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September 20 – Following God's Lead · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome back, everybody, to the Daily Ripples podcast.
• 0:07
  Today is Sunday, September the 20th, and our devotional is titled Following God's lead, The Stone.
• 0:15
  The direction of my life changes when I allow God to become my guide instead of my last resort.
• 0:20
  Ripple one practical.
• 0:22
  Today, I will seek God's direction before relying on my own understanding.
• 0:27
  I do not have to have every answer before taking the next step.
• 0:30
  Faith grows as I trust his guidance, one decision at a time.
• 0:33
  Ripple 2 spiritual.
• 0:35
  As I place my life in the Father's hands, the Holy Spirit gently redirects my path in ways I can never accomplish on my own, following Christ's example of complete trust and obedience.
• 0:46
  I discover that God's way leads to a life richer and more meaningful than anything I could have planned for myself.
• 0:52
  We're going to save the prayer for the end as we always do.
• 0:55
  And as I was reading through this, it struck me, and I'll be honest, I was trying to devise a way to best maximize my time for this Sunday morning.
• 1:06
  You see, I'm actually out of town right now as you're listening to this.
• 1:10
  But I was thinking about this thing about following God's lead and how important that is, especially this is the ninth month.
• 1:16
  This is a month where we're talking about amends a lot.
• 1:19
  And a man's is about reconciliation.
• 1:21
  It's about forgiveness of ourselves and of others.
• 1:24
  And so when I ping on that,
• 1:27
  If I think about the topic of forgiveness, the direction of my life changes when I allow God to become my guide instead of my last resort, when I need forgiven, and when I need to forgive others.
• 1:38
  Today, I will seek God's direction to forgive other people in my life.
• 1:42
  I don't have to have the answer before I forgive people.
• 1:46
  Faith grows as I trust his guidance in forgiving others as I have been forgiven.
• 1:52
  And as I place my life in the Father's hands, the Holy Spirit gently redirects my path to forgiveness.
• 1:59
  So with all that being said, I'm going to take a little bit of a cheat here this morning.
• 2:03
  And I'm going to have on our podcast episode today my sermon actually from last week, which was all about forgiveness.
• 2:12
  So, and again, as I always say, this doesn't mean because you're going to listen to technically a sermon here that you don't have to go to church this morning, because do not forsake the gathering together among each other.
• 2:24
  Let's listen together.
• 2:27
  Well, you all, I have been here with you now for just a couple of months, right?
• 2:34
  But I'm sure you are used to the fact that at the beginning of a message, I'm going to ask some kind of question that's going to make you think, and you might not like it too much, but I'm going to do it again, so don't worry.
• 2:46
  The question this morning is simple.
• 2:49
  Who benefits when you forgive someone?
• 2:54
  Any guesses?
• 2:55
  See a lot of people pointing to themselves.
• 2:58
  And that's exactly right.
• 3:00
  So you all have a good basis as we start, because you're not under the impression, like so much of what we hear outside of these rooms and sanctuaries, about forgiveness and how it is done.
• 3:11
  Because so many times what we hear, when we talk to others about forgiveness, is we, and we might even say it at times.
• 3:19
  And if you have, it's okay.
• 3:21
  After all, God will forgive you.
• 3:23
  But sometimes we say, well, I can't forgive them because they haven't done anything to deserve it.
• 3:28
  Anybody ever heard that one?
• 3:30
  Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 3:32
  Well, what about, well, if I forgive them, it's almost like I'm saying that it's okay what they did to me.
• 3:38
  Anybody heard that one?
• 3:39
  I'm sure we have.
• 3:40
  Well, what about this?
• 3:43
  Well, they never even apologize to me.
• 3:45
  Have I heard that one?
• 3:48
  I mean, we could keep going through these lists of excuses, y'all.
• 3:52
  I mean, that's essentially what they all are.
• 3:54
  Amen.
• 3:54
  But they're not just excuses because they're honest feelings that we have, because when a relationship is broken, it is so much easier for us to see the other person's part, then what?
• 4:07
  Then my part.
• 4:08
  Sometimes it's very hard for me to see my part in any situation.
• 4:13
  But these thoughts, these resentments at times that we carry, they come from real wounds, and I'm not meaning to minimize the wounds that we inflict upon one another.
• 4:25
  And notice I said we, because there's not a single person in this room or watching a joiner with us online that has not inflicted a wound on another person.
• 4:33
  Amen?
• 4:33
  None of us are perfect in this regard.
• 4:36
  But every one of those thoughts, those feelings are built on the same assumption.
• 4:43
  It's the assumption that forgiveness is something that we do for someone else.
• 4:48
  They're based on the assumption that it is a gift that we are giving someone else that they haven't earned.
• 4:54
  And I guess that assumption is true because have not we all received the gift of forgiveness that we didn't earn?
• 5:01
  Indeed, we have.
• 5:06
  And sometimes it's a door that we're being asked to open for somebody.
• 5:10
  who may or may not walk through that door, who might slam the door in our face, or who might break the door down if we give them the opportunity, amen?
• 5:18
  And so there's a lot of fear that comes along with this act of forgiveness.
• 5:25
  So we can forgive them, but only if they apologize first, right?
• 5:29
  Absolutely not.
• 5:31
  That's where we say, well, actually, That's not quite how Jesus put it, is it?
• 5:38
  And that's the words that are guiding our time together this month in September.
• 5:44
  This is week 2 of what I'm calling well, actually.
• 5:47
  And it's taken the famous teachings or thoughts or things of Jesus, the ones that we know by heart and asking them the question, do we really know them as well as we sometimes think that we do?
• 5:57
  And last week we sat with the passage on where 2 or 3 are gathered.
• 6:03
  Jesus is there among us.
• 6:04
  Now, what was that related to?
• 6:06
  Anyone?
• 6:08
  Reconciliation.
• 6:10
  Amen.
• 6:11
  I heard a few of those.
• 6:12
  And I'm thankful that now, after having been here last week, no one said that that's the definition of church, because it's when Jesus was talking about how we go about the work of reconciling with our brothers and sisters in Christ who have hurt or harmed or failed us.
• 6:28
  And today we pick up on the very next verse.
• 6:31
  With our favorite of the bumbling disciples.
• 6:36
  Amen?
• 6:36
  Because many times they were.
• 6:38
  And Peter often was the chief of them.
• 6:40
  But Peter here, he had a follow-up question.
• 6:43
  It's almost like he's saying, well, actually, Jesus, how many times do you expect me to forgive somebody?
• 6:50
  And Jesus says in the common English Bible.
• 6:53
  Not just 7 times because that's what Peter asked, but as many as 77 times, or in some versions, it says 70 times seven.
• 7:06
  How many times?
• 7:08
  Now Peter thinks he's generous when he lists seven.
• 7:10
  After all, the rabbinical teaching of his day, for my understanding, was that forgiveness was perfected when you do it 3 times.
• 7:18
  And then, of course, in the biblical text, 7 was often the number of completeness.
• 7:25
  So Peter thought he had a great answer.
• 7:27
  If I forgive them 7 times.
• 7:30
  But Jesus says, no, it's either 77 times or it's 490 times, which is what, 70 times 7 is.
• 7:37
  I didn't ask anyone to do the math this morning.
• 7:39
  I did it for us ahead of time.
• 7:41
  I guess that's where being a CPA in the past comes in handy.
• 7:45
  But anyway, the point is, no matter what version or translation you're reading, I believe Jesus' point was, stop counting.
• 7:53
  Stop counting, or as many times as it takes, or as many times as someone sins against you.
• 8:02
  After all, we pray for the power to do this, do we not?
• 8:07
  We pray for it every week.
• 8:09
  Even when we sing it, we pray it.
• 8:11
  Amen.
• 8:12
  You don't get off the hook just because today you sang, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, instead of saying trespasses.
• 8:19
  But the point is not the number.
• 8:22
  Because if you're still counting, Chances are, you probably haven't truly forgiven them yet.
• 8:28
  Amen.
• 8:30
  And anybody know who has ever kept the books or a ledger for a business or an organization, they know what a running tally does to you because you're constantly looking at the numbers and trying to figure out if the ledger is in the red or in the black.
• 8:46
  Anybody, everybody familiar with those terms in the red?
• 8:50
  It means it's had a loss.
• 8:51
  If someone in relationship with us,
• 8:53
  Are they giving life to us or are they sucking the life out of us, you might say?
• 8:58
  Is it in the black or is it in the red?
• 9:00
  And we keep books on people that same way.
• 9:02
  You know, 20 years later, we could probably tell exactly what somebody who hurt us did what day, what time, the full context of it.
• 9:11
  We keep it fresh in our mind when we choose not to forgive.
• 9:16
  Now, this can happen on big things and traumatic things, obviously, but it could also happen on just minor things.
• 9:24
  You know, I had an example growing up of 2 people who bickered back and forth relentlessly, but who clearly forgave themselves over and over because they loved each other deeply.
• 9:38
  And that was my granny and pawpaw over there in Northeast Arkansas.
• 9:43
  And I was thinking about them this past week because I had an ants, one of my sister's sisters who passed away.
• 9:49
  And so her service was over in that area where granny and pawpaw lived.
• 9:54
  And with my dad and an uncle, we got to go and visit the old homestead where granny and pawpaw lived growing up.
• 10:00
  And I couldn't help but remember, even though the interior layout of the house has changed, the way that they would stand in their kitchen, and they would be telling a story to my parents.
• 10:09
  And their story was always about their friends.
• 10:12
  And Paul would say something along the lines of, well, you know, Charlie said that he would see us on Saturday.
• 10:18
  Now granny, she wasn't going to let that stand.
• 10:22
  She said, no, sir.
• 10:24
  That's not what he said.
• 10:26
  Charlie said that he would come by on Saturday.
• 10:30
  And then they would argue back and forth about whether he said, see us or come by.
• 10:34
  And they get in such a heated argument that one of them would ultimately leave the room.
• 10:39
  And then 5 minutes later, they'd be back in the kitchen again, laughing and loving, and getting ready for the exact same arguing about something else somebody else said.
• 10:49
  But the point was, in their marriage, I saw a model of what it means to forgive each other over and over and over again, 490 times sometimes on one visit from us.
• 11:02
  And then Jesus tells us a story.
• 11:04
  And the whole thing hinges around 2 other numbers, you might say.
• 11:09
  And that's where reading, sometimes multiple translations, comes in handy because in our common English Bible, it says that the servant owed 10,000 bags of gold.
• 11:19
  In the new revised standard version, it called a slave, and it said he owed 10,000 talents, which many of us think, what did he have to sing for his supper?
• 11:27
  Use this talent?
• 11:28
  What did he mean by that?
• 11:31
  But what it really means is that based on the commentaries that I've seen, whatever version that you're looking at, it would equate to about the wages of a large number of days work.
• 11:43
  Anybody care to guess how many days work?
• 11:46
  10,000 bags of gold would have been at the time.
• 11:49
  Let's try 60000000 days of work.
• 11:54
  Let's try 164,000 years of labor.
• 12:02
  In other words, it's a debt that no human could ever repay.
• 12:08
  You might say that that debt was unending.
• 12:11
  And Jesus tells it that way on purpose.
• 12:14
  Because what he's trying to illustrate is the debt that we owe our master, the debt that we owe God.
• 12:21
  The death that the wages of sin is what?
• 12:23
  Death.
• 12:24
  But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 12:29
  And the Bible tells us it is the free gift of God.
• 12:32
  That it's not something that we have to earn, that we have to work for.
• 12:35
  It's something that God gives us.
• 12:40
  So the man begs for patience.
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  Be patient with me and I'll pay you back.
• 12:45
  Now, I don't know how he thought he was going to work 164,000 years to repay this debt, but he showed a willingness.
• 12:52
  He humbled himself before the Lord, and he asked for patience and forgiveness.
• 12:56
  And the master forgives it.
• 12:59
  It doesn't say in my Bible that he restructured it to manageable payments.
• 13:04
  No, it says that he forgave it.
• 13:07
  It was more a chapter 7 than a chapter 13.
• 13:11
  In other words.
• 13:13
  And please don't ask me after service how I know the difference.
• 13:17
  Anyway, so then the man walks outside, though, and he finds somebody who owes him a 100 coins.
• 13:23
  And our footnote in my Bible gives me that number too.
• 13:27
  That was about 100 days worth of wages.
• 13:29
  So you got a 164,000 years versus 100 days, about 3 months of work.
• 13:36
  It was a real debt.
• 13:37
  So it wasn't nothing, but if we put those 2 side by side, the same person who owed someone, 600000, is now trying to collect on his 100.
• 13:49
  That's the difference that Jesus was putting in front of his disciples and in front of all of us, because whatever somebody has done to you, the debts that they owe us and the debts that we owe God are both very real, and yet, we withhold forgiveness for someone who owes us 100 days.
• 14:07
  Well, we can never work off the 164,000 years that we owe God.
• 14:13
  And a quick note about whatever version of the Bible that you're reading, whether it uses the word for servant or slave, these are more akin to debt slavery, or the more modern sense of almost indentured servitude a little bit.
• 14:26
  They don't relate one for one, but it's certainly not slave in the context of United States slavery back in those days.
• 14:33
  So I don't want us to ever confuse the two.
• 14:36
  When it talks about that he was selling the man and his family to others.
• 14:40
  He was transferring their debts, so that's more the way that we think about it.
• 14:44
  But what was the man's sin besides choking another guy?
• 14:50
  Because I don't think that was right.
• 14:51
  But what else was the man's sin?
• 14:54
  We usually think, well, his sin was that he did not forgive the other person.
• 14:58
  He didn't let the other person off the hook.
• 15:01
  But let's look at verse 35 in our Bibles again to see what it says.
• 15:06
  It says, my heavenly Father will also do the same to you if you don't forgive your brother and sister, but it doesn't stop there.
• 15:15
  It says from your heart.
• 15:19
  From your heart.
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  That's the diagnosis right there.
• 15:25
  It's not an obligation.
• 15:28
  It's an outflow of the grace that we have received from God.
• 15:32
  And here's what I want us to look at.
• 15:35
  You see, him withholding forgiveness from the one who owed the lesser debt did not actually hurt or affect the master in the parable at all because the master's account was already settled.
• 15:45
  He had already forgiven the debts of the one who owed him.
• 15:48
  But the problem was, in the person who would not forgive, that it ruined his soul.
• 15:55
  He walked out of the greatest grace that he had ever received from his master and then refused to extend that same grace to someone else.
• 16:07
  And that is a man clearly with no room in his heart for forgiveness.
• 16:12
  It's almost like God's grace tried to enter into his heart, but there was nowhere for it to sit because that space was already taken up by what?
• 16:21
  By his resentment by his unforgiveness.
• 16:25
  And that's the real reason that we forgive, not to make somebody's debts disappear because God handles the debts of who owes what, but we forgive because resentment takes up a space in our hearts that needs to be filled by God's grace and forgiveness, for us to receive.
• 16:42
  We can't hold something in our hands from God if our hands are already full of all the other things that we need to let down and set down.
• 16:52
  We say it every week.
• 16:52
  And yet we don't hear it.
• 16:55
  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
• 16:59
  We pray that we sing it out loud together.
• 17:03
  And the most important part of that, for me, is as we forgive.
• 17:10
  We are praying, we are singing, as though it is a reality in our lives.
• 17:16
  And the question is, is it truly a reality in our lives today?
• 17:22
  Jesus explains the importance of this as well in the Sermon on the Mount.
• 17:26
  If you go back to Matthew chapter 6 and verse 14.
• 17:30
  Jesus teaching as part of this sermon.
• 17:32
  If you forgive others, their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
• 17:37
  But if you don't forgive others, neither will the Father forgive your sins.
• 17:42
  But I don't want us to think that this is God being transactional.
• 17:46
  I don't think that at all.
• 17:47
  We don't serve a transactional God.
• 17:50
  We don't have to earn God's forgiveness.
• 17:52
  We don't have to act our way into heaven, but it's God describing the reality of our humanity, that we cannot receive grace in the same chair that we're holding resentment in place.
• 18:01
  That we can't, if our heart is full of anger toward another person who owes us, it cannot receive the love of God, because it's too full of anger.
• 18:15
  You know, when Paul gets at this very same thing in his letter to the Ephesians.
• 18:20
  In Ephesians 4, 31 and 32, he says, put aside all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.
• 18:36
  But notice the order that he has.
• 18:41
  First, put down the bitterness.
• 18:44
  Free up your hands, amen?
• 18:45
  Because you can't pick up what God is handing you if your hands are full of something else.
• 18:50
  So put aside all of those things.
• 18:56
  But also want to be careful, because too many times, Pastors, preachers, persons of faith, have coached people to forgive and accept something and to stay in situations that are causing them harm.
• 19:12
  And that is not what we're talking about here.
• 19:14
  Because after all, we said at the beginning, who benefits from our forgiveness?
• 19:18
  We do.
• 19:19
  We're not doing it for another person.
• 19:22
  And so if there is a person in a situation of abuse of trauma, of violence from another, and this has been used especially for women who are married with abusive husbands in the past, this passage is not teaching and preaching that you just put up with everything because you have to forgive them 490 times.
• 19:41
  Forgiveness is us clearing out our hearts.
• 19:44
  We can forgive even if, and especially if sometimes reconciliation is no longer possible in this life.
• 19:51
  That could be due to the death of the other person, or it could be due to a relationship that is so broken, that God's presence can no longer be felt in the midst of it.
• 20:02
  And so forgiveness does not mean that we are entering back into harmful or painful situations.
• 20:09
  Forgiveness is releasing the debt in your own heart.
• 20:13
  Reconciliation requires 2 people after all.
• 20:18
  It requires someone who is willing to be bound, and otherwise, Jesus taught us just last week, we are to loose them or to set them loose.
• 20:28
  If you remember that little piece of our scripture last week.
• 20:30
  Because Jesus said, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be, loosed in heaven.
• 20:37
  And there's some people that we need to let loose even as we forgive them.
• 20:43
  And then trust in all relationships is rebuilt over time.
• 20:49
  But sometimes in this life, honestly, not at all.
• 20:53
  And that's where I'm thankful that when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing, that'll be.
• 20:58
  Amen.
• 20:58
  Because all the pain, all the hardship is washed away.
• 21:02
  But you can forgive somebody that you will never be in a relationship with again.
• 21:06
  Forgiveness doesn't even require them to have access to you.
• 21:10
  It doesn't mean what happened was fine and it doesn't mean going back.
• 21:13
  It means you stop carrying their debt as though it's your job to collect it.
• 21:17
  You know, I've learned through the rooms of recovery that when I am withholding forgiveness for someone, it's like I'm a jailer, and I'm keeping that other person in the prison of my mind.
• 21:29
  But they're not the only person there in that prison, are they?
• 21:33
  Because I believe a prison has corrections officers.
• 21:37
  It has jailers, it has wardens.
• 21:39
  And so if I'm keeping someone prisoner in my mind because I'm not forgiving them, I'm the jailer. So when I set them free, you know who else is free?
• 21:48
  I am.
• 21:49
  I'm free of that role.
• 21:55
  So there's a few things that we can do about this this week.
• 21:59
  And this is where the bulletins and the pins should start wrestling.
• 22:04
  Because here in a moment, I'm going to ask you to specifically write something down.
• 22:08
  So I want everybody to be ready and not be caught off guard.
• 22:11
  Amen?
• 22:12
  And yes, I'm talking to you, babe.
• 22:16
  The 1st thing.
• 22:20
  The 1st thing that I want everyone to do is to name the debt, honestly.
• 22:28
  In other words, You can't forgive something if you won't even look at it.
• 22:33
  So bring it out.
• 22:35
  Name the debt, honestly.
• 22:37
  Say what it actually was.
• 22:38
  Don't minimize it.
• 22:40
  don't call it nothing because real forgiveness requires a full accounting 1st so that we can see exactly what we need to release.
• 22:49
  Then the next thing that I want you to do is to do the math.
• 22:53
  Do the math.
• 22:55
  You've named it.
• 22:56
  So you now know what their 100 days worth of wages are, that they owe you, right?
• 23:03
  And so then look at, well, what do we owe God?
• 23:06
  Do the math.
• 23:07
  And the math, as we say, won't math, okay?
• 23:11
  It does not equate at all.
• 23:14
  So in other words, put before us.
• 23:16
  Think about what this person has done and then think about what have I done that God has already forgiven me for.
• 23:24
  I don't know about y'all, but my side of that street is massively messy, amen?
• 23:32
  And then this is the part that I was warning you about, write it down.
• 23:37
  Use your bulletin, you can even write it in your phone.
• 23:41
  And what I want you to write is this.
• 23:43
  I am forgiven.
• 23:48
  I am forgiven.
• 23:50
  And then the next part is, therefore, I forgive, Fill in the blank.
• 23:58
  For whoever came to mind for you when we 1st started this sermon.
• 24:04
  I am forgiven, therefore, I forgive the other person.
• 24:09
  It's the one that came to mind, but this is what I don't want anyone to fail to write it down because you think in your heart, well, I don't feel it yet, because don't worry, we're going to get into that.
• 24:21
  Willingness comes before our feelings.
• 24:25
  And then take wherever you wrote that down, I am forgiven, therefore I will forgive and the name, and then pray about it, every day this week.
• 24:38
  Pray about it.
• 24:40
  It may sound simple, you may think, well, I have prayed about it in the past, but it didn't work, but in prayer, I want you to do it as simply as God grant me the willingness to forgive.
• 24:50
  Just the willingness.
• 24:53
  And then act, just as importantly, then act throughout your day and throughout this week, as though you have already released them from your heart.
• 25:03
  See, what I learned also in those rooms of recovery, because when I was at the lowest point in my life for my own struggles with alcoholism in the past,
• 25:13
  And I came into rooms of recovery, and they told me things to do to get better.
• 25:18
  And I did not believe that it would work.
• 25:20
  Amen.
• 25:21
  But I kept going back because I saw that there were results clearly in other people that were just or had been just as messed up as I had been, and that I was at the time, and they were better.
• 25:32
  And I saw that they had something a piece in their life that I wanted.
• 25:36
  And so I did what they said.
• 25:38
  I took the action.
• 25:40
  I prayed the prayer every day.
• 25:42
  And eventually, my heart and my mind caught up to what I'd been saying and what I'd been praying.
• 25:49
  That's God's sanctifying grace where God works in us to renew our minds, to transform our minds by the renewing of our hearts.
• 25:59
  We renew our hearts most clearly when we go before the Lord and pray about it.
• 26:05
  So again, name it honestly.
• 26:08
  Do the math, write it down and pray about it.
• 26:14
  That is how we can show our repentance from our lack of forgiveness.
• 26:20
  Because I'm certain that we all have somebody that we have not decided to forgive yet for something.
• 26:25
  So we can repent.
• 26:27
  Now, I don't want everybody to think that repentance is some high holy word, with a definition and not really sure what repentance means, because for me, I'll give you the pastor Mike abbreviated version of what repentance means.
• 26:39
  It simply means turning away from the things that take us away from God.
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  And Jesus is clearly saying, when we do not forgive, that takes us away from God.
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  So let us repent and forgive together.
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  You know, Jesus is not asking us to say it was okay.
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  He's asking you to put the accounting ledger down, to hold your hands out so that you can receive God's forgiveness, and it can take root.
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  After all, our debts have already been paid.
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  Amen?
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  We've been forgiven.
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  We've been washed clean.
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  Psalm 51.
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  King David prayed, God, wash me, make me white as snow.
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  And God can do the same for us.
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  So if a person ever comes to you and they ask, well, I see that you've forgiven somebody, but how could you ever forgive them?
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  Say, well, it was easy.
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  It wasn't about them.
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  It was about me.
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  And they say, well, did they apologize 1st and you could say, well, actually, Jesus tells me that's not required.
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  Amen?
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  And thank God for that.
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  On that note, our prayer for the day for our daily ripple, following God's lead, is on this wise.
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  Father God, teach me to trust your direction above my own, through your Holy Spirit, guide my steps and strengthen my faith each day.
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  Shape me through the example of Jesus.
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  Amen.
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  And now may you go and do all the good you can and all the people you can and all the places you can, and all the ways you can and by all the means you can, and do it all for as long as you ever can. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, may you go in peace.
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  Amen.