Rise Into Forgiveness

My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Welcome to everybody here in the auditorium, welcome to everybody joining us over in the venue service, welcome to everybody joining us on the TLC app, everybody joining us online. Every single weekend we have about 3,000 to 3,500 people joining us live on campus and the same exact amount joining us via the internet. So everybody you see here live is represented by somebody joining us on the web and that number just keeps creeping up and it's great to have everybody with us.

My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here and I want to ask you to grab these notes that are in your bulletins. These will help you follow along today as we continue our series we started on Easter, Rise Resurrection Living. I truly believe God has something that could change your life today because the topic this morning is how to rise into forgiveness. Honestly, I don't know a more important subject than the issue of forgiveness because would you agree with this? Our world is filled with conflict, right? There's conflict internationally, there's conflict in families, there's conflict in marriages, there's conflict in churches, and that means we all have a lot to forgive and we all have a lot to be forgiven of.

Here's the problem: most people think they understand forgiveness, but they really don't. Forgiveness may be the most misunderstood, misapplied, misused word in our culture. So I thought we just kind of straightened out some of the misunderstandings about forgiveness by taking a true or false quiz that I adapted from Rick Warren. It was just an excellent quiz that I found in one of his messages. So look, do you see at the very top of your notes? What I want you to do is take a pen or a pencil and circle T or F by these statements. Don't worry about it if you get any of these wrong; I forgive you. But as we go through this, just don't say your answer out loud, all right? Just silently circle T or F.

First, true or false: a person shouldn't be forgiven until they ask for it. True or false? Don't say it out loud. Now I'm bearing a grudge; I resent those of you who didn't follow my instructions. Just kidding. True or false: forgiving means minimizing the offense; it wasn't that big of a deal. True or false? Forgiveness includes restoring trust and restoring relationship as a part of forgiveness. True or false? You really haven't forgiven until you've forgotten. True or false? When I see a hurt, it is always my duty to forgive.

Now this may surprise you, but when you read the Bible and you see what God has to say about forgiveness, you discover that all five of these statements are false. All five are false. How can I say that? Well, today I want to look at, according to the Bible, what real forgiveness is not and then what real forgiveness is. I'm going to tell a story about something I really grappled with when it came to forgiving somebody in my life, and then toward the end, you're going to see a video of one of the most profound examples of forgiveness that I have ever seen.

So first, how can I say all five of these are false? Let's look at what forgiveness is not. First, it isn't conditional. You offer it to somebody whether they ask for it or not. They don't earn it; they don't deserve it; they don't have to bargain for it. Forgiveness isn't based on a promise to never do it again. When you think, "I'll forgive them as long as they..." that is not forgiveness. How do I know? Well, in Mark 11, Jesus said, "And when you stand praying," in other words, there you are in the temple and your place of worship, in our case in church, "if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him." And he didn't say if they ask for it.

Next, it isn't minimizing the offense. Forgiveness isn't pretending you weren't hurt. A lot of people think that if I forgive, I have to pretend I wasn't hurt. I have to go, "Oh no, no, it really wasn't that big of a deal," when it really was a big deal. But if you do that, that's just going to delay your own healing. More on that in just a couple of minutes. Next, it isn't resuming a relationship without changes. In fact, forgiveness and resuming a relationship are two different things, right? Listen, there is a huge difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is unearned; trust must be earned. That's how you define trust, and that can take a long, long, long time.

When somebody hurts you, you have to forgive them, but Jesus did not say you have to trust them. Some con man cons you once, and you don't have to say, "I forgive you; now con me again." God does not expect you to be an idiot. You observe their character and their actions and see if they can be trusted. Next, it isn't forgetting what happened. You've heard this phrase over and over: forgiven, forget. Forgiven, forget. Forgiven, forget. There's only one problem with that: it's impossible for humans. But the good news is there's something better than forgiving and forgetting—it's forgiving and remembering the hurt and standing amazed at what God is doing even through something that bad. That's going to increase your faith if you remember the hurt and then realize that God is redeeming that hurt.

One of the greatest verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28. We're going to look at all of Romans 8 next weekend, the whole chapter, as we talk about rising above yourself, your addictions, your fears. Don't miss it. But let's just get a preview today because this is probably the most famous verse in the Bible. It says, "And we know," not guess, "that all things," not some things, "but all work together for good." Not all things are good, but work together for good for who? For those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. Now, it doesn't say all things are good because all things are not good. War is not good; disease is not good; you know, cancer is not good. There are a lot of things in life that are evil. The promise is that God will see even the bad things work together for good for those who love the Lord.

The song we just sang, "Beautiful things," he makes beautiful things out of the dust. I love that song. Jesus never said he had to forget it. What he said was forgive it, and then you're free to remember it and see how God is bringing something amazing out of it. Forgiveness isn't my right when I wasn't the one who was hurt. Only the victim really has the right and the responsibility to forgive. You can't forgive people who didn't hurt you. Again, I want to focus on this point a little bit because most people in our society just don't get this.

Stay on page one for just a second here because let's say there's a tragedy, say a high school shooting. The next morning, teenagers in the school who maybe didn't even know the victims, didn't even know the perpetrators, put up a big sign that says, "We forgive you." I know they mean well, but the fact is it's not really their responsibility to forgive because they're not the ones who lost a daughter or a son or a sister or a brother or a grandchild.

Now stay on page one here for just a second and look up here because I want to explain how this is all not just theoretical for me. Look up here for a second because this relates to where some of you are at right now. I've shared this with some of you before, but I'll be kind of a tell an honest story about my own childhood. When I was about nine years old, my piano teacher sexually molested me. I was nine, and when I told grown-ups, all I perceived from them was shock and anger and disbelief because this person seemed like such a nice person. After the second day, nobody ever brought it up with me again. In those days, this was the 60s; they didn't just go after these people; they just moved me to another piano teacher and hoped it wasn't true.

Now I was nine years old, and so I don't remember today what that person's name was. I don't know what happened to them, so there never was any closure for me emotionally. It's impossible for there to be any closure. Not only did nobody ever talk about it, but there's no chance that I have of ever bringing this person to justice. So how does somebody growing up process all of that anger and frustration? Well, for decades, decades into my 40s, I had elaborate fantasies of vengeance against that man. I mean, I dreamed of pulling him apart limb from limb. I literally explicitly imagined killing him, and the frustrating thing for me again was I had no idea how to find him. Looking back, I thank God for that because I really think when I was a teenager, I might have killed him, really, or at least assaulted him. That's what I wanted to do.

So I'm bound up with these feelings of anger and frustration, and there's no opportunity for even any closure or seemingly any justice. So how do you move on from something like that? How do you forgive in that kind of a frustrating case? Well, I want to tell you a little bit of what I discovered, and these are all things that I learned from other teachers, whether it was Rick Warren or Tim Keller. Lewis Smeeds wrote the best book I ever read on forgiveness; it's called The Art of Forgiveness. I strongly recommend it, and these are all principles from some of these godly teachers. How do I forgive?

Page two, jot these down because you're going to need this in your life. Number one: you release thoughts of vengeance. That has got to be the first step. You release thoughts of vengeance. I relinquish my right to do that. The Bible says, and I want us to read this out loud together, this Romans 12:19. Let me hear you as a church. This is a very important verse: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord." Now the phrase "God's wrath" there is a big uncomfortable phrase for some of you because you're going, "But God is love; how can there be room for wrath?" Exactly! Because God is love, he is wrathful when his loved ones are hurt, and he will see that justice is done.

You know what? Unless you believe that, then actually you will find forgiveness very hard to do. But if you believe that there will be justice and you leave whatever that looks like up to God, then you can do this. Back to my story: I still remember the freeway exit that I was taking. I was driving over the hill from San Jose to here, and I took the Pasta Tiempo exit and went left over the bridge. I remember I started fantasizing again about just killing this son of a gun who did that to me, and then all of a sudden, this verse popped into my head. I mean word for word, it was like hearing the voice of God because this is the word of God. Now, I didn't hear an audible voice, but this verse just popped in out of my memory, and I believe that God made that happen to say, "Okay, René, that's enough. Why don't you give me all that anger? Why don't you release that?"

I remember before I reached the end of the bridge, I was literally pounding on the dashboard saying, "No, I won't release it! I won't do it! This is my right to be mad at him!" It's as if I heard God say, "It is your right; this horrible thing was done to you, but I'm asking you to relinquish your right." And then I said, "God, I can't do it. I've tried to forgive over the years; I can't do it." It's as if I heard God say, "I know you can't, but I'll help you if you release it." And then finally, I just kind of breathed out one word: "Okay." A feeling of release just washed over me. Actually, you know what it was? It was a feeling of a weight leaving my shoulders. I didn't even know how much weight I've been carrying until finally I said, "Okay," and then the weight was gone, and I just felt like I was floating. By the end of that short trip down the road to our house, I was just crying tears of relief.

Now there's more to the story, but first let me just say some of you are going, "Well, you were kind of an intense case, René. You know, maybe you see the word avenge here in this verse and you think, 'Well, I don't want to avenge.' You know, I was hurt, but I don't want to kill them like you did, Pastor." So let's explore what this can mean in real life today. It could literally mean planning vengeance and pain, but it could also be gossiping and warning people. You know, this can be a disguise for vengeance. "I don't want to say anything bad about anybody, but you know, you really should know what they're like. I'm just kind of warning you." You know, undercutting their relationships. It also could be punishing by cutting and controlling and demanding. You make life miserable for them by cutting them down all the time.

If there's somebody that you live with or see all the time, or you're so controlling, it's so demanding that you make them crazy, it's very easy to drop into that pattern, even subconsciously. Because by undercutting them and controlling them and demanding all the time, you're kind of getting your pound of flesh, but it's never enough. Or avenging could be replaying the hurt to keep it fresh in your own mind. "I want to feel the pain; I want to feel the anger." Listen, take it from me: you can get addicted to bitterness. But like any other addiction, bitterness hollows you out. It hollows you out just like you look at somebody who's a meth addict or an alcoholic and you go, "Man, that person's just like a shell of who they once were." Yeah, that's exactly what this addiction does.

Look at this amazing verse from Hebrews 12: "Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many." Circle or underline "poisonous root of bitterness." When you keep thinking, "I'm gonna make them pay," what happens? You become harder; you become colder; you become more full of self-pity; you become angrier. You know, my wife Laurie and I were talking just this past week, and she said, "René, I was thinking back to how you really had kind of an anger problem at first when we moved to Santa Cruz, but I hardly see you lose your temper anymore." Just to be clear, I was never violent with Laurie or with the kids, but I would just go off in these rages about things that frustrated me at work or things that frustrated me in Santa Cruz or something. I just had such a short fuse.

I started thinking about this: what happened? Why do I not have that anymore? Well, at least in part, my diminished anger, I'm sure, is due to letting this thing go that was haunting me in my heart. Because when you're rehearsing violent fantasies in your head all the time, or even nursing some smaller resentments, it is going to make you more upset, and it's going to shorten your fuse. That is part of the poisonous root of bitterness. But it gets even more interesting because, get this, in context, Hebrews 12 is about life in a church body, and this is about how bitterness can corrupt other people in the church. Your bitterness ends up affecting other people—people who didn't have anything to do with your hurt.

So are you being poisoned? Listen, some of you are allowing people to hurt you five, ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Some of them are dead now, but you're allowing them to continue hurting you. They can't even touch you anymore, but they're hurting you because you're nursing that grudge. You're gonna keep on hurting and hurting and hurting even though that hurt was so many years ago. When you let them go, it's not for their sake; they don't deserve it. Let them go for your sake because it's poison.

Now, if you don't go for vengeance, then what's the option? Because now there's a vacuum. Your imagination has been very busy every time you think of that hurt, imagining vengeance. So you've got to give your imagination something else to do, and that's point two: Jesus says respond to evil with good. Respond to evil with good. You want to see one of the most amazing verses of the Bible? Look at Luke 6:27–28. Jesus said, "But to you who are listening, I say: Do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; and pray for those who mistreat you." This might be the hardest thing that Jesus ever told us to do. Instead of revenge fantasies, you stuff to praying for them, doing good for them. Why? This is so huge because this humanizes them.

What I want to do is I want to keep my distance so I can villainize them, but this humanizes them. Resentment villainizes; prayer humanizes. This is so important because you begin to see that other person not as a monster but as somebody deeply sinful in need of God's forgiveness, whom God can redeem. And that is such an important step to achieving forgiveness in your own life. Now some of you are saying, "But I don't want to humanize them because what about justice?" If you forgive the person who did something to you, does that mean he goes off scot-free? Like, René, if you knew who he was and you pressed charges against the guy that did that to you, are you saying you'd be unforgiving? No, look at Isaiah 1:17. God says, "Learn to do good; seek what is just; help the oppressed." You do forgive, but you still seek justice.

You do forgive, but that does not mean they escape the consequences. There might be legal consequences. But here's the thing: you can really only seek justice after you forgive because before that, you're probably not seeking justice; you're seeking vengeance. You say, "I just want to keep them accountable for what they did," but really what you want to do is hurt them. Are you seeking justice, or do you want to hurt them? When you release your desire to hurt them, then you can really seek justice because justice is about doing what's best for them—maybe protecting them from themselves, protecting other people from them, hoping for healing and true reconciliation. You can only seek that when you're seeking justice and not vengeance.

So how do I let the desire for vengeance go? How do I replace it with good? There's only one way I know of: you remember how God forgave you. You remember that God forgave you. The Bible says, "Remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others." This says remember. When you remember what Jesus did for you, there is so much power. Just think of what Jesus did on the cross. He paid the price for every sin you have ever committed or ever will commit. He ripped up the charges against you. There is now no condemnation in Christ. Now you have a brand new lease on life. Now you are born again; now you're cleansed; now you have a clean slate; now you've been adopted into his family; now you are a co-heir with Christ; now God sees you as pure as he sees Jesus Christ. It's remarkable what he did for us on the cross.

When you really get that, something happens. I love the way Tim Keller puts it. He says, "If you know God's love and forgiveness, then there is a limit to how deeply another person can hurt you." Why? He or she can't touch your real identity, wealth, and significance. Do you see that? The more you rejoice in your own forgiveness, the quicker you'll be able to forgive others because you're rooted in emotional health and wealth. That's the kind of health and wealth I want to preach as a pastor—that spiritual emotional health that comes from knowing who you are in Christ. Don't you love that?

But here's my question: do you know that you have received all of this? Do you really know that God has forgiven you, wholly forgiven you? Do you know that for sure? Because if you don't, you are going to hold it over other people and, you know, kind of hold those grudges against them because inside you'll be thinking to yourself, "I don't feel at peace, so I don't want them to feel at peace either." Some of you, the most difficult person to forgive in your life is yourself. And so in just a few minutes at the end of the service, we're gonna do something a little bit different. I'm gonna pray a prayer where you just, if this is your heart, you can say, "God, I receive your forgiveness into my life." And during the final song, the Stephen ministers are going to be up front, not just at the end of the service but during the song, because if you want somebody to pray with to receive Christ or about some forgiveness issue in your life, you're gonna have a chance to do that.

Because when you experience grace, something amazing happens: you become gracious. But watch this: what Jesus did when he died on the cross and rose again was way more than pay for your sins, and this is what a lot of Christians miss, and this is what this whole series is about. He rose to give you power. Remember when I was in the car and I said, "God, I cannot do it. You are asking the impossible; I cannot forgive that." And God said, I felt like God said to me, "You're right; you can't, so I'm gonna give you the power to do it." And he will because you have resurrection power in you. Here's the thing: God always gives you the power that you need to do whatever it is he wants you to do—always. And really, it's a matter of you just don't want to do what he's asking you to do because he always gives you the power to do it.

Now, even though he gives you the power to do it, that does not mean it happens instantly. I mean, God, through his power, grows a redwood tree, but it doesn't grow instantly, right? It's still incremental growth, even though it turns into this amazing thing. Same thing with forgiveness. And so step four is repeat these steps as long as necessary, and this is really important. Every time you remember how they hurt you, the pain comes back. You release your vengeance, you respond with good, you remember how God forgave you, and you do this over and over. The Bible says one time, do you remember this verse? Peter says, "Lord, how often should I forgive somebody who sins against me? Seven times?" No, Jesus replied, "Seventy times seven." Now Jesus might have been talking about 490 different offenses, but you know you can read this the other way—that he's saying to Peter, "You need to forgive that person who has done that against you 490 times for that same thing." Because the principle applies the same way, and in my experience, sometimes it takes about 490 times. It takes repetition.

I had a breakthrough that day in the car, but I still had to resist and say no to resentment many, many, many times after that. And let me just say something that may be obvious, but I think still needs to be said: you need to start with the first time before you can get to the 490th time. Now maybe you're saying, "Well, I know I should forgive and repeat as necessary and all that, but I'm not feeling it." Not feeling it? Again, I love this from Tim Keller: "Forgiveness must be granted before it can be felt." Right? Don't wait till you feel like forgiving them. That frankly, that's probably just not gonna happen. What you do is you start, and then the feeling often comes after you've let that thing go. That's what I experienced, and that's why we wrote this Rise booklet—that's one of the reasons—because we don't want these messages to be these little blasts on Sunday morning and then have them just leave your consciousness. Every day's devotional reading is meant to dovetail with that week's emphasis. So pick one of these up, and maybe you did pick one up at Easter and you still haven't started. That's okay; I forgive you, and you can start right now. This is day 14, and for the next several days, the readings are about forgiveness because it takes repetition.

Now I want to get real practical here before a final point. How do you do these things? Sometimes you can and should do this in person. Forgive somebody; that's often the best thing to do. But it's not always the best thing; it's not always possible or even advisable to go directly to the person who hurt you. Maybe it's the wrong time; maybe things have changed; maybe they've moved away and you can't get in touch with them; maybe they've died; maybe they, you know, remarried, and if you go directly to them now, it might open up some bad wounds. But for your sake, you still need to forgive them. So how do you do it? Well, here's a couple of techniques I've used.

This first one, it's called the empty chair technique. You put an empty chair in a room; you imagine that person sitting there, and you just go, "You know what? I forgive you for that. You don't deserve it, but I still forgive you because I'm doing it for me because resentment doesn't work." Another thing you can do is the letter writing technique. This really works for a lot of people. You explain your hurt, how it hurt you, and that you're forgiving that person, and then you put it in an envelope, and you don't mail it. I talked to somebody after the service last night who said, "Yeah, my mom was really into that letter writing technique. She wrote a letter all about the ways I hurt her to me every week. I have a pile of them." She goes, "She did the letter writing technique and then mailed everyone." So you don't have to mail it; in fact, I would say don't. But you know what? A lot of times, it's a great way to kind of get all that poison out of your system.

Now before our final point this morning, I want you to not just get info; I want you to be inspired. One of the greatest stories of forgiveness I have ever heard is about two people here at TLC. Watch this video.

I lived here all my life, and my wonderful husband, I met him at church. She came in and just sat at the next empty seat, which was right next to me, and we sat next to each other for the rest of our lives. It was four and a half months after we met that we got married. So in 1985, Manny was born; in 1987, Kerry was born. That was the goal of my life, really, to be a mom. It was a very wonderful event—first meeting Mr. Right and getting married and having my girls. My girls got along pretty well except for the sibling rivalry. When they had friends over, Mandy had to act like the older sister and kind of shove Kerry aside a little bit. But when we were together, like on family vacations, they got along famously. They loved each other.

We did a lot of church things; you know, that was the main focus. We were always in church on Sunday and midweek and, you know, making plans to go to church camp or something. So our life really revolved around the Lord. Beach Fest Santa Cruz was a Christian evangelical event. Luis Palau did these all over the world, and he came to Santa Cruz in 2001. We decided to go to Beach Fest as a family. Then we had gotten there early for the prayer team, and then I picked the girls up at work and brought them down. After Beach Fest, we got in our car and headed home. We got plowed into on the left side of our minivan by an SUV traveling about 50 miles an hour. She was drunk and on drugs. The girls died sitting right behind us.

When we were in the hospital, we were told that our girls had died at the accident scene. It just came on very slowly. We both had head injuries; we were both plugged into morphine. The shock of the accident, it all combined to, you know, nothing sunk in right away. When I did come home, my wonderful in-laws were here, and they had already done laundry and folded up the girls' clothes. When I walked down the hallway passing their rooms on the way to mine, I just kind of put like a blinder, like a horse would have a blinder on either side, so I just looked straight ahead and just aimed at my room and really tried very hard not to focus on them. It took a long time to really admit and believe and swallow that they were really gone.

Forgiving Lisa was a process too because she was really that terrible woman for a very long time. You know, very first thought every morning, that's who she was—that woman. But somewhere along the line, when she went to prison, we just felt compassion for her. When she went off to prison, we grieved for her because here was another mother losing her children—in her case, for six and a half years that she was gone. But I really wanted my joy of life back, and just I just knew if I swallowed that unforgiveness, it would be like drinking poison that I hoped would kill her because I was mad at her, but it would only poison my system.

Well, my journey to forgive Lisa wasn't as hard because I was so angry at God. I held him more responsible than I held Lisa. All God would have had to do was slow us down by a few seconds, maybe drop my keys as we were getting in the van. God could have protected us, and he chose not to. Forgiving is, first of all, not optional. God tells us to forgive, but that's because he knows it's for our own benefits. When you have unforgiveness, you're chained to that person. You can't really get rid of them; you drag them around, and I think we all know people that rehearse and rehearse and rehearse bitterness. And you know, that's no way to live. It does not absolve the other person; it doesn't mean we forget about what happened; it doesn't mean the pain goes away. It just means that we disconnect ourselves from that person emotionally. Forgiveness brings a lot of freedom. There are a lot of physical issues that go along with unforgiveness—just the bitterness and the tension of holding on to something. Forgiveness is releasing that bitterness.

I would tell anybody that needs to forgive to be gentle on themselves, to take time. It's a process, but then seek somebody that can help you—somebody to walk alongside you when you're going through heavy stuff. My journey to forgiveness was helped along by digging into the Word. I read through the New Testament over and over and over, and God really softened my heart in reading his Word. Lisa and I now speak together, sharing our story of forgiveness and love. I get to advise her and encourage her and love her, and that is the blessing for me.

Isn't that a powerful story of forgiveness? Now that's not the whole story. Dan and Lynn just wrote a little book called Not Wasted, and if you want to know some of their thoughts and some of the rest of the story, this is a great book. It literally just came out yesterday, and they have some of them at a table. If you want to meet them, talk with them after the service, maybe share some of your own thoughts. I'd encourage you to pick one of these up; they're five bucks, and all of it goes back into making more of these books available specifically for the prison ministry that Lynn has with Lisa, with Lisa, the woman who was driving the other vehicle. In fact, I'll tell you the most amazing thought side I think I've ever seen at this church happened right outside those doors one Sunday. I looked out there and I saw Dan and Lynn and Lisa, the woman who was driving that car that killed their only children. She was here as their guest one weekend, and they were drinking coffee and laughing together. Then they came in and they sat in church together.

I mean, can you imagine it? Can you imagine that? It was like seeing something out of the Bible just come true in front of my own eyes. I mean, I don't think I—I don't know who you think you could never be reconciled to, but I'm pretty sure they didn't injure you that badly. And you will never know what God can do if you never take that first step. You will never know. Now Dan and Lynn do all of these steps—every one of these steps that we've been talking about. But why? What's their motivation? Well, I know them well enough to know this: this motivates them night and day, and it's point five: rescue others with the good news of God's forgiveness. Man, this motivates Dan and Lynn and Lisa so much. Every one of them wants to live their lives doing this.

Look at what the Bible says in that last verse in your notes: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them." Isn't that awesome? And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ's ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, "Come back to God." That's the coolest thing ever! You have got a purpose for your life from God, but how are you going to be an ambassador for forgiveness with integrity if you don't forgive? How are you going to be an ambassador for God's forgiveness if you are holding on to grudges?

So let me just close with this: two very straightforward questions. One, do you know you are forgiven by God? If you don't, today's your day. No need to go out with a load of guilt. No reason to because everything you've ever done wrong can be completely forgiven today. I'd encourage you in just a minute to follow me in a prayer. And then second, who do you need to forgive? How about here at church, in our church family? Well, they hurt me. Well, you know what? That's no surprise because the church is like any other family. There's good times, but we also hurt each other—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes there's a mix. But do you want to share the good news of God's gospel with real integrity and real power? Then you need to forgive.

I'm gonna ask you to do something: would you stand with me for closing prayer? Let's stand together. Let's bow our heads in prayer. With our heads bowed, I'm just gonna pray a prayer, and I want to invite all of us here to pray this along with me silently if this expresses your own heart. Dear God, you know how much I've carried unforgiveness in my heart, but today I want to let it go. I want to get on with your plan for my life. And so first, I just want to accept your forgiveness. Jesus, thank you so much for paying for all my sins once and for all, wiping out my debts. I don't understand how it happened on the cross, but I'm grateful. And now, because you've forgiven me, I'm choosing to let go of the pain and say, "I forgive." And in your mind, you fill in the blank there; you name the person. I forgive that person, and I commit to continue forgiving them again and again. Jesus, please replace my hurt with your peace. Thank you for the power to do this, and thank you that this will give me even more power to share the good news. In Jesus' name, Amen.