Transformative Power of Forgiveness and Reconciliation

being a Christian for a long period uh forgiveness was important i' practiced that hadn't thought about it very systematically just as an regular Christian and then I uh got licensed as a clinical psychologist and began to uh do a practice that was oriented exclusively toward couples and uh yeah it didn't take very many couples before forgiveness suddenly became a major issue in almost every single couple that I ever cell so uh so that really got me interested [00:02:02]

there was this moment where I was supervising a doctoral student it's name was Don Don dancer he became a wonderful therapist but but Don is seeing this couple and they're not getting any better and I say Don what what's wrong and he goes oh you know we we've taught them this hope focused approach that you have and you know we've gone through all these and they just hate each other they've got all these things that they've done that they can't forgive [00:02:49]

I said well Don then I guess we need to make up a little intervention to help him forgive and I can remember suddenly Don's eyes went you know and he goes can we do that in a second univ I said what sure we can do that we won't tell anybody you know I'm the supervisor so we just shut the door and you know so we sat there and we made up a little intervention to help people forgive [00:03:24]

what we did was we we said to themit sounds like you all each have a lot of you know things that you're not able to forgive each other for and they're both like yeah you're right right and maybe we ought to spend some time working on forgiveness next week this is like the end of a session and you know and and they're like yes we should you know she really needs forgive for all these things that she's done to me and she's thinking the same thing [00:05:23]

so we would like this you know I'd like this week for you to just make a list of things that you would like to confess to your partner that you've done to hurt them over the years and both of them suddenly have this Dearing the headlights look like this is not the way that I wrote this up in my mind you know and so you know they would do this and the next day the next week when they would come we would have them hold hands [00:06:16]

they would take time take turns just confessing things that they had done and we told them you know I know you have to think about these things you so don't just rush into saying I forgive you you know well you might as well said don't let tell the wind not to blow you know because as soon as they confess you know the the wrongdoing they almost always spontaneously said I forgive you for this [00:06:52]

Fred told this story about this couple that were confessing they started confessing things and it was like deep wounds that they had done and and they were both getting emotional and Fred said I feel like I am intruding on Sacred Space here I am going to give you like 10 minutes to confess to each other and I'm gonna step out of the room and I'll I'll knock when I come back so he gave him these 10 minutes he knocked and they said come in [00:08:05]

they were they had pushed the chairs out of the way and they were kneeling in the middle of the room holding on to each other and Fred said there was there were Tears In A Circle all around them where they had both been just crying as they confessed and forgave these things that had tortured them for years really so was a powerful little intervention so I want to just pause here and say a word to everybody listening to us [00:08:36]

it reminds me so much of the statement Jesus makes in the sermon of the mount where he says if you're bringing something to the altar as an act of worship to sacrifice which was kind of the most sacred moment they can imagine but you remember somebody has something against you then just leave the Altar and go to that person and seek to make things right that somehow uh when we seek to pursue confession forgiveness reconciliation with other people [00:09:02]

my invitation to everybody today is uh let's let's work on that single step that EV talked about think about some relation in your life could be a relative or a friend or uh somebody a cooworker think of at least one thing that that person might have against me something that I have done wrong and uh that I might be able to go to them and say I'm sorry for this and set things right [00:09:34]

be aware of it ask God to give you guidance about how to approach that person and you'll be standing on Holy Ground and then we'll pursue this the next time thanks for joining us at become new we want to grow spiritually one day at a time but it's tough to do that alone so we're offering a little more support for anyone who would like to work on putting the content into practice [00:10:05]

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