Forgiveness

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Thanks for listening this Truth Network The masculine journey starts here now. Well welcome to the post-Thanksgiving show. We're not going to do anything on Thanksgiving, but that's where we're at. And so we are doing something, the topic for tonight's show or today's show comes to us, it's a leftover from bootcamp.

Leftover there, that's inside of Thanksgiving, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. So, one of you guys want to help explain how it's a leftover from bootcamp? Oh yeah, to me, you know, one of the major topics that we saw in the cards that we get for prayer requests had to do with this, after we did the wound talk where we kind of honed in on this idea of forgiveness. And with the idea that, you know, I held up a picture of your heart actually, and I said, you know, every time you got, you know, this kid that hurts you in school when you're a little, and you didn't forgive him, tears off this piece of your heart, and then, you know, I could switch the camera over here so people could see it. And then there's that girl.

It's self-explanatory. That little girl that gets you, and the next thing you know, there goes another piece of your heart. And oh man, I mean, by the time you get married and, you know, it didn't take very long, and more and more of your heart that you're supposed to serve God with your whole heart. But the real difficult one is you got angry when you know you shouldn't have, and then you got forgiveness issues with yourself, or maybe God took away somebody in your life that you, you know, and you get angry at God, and you get the feeling like, man, how much heart do you have left in order to?

And so it's a struggle for all of us. It just really is, and so it's a really awesome topic from a standpoint of there's so much freedom, and that, you know, of course a big theme always at boot camp is freedom, and so forgiveness is the key to so much of that. Yeah, I mean, every boot camp we're going to touch on forgiveness.

I mean, it's a key part of Christianity, right? And so we're going to, you know, do some things around that every camp, but predominantly the prayer cards, pretty universal, were about forgiveness, forgiving someone else, forgiving themself, forgiving God, all three. You know, maybe they had the forgiveness hat trick going, where they had all three that they had to try to learn how to forgive. Yeah, and listening to prayer, one of our words was forgiven, so that's the other thing of somebody identifying with not only being able to forgive somebody else, but to be forgiven as well, so yeah. So if you haven't figured it out, the topic for this week is forgiveness, right? And so all the clips are going to be around that and stories that we share, hopefully are where God's kind of called us into places of forgiveness. And so we're going to start with Robby.

Robby has the first clip of the afternoon. Yeah, so again, getting back to the amazing wound talk, which has impacted, anybody who's ever been to a boot camp, if you weren't impacted by this talk, I don't know what you're thinking about it. It's definitely a place of freedom, and it is certainly a place where this comes into play, and so one of the major themes of that, or movie clip that we use in the wound talk is from the movie The Kid, which is certainly a miraculous movie from the standpoint of, it's the story of Russell Duretz, who is really kind of a jerk, which has to do with what his pose is, actually, that there's always a story behind every person that walks around like a jerk. There's a story behind that, and they're aware of that as a self-protective thing, that that's the reason why they're a jerk. And so you see this in Russell Duretz, and then through the miracle of movies, here comes a young Russell Duretz to kind of go back and show him what the dreams were for his life, kind of what he was going to become. And then as you move through this clip, you'll see that he finds in his young self the reason why his old self was a jerk, but more than that, why he was not wholehearted enough to enter into any kind of relationship with anybody, because one of the things you see through the movie is he can't seem to connect with any women.

That's the deal, so you go ahead and play it. Sorry, kid, no dog here. Tripod! Tripod, the dog's name is Tripod! I know the dog's name! I know everything, kid, I know why you're here!

Let's just have dinner with him! I'm sorry! How can you do this to your mother? What are you trying to do, kill her faster?

What? We're going to lose her! Stop what you did today! You're killing her!

Mom's dying. I know. Soon? Yeah.

For your next birthday. Did I do it? No.

No. No, you didn't do it. It's not your fault. Dad was just saying those things because he's scared.

Because he knows that he has to raise you alone, he doesn't know how to do it. I thought you never cried. Yeah, since my eighth birthday. Guess I'm starting up again. Go on. Because I just figured out where I got that twitch from.

Somebody called the Lamby limbs. So the truth is we've got all these situations in our youth that we don't realize are behind a lot of ways we're entrapped. So here's poor Russell, he really has felt like he was responsible for his mother's death from cancer since he was eight years old. And then he's trying to deal with his father's anger and you'll see that their relationship's on the rocks at the beginning of the movie. And so much of his life has to do with this trap that he found himself in when he was eight years old when he had no way to interpret that. And so Sam, you and I both have enjoyed the journey of going into wounds like that with Jesus helping you interpret what actually went on in your life. And you believe me, we have these situations in our life for a lot of the reasons that we are acting in ways we don't understand.

There is a young little Robby and a young little Sam that were hurt. And in my case, in my addiction to pornography, there was a lot of hurts involved which required forgiveness. I had to forgive as he did, Russell, I had to forgive myself which Jesus provided that on the cross. I had to forgive the family members that were involved both that allowed it to happen and that caused it to happen. And then there's this whole God issue involved. And so you have all these forgiveness issues.

Yes, there's agreements and there's other things we talk about in many shows. But as I think we'll point out in this show, the forgiveness thing without Jesus' interpretation and without his help, because he heard Russell telling young Russell, it's not your fault. It's pretty hard to tell yourself it's not your fault. You need Jesus really or Jesus with skin on somewhere to help you work through the idea that this was not your fault and it's going to require forgiveness on your part. And so to me this is just a freedom topic like it's just meant so much in my life.

Oh, absolutely. I think often what happens, especially with those wounds that happen to us as kids, right, we get to the point where we're adults and we can think back logically on situations and we can understand things, but understanding has never equaled healing. I can understand lots of things and not be healed from it. It takes Jesus entering in and taking you back to that place to get healing. Now that could be in the shape of a counselor that Jesus is working through. It can be in the shape of lots of other people that Jesus is using to do that with, but you have to go back in. I can't think my way out of it. It's not a thinking issue, it's a heart issue. It's at the core and it has to be processed and dealt with there because I can try to convince myself, oh, well, that doesn't really matter, that's so many years ago. Well, obviously it's still holding me hostage. And so I have to be able to enter back into that with Jesus. That very process you're mentioning is the fig leaf.

It doesn't matter or whatever. Those are the things that cover you up and make you feel protected from not really allowing it to be healed. Yeah, things that happen to you as a kid, you can say, oh, well, my story with my sister, it's been on here many times, I've talked about it. But as an adult, you can start to think, oh, okay, well, I later learned she had mental illness. Okay, well, that was probably what a lot of that was. Well, she probably had her own issues, which she did.

And all those are true, and those are all good knowledge points and data points, but none of those equal healing. The healing only comes when you can get to the part of forgiveness. And in that case, I had to forgive her, I had to forgive myself, had to forgive God in some ways, which we'll talk about later on. But God didn't need my forgiveness. There was something in the relationship to where I had to forgive him of something he never did.

Because the enemy had me convinced he had, if that makes sense. God doesn't need our forgiveness, but he's gracious. He gets blamed a lot for things that are omitted, like he should have stepped in and did it. Well, if you use that logic, he should have stepped in and prevented Eve from taking the apple and Adam following her.

He could have stepped in in all of the Bible and human history when people chose sin over him. But he gives us free will. Well, people typically want free will for themselves, and they want control for other people. And they want grace for themselves and judgment for others. Exactly.

We're pretty much universal at a lot of that. God's either – he's all in. When he makes a decision, he does it the way he's going to do it. And he opted for free will. And so we can go back and say could have, should have, wished he would have, that kind of thing.

But it doesn't change any of that. Go to masculinejourney.org. We do have a boot camp coming up, but it's not at the website yet. It's coming up in March, and I don't remember the dates, but I'll tell you after the last weekend. Last weekend in March.

So get a calendar. Saturday, Sunday. It's that weekend. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Thursday night through Sunday.

And we'll be getting more details out here before the Christmas holiday. But go to masculinejourney.org, and we'll talk to you after the break. We know that without him, I'm nothing. I don't got nothing, and I will be nothing. So I decided to come back, and just right now for the first time, like, I've been through a lot of things. Like, as you see me, tattoos all over and everything, I've been through a war. So for the first time in my life on this camp, I've been able to feel that peace in my heart. I haven't seen my family in over eight years now. But I actually can say today that I'm okay with it. God is with me, and he's been dealing with my heart on a way that I never experienced it before. And I'm just thankful and grateful. Register today at masculinejourney.org.

Welcome back to Masculine Journey. Danny, that was your bump. No, I'm just kidding. That was from boot camp, and it was Robby's bump, and he had to step out for a minute. Yeah, he used it in his talk, I believe. He did, he did. It's Matthew West, is that correct? Yep. And the song's called Forgiveness.

It's a great song, so if you haven't added it to your playlist, it's a good one to have. But it'll prompt you to think, that's for sure. Prompt you to forgive. Well, hopefully.

Hopefully the Holy Spirit will do it. Or at least push you in that direction, right? Absolutely, absolutely. It takes away your reasons of not forgetting. Right, yeah. It kind of puts it in the forefront. Yeah, we have plenty of reasons not to forgive.

At least we think we do. But hopefully as we talk more throughout the rest of this show and the after hours, you'll realize that those are all just shallow at best, you know, and the only person they serve is the enemy, you know, and those excuses and those things that we hold onto. So we'll talk more about that as we go. Andy, we are actually up to your clip from the movie The Shack. Yep.

Okay. So The Shack, it's story of Mac and his journey. He ends up in this shack, and it's like this dream kind of world that he's living in. But it's to help him heal the fact that his daughter was abused and then murdered.

And he was going and helping to save one of his kids who had fallen off a canoe at a camp. And he's really struggling, and God's bringing him on this journey, and this is kind of getting near the end where he – Mac won't let it go. He's kept a lot of anger, and he's having this conversation with God, and it's a representation of God the Father, and he just really wants Mac – God wants Mac to process where he's gone with his anger and the fact that it's not getting him anywhere. He's stuck. And let's just listen to the dialogue and talk about it.

Mac, the pain inside is devouring you, robbing you of joy and crippling your capacity to love. I can't. You're not stuck because you can't. You're stuck because you won't. You don't have to do this alone. I'm here with you. I don't know how.

Just say it out loud. I forgive you. Genzi, you're such a joy. I'm still angry.

Of course you are. No one lets go all at once. You might have to do it a thousand times before it gets any easier.

But it will. Let's go. So listen to that again, and it comes up to me. The point I made before the show is that that forgiveness thing, a lot of times – there's a lot of commands in the Bible we think we have to do on our own, and Jesus said it pretty simple. Without me, you can't do anything, and that would be, I would think, the commands he gives us to do. And the command to forgive, a lot of times we think we have the capacity to do it ourselves, but I really don't think we do. Obviously he can guide us through what he went through and how much he's been able to forgive, and that's perspective. But I really believe the more – I've held grudges, I've held resentment, and it doesn't just go away on its own. Time doesn't heal.

Jesus does. But that whole forgiveness thing, I think he's actively in it now while it's happening. I can't say that I was really inviting him directly in, but he was in there.

And I know I invited him – it's just not always, I think, conscious of what's really going on. But when you look at the fruit of it down the road, you know that he's come in and helped you forgive somebody, and that's, like you said, I think it's – Sidewalk Prophets, this is where the healing begins, and it's talking about forgiveness. So just a little bit on my story of that – there was a couple different things, but one time I remember God really laid this on my heart for my family. And this was my – I wasn't married yet, and it was my dad, my mom, we were all in Missouri where I'm from, and we were having this time, and God put it on my heart because I hadn't treated – and I was, you know, I was 17, 18.

No, I was probably 22, 23, maybe 25 at the time. And I was processing all this stuff, and I went around the table and asked for forgiveness for the whole family. And the power of that was incredible, and it was like popcorn. It started happening with other family members, and I just began to realize the power in that. It's powerful words to ask for forgiveness. I mean, it was asking forgiveness for the harm I did, but in that there was healing, and you just see God's grace in that, and it's something that, you know, you want. And then there's a Scripture that backs it up in Matthew 18 where you have the servant that owes so much, and he comes and asks the master to forgive him of that, and he does. And then he has this other guy over here that owes him so little, and he goes, and he's like, no, you're going to pay all that, you're going to jail.

And then the master comes back, his master comes back and is like, no, and he throws him into outer darkness. That's what forgiveness does. It puts us in a place where we're not, you know, connected with God. Unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness, I'm sorry. But, yeah, that whole story, reading that story is what got me to do what I did. It had that much impact on me because, like, I'm like, he's forgiven me so much, how can I not, you know, do this small thing here and there, so.

Darrell Bock Andy, what you were talking about, what he said was, apart from me, you can do nothing. You know, there's a couple things you probably don't want to try without me. And there's a Scripture in 2 Timothy where it says you're ever learning but never coming into the knowledge of the truth. And I think that ties back into that with stuff like this. You can't enter into, I know I can't, into these wounds and stuff like that without him. And you can learn all this stuff. You can read, you memorize Scripture.

There's nothing wrong with those things. You can go to church every Sunday, you know, know all the worship songs and know everything. But until it gets messy, you really don't know him and the knowledge of the truth, because he said he is the way, the truth, and the life.

So until that happens and I open up my heart and go, Jesus, I'm done, I can't do anything. And that's a hard place to be, but it's a great place to be. Darrell Bock That's a broken spirit and a contrite heart that he can actually work with. Darrell Bock Yeah.

And it's amazing what we'll take ourselves through to get there. David Yeah. What I thought was cool about the movie The Shack, I actually enjoyed that movie quite a bit. Darrell Bock You even liked the actor Mac, don't you?

David No, no, not as much. He was not the shining spot of the movie. But anyway, it was a very well done movie.

But what I liked about it, and I read the book, you know, back when it came out, but there's a lot of truth in the fact, you know, the symbol of the shack is a place where his daughter had been killed, right? So God's asking him through this movie to go back to a place that he desperately doesn't want to go to. He wants to avoid at all costs because it's been one of the most painful things in his life, right?

And I can't even imagine what that would be like. But we all have painful places we don't want to go back to, that we try to avoid. And those are the places that God's calling us to.

Those are our shacks. You know, whether it's another situation, you know, with whatever the story is, God's calling us back to that place of pain, because that's where the healing is going to have to happen. Darrell Bock One of those seven times 70 events, right?

David Yeah. Yeah, that you're going to have to go back. And I loved in that clip where he talked about, you know, you may have to do this a thousand times. Or if you've carried it a lot of years, you may have to do it 20,000 times.

You know, I don't think there's a number, you're just going to have to do it until it doesn't matter anymore, from the standpoint, it's just out of your system, it's gone. You know, even at that, you can't let your guard down, because the enemy doesn't want to let you stay there, right? Whatever ground you've gained, he's going to try a different tactic to try to get you back to that place or into a worse place, right, to backslide, right? And so just be aware that, you know, you have to hold on to that forgiveness once you've received it or given it or however that's worked, you know, in the situation you're in, you have to hold on to that and fight to keep it, because the enemy will try to steal that and rob that from you as well. Darrell Bock Yeah, usually it's another situation, you forgive somebody and then they hurt you again.

So then you get confused on the whole boundary thing and all that, but again, Jesus knew that this was going to come up, and that's why he gave the story of the seven times seventy, or how many times? Gary Barnes I had somebody pour some wisdom into me one time. I was going through a situation and they said, well, pray for them.

Because I was angry. And pray for them. I'm thinking, I don't want to pray for them, you know.

And then I learned, you know, David said, Lord, break your teeth. I like that prayer. But they said, you can't stay mad at somebody and continually pray for them. And I did that begrudgingly, because now I was mad at the person who told me that. I had to pray for two people. So, you know, it kind of doubles down on you.

But it works, is that eventually you begin to pray for, and the suggestion was, you pray for them the things that you want for yourself. And eventually it breaks down a whole lot of things. And I don't know whether the other person changed it or not, but I sure did. So – David I think it's important to realize what forgiveness isn't. Right? Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to have reconciliation. Right? Because some situations are not safe to reconcile in.

Some aren't even available. Like, there are things I had to go back and forgive my father for, right? Over the years. He's been dead since 84. We're not going to have a conversation about that this side of heaven, right? But by then I won't really care, because I'll be in heaven. But, you know, it's just not possible, or sometimes it's not safe. But we're still called to that place of forgiveness, right, because it's about our heart. At the end of the day, it's about your heart. It's not about the other person. Yes, there's a piece of it that's about the other person, and you can't halfway do this.

But, you know, you have to go into this with the understanding of, God, I have to do what's best for me in this, and what's best for me is listening to you, you know, and stepping to a place I don't want to step into, or stepping into a situation I don't want to deal with. Because none of us really want to go there. No.

But how many of us have went there and are so glad that we did? Yeah. For sure.

Okay. So we have much more on this. Go to masculinejourney.org. You can listen to the After Hours.

You can pick it up on any Spotify, iTunes, any of those places, any podcast outlet. We're available there. If you'd like to ask us any questions, put our first name, at masculinejourney.org. That's our email. So andy at masculinejourney.org, Robby, any of that, you can send us a message. We'd love to hear from you. And this week, let God love on your heart.

Let him lead you into a place of forgiveness and love somebody else well this week. This is the Truth Network.