.
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  I don't, but I would just encourage people to, when they think about forgiveness,
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  especially people that are pointed in the direction of Christianity to review 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7, and 8 through, what, 13.
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  Because here it says, love never fails, right?
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  So I'm going to read this and we'll close.
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  because when we talk about forgiveness
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  and we talk about the forgiveness in Isaiah 53,
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  it says, by his stripes we are forgiven.
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  Right.
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  And for me, when I think about these passages in 1 Corinthians,
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  I find them to be valuable in that the way Christ,
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  the way Christ would view the people that tortured him
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  before they nailed him to the cross.
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  Love is patient.
• 15:21
  Love is kind.
• 15:22
  It does not envy.
• 15:23
  It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered.
• 15:30
  It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
• 15:36
  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails,
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  but where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled.
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  Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For when we know in part, and we prophesize in part,
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  But when perfection comes, the imperfection disappears.
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  When I was a child, I talked like a child.
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  I thought like a child.
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  I reasoned like a child.
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  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
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  Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.
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  Then we shall see face to face.
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  Now I know in part.
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  And then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
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  So while Christ was going through those tortures, we were fully known.
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  And now the three remain, faith, hope, and love.
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  But the greatest of these is love.
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  And can you imagine that?
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  No greater love a man has for than to lay down his life for his friends.
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  And that's what Jesus did for us.
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  You know, and that's what everything points to.
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  Choose Jesus.
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  Choose God.
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  You know, resolutely turn my thoughts to someone I can help.
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  That's love.
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  I think when people say choose, though, I think they're using that word synonymously with serve.
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  Because to say I choose God means to say that I serve the Lord.
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  Right.
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  Not that I just make a decision, but that I, by actions.
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  I think in James, I think we said this one, James 1, verse 22 says,
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  don't just do this by my words, but by my actions.
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  But this kind of comes into this word that you hate, man.
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  And I just thought about it, right?
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  Why?
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  Because I hate the word?
• 17:24
  No.
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  Because so if I stay consistent in this kind of golden key, right?
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  Direct my thoughts to God.
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  Direct my thoughts to God.
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  You know, and through any of, you know, quit trying to meddle in it.
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  Right.
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  But can I stay?
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  Can I stay in that constant thought of God?
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  Or am I going to drift off and say, oh, you know, I will guide it.
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  You know, God, can you make it work out this way for me?
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  Because I really like this way.
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  And you know what I mean?
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  Because that's what I do sometimes.
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  Just like I read in the 12 and 12, you know,
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  I got to quit letting, trying to demand of God and let God just do.
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  And that is almost in a place of abandoning myself to God.
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  Or you could go with another word, but, you know, we'll just use it as abandon.
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  Right.
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  And that's, you know, that's one of the requirements on page 164, right?
• 18:13
  Yeah.
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  To abandon myself to God to be a part of the fellowship as a spirit.
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  Am I willing to do that?
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  in a complete view.
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  And I think that's a battle every day.
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  Yes.
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  Yes, I agree.
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  For God so loved the world
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  that He gave His only begotten Son,
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  that whoever believes in Him
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  shall not perish,
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  but shall have eternal life.
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  So if you've heard nothing tonight
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  or this morning,
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  I think it's still morning,
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  yep,
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  if you've heard nothing this morning
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  through our conversation,
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  just know that Jesus loves you
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  and He always has.
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  Amen.
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  Prayer.
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  Give me the willingness to forgive.
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  Through Your Spirit, soften my heart
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  and lead me in the [forgiving] way of Your Son.
• 18:54
  Amen.
• 18:54
  Amen.
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  We're going to close on that.
• 19:01
  We were going to close on that.
• 19:02
  Yeah, but then you want to say,
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  now I'm going to have to say something after you.