Freedom Study - Week 5

Welcome back. We are so glad you've joined us for another week of freedom. I'm back and today I get the pleasure of teaching with the one and only Pastor Lisa Duvall. Last week we started talking about how to break free from the hurts we receive. And of course, the way we do that is forgiveness. We're going to talk some more about forgiveness today and you might be wondering, why are we doing two weeks on forgiveness? And it's because we believe that forgiveness is the key to freedom. You see, unforgiveness is a primary way that the enemy puts us and keeps us in bondage. Like we said last week, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It actually does greater harm to us than to the person that we refuse to forgive. So today we want to get really practical and talk about how to forgive. I'm excited to be teaching with you today, Pastor Drew. Before we talk about how to forgive, I want to talk about three things we need to do first. First, we need to recognize our own imperfection. Start by recognizing your own need for forgiveness. Romans 3.23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Think about this truth. You'll never have to forgive others for more than God has forgiven you. Second, we need to focus on the real enemy. People are not our real enemy. The devil is. Think about Jesus on the cross. What was his heart toward the people with the hammer and nails? In Luke 23.34, he prayed, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing. You see, Jesus made a choice to see the people with hammer and nails as unknowing participants in Satan's agenda of darkness. He knew who the real enemy was. If it's true that hurt people hurt people, those who hurt us are probably hurting as well. Our approach should be like that of Jesus, to love people and hate the devil. Finally, choose to live an unoffended life, no matter the situation. Do you know that you can simply choose not to be offended? Proverbs 19.11 says, a wise man overlooks offense. What if you choose to live an unoffended life, no matter the situation? So many of us are so easily offended. I made a list of some things that can help you live an unoffended life. Now, as I'm listing them, I want you to think to yourself, which one or two would be the most helpful for you? Okay, the first is humble yourself. Consider everyone else more important than yourself. Put their needs before your own. Second, focus on pleasing God, not yourself or others. To maintain a healthy balance between humbling yourself and pleasing others, people pleasing, keep

in mind pleasing God is the goal. Third, always remain grateful. Gratitude changes our attitude. It's hard to be offended when you realize how much God has blessed you. And fourth, maintain a positive attitude, even toward those who hurt you. Choose to speak words of life over them or do things that build them up. How they respond is up to them. I like to say, believe the best, see the best, speak the best. And fifth, trust God to bring justice when hurt or offense comes. The Bible says that vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to us. This particular way to live an unoffended life stands out in my freedom journey. Holy Spirit was gentle to uncover my lack of trust in God to bring justice, as I literally said out loud, in a court of law, the one who sinned against me would have a unanimous guilty verdict judged. I was trying to bring justice. I released my position of being the attorney, the jury and the judge, and I gave it to God. I released it to him. God blessed my obedience and I found a new level of freedom. Finally, spend time with the Lord in prayer and in Bible study. When I spend time with Jesus, it's hard to be offended. This provides space also for the Holy Spirit to do necessary inner work that only he can do. Those are so good. Those principles are so good, Pastor Lisa. You can choose to live unoffended, but let's say that somebody does hurt you and you are offended. What do you do then? How do we forgive practically? What does it look like? Jesus shows us how to do this in his most famous sermon, the greatest sermon ever, ever preached. Sorry, Pastor Todd, that's the sermon. the Sermon on the Mount, yeah? I can remember when I first read the Sermon on the Mount as a senior in high school, when I was a brand new believer. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever read. I can remember thinking, if I could just live like this, it would be the answer to all the problems in my life. And all these years later, I still feel that way. If you haven't read the Sermon on the Mount in a while, I'd encourage you to go back and read it. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 5, 34 through 45.

He says, you have heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. Luke's account says, but to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High. When I look at these passages, Jesus is telling us to do three things to forgive those who have offended us. Write these down. First, we need to pray for those who have offended us. I wanna ask you, how much time have you spent praying for the person who hurt or offended you? It's hard to remain hurt or offended by someone when you're praying for them every single day. You know what's interesting, Lisa? In the Gospels, Jesus never specifically told us to pray for our father and mother. He never specifically told us to pray for our husband and wife. He never specifically told us to pray for our kids. You can't find that in any of the Gospels. Now, should we pray for our mother and father

and husband and wife and kids? Of course we should. But Jesus never specifically told us to pray for any of those people. And yet here, he specifically commands us to pray for those who've hurt us, to pray for our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. That's how important it is that we pray for those who've offended us. Second, we need to bless those who've offended us. For some of us, it's all we can do just to not talk negatively about the people who've wronged us. But Jesus asks us to actually go a step further. He asks us to bless them, which means to speak well of them. You know, this is not something we see in today's culture. Could you imagine if politicians actually sought to bless and speak well of their opponents? And the Apostle Paul, he takes it even further. He says in Romans 12, 14, bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them, pray that God will bless them. What? Not only do we need to bless them, we need to pray that God would bless them too? It's amazing. Finally, we need to do good to those who have offended us. Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 12, 17 through 21. He says, never pay back evil with more evil.

Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the scriptures say, I will take revenge. I will pay them back, says the Lord. Instead, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads. Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. So Jesus says that we need to pray for, bless, and do good to those who have offended us. If you find yourself struggling with hurt and offense today, can I give you some encouragement? I've been working on my own freedom really hard over the past several years. And at one point, Holy Spirit really led me to forgive people who had hurt and offended me. He actually led me to book a flight to another state just to buy a guy lunch and forgive him for something that he did that hurt me years ago. I also needed to apologize for some things that I had done. And so I booked the flight and I got on the airplane. As I'm flying up for this conversation, I'm thinking, now what? Like, what do I say? And the Holy Spirit took me to this teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

And I realized that I needed to pray for, bless, and do good to this person. And I was so scared, I was so nervous, I didn't sleep the night before. I even thought about making up an excuse to cancel the appointment. But when we met the next day, I did these three things. And I thought that this conversation would maybe go for like 15 minutes. But we ended up talking for a couple of hours. I forgave him for some things that he'd done to me and he forgave me for some things that I'd done to him. And then I had to go. But before we parted on the sidewalk, we gave each other a big hug. And as I headed back to the airport, and I'm getting choked up just thinking about it now, man, I could feel it. I was free. I was free. And you can be free too. You know, Jesus says one other thing about forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5, 14 through 15, he says. If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your father will not forgive your sins. Yikes. Let me ask you today,

in light of all the sins for which you've been forgiven, can you release those who've hurt or offended you? Let me put it another way. Would you trade your forgiveness from God for the right to carry unforgiveness towards someone else? I know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. No way. Your story is so powerful, Pastor Drew. Even now, I think Holy Spirit is leading some of us to go and do just what you did. For some of us, that might involve booking a flight to forgive someone who lives in another state. For others, it could be walking down the hallway to forgive someone who lives in your own home. Sometimes it's a private prayer of releasing an offense and freely forgiving. Even without the conversation, supernatural benefits of forgiving are released in our lives. Personally, in the most significant situations where I made the action, the active choice to forgive, there was not an apology or a beautiful moment where someone asked, Lisa, will you please forgive me for what I've done? What really matters is that you have a genuine heart that releases the other person and a faithful, committed trust in God to do only what he can do in their life and in your life. With that in mind, I feel like we need to stop for a moment and I'd like to lead us in a prayer

where we can release those who've hurt or offended us. And this is such an important moment that I actually am going to have them put the prayer on the screen. If you wanna make this prayer personal, you could even quietly say the specific name of the person that you need to forgive. Pray this prayer with me. Dear Jesus, instead of loving, I have resented this person and I have unforgiveness in my heart. Forgive me for my sin of holding onto offense. I ask you, Lord, to give me the power to forgive those who have hurt me. I release them to you now. Give me the power to pray for them, bless them and to do good to them. Thank you for breaking the chains off my life and in Jesus' name, amen. I believe that for somebody, chains were just broken. Somebody was just set free. Lisa, can I say one more thing about this before we move on? Because we know this stuff is hard. Forgiveness is hard. Sometimes we think we've forgiven somebody, but we haven't, right? Has this ever happened to you? Like weeks or months later, you thought you forgave someone, but you still feel bitter when you hear that person's name. Or you get angry when something good happens to them. Or you just can't stop thinking about what they did.

If any of these things happen, you still have more forgiving to do. If you thought you forgave that person, you really did, only to have all those old feelings come back, you have more forgiving to do. What do you do then? Well, I don't usually have props, but I have one today. You know what this is? This is Heinz 57 ketchup, as God intended it, in a glass bottle. Heinz used to sell ketchup in glass bottles, but today you only find them in restaurants. Plastic squeezable bottles have taken over at grocery stores because it's hard to get ketchup out of a glass bottle. What does ketchup have to do with forgiveness? Again, it's hard to get ketchup out of a glass bottle. Like you can shake it really hard, you can bang it on the side of a table, you can use a knife, and still the ketchup won't come out. But there's a secret. Do you know the secret? The secret to getting ketchup out of a glass bottle is to gently tap the 57 and keep tapping. Tap, tap, tap. And slowly, ketchup will begin to pour out. Friends, that's how forgiveness works. It's poured out slowly, and you have to keep at it. You have to pray and keep praying. Tap, tap, tap.

You have to love and keep loving. Tap, tap, tap. You have to forgive and keep forgiving. Tap, tap, tap. When you do any of these three things, you are tapping the 57. Jesus said in Matthew 7, 7 through 8, keep asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep seeking, and you will find it. Keep knocking, and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be open. If you're having trouble forgiving someone, keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep forgiving, and little by little, tap, tap, tap. God will pour out forgiveness, and you will find freedom. Great illustration. Wouldn't have seen that coming. Thank you, Pastor Drew. We've spent a lot of time these past two weeks talking about forgiving others, but we also need to talk about forgiving ourselves. Because for some of us, getting past our past may be the biggest obstacle we face in finding freedom. Does this ever happen to you? Every time you seem to be growing in your faith, that old movie reel in your past begins to play in your mind. You can't help but think of your sin, or your mistake, or your failures. I totally resonate with this inner dialogue. You think forgiveness is for other people, but not for you, because you've done so many horrible things, and it's just too late. Can I tell you, it's not too late. The enemy loves to remind us of our mistakes, because guilt and shame keep us in bondage. The enemy tries to bring up our past every day. He waits for a weak moment in our lives, and then he whispers with repetition our failures to us. When our past rears its ugly head,

there are three ways we usually respond that we need to be on the lookout for for these particular tendencies. First, we try to bury it. You've undoubtedly heard the expression, time heals all wounds. Unfortunately, that's also untrue. Truth is, time often makes things worse. Concealing the past never works. That's why Proverbs 28 14 says, people who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if you confess and turn for them, you will receive mercy. James 5 16 tells us that what we need to do instead is confess our sins and pray for one another if we want to be healed. The second way we can respond is we beat ourselves up. Some of us live in the land of regret. We dwell on the if-only scenarios from our past, but if-only is a trap. We can't change the past, and the enemy uses if-onlys to torture us. King David knew this kind of grief. He committed adultery with his friend's wife, and then he had his friend killed when she became pregnant with his child. When the prophet Nathan confronted David, he repented and cried out to God. In Psalms 38 4 through 8, David says, my guilt overwhelms me. It's a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins. I'm bent over and wracked with pain. All day long, I walk around filled with grief. A raging fever burns within me, and my health is broken. I am exhausted and completely crushed. My groans come from an anguished heart. Wow, David shows us that unwillingness to forgive ourselves causes emotional and even physical pain. So please stop beating yourself up. Finally, we blame others. People have been doing this since Adam and Eve. When God asked Adam why he disobeyed, Adam blamed Eve and God. Eve's response was to blame the serpent. Stop trying to bury it, stop beating yourself up, and stop looking to blame others. Look to scripture and agree with God's perspective on your past. The Bible says when we ask Jesus into our hearts, our old life vanishes and we become a new person. When you entered into relationship with Jesus, you were forgiven of all your past, present, and future sin. You may know this in your head, but do you know it in your heart? 1 Corinthians 5 17 says, anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone and the new life has begun. Lisa, that is so good, and I just want to say this. No matter who you are or what you've done or how far you've fallen, Jesus loves you, and he has paid the price for every sin you've ever committed and every mistake you've ever made. And all you have to do is accept that forgiveness and you'll receive that new life, that fresh start, that clean slate that Pastor Lisa was just talking about. Now let me close with this. Again, God never said that forgiveness would be easy. It takes courage and strength to follow Jesus's teachings, but they work. You can live free again, free from your past. No more guilt, no more hiding, no more shame, absolutely free.

The Apostle Paul had quite a past. He persecuted and killed Christians. In 1 Timothy 1 12-15, he writes, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him, even though I used to blaspheme the name of Christ. In my insolence, I persecuted his people, but God had mercy on me, even me, because I did it in ignorance and unbelief. Oh, how generous and gracious our Lord was. He filled me with the faith and love that comes from Christ Jesus. This is a trustworthy saying. And everyone should accept it. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all. Paul says that he is the worst of all sinners. I don't know, Pastor Lisa Stums, I think I'm giving him a run for his money. But when I think about how much Jesus has forgiven me, man, I ought to be the world's greatest forgiver. As Christians, we ought to be the world's greatest forgivers. The forgiven must forgive. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4.32, be kind and compassionate to one another and forgive each other just as in Christ God forgave you. We love you, and we're praying for you.