Unforgiveness After Hours

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast. On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are in the beginning of a series of pillars. If you don't know what pillars are, we haven't done pillars in a while, have we, Andy?

Nope, I think it's been a while. So what's a pillar? Something holds up a building or something that holds up an idea.

Right, so you've got to have more than one. And so we're doing the pillars, it doesn't really flow well off the lips, but it's the tools of the enemy that he uses. It's the main tools that he gets out of the toolbox when he wants to. You keep calling me a tool, Sam. What are you doing here?

Hey! You're not supposed to know about that. Andy, you weren't supposed to say anything. So the first tool out of the toolbox is unforgiveness. We'll talk a little bit about how we have unforgiveness to one another, to ourselves, to God.

You know, it's multifaceted, and anytime you hold something against somebody and not let it go, you're actually acting more like Satan than you actually are at God, because God is very good at forgiving. And Rodney, I think you misinterpreted what I had said. You know, we call you Ramrod, right?

And that's kind of like a tool. I'm just saying. I'm trying. Danny, you've got the first clip in the after hours, so why don't you tell us a little bit about it? I've been kicked to the after hours. No. You may not make it if you keep it up. Well, I know.

Living on edge, you're taking up too much room. This is the sequel to the clip I had last week. It's actually the front part of it. And from the Star Trek series Picard. And it's an interchange between Q, who's a godlike character in the show, all the way back through the Next Generation series. And him and Picard have a series of events all through out.

And this is a culmination of it. And Picard has gone back in history and he's seen some things in his past about his boyhood. And Q is pushing him into forgiving himself, which is, as you've already mentioned, something that's very hard to do. And so there are interchanges about him forgiving himself. And it has to do with Picard letting his mom out of a room that his dad had locked her in to protect her. And he didn't realize everything was going on. And he had blamed himself for years.

And so we can play the clip and then talk about it. My old friend, forever the boy who with an errant turn of a skeleton key broke the universe in his own heart, no more. You are now unshackled from the past.

As I leave, I leave you free. But why does all this matter? Is something going to happen for which I will be required? Must it always have galactic import? Universal stakes?

Celestial upheaval? Isn't one life enough? You ask me why it matters. It matters to me. You matter to me. Even God's had favorites. And you've always been one of mine. Q, time's almost out. I have one last surprise in store. What's wrong?

Colin? Quite the opposite. Yeah, at the end of that clip, they ask him, what's the matter? And he says, quite the opposite. And isn't that what forgiveness feels like?

It's quite the opposite. There's nothing wrong. And, you know, so often in my own life, I walked in that unforgiveness of me, you know, with the molestation stuff and lots of different things and taking on the ownership of that. And, you know, if I would have done something different, my life wouldn't have been this way. You know, having been deeply involved in a Christian walk early in my life and then getting into alcohol and drugs and then carrying that burden, that unforgiveness of you, you're a failure, you know, making those agreements that we talk about. And, you know, God coming after you, not so much for universal impact, but because you need to be free. And I need to know that he loves me because he loves me because he loves me. And, you know, the freedom in that, and I think it's a process.

You know, we talk about the onion effect, so to speak, peeling off the layers of, oh, that's uncovered and that's uncovered. And God just keeping pursuing who we truly are in his eyes. And that's what that clip meant so much, you know, because we all make the joke sometimes, you know, God loves everybody, but I'm his favorite today. And, you know, to believe that is awesome, I think. Yeah, that was an incredible clip.

It is really good. And we saved it for the after hours. We saved it for the after hours, yeah.

No, it is a great clip. Of all those things you said, one thing that stuck out to me is I think we need to go trademark the onion effect. The onion effect, yeah. Yeah, I think that could be one that, you know, we've heard of the butterfly effect, the whatever different effects. I think we got to trademark that. The onion effect. Yeah.

A masculine journey. That's right. Now, Rodney, you also have a clip and so we're blessed with it in the after hours as well. Yeah, I'm with you, Danny.

I think we've just been relegated. I'm just saying our after hours listeners are very special and they deserve the best clips. Okay, Sam, you're trying to dig your way out of it, but you're just not going to make it. We're not going to forgive you.

That's right. Andy, let's talk about Rodney after the show again. There's a lot you're going to have to talk about. When the topic came up, it was truly unforgiveness. And I'm like, okay, there's so many things out there and what we're seeing in the clips even presented tonight about forgiveness. Because almost every movie show thing you talk about, it's about working towards forgiveness. And it just brought to my mind about how deeply we all really need to be forgiven. We want to be forgiven. But then it's so hard to forgive.

And in this movie, it's not pure flicks, but this is Netflix's original movie, The Unforgivable. And this is about a lady who spends 20 years in prison for shooting a policeman because they were coming to evict her from her home and she was trying to protect her younger sister. And her sister grows up without her for this whole time. And the adopting parents, they don't even tell the younger sister about her older sister. The two brothers of the policeman who was shot and killed, they are basically unforgiving and they are going after her. You'll hear that in the clip a little bit. And the wife of the attorney who she goes back to her house and gets this attorney that happens to be living in her house, he forgives her. But his wife is like, no, you're just a killer. Everybody in this movie just won't really let her go except for basically one character as they kind of work through this movie. So let's go ahead and hear the trailer. And the attorney and his wife lived in the house where the police officer got shot.

Yeah, and that's how she came back to get into their life. Now, Ruth Hong Kong. Hello.

Hello. You're going to pay for what you did. I was in prison. I just got out.

I was there for 20 years. For what? It was an accident.

Would your release alter the terms of your no contact order? You don't have to give me a speech. I'm looking for Katie. She's my little sister. I raised her.

OK, next time don't drag me through three bus transfers to tell me something you already know. John, there's a woman in the front yard. Can I help you with something?

You're a lawyer? What would Catherine gain by meeting her now? I wonder all the time what she looks like, what she became.

Your life starts here now, not 20 years ago. She did her time. She killed somebody in cold blood. What? If that were any of your black sons who had been in this system, they would be dead.

She walks around like it never happened. You tell me if that's fair. You're going to be a convict wherever I go?

You're a cop killer everywhere you go. Just stop. Don't treat me like I don't exist. Tell her about me. Don't even pretend this is about her.

Yes, I was pretending her. I'm not a victim. I don't quit.

I don't, Katie. And she doesn't quit. And none of us can quit. And that's where the biggest thing that I would take away from that clip is the fact that every single person in that clip is really, really ugly, angry, and wrathful, except for the one guy that has a little bit of heart for that is the lawyer, and he's willing to kind of take on her case. She even lies to him at first because she doesn't want to expose who she really is, and then they find out she explains the circumstances and he actually forgives her.

And it's like, I can see where your heart's at now kind of thing and takes on her case to try to basically get her to where she can see her sister. But we can't give up on trying to forgive people. It's so easy just to live in that hate and that vengeance, and like you guys talked about in the first show, where basically if you're going to live in that, it's going to eat you up and eat you alive.

And we've got to be able to basically get past those things and get to a point where we don't have to say, oh, hey, great, I completely accept everything about you, but you do have to forgive. David, how about you? You got any thoughts? We haven't talked to you yet.

I know you have thoughts, but do you have any thoughts on this subject? Well, you know, I'm still working on the forgiving parts since y'all wouldn't play my clip. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And I do want to say it's more than saying sorry, you know. Probably the first and last clip I'll ever submit. Sounds like an agreement we'll have to work at the next one.

Definitely, definitely. You know, I think a lot of times, you know, we use the I'm sorry as basically like a get out of jail free card, say, you know, we made a mistake, whether it was with our wife or our kids made a mistake with us, and they say, you know, well, I'm sorry. And when I sit back and think about that, do we really truly forgive them when they do say what they're sorry? You know, I know at times when, you know, my kids make mistakes, which they do growing up all the time and recently some more than others, but, you know, she says I'm sorry. And do I really truly forgive her?

You know, looking back at it, I don't think I did. I think that a lot of times I would use that and hold on to that and throw it back at her and say, well, you did this even though you said you're sorry. I think the truly the true definition of forgiveness as for the most part, everybody's point has had so far tonight is we need to forgive others as well as forgive ourselves. You know, long before our story was ever written, before we were ever even part of this world and we were just a creation of God's eyes, he forgave us.

So, I mean, I think at the end of the day, why can't why is it so hard for us to be able to forgive each other? Great point. Thank you. Bless his heart. As I was thinking more about this topic.

We have a therapy group for that, by the way, too, if your clip doesn't make it. Rodney's a, he's the president of that club. Yeah. Of not making it.

As well he should be. No, just joking. He's not joking. No, I was joking. Maybe. Ish.

I'm joking. As I was thinking about this topic some more, God's reminding me of, you know, I've been married twice. They didn't end well, obviously, because that's... Because they ended.

They ended, right. And with both of my ex-wives for different reasons, I had a lot of pent up unforgiveness and anger. And, you know, God at boot camps would work on it with me. Initially I wasn't really open to it. And it was different times for each one of them.

It was different times. But when he really got my attention and got me to start working on it, it's not like I called him and said, you know, I forgive you. You know, that's probably not going to go well. You just call and just spout out there, I forgive you. Now, what he had me do is he reminded me of the things that I did wrong in that relationship and prompted me to call them.

You know, this is several years apart, obviously. Called them and just asked for their forgiveness. And what ended up happening was they turned around and said, you know, would you forgive me? And then we had dialogue and there was conversation. And not that we're, you know, any of us are best friends anymore, but we're in a really good place. You know, we have great relationships for what they are because it's built on a place of forgiveness. Not of a place of anger or resentment or holding on to things. You know, and I have hope that that's going to serve me well in a future relationship or a current relationship, rather. That, you know, I'm going to do better at, you know, believing those things and trusting those things and walking in that.

And I would not be able to be, to do that if I hadn't, God hadn't taken me through that. You know, I think that we carry him with us, as we talked about it. Harold pointed out, we take it into other relationships.

Immediate or future. And I think that that forgiveness is key for us to have the joy and the hope that we want to have in the future. No doubt. I mean, it's hard not to, that's the whole part of this whole restoration process and forgiveness is a big part of that. And you're going to carry that along if you don't deal with it eventually.

And that doesn't mean that you're not potentially going to, anytime you expose your heart for love for the next time down the road, you're opening yourself up for that. But how do you handle it the next time? Have you learned from what you went through the previous time? Just a story from my youth. I mean, as a kid, you know, I'd been around the gospel but didn't really have anything deep. And teenage years, looking for a job, got a job at McDonald's and I met this girl there. And first girl that gave me some attention and I just went gaga over her and I thought we were a thing and we weren't a thing and I found that out really quick. And I'd never had really that rejection before.

I know Robby's talked about rejection from a girlfriend with, you know, that was with his best friend. Very difficult, I can't imagine, but it was something similar to that and it was really hurtful. And we had to work together there at McDonald's.

And I remember this is the first time I had to put the shields up on my heart. And we were working together and, you know, she's up front serving the customers, I'm back cooking, she'd say she needs something or whatever. I just looked straight through her, just mean, cold. Sent her home, she went home crying a couple days just, is that mean?

But I didn't know, you know. And, you know, we made up after that as friends and kind of happened again. And, you know, going down the road, we've talked recently since I've been separated just as friends and all that stuff is behind us.

In fact, she was going through a separation herself, we were able to talk through that. So all that stuff was healed from the past, but I'm just thinking back about how that was not good for my heart. I thought I was getting revenge by doing that and seeing it on her face, you know, it was almost like I was, you know, how you are. Whenever you feel like I've been hurt, that person hurts, sent her home crying, that was somewhat of a victory.

But then I saw how hollow that was. And it's just, you know, you think about people and how they do it. She was just trying to figure out life.

She didn't really do anything wrong, she was just trying to figure out who she liked or whatever. Things happen, but we hold those things on. I think, too, when I got serious about God in my 20s, I remember reading that passage from Matthew 18. And it's about the king that had a servant who owed him so much and the servant complained and said, No, no, I don't want to pay this back. King said, Okay, I forgive you. Well, the servant, as soon as he gets forgiven, he goes out and the guy owes him like $10 and he said, No, I'm going to take you and bind you up and hold you and put you in prison.

And, you know, the king found out and he's like, No, no, no, that's not the way it works. And then the torment for him was much greater because that made a big impression. I began to realize, you know, I've been forgiven so much.

How can I hold anything somebody does? Now, it's not easy as you walk out life, but that's always been a foundational, you know, pillar in my mind about forgiveness. Thanks, Andy. Rodney, do you want to share anything?

Well, I just, back where you were earlier, Sam, where you're going in the future and what do we learn from all the unforgiveness we've got in our heart? You know, it may not be perfect, but you can, there's like Danny was saying, what was that, the onions? Onion effect. What's our new onion effect?

Yeah, the onion effect. You know, there's different layers to this forgiving because you can forgive them for a little bit of what they did and then you can forgive them maybe for a little bit more. But are you really just wholeheartedly forgiving? And the freedom you get to walk forward with in future relationships, like I was just thinking just like for you, Sam, it's like, Oh, my gosh, yeah, I look at your relationship with your kids, your relationship with this group and other groups that you talk about and other men that you know that we all kind of know. And it's, you get to see that so clearly in other people's lives. And I think that's one of the things we need to really, you know, talk more about with each other is, hey, this is what I see in you.

Yeah, you've talked about this. And, wow, since I've seen your heart change in the unforgiven state is just a great place to go help other people out and always look for it in others because one of the things that helps me get through things I struggle with, like forgiving people, is the fact that I've seen what you guys have done. When you guys talk about your issues and, hey, I've forgiven and you guys have moved on, I'm like, wow, can I go do that with my situation?

That's a great point. And, you know, I think it goes back to one of the things that Andy said or was said in Andy's clip was when God was talking to Mac, he said, you may have to forgive over and over and over again or a thousand times or whatever. And that's what it looks like. You know, sometimes it's chunks of forgiveness. You know, it's a big forgiveness elephant, you know, unforgiveness elephant.

I got to take a little bite at a time sometimes to chew that elephant up. Yeah, so, you know, Randy said a couple things, you know, kind of, you know, provoking. The one that he said was, you know, when you are holding that unforgiveness, you're more like Satan, obviously, than you are like God. And it's fascinating to me that God puts us in families. And, you know, it's not just spouses, you know, you've got in-laws, you've got all sorts of interesting characters that are in this group of people that you, and 70 times 7, that ain't nothing.

Just saying. And, you know, the stuff builds and it builds and it builds. And, you know, I can actually remember just Sunday as Tammy and I were going to church, I said, man, we have got to figure out a way to get the massive forgiveness download. Like, we have so much that we need to forgive because it's getting piled on every single day and piled on and piled on and piled on. And, you know, it takes a thought of what Jesus said to me, you know, the scripture that kind of speaks to that. The only time that Jesus talks about grace or teaches about grace is he says, for you to love those that love you, what grace is that to you?

So, what he's saying is to love the unlovable. Well, those are the ones that are the 70 times 7 times 7 times 7. I'm just saying.

Or maybe another 70 times. Like, how in the world? I mean, at some point in time, is there a limit? Well, apparently not. And apparently, right, I don't want to end up being there like Satan. And so we got to keep downloading, you know, like the forgiveness. And it's fascinating.

It's fascinating to me that I'm in this family, right, which requires that here you are. And are you going to really live that? Because it's one thing to, you know, forgive that person that did something, you know, whatever. But man, I mean, real life is a lot different.

Yeah, forgiving them and living with them is different than forgiving them and not seeing them. Right. Yeah. You're feeling what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm picking up what you're throwing down there.

Smelling what the rocks cooking. A quick story. One of the greatest lessons on forgiveness and God's forgiveness I ever got was from my son. He was about seven years old, I guess, me and his mom hadn't been married too long. I would make his lunch every morning and I asked him one morning, make your lunch. And he said, no, I didn't eat mine yesterday or I had two from yesterday or something.

So we don't know about our business. Well, that evening he comes in our room and I'm standing there and usually he's coming to see his mom and he's got his lunch box in his hand. And he walks right around my shell. And that little seven year old, 10 foot tall guy confessed to me that he lied to me and just confessed his sin right there. Just and laid it out.

And I'm stunned. But what God spoke to me was see how it's done, because I had no choice but to just forgive him and let it go. God says he'll throw it in the sea of forgetfulness and remember it no more. And, you know, I remember that story because it made such an impact on me because here was a little child shall lead them.

He was showing the example of how God works. So do you not like your sandwiches? Is that what the deal was?

They were freezer-like vegetables. I mean, I don't know how bad you can mess one of them up, but everything I would. Okay, makes sense. As I was thinking more about this, sometimes that forgiveness is a conversation. But how do you step into forgiveness when there's somebody that you can't be around because it's not safe or somebody that isn't around anymore? You know, in the times that God's called me through to forgive my dad for things, and he's been gone since 1984, or more my sister, that it was not safe to talk to my sister.

She had some mental illnesses and was not a safe person to have any type of conversation with. But God still, you know, as I shared before in the air, kept laying her on my heart. He kept waking me up saying, pray for her. I'm like, I don't want to pray for her. It ought to go back to bed. You know, this went on. And finally, after about how many nights he woke me up, I'm like, all right, you know. And I prayed for her, and I really did pray for her.

And the release that I felt was just tremendous. You know, she's never going to know anything. She probably didn't even care. She's not alive anymore, so she doesn't care. But she probably didn't even know.

Right? And that's the whole thing is sometimes people don't know, and you think they do, and you're just holding yourself in bondage. And the last point I wanted to make on it was, as Jesus tells us in the Lord's Prayer to forgive, please forgive us.

You know, I'm not going to quote it right. I'm agreeing, but forgive us as we forgive people who have trespassed against us. I'm really glad that Jesus doesn't hold us to that, that he forgives us totally, even when we haven't forgiven totally.

Right? But he knows that we're works, you know, works are under construction. And that we need to be able to continue to walk in him with that and help us to forgive. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the boot camp November 17th through 21st. We'll talk with you next week. Forgive somebody.