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Letting Go of the One Hardest Word Forgiveness · HAVE FAITH LET IT BEGIN®

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  This week's podcast is brought to you in part by Right On Q Productions.
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  They produce and edit all of our intro and outro.
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  DJ Eric Santana and Right On Q Productions presents Half-Faith, Let It Begin.
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  Good morning and welcome to another episode of Half-Faith, Let It Begin.
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  Dr. E is back and today we're talking about the one hardest word,
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  the hardest word we will ever face.
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  You want to take a guess what that word is? No.
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  Okay that word is that the word to hear the word no oh that's the sequel no
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  and today's word is forgiveness oh that's a good one and Dr.
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  E is back half faith let it begin starts right now.
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  All right, everyone, let's get right to it. Have Faith, Let It Begin is back.
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  It's another Monday. The one-two punch is back.
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  Dr. E is back from a much-needed time rest. So let me just get off the jump
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  with this. I'll be honest with you, Dr. E.
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  There was a time in my life when I was deeply betrayed.
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  Someone I trusted, someone I loved hurt me in a way that left a scar in my heart.
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  For years, I carried that wound.
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  I thought at night I would replay those conversations in my head,
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  and I lived with the anger and the pain.
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  The hardest part, every time I thought about forgiving, I felt like I was letting
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  them off the hook, like they didn't deserve it.
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  But the truth was, it wasn't about them.
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  You see, it was about me. My forgiveness was chaining me down.
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  So my first question to you, Dr. E is, how hard is it for you to forgive?
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  Oh my God. It's one that I struggle with. So, you know, there's a couple of things here.
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  Number one, let's talk about the process of being hurt, right?
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  So we, people don't hurt us.
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  We allow people to hurt us. So it's really, as you said, it's really us,
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  you know, all of our half faith listeners, you need to do an inventory on your
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  self-esteem and how you feel about yourself as a person.
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  And if you continually get hurt, then there's probably a void in you.
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  There's something in you that you need to figure out and you need to address, number one.
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  Number two, this is the thing. So I'm bad at that, number one, right?
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  So I have this huge void, self-doubt and self-esteem issues and all that kind
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  of stuff, imposter syndrome, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Number two is the reactivity.
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  So again, you know, my fuse is short, but I made this, you know,
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  as I'm heading into the late sixties, I finally, it took me this long to figure out.
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  I did an inventory and tried to remember every single time that I've been reactive.
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  And I don't mean like little day-to-day stuff.
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  I'm talking about the big stuff. And I came to the conclusion that every time
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  that I showed reactivity or tried to defend myself or make a big case about
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  something that it didn't turn out to be the wrong strategy.
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  There is really no need to ever be reactive.
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  Now that's easy to say, you know, trying to eliminate reactivity in your life
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  is, you know, we're not Jesus, you know, we're human, we're flawed. So that's a problem.
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  So you have first recognition of yourself, the void in you.
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  Number two is how to deal with your reactivity and number three which is the
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  big one and they all kind of kind of lead lead to the to the finish line is
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  is that forgiveness and to be honest with you there's an excellent excellent.
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  What would you call it? Like a little allegory or it's a cute little story of,
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  you know, Eastern belief.
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  And it's a story of two monks that are in this, you know, in this,
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  you know, castle or whatever, this, this, you know, monks, you know, garden or whatever.
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  And the master tells the two monks, they need to go to town and buy the rice.
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  So they go down to town, they vow silence and they're not allowed to talk to
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  people and they're not allowed to, you know, even engage with their eyes to
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  look at a woman or God forbid,
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  even talk to a woman or God forbid, ever touch a woman.
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  And the two monks go into town, they buy the rice and they see this woman who's
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  in trouble because she needs to try to get over this, this puddle.
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  And she's got, you know, a kid on her, on her one arm and she's got her rice
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  in the other arm and she's got the donkey in front of her and she's really at her wit's end.
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  So one of the monks takes the woman, puts her on his back with the woman and
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  the son and the mule and the whole thing and he walks her over the puddle and
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  then puts her down and the rest of the way up to the monastery,
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  they're walking with their bags of rice and the one monk is just walking like
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  nothing is wrong and the other monk is so angry that his brethren, you know,
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  not only spoke to a woman or looked at a woman,
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  but actually touched a woman and, and they walked and walked and walked up the hill.
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  I could see all those stone stairs.
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  And at the end he said, you know, I didn't think what you did was good by carrying
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  that woman and doing all this and do all that.
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  He goes, the only person who carried that woman was you.
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  When I carried her physically, I let her down and then it was over.
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  You've been carrying that woman the entire way up the stairs.
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  And I think forgiveness is, that's a really good metaphor for forgiveness because,
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  you know, number one, we're not perfect.
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  Number two is that we need to be forgiven, you know, because we're going to
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  be impure and make mistakes.
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  And the most important thing, just to tie it all together with a beautiful little
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  bow, is that if Jesus could forgive the.
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  The men who were spitting at him and throwing
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  things at him and whipping him and putting thorns in his skull and then nails
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  in his hands and feet and then tying him up on a cross until he died of a painful
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  death of asphyxiation for doing nothing.
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  And then berating him and scolding him and yelling at him and just shaming him.
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  And if he can, if Jesus can handle forgiving those guys, I think I could forgive.
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  You know, I know, and I know the story.
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  I won't give it. I know who you're talking about.
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  Then we can forgive those who have, who have done wrong to us.
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  Yeah. And, you know, it's funny. I was going to mention it. I,
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  you know, I, that's part of the reason why I brought this up because I saw the
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  speech and that was powerful, you know,
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  and I'm sure that, you know, You don't have to agree or disagree or disagree to agree,
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  but it's still a human being forgiving someone for doing something so tragically
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  wrong in all aspects of the world.
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  So I took this right from the Bible because I thought, wow, this is going to
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  be an episode and I waited for you to return.
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  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as Christ God forgave you.
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  And you didn't even know I was going to bring that up. So you brought up the story for us.
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  Let's reflect on this and let's close this out.
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  Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting. It doesn't mean what happened was okay.
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  It means you're choosing not to be, not to let bitterness steal your joy.
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  Christ forgave us even when we didn't deserve it.
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  And if we are to walk in his love, we're called to do the same.
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  Maybe today you're holding onto something, A wound, a betrayal, a scar.
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  And you're saying, I can't forgive. You're right. You can't.
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  But Christ through you can.
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  So let's pray about it. We thank you, Lord. And we know that our wounds and
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  you know the pain we carry.
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  We ask you today to give us the strength of forgiveness, not because they deserve
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  it, but because you first forgave us.
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  Heal our hearts. feel free to give us freedom from bitterness and let us walk in your grace.
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  So as we close out today, we thank you for listening to us.
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  We wanna encourage you to listen to yesterday's episode of the Croc Podcast,
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  which was actually entitled, I Believe in Miracles.
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  And trust me, you don't wanna miss that. It was an amazing episode.
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  And believe it or not, there's some forgiveness stories in there.
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  There's a little bit of retribution, if you want to say, for better lack of words.
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  And more importantly, for believing that there is a higher power and knowing
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  that miracles just don't happen by accident.
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  So on behalf of all of us here at Have Faith, let it begin. And Dr.
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  E, thank you for returning. We want you to know that Nick hasn't taken your spot.
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  He's been listening in and he's been doing some new episodes for us.
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  But I want everybody to know that we're coming together as a team.
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  So thank you for everything you do for us. and remember to stay safe,
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  drive safe because you matter and never forget faith. Let it begin, baby.
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  Have a good one guys. God bless. Have faith. Let it begin.