Last week: Acknowledging the Hurt.
There have been some bad actions that have happened to you in church, but not only in church.

Here’s the raw unfortunate truth: If it involves people, it will involve the potential for hurt. Even Jesus experienced church hurt, but how did Jesus responded to the hurt? He didn’t focus on the hurt, he focused on the healing. God never planned on that hurt, but he is more than willing to heal it. I pray the Holy Spirit was able to show you any hurts that were hidden, undealtwith, etc.

Now that you’ve hopefully acknowledged that hurt, what do we do now? Ok the hurt happened, so we have some options here:
- Disconnect completely
- Connect but just minimally to ensure your safety
- Rage and grasp at vengeance
- Or forgive

Which one does your gut lunge for first?

Well…
- If I disconnect, I might dodge the negatives of being in an organization, but I miss the benefits of family.
- If I connect but minimally, I can at least say I didn’t connect, but you can only live in skepticism and doubt so long before you go crazy.
- If I rage and grasp for vengeance, I run the risk of destroying everything.
- If I forgive, they get away with it.
- If you feel at least one of those deep down, blink twice.

So what do you do? Well, what would Jesus do?
What does Jesus command?

So if forgiveness is the answer, what does that mean to forgive? If I forgive what happens to me and my hurt? What happens to them? If I forgive what does that really mean? And how can forgiveness possibly help?

Valid questions. We could go on for a while on forgiveness, but let me just give you a couple of things here. This is a big topic and a big ask, so let’s hit a couple important things to help you heal.

1. Forgiveness doesn’t mean it’s OK, but it does mean you’re OK.
How can I be ok when that pastor manipulated me, that group leader betrayed my confidence, that church treated me like trash because I didn’t fit in, that family member abused me? “If forgiveness means letting it go, I don’t want to because I don’t think what they did was ok.”

Remember, forgiveness doesn’t condone actions, but it does free you of them. How?

Two parts:
When we forgive, God can forgive us.
This is the “tell it like it is” part of forgiveness. You’ve heard this before.
Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

God isn’t being mean here. He knows what forgiveness does - it unburdens. He unloads us of our sin and even goes a step further in how he treats us after we sin: Psalm 103:10-14 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

Even with our level of sin and betrayal against God, he not only chooses to forgive us, but he treats us as if we never hurt him to begin with. What makes this hard is that when we sin and we ask for forgiveness, we (the perpetrators) are genuinely sorry, but the people who hurt us aren’t necessarily.

So why forgive them? The common answer is so you can be forgiven. The biblical answer is because God commands it. When it comes to Christianity, forgiveness is mandatory, not optional.

When we forgive, he can heal the brokenness.
1 Peter 5:7 cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.“anxieties: in Greek here is merimna, from the word merízōit means: divide, separate, worry, that which fractures and divides a person’s being into parts

Again, the context here is God freeing us of the hurt and pain. When we forgive and allow Jesus access to what happened, it allows him to take that which was fracturing and dividing our being into parts, and restore our brokenness to wholeness.

When we forgive, God takes what was meant for evil and turns it for good, but when we don’t forgive, there are a variety of things that happen, almost all internally, that are drastically detrimental to not only our healing, but to us actually being ok, not just saying we are ok.

Let me give you two.

First, when you don’t forgive, it renders you almost incapable of trusting in the future based on your hurts from the past.
Unforgiveness is a tether that links your soul to those hurtful actions and people and not only keeps you from moving forward, it keeps you from embracing relationships that could help heal that hurt. Many people are never able to embrace quality new relationships because they’re still tethered to the actions perpetrated upon them by malicious old relationships. The familiarity of the environment exacerbates this issue.

If you were hurt in a church, it will be hard for you to trust a new church. If you were hurt in a relationship, it will be hard to trust in a new relationship of the same type. This is what we find in Ephesians 4:31-32 31 "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

When we refuse to engage in v32, we experience the fruit of v31. Have you ever tried to enter a new relationship with bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander? If you feel these about your last experience, what makes you think you won’t think them about your new experience, and worse, that you won’t act upon them? Old saying: how you leave one church is how you enter the next one.If you left with hurt, you will enter with hurt.If you left with forgiveness, you will enter healing.

When you do forgive, you make a conscious decision to stop allowing the hurts of the past to restrain you from blessing God has for you with new godly relationships in this moment and in the future. This is for every hurt, no matter how bad the hurt or the action. The hurt can end, the action can lose its power in forgiveness!

I get self preservation. I get being cautious. I get making sure you aren’t hurt again. But when you refuse to engage in new relationships because you are afraid of history repeating itself, you might stop others from hurting you, but you take on that role yourself, inflicting pain upon yourself by refusing to let yourself go too deep in a new relationship. This is tantamount to having a bad meal at a restaurant and deciding never to eat again.

I am also not ignorant to the fact that some of you have had things happen to you that we might consider unforgivable. Be that in the church or out of it. But I want you to catch a tiny phrase in the verse I just read, Ephesians 4:32 "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

If you have said: “I can’t forgive that person for what they did,” look at two words that make the difference here: “in Christ.” Sometimes we can forgive out of ourselves. Obviously it is the Holy Spirit working in us because forgiveness is a divine trait, not a human one, but if you don’t have it in you to forgive out of your heart, do what God did and forgive out of Christ’s heart. We say “the Lord bless you, “ “the Lord rebuke you,” why not, “the Lord forgive you?” Say it out of his heart until you can say it out of yours.

Again we are talking about a couple of things that happen when we don’t forgive.

Second, unforgiveness can turn an action into an identity.
Unforgiveness does more than keep you in the hurt. Undealtwith pain and unforgiveness can too easily become your identity. It keeps you in a cycle that drives you to skepticism, that keeps you from trusting, and eventually, you will find that your hurt is no longer something that happened to you but it is something that you become.

This is the process that the enemy employs with us.
- An offense becomes frustration.
- Frustration becomes anger.
- Anger becomes bitterness.
- Bitterness becomes hurt.
- Hurt breaks relationship.

When you live in unforgiveness for that hurt for long enough, it stops being about what was done and you begin seeing yourself as broken. That pain seeps into other areas of your life and whereas early on you could keep it separate, the more you live in it, the more you see it in everything. Before long you stop seeing the action as something that was done to you and you start seeing it as something you are.

Why? Because the common denominator in your mind is not the one who hurt you, but you. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Even if the environment is healthy, you will create dysfunction in your mind based on the pain.

THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY YOUR FAULT!
The pain is definitely real, BUT we also have to realize something that might sound a little harsh: While you are not at fault for what happened, you can help the enemy along in his plan for your life by continuing to dwell in that event and pain rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to heal it.

I want to be careful here because I am not minimizing the event or the hurt, but I need to remind us all that the enemy only gets the parts of us we give him, and if we cling to our pain more than we cling to Jesus, we cannot expect healing for that hurt.

This is why forgiveness is SO HUGE. Forgiveness does more than release you from that event and pain, it also reaffirms the truth that you are not a victim, you are not broken, you are not abused, you are a son, a daughter, and you are worthy of the healing that God wants for you.

But it has to start with forgiveness.

2. Forgiveness changes your past, present, and future.
One of the only things in our lives that can affect our past, present, and future is forgiveness.
- Forgiveness changes our perception of the past.
- Forgiveness changes our practice in the present.
- Forgiveness changes our potential in the future.

The Past
No one can go back and literally change the past. Who wanted that more than Peter? Maybe David? Perhaps Paul? Maybe Eve? We are constantly being reminded in scripture about abandoning the past, the “old things,” the “former things.”

Isaiah 43:18-19
Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

This is especially exciting since hurts tend to break our hearts and wound our spirits.

Colossians 1:13-14 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son

Even in the midst of darkness we experience from those hurts, still Jesus takes us out of darkness and into light, if we let him! That sounds great, but that doesn’t minimize the hurt, right? Maybe not, but it can change your perspective on that event, that hurt.

What would you want God to do about hurt from your past?
Never to experience it. Yes, but that isn’t possible. Someone else’s sin was taken out on you. We can’t change the event. So what is the next best thing? That it doesn’t go to waste, that my pain wasn’t for nothing. I have great news for you. Not only is this the perception of your pain that God wants you to have, he gives you and those godly people around you the power and ability to do that.

Isaiah 58:12 Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.

Here’s the point:
Nothing can be done about the action, but God can change your perspective of it. So you can choose either to sit in the ruins of what you were, or you can embrace the perspective of Heaven and allow God to not only restore you, but to use your pain to restore others.

“I want that.” Perfect.

It starts with forgiving the person who hurt you. Your hands can’t embrace a perspective change if they are clenched in unforgiveness.

The Future
Wonder with me for a moment…
What if you forgave and that allowed your perception to change of the events that were so hurtful, which opened the door to the ruins of your life being restored both by God and those godly people around you,
and then rather than you living your future in endless hurt, you now were a part of rebuilding others who were crushed like you, repairing others who were broken like you, restoring others who were hurt, just like you?

Your future potential requires your willingness to be healed.

We often associate the future of being pain free to be reserved for heaven.

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.Many of us cannot wait for that!

But when you say yes to Jesus, you say yes to more than Heaven some day, but yes to Heaven today. True we only get a portion of that on earth, but what if freedom from the pain of your past was a part of that?

The Present
You don’t have to wait until Heaven to experience freedom from hurt. It can be a part of your daily practice today!


Consider these verses we typically read these as just physical healing, but they are healing to your broken spirit as well!

Jeremiah 17:14 
Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.
- This isn’t some day in glory. It can be today!

Psalm 103:2-4 
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
- Does hurt from the church, from family, from life have you trapped in a pit? Well he redeems your life from the pit!

1 Peter 2:24
 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
- We always read this in relation to our own sin. But it doesn’t say my sin specifically, it says to sin. That includes my sin. Your sin. And yes, even the sin of the person who hurt you. He bore sin so we could bear healing! And more than be healed, to LIVE!!

However badly you have been wounded, Jesus’ wounds have healed your wounds.


So how do we activate this? How do we embrace it?
We FORGIVE

Let me ask it like this…How are we saved?
- It begins with us acknowledging our situation. We are sinners and need Jesus.
- We have a realization that only he can bridge the gap between us and the father.
- So we confess that need and we confess who he is.
- The next part is on him. Why? Because he was the one hurt.
- So we receive his forgiveness.

What we’ve done over the last two weeks is the same process, up til this moment:
- Acknowledging the fact that we are hurt. We are hurting and we need Jesus.
- We have that realization that only he can heal the brokenness in us.
- So we cry out to Jesus and ask him to heal the brokenness.
- The next part is on us. Why? Because we were the ones who got hurt.
- So we offer our forgiveness.

Micah 7:18
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?

Who is like you God in how you forgive? What if you are? What if you, just like your father in heaven, forgive?

Forgiveness in practice is easy
You bring that person’s name to the Father and you say
I forgive you _______________ whoever it is.

You say it until you believe it.
You say it until you know it is true.
Might take time. But you keep saying it.

Say it until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Hurt is often a sign that unforgiveness is hanging around. Often, but not always. I’ve talked to some who still have a touch of that hurt but they have forgiven. So let me say, say it until you have compassion on them.

Who do you need to forgive today?

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?