Embracing Forgiveness: A Journey to Freedom

We live in a hurting world and we are hurting people we have all received hurts and wounds and at the same time we have all inflicted hurts on others so none of us is 100% at fault for the M of our lives and yet none of us is a victim or 100% innocent hurting is a natural uh phenomenon in our world but forgiveness that's Supernatural forgiveness is God's invention it is God's forgiveness it is God's gift to you and to me. [00:18:00]

What is it like to feel forgiven you we've talked about how forgiveness is there's decisional forgiveness I I make a uh uh decision I form the intention to forgive somebody else and then there's emotional forgiveness where it's actually in my body at the level of uh neurotransmitters and muscular tension and it's in my face and it's in my shoulders to experience forgiveness this is not just true of forgiving somebody else this is true of forgiving yourself or of experiencing yourself as a person who has been forgiven. [00:30:56]

Forgiveness is fundamental to every other good feeling this is a remarkable statement now think about this forgiveness is fundamental foundational to every other Good Feeling try other sorts of delightful feelings and compare them with the feeling of being forgiven think of the feeling you have when you finally managed to do what you've been trying to do forever I did it I did it the feeling is triumphant. [00:37:05]

Feeling forgiveness is a feeling of total acceptance a feeling lodged in your deepest self a feeling that no bad thing you do can take away you feel totally affirmed totally loved totally received your entire being is restored because you feel that nothing can separate you from the source of love and you might remember Paul in Romans 8 what can separate us from the love of God then he goes through a list of all kinds of things nope nothing can separate us you know that nothing can really hurt you. [00:48:56]

One sure way to miss out on the fundamental feeling of being forgiven is to worry too much about being a spiritual success so now here's where most of us get in the trouble we do well sometimes to follow our feelings into the darker region of Our Lives where we are neither very pretty nor very pure we are a mixed breed Lou right Shadow and light weak and strong foul and clean hate and love all at the same time our middle name is ambiguity admitting this fundamental ambiguity opens us to the fundamental feeling of being forgiven. [00:55:19]

Obsession with spiritual success can take you on idiotic detours around the fundamental feeling I know a man who needs to be good so badly that he cannot face up to the puniest fault he often groans about being a poor poor sinner always in gorgeous generalities always as a trick to get people to reassure him of his unusual virtue but when his wife complains that he forgot to take out the garbage he is ready to hire a criminal lawyer to defend himself against her indictment. [01:02:06]

Part of the journey that we're on is uh in in forgiveness we extend empathy including to ourselves and I think about uh why is it that I want people to like me so much and why do I avoid wanting not to be liked and there are lots of factors involved with that uh not all of those factors are things for which I am morally blameworthy so I I I think through how to extend empathy to myself in that moment but then I don't just stop there I come to that place where I say yeah but there's part of me where that was simply a wrong thing to do and it's not excusable and then I must realize although it's not excusable it's forgivable. [01:16:01]

Psalm 32 the psalmist says blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven whose s are covered blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them in whose spirit is no deceit now see that's the raw honesty part no deceit when I covered up my sin the psalmist says my bones were wasting away when I confess them God forgave my sin and he cleansed me that's the feeling of being forgiven. [01:23:19]

Cory was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp a few days after the Allies conquered Germany took longer to be liberated from her simmering hate but she set out on the forgiving journey through her remembered pain kept traveling until she arrived at the place where she forgave even the Nazis who had dehumanized her in life in the camps in forgiving she believed she had discovered the only Power that could heal the history of hurt and hate for the people of Europe and all the other peoples on Earth. [01:30:56]

A man walked over to her he reached out his hand to her expecting her to take it y I'm so glad Jesus forgives us all of our sin just as you say Cory knew him she remembered how she was forced to take showers with other women prisoners while this Beast looked on laring mocking a Superman guarding helpless naked women Cory remembered he put his hand close to her her own hand froze at her side she could not forgive she was stunned and terrified by her own weakness what could she do she who had been so sure that she had overcome the Deep hurt and the desperate hate and had arrived at forgiving what could she do now that she was confronted by a man she could not forgive. [01:37:24]

She prayed Jesus I can't forgive this man forgive me at once in some wonderful way that she was not prepared for she felt forgiven forgiven for not forgiving at that moment in the power of the fundamental feeling her hand went up took the hand of her enemy and released him in her heart she freed him from his terrible past and she freed herself from hers the linkage between feeling forgiven and the power to forgive is the key to everything else. [01:44:52]

So now on this day you forgive yourself you receive forgiveness uh as a decision and the Bible's language for this is uh we receive it by faith now that's not a vague cloudy thing we don't wait for that to happen that actually is an act that we can commit ourselves to and so I say uh as best I can God with your help I won't r umate anymore I won't self-c condemn anymore I receive the fact that you are forgiving not based on me I am forgivable because you are a forgiving God and then allow that to reach the level of Grace you are forgiven you are forgiven that's your word today. [01:51:39]