Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / August 9 – Willing to Forgive

Transcript

August 9 – Willing to Forgive · The Daily Ripples Podcast

0:03
Good morning and welcome to the Daily Ripples podcast
0:08
for Sunday, August 9th. Or maybe I should
0:11
have started off a different way by saying good morning, good afternoon,
0:15
or good evening. Whatever time you find us, we're glad that you're here.
0:19
That's more in line with how our good buddy
0:23
Paris often starts his episodes when he kicks it off. And speaking
0:26
of, Be sure to tune in every day this coming week because
0:30
starting tomorrow morning all the way through Friday, we've got myself
0:35
and Corey, but we've also got Paris back on the podcast with
0:39
us. And so that's something that we can all look forward to,
0:42
some great and engaging conversations that we had with him,
0:46
and I'm looking forward to everybody enjoying those episodes alongside us
0:50
this week. But today is Sunday,
0:53
August 9th, as said, and our devotional today Well,
0:57
it's on my wife Cristi's absolute favorite topic. And of
1:00
course, I say that very much tongue in cheek because
1:04
this is the hard one for her. But it's titled Willing
1:08
to Forgive. The stone: I cannot fully seek forgiveness
1:12
while refusing to extend forgiveness to others.
1:15
Ripple 1, practical. Today, I will examine any
1:19
resentment I'm still carrying. Holding on to old hurts does
1:22
not protect me. It keeps me tied to the past and makes
1:26
it harder to pursue healing and reconciliation. Ripple 2 is spiritual.
1:30
As I choose to forgive, the Holy Spirit softens my heart, helping me
1:34
release bitterness and walk in the freedom that forgiveness brings.
1:38
The Father calls me to receive and extend grace, and Jesus taught that
1:43
forgiveness is not earned but given freely. As always,
1:46
we save our prayer for the end of the show, but the
1:50
important thing I think on this one is a very simple
1:55
word, that comes in, it's really in the middle of
1:58
this line in the Lord's Prayer. Now, if you're not familiar
2:02
with the Lord's Prayer, then I guess my question is, are you
2:06
familiar with the rooms of recovery, at least
2:10
in the Mid-South and Southern churches in general? Because many of them,
2:13
both churches and recovery meetings, many of them include
2:17
the Lord's Prayer that everybody typically stands and recites together all
2:23
at the same time. And there's a line in that Lord's Prayer that says,
2:26
forgive us our trespasses, trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
2:30
against us. And the word that I keep
2:34
coming back to is the word as. Man, we say
2:38
it so many times, we skip over that as, and that's A-S for,
2:43
in case the subtitles get it wrong, I am not cursing.
2:46
It is A-S, the word as, as we forgive
2:49
those who trespass against us. Sometimes I
2:54
have to stop and think about what I'm actually asking for there. I'm asking God
2:58
to hand me the same deal, you might say, that I've
3:02
been handing everybody else, the same measure, the same terms.
3:07
Whatever I've been willing to give to my brother or sister or
3:11
friend of Bill, you might say, that's what I'm
3:15
asking to receive in return. And to be honest with you, some mornings
3:19
and sometimes in the meetings, whenever I'm saying that prayer, I don't think about it
3:23
at all. It just kind of rolls out when we recite these things,
3:26
but when I do slow down and actually listen to it, I think about
3:30
what a big ask that is. Man, I'm having to
3:34
be very careful with consonants today so that our subtitles don't think I'm over here
3:38
cursing left and right and talking about donkeys. But anyway,
3:42
I know what I've been carrying around towards some people at times. There are
3:47
people in my life that are just harder to forgive.
3:51
But that's today's stone. What it's telling me is that I can't fully seek
3:55
forgiveness if I'm refusing to extend forgiveness to others.
3:59
For me, my refusing to extend forgiveness often comes just
4:04
in the form of distance. I will avoid the person
4:07
that I have some type of resentment against.
4:11
But this is the idea that Jesus put in the prayer that he taught us,
4:14
the giving and the giving, you might say, of forgiveness are
4:18
tied together. And that's really what makes it so difficult,
4:21
because I think for many people, you know, we know that God forgives
4:25
us, and we know what kind of crap we've done,
4:28
you know, what sins we've done against God or what have you, and yet we're
4:33
still forgiven. And we know what this recovery program has
4:36
provided for us, and we have gratitude for that.
4:40
But then at the same time, we can get a little bit upset with
4:44
other people in the rooms and form resentments against them as well.
4:48
And we have to step back at times and remember what we pray every time:
4:52
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
4:56
who trespass against us. So let's dig into the
4:59
practical side of this thing first, though, this morning, and that's the Ripple 1.
5:03
It says, today I will examine any resentment I'm still carrying.
5:07
And if you've spent any time at all in rooms of recovery, you know
5:10
that word resentment. It's right there in the steps.
5:14
The Big Book puts it bluntly. Over in the bottom
5:18
paragraph on page 64 in the book Alcoholics
5:22
Anonymous, it says that resentment is the number one offender
5:27
that destroys more alcoholics than anything else. And,
5:30
you know, I would go a step further and say that resentment destroys people
5:34
in general, sometimes more than anything else.
5:38
But it calls it the number one offender. It says that from it
5:42
flow all kinds of spiritual sickness. And then a couple pages later,
5:45
it says something more plain, that a life that holds deep resentment
5:49
leads only to a dead end and being unhappy. And that's a strong claim
5:53
that this book makes. It calls it the number one offender. It puts it
5:57
at the top of the list. Now,
6:01
when we first hear that, sometimes we can push back on it a little bit
6:04
because we could think of plenty of things in life that might seem bigger.
6:08
But the longer that we sit with it and the more that we think about
6:11
it, the more that maybe we realize that those authors got it right.
6:15
Because resentment is the thing that's still running through our minds,
6:18
through our brains, when all of our other negative emotions have stopped.
6:22
And what I mean is that, say something happens to you,
6:25
and somebody says a thing or does a thing or takes
6:29
a thing from you, and that happens once. It's over in a minute, maybe it's
6:33
only a second, and then you carry it around for the
6:37
next 11 or 12 years. That's a pretty big thing.
6:41
You have the conversation again in your quiet moments,
6:44
maybe when your time in the shower, and maybe you're arguing it
6:48
in your head again in the car on the way to work. And the good
6:50
thing is when you're doing that, you win that argument every single time.
6:54
You think of the perfect thing that you should have said, and maybe you even
6:58
say it out loud to nobody. Maybe you say it, Cristi,
7:01
to other drivers driving down the road, or maybe
7:05
you're just saying it to yourself. But meanwhile, that other person that
7:09
did something to you, at least did something to you in your own mind,
7:12
they're out there living their life. They might have forgotten about
7:16
it entirely. They might not even know that they did anything wrong. And yet
7:21
you're the one still carrying around, refusing to,
7:24
I guess, terminate that lease that they have on you. But that's what the devotional
7:29
is getting at. You know, whenever I wrote that it, you know, holding on to
7:32
old hurts does not protect me. Because that's
7:36
the story we tell ourselves, isn't it? That holding on is a kind of guard.
7:39
If I stay angry, I stay safe. If I keep the wall up, then they
7:43
can't get to me again. But look at where
7:47
that actually leaves us. It says that it keeps me tied
7:51
to the past. Tied is a strong word.
7:55
It's like a rope on a boat. If you've got your boat tied
8:00
up to a dock, you know, depending on how strong that rope is, you can
8:03
run the motor of that boat all day long and you're still going to be
8:06
sitting in the same spot because you're tied to the dock behind you.
8:10
Now, as you all know, if you've been listening for
8:14
any amount of time at all, I am a pastor and I've watched people get
8:18
hurt by sometimes how the church talks about resentment
8:22
and forgiving. Because forgiving someone and
8:26
trusting them again are 2 very different things. And also forgiveness
8:32
and reconciliation are 2 different things. Both of those things, people get mixed up all
8:36
the time. You see, you can forgive somebody and you can still keep a locked
8:40
door in between you. You can let go of what you're carrying and
8:44
still keep the keys in your pocket, you might say.
8:49
Forgiving is about what you're going to carry with you.
8:53
It's about setting down the weight that you've been hauling around
8:57
that you shouldn't have been carrying in the first place because God has
9:01
already called you to forgive the person that offends you. In fact,
9:05
it's so important that, you know, as we will talk about even further this week,
9:10
you know, in the Gospel of Matthew, you know, Jesus told his disciples
9:14
that if you have something between you and a brother of
9:18
yours, to go and make it right before you bring your
9:22
offerings into the temple. And so forgiveness,
9:25
and the follow-up to that, you know, in Christian circles a lot is talking about
9:29
reconciliation, and that's being reconciled
9:34
between and among believers in Jesus. And so for
9:38
those of us who are in recovery and also have our higher
9:42
power as God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and affirm
9:46
the Christian faith, this is even more important for us because it's not just
9:50
a matter of staying sober, but it's a matter of God's process
9:54
of healing our very souls. God heals our souls as
9:59
we forgive others. The Big Book has a very
10:02
practical way through this, and it's a way that whether
10:06
we're going to church today or whether we're going to a recovery meeting today,
10:09
it's a way that holds something that we can all actually do.
10:14
In our Alcoholics Anonymous textbook, at the bottom
10:17
of page 66 going into 67, it says,
10:20
we realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually
10:25
sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us,
10:28
they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them
10:32
the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant
10:36
a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves,
10:39
this is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him?
10:42
God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done.
10:46
So in other words, when a person offends
10:50
us, when we have a resentment against somebody, we're called to pray for
10:55
them, to ask God to help us show them the same patience and kindness that
10:58
we cheerfully give a sick friend. Because if a friend of mine had the flu
11:02
and snapped at me, well, I wouldn't hold that against them for a decade.
11:05
I'd say, well, he was sick. That was just the flu talking.
11:09
But there's also a story in the back of that book, and it's one that
11:12
a lot of people know. There's a woman who's told that if she'll pray for
11:15
the person she resents every day for 2 weeks, asking that they get
11:19
all the good things she'd want for herself, she'd be free of it. And she
11:22
said she didn't mean a word of it when she started. And that's some honesty
11:25
right there in the textbook. She said it through her teeth, you might say,
11:29
but she kept doing it. And somewhere in there, after a while, it became
11:33
true. And that reminds me of just a conversation that I was
11:36
having very recently with a sponsee of mine.
11:41
And he was saying that after a relapse,
11:44
that he He didn't want to go back into the rooms. He just did not
11:48
have the desire. He was not convinced that going to
11:51
meetings in recovery was going to do anything for him.
11:55
And so he started listing off all the ways that he was going to kind
11:57
of essentially work his own program. And I had to lovingly but
12:01
bluntly call him out on that and say, well, if that's
12:05
what you want, then what you're looking for is a friend who has gone
12:09
through similar things you've gone through that you can commiserate with.
12:13
That's not sponsorship. If you want sponsorship,
12:17
then sponsorship is doing what the book and what your sponsor says, and that's
12:20
getting your behind into a meeting. Because what we've learned over time through this
12:24
program of recovery, or at least what I've learned, is that as
12:29
I take action, my mind and my thinking catches up.
12:33
So I just have to take the right actions. And in terms
12:37
of forgiveness, you know, when I start praying for the person who's wronged
12:42
or offended me, even if I don't believe it at first, you know,
12:46
my mind catches up. And I'll share a little bit of a story. This is
12:49
not one that I talk about a lot. And a lot of times, you know,
12:52
I don't speak a lot about— and
12:56
I've talked about this some here on this podcast, but I don't speak a lot
12:59
about my specific process of prayer and times
13:03
and who I pray for and how and things like that.
13:06
And that's because Jesus teaches me that when we pray, we're supposed to do that
13:10
in private and not out on the streets like the Pharisees for everyone to see,
13:13
right? But this is related to our topic today, so I'm going to kind of
13:16
go against that a little bit. I had a long-term
13:21
resentment, you know, as many of us do,
13:25
but I— it manifested in, you know,
13:28
a lot of different ways and, and things of that nature. You know, I'd told
13:32
myself that I had forgiven, you know, her of things, you know, long ago,
13:35
and yet what I found is that every time something negative came up, then she
13:38
was automatic scapegoat. And so I eventually
13:43
started to, and this was just within probably the past year,
13:47
that I started including her in my daily prayers.
13:51
She was one of many people that I was praying for. Then where that led
13:55
eventually was to my realization, and this is fitting as well since we're in the
13:58
8th month, about making a list of all the persons we had harmed
14:02
and became willing to make amends to them all. So during that process of praying,
14:06
God revealed to me where I, over time, had continued to make
14:10
assumptions about her and None of which
14:14
may have been true. It may or may not have been. I don't know.
14:17
And it was outside of my control. But what was inside of my control
14:20
was the realization of all the ways that I, back in the
14:24
day, had hurt her when I was actively drinking. And I had told myself
14:29
time and time again in this program that, you know, my amends, you know,
14:32
toward her and toward a few others was sufficient to be that living
14:36
amends or that, you know, the cop-out amends, you know, as I've now
14:39
come to call it. But eventually I realized
14:43
that that probably wasn't enough. I would say that God was working
14:47
in me. So an opportunity presented itself where I could make an in-person amends
14:52
to her, and since then, any type of resentment,
14:56
any type of blame game, any type of holding
14:59
on to those things, I mean, I cut
15:03
the rope. I left that dock behind. And the boat of my
15:07
life has sailed forward and has continued to grow and improve in many
15:11
different ways. And I love that because
15:17
whether I'm talking about my specific example or kind of what I reference
15:21
to in the book, it puts the action first and lets the feeling or lets
15:24
the brain catch up. And that's exactly what our spiritual ripple says
15:28
today. And we'll get there in a minute. And I know you're thinking, well,
15:30
hopefully you get there soon since we're this far into the episode. But there's one
15:34
more piece on the practical side, and it comes from where we are in the
15:36
steps right right now. You know,
15:39
we've been walking through the 8th and the 9th steps this month and,
15:43
you know, making the list and becoming willing to make those amends. And there's
15:47
a word in the 8th step that sometimes we skip. It says all,
15:51
kind of like the word at the beginning, you know, forgive us as we
15:54
forgive those who have wronged us.
15:57
And it's that word all, a list of all persons
16:01
we had harmed, every single one, all of them.
16:04
Every name, including the ones where I come out
16:08
of the story looking bad, you might say. But that's where it ties into today,
16:11
because if I'm sitting there with my list and there's a person that I refuse
16:14
to forgive, then what are the odds that
16:18
that name goes on my list? Well, just about zero, because I've
16:21
already decided that the harm in the relationship runs only in one direction.
16:25
You know, I might think that, well, they did that to me and I'm the
16:27
one owed, and, and I can tap into that righteous anger again.
16:32
But my unwillingness to forgive them keeps the name off the list,
16:35
and keeping the name off the list keeps me from cleaning up my side of
16:38
the street. Or maybe I have the name on the list and I think,
16:40
well, I just changed my life and that's enough. But that means
16:44
that my resentment is standing between me and my own freedom,
16:48
and I've experienced that. So practically for today, that's the work.
16:51
Sit down, look at what you're still carrying. You probably already
16:55
know the names. Most of us already do. We don't need a long inventory to
16:59
come up with the first 2 or 3. But let's take on the spiritual side
17:02
now. It says that as I choose to forgive, the Holy Spirit softens my heart,
17:06
helping me release bitterness and walk in the freedom that forgiveness
17:10
brings. There's an order to that sentence. The choosing comes
17:13
first, and the softening comes after. But that's good news,
17:17
because a lot of us are sitting around waiting to feel forgiving before
17:21
we act forgiving. We're waiting for the anger to lift on its own,
17:25
waiting for the resentment to go away, waiting for the hurt feelings
17:29
to lessen, and then we'll be ready. And so we wait
17:33
and we wait and we wait, and then before we know it, 30 or 40
17:36
years have gone by and we're still waiting for that feeling to come instead
17:40
of just doing it, instead of just writing the name down and
17:44
praying for them every day. But this ripple says the choice is ours to make
17:48
first. But then God meets us there. You choose,
17:51
and then the Spirit goes to work on your heart. Same as that woman praying
17:55
through her teeth for 2 weeks. She chose first, but her
17:59
heart wasn't softened until later on. I think a lot of us have
18:03
that backwards. We think that forgiveness is a feeling that we arrive at somehow,
18:06
I guess magically, through, as one of my pastors used to call
18:10
it, through the spooky spirituality of our faith. But it's closer to a
18:14
decision that we make sometimes over and over again, about a thing that
18:18
we'd rather keep holding on to. And then, you know, I'd written that the
18:21
Father calls me to receive and extend grace,
18:25
and that's with both hands, you know, receiving with the one, giving with the other.
18:29
And I think that most of us are pretty good at one of those but
18:32
not the other, and which one, of course, depends on the person. But I also
18:36
think that, you know, some people can give grace to everybody in the world,
18:39
but they can't take an ounce of it for themselves.
18:42
They allow things that happen in life. Maybe it's a relapse.
18:47
Maybe it's a way that we've hurt somebody. Maybe it's angry words.
18:50
Maybe we even got physical with somebody that we should have never laid hands on.
18:55
And so we carry around shame, and that shame is different
18:59
than guilt. You know, guilt says that, well,
19:03
I did something wrong. I made a mistake. And shame says
19:07
that I am wrong and I am the mistake. And so we have
19:10
to find a way to set that shame aside.
19:14
You know, the Father is calling us to open both of those hands to
19:18
receive his forgiveness, just as we forgive
19:22
others. But that's a hard row
19:26
to hoe sometimes for some of us. But then we get to the last one.
19:29
Jesus taught that forgiveness is not earned, but given
19:33
freely. So let's go to the place where Jesus taught it most
19:37
plainly about forgiveness. I'm going to
19:40
read this story from the Bible out of The Message.
19:45
Well, some people call it a translation, which is really not a translation.
19:49
It's more of an interpretation of Scripture because it's where the authors took
19:53
the ancient biblical text in their original language and kind
19:58
of converted it into more of a novel-type modern flow. So it's not
20:02
technically a translation of Scripture; it's more an
20:05
interpretation of Scripture, but sometimes it's still fun to read.
20:09
But in Matthew, the 18th chapter, beginning around
20:13
verse 21, it says that at that point Peter got up the nerve to ask,
20:17
well, Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me?
20:20
7? Jesus replied, 7? Hardly.
20:24
Try 70 times 7. And then he tells them a story.
20:27
The kingdom of God is like a king who decided to square accounts with his
20:31
servants. As he got underway, one servant was brought before him who
20:35
had run up a debt of $100,000. He couldn't pay up,
20:38
so the king ordered the man along with his wife children, and goods to be
20:41
auctioned off at the slave market. The poor wretch threw himself
20:45
at the king's feet and begged, Give me a chance, and I'll pay it back.
20:48
Touched by his plea, the king let him off and erased the debt. The servant
20:52
was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one of his fellow
20:55
servants who owed him 10 bucks. He seized him by the throat and demanded,
20:58
Pay up now! The poor wretch threw himself down and begged, Give me
21:02
a chance, and I'll pay it all back. Huh, just like the man had just
21:05
done to the other master. Anyway, but he wouldn't do it. He had him
21:09
arrested and put in jail until the debt was paid, all $10 of
21:13
it. When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a
21:17
detailed report back to the king. And before
21:20
we even get there, as you can imagine, the king wasn't happy. So the king
21:23
summoned the man and said, you evil servant, I forgave your entire debt when you
21:27
begged me for mercy. Shouldn't you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow
21:31
servant who asked for mercy? The king was furious and put the screws to
21:34
the man until he paid back his entire debt. And that's exactly what
21:37
my Father in Heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn't
21:40
forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy.
21:45
Man,
21:47
that's a hard message to
21:50
hear. Many of us can imagine that
21:56
second debt that was mentioned in that story, the $10,
21:59
as The Message called it, that was owed, because that's a manageable
22:03
amount of money. But the one that that man meanwhile owed
22:07
to the king that the Message calls 100,000, I mean, that's 1,000
22:12
times more, you know, if you're quick with math like that. But that's the picture
22:16
that our stone is painting. You know, I can't fully seek forgiveness from
22:20
God who forgives me 1,000 times more than I could ever forgive anyone else
22:24
and then refuse to extend my meager little bit of forgiveness to
22:27
somebody else. I can't walk out of a room where my sky-high
22:32
debt was just wiped clean and then go straight and grab somebody by the throat
22:36
who owes me the 10 bucks. And right after the Lord's Prayer back in Matthew
22:40
chapter 6, Jesus says it again flat out, you know, from the NRSV,
22:44
says, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also
22:48
forgive you. And there it is again.
22:53
You might say the word as wearing a different coat,
22:57
if you forgive others in this case. So that's where I would
23:01
leave us for today. You know, last Sunday our devotional
23:05
was called Willing to Be Made Whole, and today is Willing to give. It's the
23:08
same first word both weeks, willing.
23:12
And I don't think that's an accident, even though I didn't necessarily plan it when
23:15
I was writing. That's where it was a divine intervention,
23:19
you might say, because willing is the place that most of
23:23
us can actually get to. You know, I might not be able to sit here
23:26
this morning and tell you I feel warm toward a certain person, but the
23:30
question is, am I willing to write that name down and include that
23:34
name in my prayers? I've done it before. I've seen the benefit of
23:38
it, and I need to do it again every time that I hold a resentment
23:42
and withhold forgiveness from somebody. Because I can tell you
23:46
that I'm willing. I'm willing to pray for others.
23:49
I'm willing to put names on a list today. I'm willing to set
23:53
things down and see what God does with my hands once
23:56
they're empty. And that's enough to start with, because if I'm holding out
24:00
empty hands before God, then I know that God is going to provide
24:04
for me. Not always what I want, but always exactly
24:08
what I need. Let's pray together. Father God,
24:12
help me forgive as I have been forgiven. Through your Holy Spirit,
24:15
release me from resentment and bitterness. Shape my life through
24:19
the example of Jesus and teach me to walk in grace and mercy. Amen.
24:25
That's it for today, everybody. And Corey will be back
24:29
with us in a solo episode next Saturday. I'll see you next Sunday. And this
24:32
week in between, we have 5 episodes of Corey and
24:36
I sitting down with Paris for some really good, sometimes really fun conversations.
24:41
If you've listened to either of those 2 before, you know that there's probably a
24:44
little bit of debate that's going to be included in there. But if you want
24:47
to read today's full devotional, head on over to www.dailyripples.com.
24:52
And if the show means something to you, we'd love to hear from you,
24:55
any feedback. You can reach out anytime, wave@dailyripples.com.
25:00
But for now, you know what to do, as we do every week. Go and
25:04
do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the
25:07
places you can in all the ways you can and by all the means you
25:11
can, and do it all for as long as you ever can. In the name
25:14
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, may you go
25:18
in peace.