Teaching | The How-To of Forgiveness | Forgiving As We Have Been Forgiven E03

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome to the John Markomas Teachings podcast. My name is Yinka Duss in an Amir host. Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. And it's great to have you with us. We're continuing our series on forgiveness, exploring what it means to release those who have heard us and experience the freedom Jesus offers. In this week's episode, Gerald tackles one of the most difficult questions in the forgiveness journey. What do you do when you try to forgive, where you're still struggling? You walk through a practical step-by-step process from moving from decision to deep emotional healing. Showing us the forgiveness isn't just about letting someone off the hook. It's about replacing the negative emotions attached to our wounds with empathy, compassion, and love. Here's Gerald. Hey again, my name's Gerald, one of the leaders here. And we are in a practice right now about forgiveness. How's-- (audience laughs) My name's Gerald, and we are in a practice. How's that going though? You guys enjoying forgiveness? Yeah. We're halfway through. And some of you guys are like dang it. I thought we were done, no we're not. We're at that point where it gets hard and you want to quit, but maybe you should press in. You know what I'm saying? Thank you. And if you are really new to the Bridgham story, what we've been doing is kind of regular week to week, we're teaching through a book of the Bible, which is Matthew's, that's kind of running in the background. And then we pause that and we do a practice. Like we just did fasting and now we're doing forgiveness. And then this is four weeks long, and then after this practice we go back to Matthew. Does that make sense? That's kind of how we roll here. So again, welcome, let me go ahead and pray. God, thanks so much for sending your Holy Spirit. Thanks that we're not alone, God, that you come alongside us in the person of the Holy Spirit and you help us. You guide us, you endure us and empower us. So we just together, we just say welcome, Holy Spirit. We love it when you come, we love what you do. We love all that you bring. And we just welcome you. There was this image that was so powerful of an avalanche coming over us and it was your love. And it covered everyone and everything. So God, we know that your Holy Spirit actually works in our hearts to testify of your love. So we just say, come, Holy Spirit, and bring your love even right now. Amen. Great. So as we've been talking about forgiveness, and hopefully you're talking about this with your community or friends and processing it, there's practices that we do that go along with this. One of the things that we've realized is that we've talked a lot about big major offenses. Like massive things, trauma events from childhood or adolescence. But let's be honest. And those are super important and there's a space for that. But also, on the day to day kind of regular, we all deal with multiple offenses and multiple opportunities, let's call them, to forgive. If you live in the city and you drive a car, there's a lot of opportunities to forgive one another. Am I right? I ride a bike normally to work and a couple weeks ago, you know, and it's about a 20 minute ride from Southeast to the office in the Pearl. And a couple weeks ago I was riding and I get in my head on like in a zone, I'm just kind of cruising, I've got my path. And one of the things that I'm not proud of, but sometimes I just as I'm approaching a red light, sorry, I'm having my wife is like, hates this. As I'm approaching a red light, I like look down a one way straight in the Pearl. And if there's no oncoming car, I just kind of roll, you know, just, you know what I mean? And I'm not proud of that. And I'm working on it guys, I'm in process. But you know, a couple weeks ago I was in my head, I'm thinking, I'm like, you know, thinking about my day, what are you going to meet, whatever I'm doing and as you know, cruising through this intersection, I just kind of look, no car, and I roll. And then I hear a voice and it was a real voice of another person on a bike, a guy that was waiting for the light to turn green. And as I rolled through the intersection, he said really loud, he was like, oh, you're one of those guys. (audience laughing) And then he called me a name that was really inappropriate, that I will not say here. I felt like I should call my mom. Mom, this guy called me a name, but I didn't want to even tell her the name that he said. And I was like shocked and then I was kind of embarrassed and then I was mad. And I started thinking and funny thing was he then passes me and then pulls into an office right next to mine. So I know where he works now. And I was thinking about it and for whatever reason, it got stuck in my mind. And I kept thinking of things that I would say to him back if I could go relive that moment again. They were all totally Christian and it was like, I'm a pastor, dude, you don't even know where I was, you know, it's like stuff like that. I was going to an emergency prayer thing and you like mess it up, I don't know. But seriously, the thing that was scariest for me was not the red light, but it was how much I kind of thought over and over and over about that and felt negatively toward that guy. So let's just be honest that forgiveness is something that we have to deal with regularly. And I will be the first to say, it's something I'm still working on. So let's turn to Jesus' teaching on forgiveness and Matthew chapter seven, beginning in verse nine. This is what's been called the Lord's Prayer. This is the disciples saying, Jesus teaches how to pray and he does, but not only does he teach him to pray, he teaches us a ton about life and the reality that's the kingdom of God. So, verse nine, Matthew six, first time, this then is how you should pray, our Father in heaven, how would be your name? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And then a couple more verses and this is the hard part. If you forgive others, other people, when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. So just quickly, a couple of things to point out from this. Number one, in orthodox historic Christianity, there is forgiveness. It's an amazing thing if you think about the world religions, one of the hallmarks of what it means to be a Christian and receive the love of God is that it's all about forgiveness. When Jesus died on the cross, his like almost final words were, forgive them, Father, for they don't know what they're doing. Now, what we do, and as you read through the story of Scripture, actions have consequences and our choices and actions are super, super important, but God forgives. Forgiveness is freely available. For some of you tonight, that's all you need to hear. Stay, but that was the main thing you need to hear. Forgiveness is real and it's available. We get that from that prayer. But then also, notice that Jesus assumes we're gonna need forgiveness regularly. This is a template he was teaching us disciples kind of for daily prayer. And I think what he's saying is we need forgiveness daily as well. So just as we need oxygen daily, and our friend has said that forgiveness is the oxygen of the kingdom of God. I love that. We breathe in from the Father. We inhale forgiveness. But then that breath in our lungs has to go somewhere. So also we exhale and we extend forgiveness to others. Like breathing oxygen forgiveness is normal, it's healthy and it's necessary. Two authors put it this way. And the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He emphasized the daily practice of forgiveness as a way of maintaining and sustaining relationships. Just like food, forgiveness sustains our lives and community. Just like we cannot live without daily bread, we cannot fully live in our communion with each other and with God without the ability to grant and receive forgiveness. Forgiveness is just part of life, especially in the kingdom of God as we try to live life together in community. We are absolutely desperate for it. But we also learn from this prayer that there's a condition. To receive forgiveness, we ourselves must be forgiving people. The heart that's not open to grant forgiveness to others will also be closed off to receive God's forgiveness. That's heavy. So this leads to a big question for today, if you're ready for it, you guys ready for it. The big question is, what if I'm really struggling to forgive? What if I've tried, but I still want the person that hurt me to hurt. I still, the pain that they caused me, I still want that pain for them. What if you're struggling with it? with that. And we all know what this is like even in the minor offenses when someone that's caused you pain and they show up somewhere and you're surprised to see them like at church. And they're like, I didn't know they went to the five. Oh shoot, I'm going to the seven. And they show up. They walk in. Your heart rate increases. Your palms are sweaty and you do not want to greet them. You want to snub them and make them feel it a little bit. You know what I'm talking about? So what do we do about that? That's what we're going to talk about today. We want to talk about the super, super practical kind of the daily choices and the daily practices of how to forgive. And I got a ton of this material from this guy I discovered. Fantastic. Christian Jesus follower, his name is Dr. Everett Worthington. He is a psychologist, a PhD, and he spent 30 years, basically the bulk of his career as a Jesus follower from a place of faith, from the scriptures, but in like doing the clinical science of what helps people to forgive. What helps people of all different demographic backgrounds? What helps them to achieve deep lasting forgiveness? That's what he's devoted his life to. And so let me just put it to you this way. If someone studied thousands of different people over 30 years of research and they identified some things that were really, really helpful for people to achieve lasting forgiveness, would you want to know about that? Good. And if not, just they put, I think there's probably still something for you. But before we jump into Worthington's stuff, I want to talk for just a second about emotions. So in our journey as a church, we discovered something totally radical, mind blowing. We as humans have emotions. If you're around for the emotionally healthy church, we went through that and it was kind of this conversation about, wow, I guess in most kind of Bible teaching churches in the past 20 years that I've been part of, we didn't really talk about emotions. We talked about emotional health. So we discovered that as a church. Amazing. We have emotions for human. Welcome to the party. And also Jesus experienced as a perfect man and God. He experienced this whole range of emotions. So monitoring our emotions and being aware of them is super important in forgiveness. So think about this for a second. Someone transgresses somehow against you. You decide to forgive them. You give up the right to repay them back. You absorb the pain. But then God actually wants us to go a level further, to love them, which means to actually replace the negative emotions connected to that event, the resentment, bitterness, fear to replace all that with the positive emotions of empathy, sympathy, love, and compassion towards the one that hurts you. This is called emotional replacement. So when we forgive someone, we can actually change the emotional attachments to the transgressor and to the event. We can't change the event, but we can change how we think about it and actually how we feel about it. So when we think about something that hurt us in our past, our body actually sends messages to the working memory to your mind and our brain detects these hormones. Are they associated with resentment, bitterness, hostility, hatred, or are they hormones sending messages of empathy, sympathy, compassion, love? Replacement occurs when we can actually picture that old wound, but this time while experiencing those strong forgiving emotions, these positive feelings can actually overcome the negative. The forgiving emotions can attach to that memory. So wouldn't that be awesome if you could have that kind of healing from things that have hurt you from your past? And we believe that you actually can. And this is like a work that we do with God by the power of the Holy Spirit and with a trusted friend or two. So here's the process of what this looks like from Everett Worthington. You guys ready for this? It's an acronym, reach R-A-C-H. We're going to go through one at a time. It's like a slow reveal to get them all and then at the end you get the reward. Okay, ready? First one is, step one, recall the hurt. One author said this, we eye the evil face to face and we call it what it is. Only realists can be forgivers. Oftentimes we want to forget a painful memory and suppress the feelings of unforgiveness and the pain. We don't want to admit it happened or we want to minimize the impact like it wasn't that big of a deal. They didn't really mean it, but the first step towards actually healing is facing the pain and the frustration. And for some, I know this is the scariest thing in your life. And when we recall the hurt, there will be emotions. We'll want to be really careful when we go back there and so we don't slip into or feed into this vengeful rumination to ruminate. So you want to be careful that you don't slip into that cycle of like recalling the hurt and then just fixating on those negative emotions because honestly that kind of negative fixation is the enemy of forgiveness. So we ask the spirit for self-control in this process to guard us as we go through it. But the bottom line is we want to bring the event into the open without retraumatizing or fixating on the negative emotions. And many find that writing about this like journaling about these kinds of painful events are super, super helpful. It could also be helpful for you to talk it out with a trusted friend. One study actually cited that people who journal regularly have better health. Did you know that? They physically experience better health by getting that stuff out of their heart and mind through the act of journaling. So at first, when we write about this or talk about it, all the emotions can be strong. But eventually what we want to work towards is this ability to recall the event as objectively as possible. And it could look like this. We're going to talk about some practical stuff here. It could simply be like this. Get alone in a quiet place, maybe with a trusted friend or a loan with a journal and ask God to help you recall the event. And create that picture in your mind. I try to remember what you felt. Try to be as precise as possible with emotions to imagine it vividly. And it's okay to express negative emotions in this space. You want to do it in control. And if you can't, if you can't stop unwanted thoughts, then that's a space to go, wow, okay, this is somewhere I need healing. If your thoughts are spiraling out of control, especially in hate, anger, revenge, whatever, then that's something great. We believe that there's two great pathways when we're stuck like that. One is come and get healing prayer. Let us pray for you. We believe that oftentimes God miraculously heals even emotions like that. But secondly, this may be something you want to talk to a therapist about. So try to be objective. Picture yourself like almost from the outside looking in. And then as you remember what happened and how you felt about it, you can write about it or share about this with a trusted friend. And I know that many, this is hard to do. Like, you don't want to go into that pain. But think about it this way. Compared to the effects and the pain of unforgiveness, this is totally worth it. This is a necessary step. You know, there's a community aspect to this that if I'm holding bitterness against the guy that cursed at me on the bike or anyone else, if I'm withholding that bitterness, it affects you. Did you know that? That we're actually not just those in my community that I gather with Tuesday nights around the dining table. It affects them, but also the greater body. We're a family, as Bethany said. So at the heart of this whole process is recalling the events and hurt, but then beginning to overlay the anger and the pain with empathy, sympathy, compassion, and agape love. So we start the process of healing by recalling the event, not excusing it or excusing the offender, but beginning to process all the emotions that are attached to it. That's step one. Number two, the next kind of stage in this process is to develop empathy to empathize. Les Greenberg, this noted researcher of psychotherapy, discovered what's now called the empty chair technique. So picture this in your mind. There was a 30-year-old young man, true story. 30-year-old young man, notice how I said young, 30 years old, super young. It's like, just young. And he was completely stunted. Emotionally, relationally, he was locked up harboring deep grudge against his mother and his father. His mother had committed suicide when he was 10 years old, and his father was in such deep pain that he was relationally and emotionally unavailable to his son. So while working with the therapist, this young man was asked to imagine if his father was there sitting in an empty chair, what he would say to him. So the young man sits down, super young, sits down, and the therapist says, now imagine your father there, and what would you say to him? So interesting, what he's basically doing is recalling the hurt, right? So he says to his father, like, I'm died. She was gone, but I felt like you were gone too. You basically abandoned me, and hurt so bad you were not. never, ever there for me. And then the psychologist says, now I want you to sit in your father's chair and imagine what he would say back to you. So the young man sits in the chair, and he thinks for a minute, just a second like, okay, what was it like for my dad? And then he's prompted by the therapist, okay, now what would your father say back to you? And he says, I am so, so sorry. I should have been there for you. I wish that I was a real father to you. When your mother died, it hurt me so bad. All I could do to cope with her was just barely survive. I should have been there for you, and I'm sorry. And then the therapist says, one more time, sit now in the chair, and think about what your father just said to you, and what would you like to say back to him? And he said to his father, imaginary, says, Dad, I am so sorry. I was only 10 years old when mom died. I had no idea what it was like for you. And through that process, he began to empathize for what his dad had gone through. And that was a turning point for him in beginning to forgive his father. You see, empathy brings us a massive step forward in healing and forgiveness. When a person sits in their perpetrator's seat and sees things from their point of view, they begin to identify with them as a fellow human. And this can lead to genuine compassion, realizing that we're all under the same skin, we're all made in the image of God. But what I've experienced is that when someone hurts me, I want to focus on all the negative things about them and not see any good in them. And then I want to see myself as this like innocent victim. They're all evil and I'm all innocent, right? It's like me and the bite guy. I was actually breaking the law. I rode my bike through a red light. That's totally illegal. In the last 10 o'clock, my friend Ryan, who works for Portland PD came up to me afterwards and he said Gerald, the city of Portland forgives you. (audience laughing) It felt really good. I didn't realize that I needed their forgiveness, but it felt the entire city, it felt really good. But here's the thing, I wanted to make myself out as innocent in that situation. But funny thing was I was driving with my daughter the other day, she's 16, she's an excellent driver. And I don't know about you guys, but I grew up driving in the suburbs with wide roads and like a couple four way stops and a couple like lights. But driving in the city is hard. There's one ways, there's narrow, there's weird stuff. And so we're coming up from Southwaterfront to get onto the Ross Island Bridge going east and you go up that hill, you wait in line, you're like, it's like a roller coaster, you're like, (humming) You know what I'm saying? Then you finally get to the top where you can see and then there's a three way stop and people are aggressive there. You know, they're like, okay, they went, they went. That's how I feel. They went, they went and you gotta go. And so Joe gets up to the point and then this lady goes out of turn and burns her and goes in front of her. And I was so mad, I read from the passenger seat, I reach over and start going on the horn at that lady, right? And freaked out my poor daughter. She's gonna traumatize not by the lady, but for me, like jumping on the horn. She broke the rule and I was ticked. But the irony of it is, that's the exact same thing I had done on my bike that I was so mad at this guy for calling me out on. And in that, I faced my humanity and realized what I wanna do is I wanna turn every offender into a monster and keep myself squeaky clean. Martin Luther King Jr. said it like this, "There's some good in the worst of us "and some evil in the best of us. "And when we discover this, we're less prone "to hate our enemies." So this kind of empathic understanding doesn't make the inexcusable behavior right, but it helps it be a little bit more understandable. So some super practical stuff. How do I grow an empathy towards the one who hurt me just a couple ideas? Number one, start with prayer. We ask God to activate empathy in us. You could do something like write a letter from the point of view of the person who hurts you. You could write out if you imagined that person apologizing to you, what that apology would look like. You could create your own empty chair therapy room. Just don't do this in public. Do it in private, but you could do that. And you could do that with a trusted friend to be praying and like guide you through that process. Maybe a therapist or maybe your community leader. Or you could even get to the point of where you ask and you listen to your transgressors story. You know, after the mass genocide in Rwanda and South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee used this principle. Victims told their stories, but then they asked. They wanted to hear the stories of their perpetrators, those that had killed their family members. And through that process, there was incredible forgiveness and reconciliation. Empathy is essential in order for healing to take place. The science shows that those who practiced empathy based forgiveness forgave more deeply and held on to forgiveness for longer than those who didn't. However, empathizing is not enough to do the full work of forgiveness. You need also to move to the place of offering the offender a gift. So the next, we did R, E, and now A, the next stage in forgiving is giving the altruistic gift of forgiveness. Interestingly enough, when two groups were studied, those who forgave for the other person's benefit, not for their own, had more lasting forgiveness than those who did it for their own benefit. Now, what I've always said and always thought has been, and this is still true, that forgiveness is holding someone captive, and then you set that captive free. You set this person free, but you realize the person that was really captive was yourself. That you're creating this bond, and this is really fascinating why so many of us locked in unforgiveness actually become like and create behavior like the one that hurt us because we're so connected to them through the chain of unforgiveness. So there's truth there that we need to be free for ourselves, but in their study of this, they found that it was actually most helpful for lasting forgiveness when you forgave like you were giving this release from the debt was a gift to the offender, and you actually did it for them. Interesting. The perspective is that it's not for you, it's for them. It's a gift they need that only you can give. And this act, when you do that, it brings shalom, the peace not only to you, but to the entire community. So how do we do this? One suggestion from Worlington is this, remember a time, and this is all these practices, all this practical stuff is on the website, practiceintheway.org, so check this out during the week, talk about it with your community, but one step that he suggests that's really helpful is to remember a time when another person forgave you. Now usually we say, okay, you know, God forgave me of so much, so now I will forgive others, which is totally true. However, some people can then respond, well he's God, of course he has to forgive, right? So it's actually super helpful. If you're locked up, you're stuck, you're struggling and forgiveness, it's really helpful to remember a time that another human forgave you. Maybe journal about that. Share that with a friend and give thanks for that time. And then in the same way that somebody gave you that gift of forgiveness, now you often offer that gift to another. You release them from the debt they owe you. And this is the aspect of forgiveness in the past two weeks that we've really focused in on this releasing. And at the heart of the gospel, think about it, is the free gift of forgiveness in Jesus, unirred, undeserved. And we live out that gospel when we give that same gift to others who have wronged us. And in some cases, like with this young man and both of his parents were deceased, his mother by suicide and then his dad later in life. And in his situation, his dad never knew the forgiveness work he had done. But there was still something that he needed to do in giving that gift, even if they don't know. Next one, you guys with me one more or two more. The next step, see is to commit publicly to forgive. You heard me. So have you ever forgiven and then later doubted it? Like you forgave someone, you worked through it, you're like, okay. And then all of a sudden it all resurfaces again. And you're like, oh my God. "Gosh, I thought I forgave them and hearing I'm doing it again, right? Maybe you see them somewhere, like at church at the 5th year, you're like, "I'm only going to the 7th from now on." And you see them and they walk in the room and it triggers all the pain. Memories link to those emotions of fear and anger, stored up in your body and brain and you're just like, "Ah, right?" Or maybe someone else hurts you in the same manner, in the same way. And then it resurfaces all that old pain. Or maybe you're just under stress and all of a sudden you're like, "Ah, I'm so stressed and I'm suddenly mad at that person for what they did a year ago or whatever." Or maybe the offender actually does hurt you again in the same way. And all the old feelings come back up. And any of this can make us seriously doubt whether we've forgiven them in the first place. So an important step in the process is to actually publicly commit to forgiving the person that's hurt you. And don't be too freaked out, you don't have to come up here and do it. If you want to, that'd be definitely a Sunday we will not forget. But it could be simply just like writing this out in the book and look up Worthington's stuff if you're interested, it's really, really fascinating. He actually has people in these workshops write out a certificate of forgiveness. Some of you guys actually need to do this. And you like, you know, make it official and you put the date and you write specifically what you are releasing this person from. And then your commitment, I will not bring it up to them again. I will not bring it up to anyone else and I will not bring it up to myself. And you sign it and you date it and maybe you need to have a witness too. That's an idea. Some of you need to do that. Also, it could be as simple as just talking to someone that's trusted about it. And just say, "Hey, I'm working through this thing and I just want you to know in front of you and in front of God, like I have forgiven them, I release them and will you pray for me. It could be something like that you do with a friend." And remember that forgiveness doesn't replace the hurtful memories. It replaces the negative emotions attached to those memories. Forgiveness is a complex and emotional event. It's not just a change of belief. Like, "Okay, I should forgive." It's a decision I choose to release them and absorb their debt. And then also, there's an emotional aspect. Now I experience and I work towards experiencing peace and love even when I think of them or they walk in the room. And finally, age. Hold on to forgiveness. We're going to be tempted to fall back into thinking about all the ways this person to hurt us. We're going to be tempted to go back to the old emotions of anger and what we want to do by God's grace and with the help of our community is to hold fast to forgiveness. A couple thoughts on that. First, the pain of a remembered hurt is not unforgiveness. Unforgiveness requires fixating on the negativity, on what they did and how bad they are and mulling that over and over and over. Again, that kind of negative fixation is the enemy of forgiveness. Remembering it is not. Also, when those negative emotions do come up, we don't want to dwell on them. It's natural to feel them. We just don't want to dwell on it. And remind yourself that you have forgiven that person. Remember what you said and did publicly. Go back, reread it. Call your friend in and tell them again, "Do you remember when I forgave them?" Your friend is like, "Yeah, dude, you totally did it." That was real, right? Because I'm not feeling like I know you did. And recommit. I just recommit again. I did it that day with you and I do it again right now. I released them. And something about publicly saying out loud with a friend is so powerful. There's a friend in my community who I really, really respect. She's done a lot of great work, forgiveness in her journey with Jesus. And she said every single time that she forgives someone, God prompts her to do forgiveness work for somebody. She says it out loud, not to like a roofful people, but like a loan with Jesus. But she actually proclaims it out loud. Again, I released this person from the hurt they caused me. Again, and she walks through that. There's something so powerful in that. So seek reassurance from a friend. Let them remind you that you've forgiven the person. And then the other thing is, if you're struggling, like, "Yeah, I work through this process. I'm working through my forgiveness and I'm still struggling." This is not a one and done. I hate to say it. I wish it was. But oftentimes, you know, for the guy that was a jerk to me when I did something illegal on my bike, "Okay, it's easy. I'm like, "Oh, it's funny. All right. I hope I don't see him again." But for deeper things, this is a process and a journey that we may have to keep going through over and over again. And even as I lay out these like kind of five steps, it's, man, for many of us, we'll be going through these over and over and over again. The example that was given to me recently is like an archaeological dig. They call it a tell. And there's, you know, especially like in Israel, I went and saw it's amazing. Modern-day streets in Jerusalem are like 30 to 40 feet above where they were originally because every civilization has come in, destroyed Jerusalem and then built their civilization. And then the next one comes in, destroys them and built into Jerusalem. So you can look on some of the streets. You look, they've dug it away and you stand there and you see layer and layer and layer and layer of these civilizations. Well, I think oftentimes the process what it's like for us is God brings us one layer deeper at a time. And you're like, "Oh, God, I forgive that person I'm done, I'm free." And then like a year or two later, you're like, "Really? We're doing this again." And he's like, "Yeah, I want to lead you deeper. I have more freedom." I've experienced that recently in my own life and it's disturbing and really good. I'm like, "I thought that was done." He's like, "No, we're going deeper." I'm like, "Okay." So, this is not a one and done. This is layers and layers and layers. So again, the process is called reach. Recall the hurt. Are you ready for this? Recall the hurt. Impatize. Give the altruistic gift of forgiveness. Commit publicly to forgive and hold fast. So this week, all of this is up on practicing the way.org, discuss with your community, and start with something small. To start with something small, like, "God, bring something to mind that's small and work through that process on your own with a friend." And then if you get it, maybe move on to greater and greater and greater. And the greatest thing I just want to encourage you in tonight is we kind of land the plane is this. Keep going. Keep pressing in. I really think that some people were hoping that we weren't still talking about forgiveness tonight. But I think we need to. And we have one more week. I think it's super helpful to kind of wrap it up. But please keep pressing in. Would you say, "Anafee, we're going to go ahead and press." Forgiveness isn't just about deciding to let someone off the hook, but actually involves God replacing the negative emotions attached to that memory and the transgressor. So to end, let's take some time to talk with a Holy Spirit about one specific hurt where you need God's help. Start by taking a few deep breaths with me. Become aware of God's presence. When you're ready, ask the Holy Spirit, "What's one hurt I'm holding on to?" We've decided to forgive, but the negative emotions are all still attached to that memory. Does anything come to mind? It's okay if not. But if you have something, let's not ask. Holy Spirit, would you begin the work of replacing those negative emotions with your compassion, your empathy, your love for this person who hurt me? I'll give you 30 seconds to meditate on that and then close with Amen. [Music] Amen. Thanks for listening. This podcast is from Practice in the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks to little thoughts for our show music. We're a crowd-funded non-profit, so everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by the Circle, our community of monthly giveers. Special thanks today goes to Adam from Edmund Washington, Logan from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rast from Dublin, Ohio, Vern from Ireland, Texas, and Steve from Delevin, Illinois. Thank you all very much. To join these friends in the circle and none more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.