Episode 031 || Family Wounds

What's up, Pando family? So glad to have you on our Pando exclusive podcast, a part of Southeast Christian Church. Excited that you're here, if it's your first time. My name is Derek, and I'll introduce you in just a second to my teammate Brandon, but we're excited that you're with us. We do this every single week to be able to talk about this sermon and to help each and every one of us grow in our faith and understanding of Scripture, but also in our walk with Christ. So like I said, here with my teammate Brandon, who's on here with us almost every single week. And so we have some people from our recovery ministry and other places around our church. Today you have Brandon and I that are on here, and we are going to be talking about a brand new sermon series that we have called Dysfunction Junction. Yeah, it sounds like Schoolhouse Rock. Schoolhouse Rock. That's exactly what we've got going on. And if y'all grew up on that, I remember as a kid, I think when we used to have school trips and stuff on one of them nice buses, and they would have it up on the TV screens, like the block TVs back there on those buses. I think that's one of the last times I've heard that. But y'all, we're excited to be able to talk about this today. Brandon, we had a guy named Brock O'Dell, who's one of our student pastors here at our Blankenbaker campus that brought us, what is this, Genesis 25, talking about this story of Jacob and Esau. But where we're gonna be starting today is we're picking up in this biblical narrative in Genesis where Isaac, who we last saw almost getting sacrificed by his dad, has grown up and now has these sons. Yeah, so Isaac married a woman named Rebecca, and we read about that, I think it's maybe Genesis 23, 24. And then they end up, after years of infertility, kind of like the same journey Abraham and Sarah had, they end up getting pregnant, and Rebecca realizes very quickly in her pregnancy

that things are not entirely right, that she's pregnant with twins, but these two twins are always jostling with one another, like they're always fighting. And it gets to the point in Genesis 25 where it says the two children struggled with each other in her womb, so she went to the Lord about it, why is this happening to me? The Hebrew is very short, it's something like, why this, Lord? And so she's just like, I don't understand what's going on, why are they always seeming to be at each other's throat, even in utero? And God tells her, it's in Genesis 25, 23, the Lord said to her, the sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other, and your older son will serve your younger son. Interesting. So there's this kind of flip, even from the beginning of their story, like, hey, the younger son is gonna be the one who rules over the older. So Rebekah knows this from the very beginning, that there's gonna be this tension between them, and that ultimately, it's not through the older son that this promise that's been made to Abraham is gonna be fulfilled, it's through the younger son that this is gonna happen. And the differences between the boys are very clear, not just in the womb, but when they are born, when the first child is born, the oldest is named Esau, because he's just covered with, it says he's covered with thick hair like a fur coat, it's like a little baby Ewok. Like, I don't know what's going on with this guy. Very Star Wars fans out there. So they name him Esau, and then the other, the second-born twin, when he is born, he is grasping at the heel of his brother, kind of this idea that he's trying to take his brother's place. Interesting. He's trying to usurp that position, and so they name him Jacob, which means he grasps at the heel.

Which, if that sounds like a bad name, I mean, the other, shorter translation, that would be Deceiver. Like, what you're, you know, kind of our... Even better. Yeah. Even better. This is our kid, Liar. This is our kid, Hairy Red Guy, and our kid, Deceiver. That's a great, that's great kid names. But they, so his name is Deceiver, and you think about our modern-day parlance, we talk about, like, if someone's trying to deceive you, they're trying to trip you up. That's kind of the imagery of that, is grasping at the heel. You're trying to make them stumble and to fall. So yeah, so right from the very beginning, there's this tension between these boys that only escalates as they get older, and some of it is because their parents play into it. Rebecca is, she favors Jacob, and I don't know, I think it's partially personality. There's probably also an element of, like, she knows, God has told me. me this is this is the kid the promise is gonna go through whereas Isaac he prefers Esau because Esau is more like a man's man like a hunter and he goes out and does yeah you know he's covered in hair yeah he's a hunter all those yes yeah it's like a like a frontiersman out there yeah there you go we're just throwing things out there today but so what happens is when they get a little bit older Jacob is is cooking some stew inside their tent or their home or whatever and Esau comes in from hunting and he's just had a long day hunting he's worn out and he just he asked Jacob like hey give me some give me some of that stew give me some of that soup and Jacob is like sure I will happily give you some of this if you will give me your birthright and Esau he's just not smart he agrees to it he's like oh sure I will I will trade my birthright as the firstborn son for a bowl of soup now look I'm I'm a fat guy so like I get I get like being hungry or whatever but I've never had soup that I thought like

never sold your soul for a meal like no no I'm definitely not soup like I don't get it it's probably Campbell's tomato soup yeah that'd be the worst at any rate so Esau makes that trade and the birthright was very significant in that day and age you know Brock talked about this a little bit on this past weekend but in that culture the firstborn child got a double portion of the inheritance so basically what that means is like let's let's pretend for a second that you and I are brothers right okay and like that yeah well there you go and so if it was just the two of us right when that when our parents died they would split the inheritance into three portions instead of two okay and what would happen is that I as firstborn would get two of those portions I'd get a double portion and you'd get that third one and so that is you know it's very financially important right to think well I'm gonna get double of what the rest of my siblings get but also when you think about the fact of this family's promise that God has made to them right that God has promised Abraham I'm gonna make you in a great nation I'm gonna bless you I'm gonna bless all the nations of the earth through you like there's a promise attached to being the firstborn and so you know Esau is not just trading away that you know that money he's trading away being a part of that promise he's saying well no that promise doesn't matter to me and it's it's really you know as we get deeper into the story we'll see like it's not like Isaac I'm sorry it's not like Jacob or Esau either one of them is a great guy but what differentiates them I think as you go through the story is that Esau does not care or believe in God's promise he doesn't think you know it's he thinks it's worth trading for a bowl of soup that a bowl of soup is more tangible than what God has promised but Jacob on the other hand looks at what God has promised and it's like no I like I want that I believe he's gonna do that so tangibly like what would that birthright look like is it land is it animals like what does that is it all yeah it would it would be everything you would put everything kind of in a I guess in a big pot for lack of a better term and you just kind of divide it out among that and make sure that you whatever everyone had that the firstborn had double of

that so yeah gotcha gotcha so anyway so this all kind of comes to a head about I think Brock said it was about 40 years later was it 40 50 years later this all comes to a head when Isaac gets up in years and he's he's old he's going blind and it comes time for him to give the the firstborn blessing to Esau and and to make this a reality and so it's in Genesis what is it chapter 27 where Jacob steals Esau's blessing and so Jacob with the help of his mom Rebecca they come up with this plan where they dress him up like Esau and it I mean it's kind of detailed so apparently Esau never learned how to like shave his arms or whatever I don't know but he's still so hairy that they're like well let's put a let's put some animal skin on him and we'll put some of like Esau's clothes on Jacob to make it smell like you because again Isaac can't see so they send Jacob in dressed up like Esau with food and Jacob believes that I'm sorry Isaac believes there's a lot of names here Isaac believes that Jacob is Esau and he pronounces the blessing for the firstborn over Jacob and it's not until after then that Esau really seems to have any regard for the birthright that he's given up right he weeps over it asks his father to bless him too but you know the blessing has already been given and so that kind of launches Jacob and Esau into even a more tense situation where he, you know, Esau threatens to kill Jacob over this and Jacob has to run and he has to flee. And I will get into this, I think in the next coming weeks, but Jacob ends up fleeting fleeing to his uncle Esau or his uncle Laban to escape his brother Esau. And it just, when Jacob gets there, he finds that Laban is just as much a deceiver as he is like there, there's going to be some real family tension there. And I think, you know, we, we see this sibling rivalry kind of spill out into the rest of the family. And there's a lot of, I mean, dysfunction junctions a good term here because this whole family is, is a little bit messed up. Oh, no doubt. And it's a great sermon title.

And it applies to so many of us that we all have dysfunction in our families in different places. And, um, you know, I can see that in my own life in different places. And, um, you know, I know that just with certain people in my life, they'd probably say the exact same thing. And even in this story, right? Like we think that, again, we want to push against this, maybe popular narrative that I hope doesn't exist, but maybe it does for some people out there that, you know, the Bible is just full of perfect people and, and it's not right. It is full of broken people, um, that are desperately in need of God's wisdom and guidance and grace. And that the only one who's perfect in all of scripture is God himself. Right. God himself, whether that's through God, the father, Jesus, the son, um, or his Holy spirit, right there. He's the only one that is perfect. Um, but this story, not only is the family complicated, the story's complicated, right? The story's complicated. So Brandon, like for you personally, when you look at this story, I know we, we'll talk about some of the applications that Brock talked about here in a minute, but what are like, if you were to sit down with somebody over coffee or at a meal or whatever it would be, and they would ask you like, Hey, like, you know, Brandon, like, what do I do with this? Like, what do I do with this? What do I learn about God? How do I apply this to my life? Yeah. So I think there are a couple of things. You know, one is that I think for all its confusion in the narrative and like, who are we supposed to relate to here? Cause there's not really, uh, there's not really a likable character in this because Esau is just not smart in trading his birthright. Jacob is a liar, you know, Rebecca is kind of a manipulator. Isaac apparently doesn't listen to God when God tells him that, you know,

the second board is going to serve the older child. Like, so there's, everybody is kind of a little bit off kilter right here. Uh, but I do think there's a great comfort for us in that. Right. Because I, I, I feel like I've been really hard on Esau here, but, uh, like Jacob is a terrible person too. Like he is, he lives up to his name. He is, he is an absolute deceiver, but God still uses him, right? Like it is still through Jacob that the promise God made to Abraham is going to come to fruition because Jacob will, uh, well, he'll end up having multiple wives, but you know, he'll have, you know, the 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, uh, and the whole nation of Israel will grow out of Jacob's lineage. And so I think there's a great comfort for us in that is to think like, Hey, God works through imperfect people. He can work with imperfect people. Uh, and to a certain extent, I mean, that's all he's got to work with. Right. Besides there's nobody, there's nobody that he could work with who's who's perfect. And so I think there's a comfort for us in that, like even in this messed up family, like God did something, uh, and he still worked through that. And I think, you know, you talked about the Bible being a picture of perfect people. I struggle. We were talking about this before we started. I struggle to think of a perfect family in the Bible. I don't think there is one because you know, you start with Adam and Eve, well Cain and Abel, that goes South. Uh, you know, One brother murders another. Yeah. Yeah. So Noah's family was messed up. That didn't work out for them. Abraham's family continually messed up. Moses's family has a whole lot of disagreement. Uh, you know, Aaron and Miriam, his siblings are always kind of bickering with him. Even Jesus, uh, you know, he's preaching, uh, throughout Judea and his family shows up to be like, Hey,

we need to reign him in. Uh, and so, you know, the, the Bible is full of families that dealt with trouble and dealt with some dysfunction. And, and again, I think there's a comforting word for us in that. Like, Hey, uh, you know, family is, is God's idea. It's, it's what he wants, but it's also, sin has, has messed with that, but God can still redeem it. He can still use it. He can still do things through it. That's so good. Yeah. God can, uh, work through broken people, like you said. And I think that is an encouraging word for us. Um, and we, you know, we have several, yeah, we have several different things that happen. throughout our life, the mistakes we make, or things that happen to us that just give us this very clear understanding that, man, like, we don't have our stuff together, or we've made this mistake, and there can be this temptation to listen to the voice in our head that says, well, God can't use me, right? Or God doesn't love me. You know, and I would say for so many people watching this right now, you may be someone that you're like, I don't know if I've ever had someone tell me that they love me, right? Or that they forgive me. Whether it's for the things that I've done, or maybe you've never had the opportunity to, you know, have somebody apologize to you. Like, that may be a very foreign thing. And I think that, Brandon, that's just a kind of a microcosm of the world that we live in, right? That I think going through Genesis, I hope is helpful for everyone watching this, knowing that, like, if you have broken this in your life, like, unfortunately, that's normal. Right? Right? That's a normal human experience. Doesn't mean that it's the way that it always was supposed to be. Right. You know, we see that clearly. That wasn't God's intention. But if He, you know, at the end of the day, He can use us, despite what we've done, you know, despite the family we come from. And He uses Jacob, right? Yeah, He uses Jacob. And, but even on the same side, I think of Isaac, you know, of like him just doing his best, you know, and being the one who was deceived, which can be so complicated. You know, but Brandon, so walk us through a little bit of Esau. So we learn about what happens with Jacob and his family. What do we ultimately learn about Esau and his family?

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, there's a lot going on with Esau. And in fact, we were talking about this with my online group on Sunday night. Like, well, how did, you know, how did Rebecca know? Because Rebecca seems to have this idea that Esau is going to squander the blessing. Like, how does Rebecca know, you know, not to trust Esau? And it's really abundantly clear throughout the text that Esau is a little bit of a mess. Because there is initially the trading, you know, the birthright for a bowl of soup. Like, at least get a steak, man. But he does that. He trades what is incredibly valuable for something that's just a temporary fix. But then also, you know, we haven't got to Jacob's wife and how that all happens. But one of the things that happens with Esau is that he like immediately marries some Hittite women. So he's, you know, not even, you know, marrying within, you know, the religious people of God or whatever. So marrying outside of that. And so, like, he has, I think it's two Hittite wives. And they are like driving Rebecca crazy. Like, it kind of goes throughout the text. She's like, life is terrible because of his daughter-in-law. And it's like, all right, well. So, you know, she's seen like Esau is very much governed by his desires. You know, he's just very much governed by this is what I want now. And I'm willing to sacrifice whatever it is to get it. And I think that's part of why Rebecca makes the choice that she makes to help Jacob with all this. Is the idea that, like, Esau's going to squander it. He's going to really discredit and discount the promises of God. And in fact, the writer of Hebrews picks up on this. In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews is trying to encourage the church to not fall away from their faith. To hold on to what they believe. And here's what he says in Hebrews 12, I think it's beginning in verse 16. He says, make sure that no one is immoral or godless like Esau, who traded his birthright as the firstborn son for a single meal. You know that afterward, when he wanted his father's blessing, he was rejected.

It was too late for repentance, even though he begged with bitter tears. And so, you know, in the course of the argument of the book of Hebrews, what he's basically saying is like, hey, don't wander away from God's promises. Don't wander away from the things you know are true just to get a temporary fix. Because we can see what happened to Esau. We can see how he missed out on the blessing, how he missed out on the promise, because he was so controlled by his desires. And so, you know, there is that great encouragement in Jacob's story. There's also a challenge in Esau's story. Like, hey, the things we see around us are going to try to pull us away from what we know is actually eternal and valuable. And we have to have eyes to see and ears to hear what it is that God wants for us, rather than being yanked around by what we want for ourselves. Yeah, this is such an interesting story, maybe just in my mind, because there are some stories in Scripture that we believe are absolutely true, but there are points in Scripture where it's like it's very clear of like, oh, okay, we should be like this person. Right. You know? I think an easy toss-up is, you know, like David, when he was young, and walking into this valley of death with Goliath, and he's doing this, like, because Goliath is speaking out against his God, but yet, you know, David, being filled with the Spirit, is full of courage and faith and action, or you think of, you know, Joshua, where, you know, they're about to, the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land, and he's being encouraged by God to be strong and courageous and go and conquer this land, and I will be with you wherever you will go, and it's like, okay, like, I can, like, I need to be like that, right? Like, even though if Joshua may be imperfect, I need to be like that. It's hard to take, maybe it's just me, is it hard to take away something like that from these two characters in Jacob, and these two people in Jacob and Esau? Yeah, I think so.

I think... At least at this moment? Right, like, they're very challenging in this story, because neither one of them is, like, a moral example, right? Like, Esau is very much governed by his desires, and Jacob is, he's kind of governed by his own selfishness, right? Like, he wants what he wants, he's willing to shortcut whatever he needs to to get it. Like, I think if we're looking at the characters, though, I think the only, I guess I would say the admirable thing we could look at in Jacob, right, is that Jacob so desired the promises of God, and he so believed the promises of God were real, that he was willing to do anything to grab hold of them, right? Like, I guess if I had to nail down a fundamental difference between them, that would be it, is that Jacob looks at this promise that was made to Abraham and says, yes, God is going to do that. And Esau looks at it and says, eh. I don't know that that makes everything that Jacob, well, I know it doesn't make everything that Jacob does right, but I think if we're looking for any sort of attitude that we ought to have is, like, hey, how seriously do I take the promises of God? Do I really think this is what he's doing? Well, and I wonder, and I don't want to, you know, draw a meaning from Scripture that's not there. I certainly don't want to do that. But I almost wonder, like, trying to relate this to our own lives, like, if there's a correlation in the ways where we may believe that, like, okay, God can do this thing, but we try to manipulate it. Oh, yeah. Like, we try to manipulate it, we try to make it happen on our own, and it's funny. When I think of those times in my life I've done that, it just doesn't go well. No. It just doesn't go well.

Like, there's value in waiting and trusting that if this thing were to come to pass, then it needs to be in the Lord's timing. Right. And it needs to be, because when we do it our own way, oftentimes it fails. Yeah, and I think that's a thread throughout Genesis, right? And the hardest part of, well, I shouldn't say, one of the difficult things about the story of Jacob and Esau is that we don't clearly see what the alternative would have been, right? Let me just give an example. Because if you go back to the story of Abraham and Sarah, you know, they obviously try to take a shortcut with Hagar, and, you know, she ends up giving birth to Ishmael, and that creates all sort of tension. So we can look at that and say, like, well, what, they shouldn't have taken that shortcut because Isaac was coming, right? Right. With the story of Jacob and Esau, we don't see what the other way would have been. Gotcha. Right? Like, would Esau have eventually disqualified himself from the blessing? Would God have? Because it's God himself that says Jacob is going to be the son of the promise. So it's one of those, like, what was the alternative there? Because Rebekah and Jacob took matters into their own hands, and they took a shortcut. They shortcutted what God wanted to do. We just don't see, you know, what is it that God really was up to in giving the promise through Jacob. Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right, you know, because, gosh, especially as you were talking about with Abraham and Sarah, you know, they, yeah, I mean, having to go through this waiting period, and there may be someone that's watching this right now, and it's like, gosh, I've been praying and waiting on this thing, and it's just not happening. Right.

It's just not happening. Well, when I look at my life, the times where I am prone to manipulate things in my life in order to get the outcome that I want are in the seasons where I'm not getting what I want when I want it. And oftentimes, when we make terrible decisions and bad decisions, it's when we're not getting what we want when we want it. Right. And, you know, like you were talking about, we talked about this just a few weeks ago with Abraham and Sarah. Like they get... Is it Hagar? Is that her name? Right, yeah. And has, you know, Abraham sleep with her, and she ends up having a child? But that's not what God wanted. Like, ultimately, the promise was gonna come... through Isaac, and God wanted them to trust in that. And even with that, like we talked, I think it was last week, of like, well, because of that and going through those decades of trusting and waiting, that ultimately Abraham had enough faith in the Lord to take this promised son of his up on this mountain to, hopefully not, but probably to sacrifice him, and that's what God told him to do, and yet the angel of the Lord came in and told him to stop and provided the sacrifice, but even in the midst of that, I mean, gosh, I think of even Abraham, like if I were Abraham in that moment of like all of the ways I would be trying to talk myself out of, like, I don't think this is what, I'm actually gonna do this other thing. Right. Well, and you know, part of the issue, part of the problem with talking about Jacob at this point in the story is that he's like very much in process now. Like he is going to, I think we'll talk about it in two weeks, he is very literally going to have a come to Jesus meeting. Sure.

Like he is- You'll meet him on the side of the road. Yeah, he is, he's gonna find Jesus, and I guess it's more appropriate to say Jesus is gonna find him. Right. And, you know, he is going to have some of that pride wrestled out of him. He's gonna learn humility in a very interesting way, but right now we're just at the beginning of the process with him, and in fact, next week we'll talk even more, like Jacob is a schemer man. He's got plans for days, and he is, he's just trying to work the angles on all these different things and make things his own way, and it's not really until he encounters, he'll encounter the angel of the Lord, or we would say Jesus, he encounters Jesus at the side of the Jabbok River in a couple chapters that he really starts to understand like who he is. And I think, again, that's another encouraging word for all of us, that we are all in process. You know, when we think of biblical characters, we so often think of the finished results, and it's, you know, so many of them had a journey that they were on that God was taking them through to make them into who he wanted them to be. That's a great point, because just as people, we are messy. Yeah. We're messy. Our lives are messy. I think a lot of times what we want in our life that we kind of see in stories or movies these days is that like there's almost this like linear progression of the story of the life of like, well, once I'm out of prison or once I am fully recovered or in recovery or past this place where I'm comfortable about being around things that used to really tempt me, or once my marriage is fixed, or once my kid's doing that thing, or once I have this amount of money or that job, then it'll be sunshine and rainbows for the rest of my life. And what you said is so biblically accurate that God will work through Jacob. Because even as I read this story, and as we're talking, you know, we live in a culture that's very cancel culture, where it's like, man, you do one wrong thing, and it's like, boom. Like, that's it. Like, God ain't gonna use you. He kind of trashes you, brings you down, throws you in the wastebasket, and then forgets about you. But I think the encouraging thing is that God doesn't forget about us. He does

not forget about His children. He does not stop looking for His children. He does not stop pursuing them, and He's faithful in that. It's like He's the one that's doing those things and not us, and I'm grateful, because if it were left to me or us, we'd be exhausted in that. And it's so tempting, even right here, to kind of like take a knife and just cut out the rest of the pages of Jacob's story, of being like, man, like, if someone's willing to do this for that, then I don't know if God can use them. But He clearly does. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's one of the things that can give us such... help us trust in Scripture a lot more, right? Is that Scripture does not hide those parts of the story that are messy and messed up. Yeah, for sure. You know, it deals with... it shows us a better life and life as God created it to be, but it also shows us life as it is and how these people were flawed and messed up. And, you know, I think not only of Genesis, of the people who made the wrong decisions around there, I think about like in the Gospels, the disciples are continually, continually shown to just be a mess. You know, they misunderstand Jesus, they don't do the right thing. Peter denies Jesus three times. Like, there is all this mess in the Gospels and in Scripture, and it doesn't hide that from us. It shows us like, hey, if I were making my own religion, I would cut those parts out. I'd be like, man, we have it all together. Yeah. And Scripture is like, no, like God has it all together, but you guys are a mess. Yes. But the good news is He's... he still loves you. He's still got a plan for you. He's still gonna work through... He has factored in your stupidity when he made his plan for your life. Very true. You know, he's worked through that. So I think, again, there's a trustworthiness of Scripture there, but there's also that comfort in our own lives that, hey, God worked with these people, so surely He can work with me. Amen. And even though... So what we believe that we've just been talking about, Brandon, we believe to be biblically accurate. That's not our opinion, that's not our church's opinion, that is what we believe Scripture teaches, and because of that, that is our opinion, and that is our church's stance, right? Because that's what Scripture says. And so we try to live our lives as Christians by what we believe, this book full of God-inspired actual stories and

songs and poetry and records and all these things in Scripture that we see as God's Word. And so we can take that and understand it, but then there are certain times when we have to put what we read on the page and what we're learning in Scripture and what we're learning from Jesus and other believers into action, into our lives. And there are a couple things, there's a few things actually that Brock talked about on Sunday that I'd like to read through. He had talked basically this question of, how do we find healing from these things? There's gonna be points and times where we're Jacob, where we've manipulated the situation. There's times when we're Esau, where we don't trust in God's promises, we're really flippant about those things. There's times where we're the one that have hurt people, and we're the ones that have been hurt. We're the ones that have stolen something, and we're the ones that have been stolen from. And so how do we find healing from this cycle? That in our families that may be dysfunctional, how do we be different? How do we take a step forward? Not how do we become perfect, but how do we approach life as a Christian? Well, here's a couple of things that Brock had mentioned, was number one, submit to Jesus. So if you can't lower yourself, then you probably aren't sorry. Humble yourself before Jesus, then take that same humility to other people. So it's the simple concept of like, have we submitted ourself to Christ first? Have we done that first? Number two, say sorry with your words. And this was a convicting thing to me, no matter how long ago it was, apologize for what you've done. Take that first action, take that first step to make things right. Man, I think about those things that, man, what are those things that I have said or those things that I have done that I know didn't sit well with somebody, and I just kind of waited, like, are they going to say something? I don't know if they are, you know, or maybe they've just forgotten, or maybe they know I'm sorry. And it's like, well, I don't know if they know that, you know, because there's often times that I'm the one, you know, drinking that poison, right, that Brock had talked about, expecting them to suffer the consequences for it. And it's like, no, they probably haven't forgotten, and they don't know if you're sorry. Then number three, show you're sorry with your actions, right? So his point was to live a life of submission, make the choices to help prepare the relationship. It may take a long time, but the healing is possible. And so, Brandon, even as we go through those, Brock talked about that, you know, this past weekend. Which of those do you feel like is the hardest within that?

Oh, I mean, I would... Man, I don't know that any of them are easy. No, none of them are, none of them are. You know, I think very often saying sorry is the hardest thing to do. And I think that works both ways, because, you know, if I have done something wrong, then it's hard for me to own up to that, to be like, you know what, I did, like I really did screw up, and I'm sorry about that. And there's a sort of humility that comes with that too. It's just the ability to look inside yourself and be like, no, I messed that up. On the other hand, like, if you're the one who feels wronged, saying sorry feels counterintuitive too. Well, I don't have anything to apologize for. Yeah. I've heard that line a time or two in my head. Yes. Yeah. And I don't want to trivialize anything, because I know, like, there are real, like, family hurt situations where nothing that happened is your fault, right? I know that's true. But, you know, sometimes it's, even when we feel wronged, we can look back and be like, you know what, I probably didn't handle that right. I probably didn't respond right. And so, you know, there's an element where, even when we think, I don't have anything to apologize... maybe we do need to step back and look at our own hearts and be like Maybe there is something there that that I can take that first step and say like hey, this really hurt me But I want you to know That I'm sorry for how I reacted or how I did this or whatever Again I don't want to trivialize those situations where where there's nothing that that you're at fault for but but I think there is an Element to look to look inside ourselves and just kind of see like hey How have how have I responded wrongly to that because at the end of the day, you know, I think true forgiveness Especially when it comes to families requires both parties to be like, you know What we we both need to submit to Jesus in this we both need to see our own brokenness And if we're gonna go forward we have to work through that together Oh, no doubt and you know, like if you are alive and breathing, I promise you like there is brokenness in your life Oh, yeah in some way shape or form and anybody that would say different You know, they'll find out soon enough, you know Like I'll find out soon enough and I can say that because they've been points in my life or it's like I feel like I'm doing Pretty good. Yeah, you know, I have it all together Yeah, and then someone brings something to me and I'm like, oh man, like I am more broken than I thought

Yeah, you know, I'm more messed up than I thought but these types of things that they may seem easy and even like even as I read through some of these like it's almost like This is almost something that you would share with a kindergartner, you know I'm like, hey, okay rule number one. We're gonna say sorry with our words number two we're gonna say we're gonna show we're sorry because of our at with through our actions and it can seem like something that we're saying to An elementary schooler, but it's not right because it is it is this hard basic? Understanding as a Christian even as a person that gosh like we don't want to do these things like I will fight against these things Because putting yourself in this position to do that it's humiliating right, right it can be humiliating it can make you feel different right, you don't Gosh, it can almost make you feel weak or seem weak and I can only imagine that there are people watching this right now they're like man, I can't do that because I can't let my guard down like I can't do that and in my encouragement for the mists of that would be that I Like I get that and I know that it's hard And it can be and they're gonna be times when you know, we say sorry to someone who ain't gonna forgive us, right? You know like it's not gonna be a good response back. They're gonna be times when Even though we may live the rest of our lives. I'm showing remorse For what we've done. It may not be good enough for someone, right? Well, you know, I I think in those moments we can take some comfort in the fact right that that reconciliation and restoration Are not always the same thing, okay That you can look at someone and apologize and say hey like I'm sorry about this I'm sorry, but there's an element to where that that relationship can't be restored. It can't be what it was and that's fine Yeah, you know, but I think there is an element of we we just have to acknowledge the hurt we've done to each other We need to apologize for it and then that can be that, you know I think there there's an element where we've lost that ability right to just we because we assume Well, I like I have to get the relationship back to what it was and and sometimes that's not possible you know Paul will say later in one of the New Testament letters that as much as it depends on you live at peace with everyone and and that implies right there are times where You can have peace towards someone you can show forgiveness towards someone and not get it back in return

Yeah, and that's fine. But at least you've done your part, right? At least you have extended That olive branch at least you've extended that forgiveness and how they respond and what that looks like isn't always up to you Yeah, it's not always up to us You know, well, yeah, like especially as it pertains to how others react I think that's important for us to remember like we don't control how other people react but we do control how we react to situations, you know, and so You know my encouragement and our encouragement as we kind of wrap this up is I think for so many people You know, the number one place to start is have you submitted your life to Christ? Have you submitted yourself to Jesus? Because I promise you it's not going to be the easiest way to live It's not gonna be this sunshine and rainbows, but it's going to be the best way to live Especially for those of us that are broken which is all of us that Submitting our life to Christ first to acknowledging that we're sinful. We're broken We've made mistakes that we need a Savior Into to repent of our sin literally to stop living the way that we've been living and to start living the way That Jesus wants us to live by what he's told us in Scripture is the best way and Our hope for you today is that you would just genuinely pray through making that decision like have I my life to Christ. But secondly, to ask that question, have I hurt someone? Have I wronged someone? And if I have, have I taken the appropriate steps in the ways that I'm allowed to, to say I'm sorry, to genuinely apologize, and to live your life with—I don't even know the right word to use here—with just an acknowledgment of, hey, like, I know that I've hurt you and I'm sorry, right? And to live our life knowing that we're not perfect, but we want to make the choices necessary to repair that relationship, like Brandon said, you know, as much as possible, you know, and know that what we're responsible for is how we respond, right? How we respond, what we do, what we say, if we say sorry or not, and not so much of, you know, how other people react to that. But y'all, we love you, we're grateful for you, we're grateful that you're here with us each week. If you're a returning watcher, listener, we're

grateful that you'd be with us. We hope that this is helping you develop into the person that God wants you to be, because that's the most important thing, to be able to follow Him, to continue growing and developing, as we're just broken people that God is using. But I'm talking about all of us, not just, you know, Brandon and I at this table, or the people behind the camera, but all of us together as part of God's family, that we want to continue to become the people that He wants us to be. But in the coming weeks, we're going to be continuing on this sermon series, Dysfunction Junction, talking about Jacob, talking about his family, and all the things. We'll have a couple of different people on here with us that you'll be excited to hear from. But until next time, we'll see you guys. Peace. you