One Another | Bear with One Another

Now I want to transition to our sermon for this morning.

We are continuing in our One Another series, looking at God's

invitation to community and what it means to be a people marked

by love. Our scripture reading today is

from Colossians 312 to 14. Therefore, as God's chosen

people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion,

kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another.

If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the

Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put

on love which binds them all together in perfect unity.

This is the word of the Lord all.

Right. Good morning.

How's everyone doing? Morning.

Good morning. So many exciting summer tables.

Vera did a great job. Yeah, you guys should come and

have lunch with us after the service that that wasn't already

your plan. It'll be super fun.

I'm sure there will be some very inspiring and helpful questions

to help you. Too deep to dive right into

friendship. If you haven't met already, My

name is Mandy. I'm on staff here at Reality

Church Boston, and today I'm going to be continuing our

sermon series on the One Another Commands.

That we see in the New Testament, and together these

commands show us what it looks like to love one another, which

is the overarching theme of our sermon theories.

So, so far this summer, we've talked about what it means to

belong, to serve, to encourage, to care for, and to humble

ourselves before one another. And so I really appreciate how

each of these topics kind of gives us a different angle and

perspective on what love is, because we don't want our

concept of love. To accidentally become

one-dimensional or to be based solely on what's?

Comfortable or convenient for us because love is God's very

nature and character. So to grow in love is actually

to grow in our knowledge of God. And by pressing into these one

another commands, we are slowly but surely being shaped into a

people who reflect God's transformative love.

So today, as Vera read, we have not one, but actually 2/1 and

other statements that are just packed in the same verse.

So Colossians 313 calls us to both bear with one another and

to forgive one another. And so the good news is that

they're both incredibly challenging and WAVY topics.

So here's the thing, here's the thing about the topic I signed

myself up for. Patience and forgiveness are so

important. That we could do an entire

sermon series just on these. So I know that my 30 minute

message here is not going to be exhausted by any stretch of the

imagination. So really we're just going to

ask you this to meet us where we are right here, right now with

these topics. And even if we only manage to

kind of dip our toes into the waters today, it's still worth

it because patience and forgiveness are two of the most

powerful expressions of God's love.

They are integral. To the life of Jesus.

And they have the power to bring real healing and change into our

lives, into the lives of those around us.

But to respond to this call, we are definitely going to need

some supernatural assistance. So let me first open us with a

word of prayer and we will just ask God to meet us in our time

of need and my time of need this morning let me pray for us.

Lord, we thank you that your very character, your very

nature. Is forgiveness, is patience.

You even call yourself that a God as a God who is slow to

anger, but you are full of mercy and long-suffering and

compassion and God. We just pray that we would have

an encounter with you this morning, that we would see more

clearly the beauty of who. You are Lord, we know that there

are so many things that each of us carries into a moment like

this, into a Sunday morning, things from far in our past.

Things, maybe even from the last week.

Things that we've wrestled with that we've brought before.

Mentors and and elders and therapists and people who we've

just poured our hearts out out to and Lord.

There might also be things that we haven't even begun to

address. Things that are in our hearts.

Unforgiveness and in pain and in difficulty that we haven't even

brought before you yet, Lord. And so we recognize that we

might be there in very different places here today.

We just ask that you are Good Shepherd would meet us.

That you would show that you care for the healing of our

hearts, for the restoration of our souls, that you desire to

draw us near to yourself. God, we believe that you are

present here today. We believe that you want to meet

with us, so we just pray that you would speak your word

directly. To each of us today.

And that again that you would show us that you desire for your

people to come near to you, and that we can trust that you are

the Good Shepherd of our souls. So please meet with us today,

Jesus. We pray all these things in your

name. Amen.

I'm going to move this up just a little bit, if I can.

It's kind of squeaky. All right.

So as we read our passage today is from the book of Colossians.

So now the church at Colossi was started by this man named

Epiphris, who was a friend of Paul the Apostle.

And Epiphris writes a letter to Paul, kind of updating him on

all the great things that are happening within this church,

but also the struggles and temptations that they were

facing, presumably to ask Paul's advice.

So Paul's response is this letter that we have, that we

call Colossians. And so the Colossians, this

church was experiencing these pressures, these external

pressures to turn away from Jesus and to turn toward these

alternate philosophies and these kind of competing ideologies

were critiquing the way that the Christians were pursuing God.

The message that they were hearing was that faith in Jesus

and their Christian way of life was not enough.

They needed to do more, like observe certain festivals and

religious days, or avoid certain foods, or worship angels, or

have supernatural visions. So in response, Paul basically

cautions this church not to be taken captive by these hollow

and deceptive philosophies which may have an appearance of

wisdom, but in reality they lack any value because your faith.

Paul reminds them it's not merely about checking off the

right religious boxes, or about like transcending the world with

these mystical experiences. Our phase is rooted in Christ.

He is the one who created and who sustains all things.

He brought us from darkness into light.

He gave us redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

So Christ has done it all and nothing is lacking in him.

So Paul's basically calling the Clausians to fix their eyes upon

Jesus to look to his goodness and power.

Christ has given them new life, and renewed people live in

renewed ways. So don't turn back to your old

behavior. He's saying walk in the ways of

Jesus. So to clarify what this looks

like, Paul emphasizes certain Christ like virtues and invites

the Colossians to pursue them. So he says clothe yourselves

with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and

patience. Bear with one another and

forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance

against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you, and then over

all these virtues put on love which binds them together in

perfect unity. So the call to bear with each

other and to forgive one another is what it looks.

Like to put these virtues into practice?

Compassion, Kindness, Humility, gentleness, patience.

And it's not a beautiful list. I mean, it sounds it sounds

appealing to me. A life in the community that are

centered on these things would be awesome.

But the question is how do we get there?

Even if we buy into this and we want to become patient and

forgiving people, how do we do this?

So I was starting to kind of get, you know, like analysis

paralysis I suppose, just trying to decide how to even enter into

these really weighty topics until I basically realized that

we can start with the call of Jesus and the message that he

preached, very Simply put, was repent and believe.

So I'm going to gently steal that framework today, and we

will look at forgiveness and patience through these two

lenses. A call to repent, so to come to

Jesus and to receive his transformative forgiveness, and

a call to believe, to trust in the power and the promises of

Jesus. So these two items.

Just by themselves are a lot to cover.

And I actually considered not spending quite as much time on

repentance, partly because it's an intimidating word and just to

kind of hone in on patience and forgiveness.

But then I realized that we really can't have a well-rounded

conversation about one without the other.

Forgiveness is not a natural, instinctive reaction, becoming a

forgiving person. It's often the fruit of having

received forgiveness, becoming a patient person.

Is often the byproduct of having witnessed the beauty of a

patient, humble, compassionate spirit.

And repentance is a pathway to both of those things.

So this is where we need Jesus so badly.

Jesus is the embodiment of forgiveness and patience.

And we can see what this looks like by reading through the

Gospels, these biblical stories, accounts of Jesus's life.

And so I want to point us to one story in particular that can

help us see how Jesus forgiveness has the power to

transform us. To this story is from the gospel

of Luke and at this point in the narrative we're pretty far in.

So Jesus has been in ministry for years.

We're in kind of the final stretch before he's going to go

to Jerusalem and walk that hard road to the cross.

So in Luke 19 we meet a man who has heard about Jesus, how Jesus

has traveled all over the country, healing the sick,

touching lepers, forgiving sins, and welcoming in the despised in

society. So this man is desperate to see

Jesus because he knows that he. Is in need of forgiveness

because he is a tax collector, which to the Jewish community,

to the community, made him the chief of sinners.

Tax collectors were traitors. They worked for the Roman

government, the oppressors of the common people.

They abused their power to make themselves rich, and they

extracted money from people who had less so.

Nobody likes this guy, but he has heard that Jesus has a

reputation for being a holy man, a healer, a prophet who shares

his dinner table with tax collectors and with sinners.

So when he learns that Jesus has come to town, he is so eager to

see him that when he can't get through the crowd, he climbs a

tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus.

So Jesus sees him, and he calls out Zakiyas, come and hurry

down, for I must stay at your house today.

So this man, Zakiyas, is overjoyed to be welcomed by

Jesus, but others who overhear the invitation start to grumble.

This man isn't worthy to have this great teacher and healer

under his roof, but Zakia seems to understand the weight of

having Jesus as a houseguest. He isn't worthy, he he knows

that. So he does something to make it

clear that he understands the honor that is being bestowed

upon him, and he doesn't intend to take it lightly.

Zakia's promises then and there to give half his fortune to the

poor, and if he has defrauded anyone, he will repay them four

times as much. So Jesus responds to Zakhya's

repentant heart. Today's salvation has come to

this house. So two things are important

here. First, when Zakhya sees Jesus,

he knows who he's looking at. He sees that somebody who has

the ability to change his identity, to cleanse him from

the past, that he's ashamed of. Repentance is not just about

fear of being punished or wanting to escape consequences.

It's about recognizing that we are broken.

And wanting to be made new. And secondly, Jesus or Zachius's

repentant heart is evidence at how he jumps at the chance for

forgiveness. His desire to be worthy of

Jesus's presence, to be able to enter into that community, that

that relationship with him, causes him to behave like a

completely different person, to no longer be the traitor who

takes advantage of others for his own gain.

Instead, he puts on new clothing the clothes of justice and

generosity. Because he sees in Jesus a God

who forgives and restores so this invitation to bear with one

another and to forgive one another.

It begins with receiving those things from Jesus.

Jesus, the Son of God, came to serve a human race that rejected

him, despised him, betrayed him, abandoned him, and crucified

him. But even as he hung from the

cross and the people watching him die.

Scoffed at him. His response was Father, forgive

them, for they do not know what they do.

What kind of love is that? He's presently dying unjustly,

accused of these fabricated crimes, and he's praying to God

the Father on behalf of his murderers right now.

They are not repentant, but it says that Jesus were saying.

If only they were. If only they would turn away

from the darkness inside them, they would be healed.

They would be able to receive what I'm offering them.

They would be made new. What kind of?

Radical love is this. This invitation to be restored

is at the heart of the call to repentance.

Jesus offers us transformative forgiveness.

He compares himself. To a doctor of the soul in Mark

Mark 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2, when the religious leaders are criticizing him for

having meals with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus's response is

those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are

sick. I came not to call the righteous

but sinners. So Jesus invitation to repent is

like him saying your soul is sick.

Come to me. Let me heal you.

There's a pastor who I follow an Instagram.

His name is Ian Simpkins, and he recently shared this post where

he references the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, which

means a change of mind or direction.

So for example, if you were going South on a freeway and

suddenly you realize you're supposed to be going north, what

would you do? You would look for an off ramp.

You would turn around. So he goes on to say that

Metanoia carries the idea not only of a different trajectory,

but also of transformation. A new mind, a new heart, a new

will. And this is key.

Metanoia is a forward-looking word.

It looks toward the promises of God, toward a future where Jesus

offers fresh hope. And so, as Simkin says, Jesus

isn't merely inviting us to turn from brokenness, but also to

turn toward wholeness, not merely away from sickness, but

toward healing. Because the gospel isn't just

freedom from something. It's freedom for something.

So he's saying that Jesus is inviting us to renewal.

So we have, because we have these kind of defective coping

mechanisms to try to protect ourselves from a broken world,

to give us a sense of self worth to battle against the anxiety of

not really being in control. And maybe we cling to these

patterns because they're all we know and we fear how vulnerable

we might become if we don't have those things to fall back on.

But Jesus says let go, come to me.

Receive my transformative forgiveness.

So this call to repent is followed by a call to believe,

to trust in the power and the promises of Jesus.

So it's one thing to realize that we need to turn away from

our patterns of brokenness, and it's another to actually walk in

Jesus footsteps and learn to do what he would have done.

So this past week, the more that I studied and reflected on

patience and forgiveness, the more convicted I felt about how

wobbly I am in practicing both. I see the healing work of Jesus

and I'm captivated by it. It's so beautiful.

I want to live into that, to become like him.

But then I think, if I can't even exercise patience and

forgiveness in Boston traffic, how am I supposed to do it in

other situations? Do you know what I mean?

I know some of you definitely in this room drive, right?

If not, you have. You know, there are people doing

it, It's just I can't. Tell you how many times someone

has honked at me, and a quick survey of our circumstances made

it clear to me that they were honking because they wanted me

to break a traffic law and they were angry that I was not doing

so. And I'm just like, what kind of

lawless? Rage Field movie from the Fast

and Furious franchise. Are we living in SO?

I get I get frustrated and it's just easy to sometimes even find

myself wishing ill towards people who cut me off or

actively endanger my life. And as I'm wishing them ill,

I've of course developed complete amnesia about the times

that I've made very questionable decisions while driving to save

time. So I'm obviously trying to pick

what is is potentially A relatable example.

But at the heart of it, and this is true for all sorts of

offenses that we experience, the way that we respond can reveal a

lot about what's in our hearts. When I start angrily fantasizing

that the person who zoomed around me to save 5 seconds will

find themselves stuck in a traffic jam, they'll make them

30 minutes late. Realistically, the seed that I'm

nurturing in my heart. Is vengeance.

And because it's a common situation, and because someone

may have actually broken the law and done something dangerous,

it's so easy to 1st justify my anger, but then to justify my

vengeful thoughts and ultimately to justify my bitterness and

myself righteousness that I'm using to cope with with a

lawbreaking world. So whether it's kind of an

everyday frustration like Boston traffic or it's the

relationships where. People we wanted to trust cause

us harm, take advantage of us, neglect us, maybe abuse us.

Forgiveness is not instinctive, and I think we have to start by

acknowledging that what Jesus is asking us to do by forgiving is

an immense act of faith. It is a trust fall from a

dizzying height. Jesus is asking just to do

something radical because he intends to work through us to

bring about. Radical change in this world,

and this is incredibly important, so I'm going to say

it again. Jesus is asking us to practice

radical forgiveness and patience because he intends to use that

to bring about radical change in our world.

The game plan of Christianity, of Jesus's way of life, is to

reconcile literal enemies to the point where they view one

another as brothers and sisters. This is radical.

So forgiveness is really an act of trust in God's plan, and that

includes trusting that God cares deeply about both justice and

compassion. And this, I think, can be a

major blocker in our journey of forgiveness, the fact that we do

have to live with the reality of injustice.

So I was thinking about the phenomenon of cancel culture.

It's quite hard to go too many sermons, whether you're

listening to them online or in person, without talking about

things like cancel culture. But you know, it's where we

ostracize or boycott anyone who's rumored or has done

something that we consider unacceptable.

And so as I was thinking about it, I kind of imagine that one

of the main motivators behind cancel culture is the sentiment

that nobody's going to hold wrongdoers accountable for their

sins. They will have free reign in

this world unless we take back power from them.

So even if we see the flaws that we see playing out in cancel

culture, the relatable part here is a desire for justice, a

desire to protect the vulnerable, even a desire not to

allow sin to go unchecked. But in this case, what role does

forgiveness play? Does it have a role if our end

goal is a more just society? So this week I was reading

through Tim Keller's book titled Forgive Very Appropriate Title,

and I found this quote from a conversation between the author

and professor, bell hooks and the poet and civil right

activist Maya Angelou. And I think it's bell hooks

who's speaking when they say this.

But it says for me, forgiveness and compassion are always

linked. How do we hold people

accountable for rounddoing and yet at the same time remain in

touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to

be transformed? Isn't that the $1,000,000

question? Can we pursue justice and

forgiveness at the same time? I believe that the Bible says we

have to because our call is to pursue God, to walk in the way

of Jesus and Jesus embodies both.

The cross is about the intersection between forgiveness

and justice. In Jesus, we encounter a God who

intends to deal with every sin and who offers the path of

restoration and mercy for those who are willing to take it.

I think when we set justice and forgiveness in opposition,

perhaps sometimes it's because so far our understanding of

forgiveness, what we've learned from the people around us, from

the culture, it just has remained too shallow.

Because the call to forgive is not just another way of saying

get over it and move on. It's not a call to only have

positive feelings towards an offender from this moment

forward. I think that the call to forgive

can be better understood as a decision to walk a path.

It's about resisting the temptation to walk the path of

revenge and bitterness, or just letting a desire to reclaim

power and protect yourself harden you against others.

And I think This is why I appreciate the term the phrase

bear with one another because it sounds like an ongoing process.

It sounds like this burden that you carry, but it is a burden

that Jesus carries with us. We see that in his life and he

is telling us that he has the ability to make it lighter.

Walking the path of forgiveness is choosing to believe in the

hope that Jesus is offering, and that hope is this, that God can

make all things new. If God cannot or is not in the

business of making all things new, maybe cancel culture is our

best option. Nobody's going to hold

wrongdoers accountable. We have to take back control.

But if Jesus is a God who paid for all of our sins, if

offenders like this, Achias can be transformed into these

emblems of grace, if God is enacting a plan of renewal for

humanity even as we speak, then we are living in a different

kind of story. If we believe that God can make

all things new, no one is beyond hope.

If we believe that God can make all things new.

We can be courageous when the Spirit leads us in steps of

reconciliation, and also if we recognize that God is the healer

and transformation is His work, we may not be necessary to every

stage of His plan. Maybe we are called in a certain

season to engage with someone who wronged us.

Or maybe it's not safe and the why is this action is to create

space and to trust God to keep working no matter what the path

looks like. On that day-to-day basis, we can

choose the trajectory of forgiveness to come to God's

journey with him and to trust that he could heal and restore.

To ask him to do those things and to believe that he can

strengthen our desire for renewal to the point where, like

Jesus, we want renewal even in the lives of those who willfully

act as our enemies. And This is why we're framing

forgiveness and patience within the context of trusting in the

power and the promises of Jesus. To rock this path.

We need more than willpower. We need the kind of forgiveness

and patience that lives inside of Jesus to basically flow

through us. We are actually counting on the

power of God to meet us and to sustain us when we choose to do

this as an act of love and as an act of worship to Jesus.

So you may be familiar with this, but if not, I'm going to

tell you her story on the story of Cory 10.

Boom. So her book, The Hiding Place,

The Hiding Place is phenomenal. And if you haven't read it, this

is just going to be my one book recommendation.

I could do more, but this one of the books I read in seminary, I

think if I had to pick only one that I said changed my life, I

would say it was the hiding place.

It is a phenomenal book and it's an autobiography.

So it's an account of her life in the Netherlands during World

War 2. So Cory and her family were

Christians, and they hid Jewish friends, neighbors, and

ultimately actually even strangers in their home.

And they were ultimately found out by the Nazis and sent to a

concentration camp. And so during that time, Cory?

Saw her father, her sister, obviously countless others die

and suffered, as you probably can imagine.

Just atrocities, pains, indignities, losses.

At the same time, she writes about also experiencing

incredible moments of grace and seeing God work forgiveness in

her heart. And so many people, years after

this happens, would want to hear Corey tell her story.

And so on a particular, in a particular instance, she

recounts this The war is over, Years have passed, and she has

this unexpected encounter at a church service.

So she had been invited to speak there.

And part of her talk, as you might expect, centered on God's

forgiveness and the need to forgive others.

And so after the service, Corey recognizes in the crowd a former

guard from a concentration camp, an s s man who had actually

stood guard at the shower door at one of the processing centers

she had gone through. So he was the first of her

jailers that she had seen since that time.

So this man comes up to Corey and as she puts it, he is

beaming and bowing to her. And he keeps saying how grateful

he is for the message that she had just given, That Jesus has

washed away our sins and the man clearly wants to shake her hand.

The Corey is struggling internally.

These angry, vengeful thoughts start boiling in her memories of

the mockery and the cruelty of the guards.

But at the same time, she was acutely aware of the message

that she had just shared. So in the midst of this

incredible tension, she prays silently.

She records the prayer that she prays to Jesus, and she just

says, Jesus, I cannot forgive him.

Give me your forgiveness. And then Corey writes this, she

says as I took his hand. The most incredible thing

happened from my shoulder, along my arm, and through my hand, a

current seem to pass from me to him, Well into my heart sprang a

love for the stranger that almost overwhelms me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more

than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on

his. When he tells us to love our

enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself.

And that line is so incredible it's almost breathtaking.

So I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness that the

world's healing hinges, but on his on Jesus.

When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives the love

itself. So again, I am so aware of the

need to not minimize the reality of the evils that happen in this

world, or to treat forgiveness like it's a simple thing.

But if there's anyone who had a reason to withhold forgiveness,

I would probably give that immunity pin to someone like

Corey. But her story shows that

forgiveness is not like a like a social theory or an abstract

philosophy. It is a power of God meeting us

in our deepest pain. Jesus.

Forgiveness is not a small or a timid thing.

It is a rushing tidal wave that sweeps people off their feet and

plants them somewhere completely new.

It is a powerful force that cleanses everything it touches

for everyone who will repent and receive it.

Corey got to experience the immensity of God's provision as

she chose to walk the seemingly impossible path and.

What we see in her story, and we need to believe this, is that

forgiveness is strength. It's freedom.

It's healing. Corey's anger was righteous.

Her pain was justified. But her decision to ask Jesus

for his love is life changing. That is a faith that can move

mountains, that can change the way that other people like you

and me actually live our lives. And if she had clung to

bitterness, the story may not have been worth telling.

Instead, she lived out the message of forgiveness that she

preached, and the story that she tells shines like this, radiant

testimony to the power of God. And it may be true that the road

will be different, maybe it'll be longer and harder than what

we see in her example in some ways.

But we need to believe that the same power is available to us.

We need our faith to fuel our forgiveness and patience.

All right, so we are in the final stretch here.

But the last story, some of you have heard me teach before, so

you will not be surprised by this, but it's a personal one.

Sometimes when I pray to God as I'm preparing, I asked him to

exempt me from this, to Get Me Out of it.

He puts a very a story very clearly on my heart.

And so then I'm like, I think, I I think I have to, I think I

have to tell it anyway. So this story actually starts

with what I would consider the first miracle that God ever

worked in my life. So even if you do know me, I

don't talk a lot about my relationship with my dad, I

think because it feels complicated to explain.

And sometimes when I've tried, I I feel like I'm just telling

kind of the stereotypical story that you might see in the movies

about a formerly absent or unreliable father who wants to

change and reconnect with his kid.

And maybe it is a common story, unfortunately for many of us.

But it's part of my story. And my relationship with my

father colored my childhood with a lot of hurt and a lot of

sadness. And then as I became a teenager,

the sadness turned into anger and I stopped wanting to have

anything to do with him. I felt justified and holding his

failures against him. I was trying to protect myself

from getting hurt again, but during my high school years, he

really tried to reengage with me and my mom, even though they

were divorced, encouraged me to say yes to his invitations to

get ice cream or to go on a hike.

So I would say yes sometimes, but I still mostly felt

resentment in my heart. So when I was about 17, my dad

and I went on this hike and about 2/3 of the way up it

started to kind of drizzle to rain.

And so we were kind of sheltering underneath a large

tree. And nailed to this tree is this

picture of a teenage girl about my age and kind of a description

of her life story. And it's very clearly the way

that it's written, a memoriam to someone who has passed.

And my dad recognizes the name of the story of this woman, this

girl, and he had seen her in the local papers and learned that

she had recently taken her own life.

So at that time, I hadn't really been confronted with mortality,

especially while looking at a picture in the life story of

someone my age. And it was like something spoke

to me and kind of woke up, this part of my brain that had been

muted by resentment and anger. And now I actually see this as

God's gracious intervention. But at the time, it kind of just

felt like this uncharacteristic thought, this like strong but

sudden conviction that life is fragile and short.

And I actually didn't know how many days I or anyone else had

left. So I should I should try to

forgive my father. Surprisingly, that sentiment

actually stuck with me. In the years to come, I slowly,

probably mostly painfully, moved towards forgiveness.

I would try to give my dad the benefit of the doubt more often

when he wanted to make up for things.

I would create more space to spend time together, maybe even

more than I was inclined to. And through that, we did form

new and better memories, even though certain things would

definitely rekindle my anger. The more that I saw good in our

current relationship, the more I was able to hope.

And then many of you know the story.

But when I was a sophomore in college, I began following

Jesus, and his message of forgiveness changed my

understanding. It showed me the ways that I had

been cold or selfish, and it softened my heart more and more.

And then when I was a junior, my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4

cancer and he passed away before I finished the school year.

Honestly, some of my last memories of him were not great

ones. There are a lot of things I

regret not doing and not saying there are things that he did or

that he said that hurt me. And overall, it left me in a

very strange place emotionally to have done, especially at that

age, all this work to repair a relationship that was suddenly

over. So probably four years later.

This was my first year living in Boston, and I experienced what I

would probably characterize now as a nudge from the Holy Spirit

He's just hanging out, intervening unexpectedly.

But it was to do this very specific writing challenge that

I'd come across, and it basically became this, like,

literary healing journey where I tried to make sense of all the

complicated feelings I had about my relationship with my father.

And God met me as I wrote about the pain and the healing and the

strange kind of in between places.

And through that I found myself journeying deeper and deeper

into this concept of understanding what forgiveness

looks like. And so I remember after

finishing it, talking to one of my best friends.

She was someone I knew in college, and so she was actually

one of the people who consoled me after my father passed away.

And so I was telling her that the conclusion of the story I

had written was basically me owning the fact that I could

feel hurt by my father and still acknowledge how much I loved him

at the same time. And she started to cry.

Which startled me. But she's just explained that

she was so overwhelmed to see how much healing God had done in

my heart. And she said, Mandy, in the

years that I've known you, I've never heard you say out loud

that you love your father. This is a really big deal.

And I hadn't realized that, but it was true.

And in the wake of that conversation, I started to feel

more and more peace reflecting on my story and just learning to

hold that tension. And so a few years later, I was

at a Sunday gathering at Reality in one of our old spaces, and it

was Father's Day, which was usually an emotionally complex

day for me. I mean, sometimes I felt numb,

sometimes I felt brief all over again.

That day I was overcome with kind of strange and unexpected

emotion. And so I went up to two of our

elders at the time, both of whom were fathers, and asked them for

prayer. And it wasn't until I, like,

wasn't really sure what I was feeling until I just, the words

were coming out of my mouth and I was asking, giving them my

prayer request. And I found myself just saying

that this was the first Father's Day I could remember where all I

felt was that I missed my dad. I didn't feel anger.

I didn't feel pain. I didn't feel numbness.

I just missed him. And I hadn't realized until then

just how far God had brought me. Now, I mean, of course you may

be able to predict and understand that.

I wouldn't say that. That means that my journey is

over, because the reality is that dealing with pain from a

close relationship, like a parent, is something that you

might work through for an entire lifetime.

But it is true that the level of freedom and heart change that I

experienced just step by step as God led me forward, showed me

that forgiveness had won in my heart.

It had taken root and it was flourishing, and I recognized

other stories may have a different timeline, a different

landscape, but in Christ, I have to believe that the trajectory

is the same. God moves us toward wholeness

because restoration is his desire for his children.

There's this metaphor that Jesus uses and one of his parables,

and it's about a good tree. A tree that is fundamentally

healthy and vibrant, he says will produce good fruit, and I

think a similar metaphor works here.

Forgiveness is the character of Jesus.

It is his work and his lifelong passion.

When you plant the seed, the Christ like seed of forgiveness

and tend to it patiently, over time you will get a good tree

that will bear good fruit. It may take a long time to grow

as trees do, but I think we will always be surprised to discover

what God can do through the faithful watering and in the

patient waiting. By walking that long, hard road

to forgiveness, we can experience the invitation that

we hear in the Psalms to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Pursue forgiveness and you will taste His goodness.

Practice patience and you will taste His kindness.

Bear with one another and you will experience His love working

in you. So this is my closing invitation

for us. I recognize we are all likely in

very different places meditating on these themes and hearing this

message. So I'm going to offer you three

different prayers. This is going to be our closing

prayer, but there's going to be 3 different kind of focal

points. And so I just invite you to

listen. If it's helpful for you to close

your eyes as you listen and just kind of enter into a posture of

receiving, feel free to do that. And I'm just going to invite you

to pay attention to the one that stands out to you as we

transition to our time of response.

So this is the first prayer Jesus.

Help me to sincerely ask for forgiveness.

Help me not to fear owning up to what I've done, as if the weight

of shame will crush me. Help me to trust that my

repentance can bring healing into my life and the lives of

others. Please meet me now with your

transformative grace. Secondly, Jesus, help me to

choose the path of forgiveness. I'm not sure what lies ahead,

and part of me is afraid that I'll turn a corner and find

myself facing pain or disappointment again.

Show me that you walk this road with me.

Remind me that it is the power of your forgiveness that will

heal the world. Fill my heart with the merciful

love that only you can give and the wisdom to follow your

leading. Lastly, Jesus, help me to become

a person of patience. Remind me of the ways that you

have loved me at my most unlovable.

Help me to bear with others. And to believe that you were

able to transform and heal. Even if I can't see it now.

Help me to trust that you were working renewal in my heart and

in those I struggle to have compassion toward.

Help me to put on the new self you have created and to walk in

compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience even

today. So we pray for all of these

things in Jesus name. Amen.

I'm just going to do a quick invitation as the band begins to

play. This time of response is so is

so key. I can stand up here and talk

about it, talk about these things for another half hour and

I will not. But there I believe that there

is some kind of seed of forgiveness, whether that's to

forgive, to receive forgiveness, to walk with embarrassed people

that Jesus is planting in our hearts now.

And I'm just inviting you right now to listen, to listen for

what that might be. It might be helpful for you to

sing the words of the song that we're about to play.

It might be hopeful for you to come down to the carpets and

just take a moment to focus on The Voice of God that is present

to us in these moments. If you would like prayers, there

will be leaders at the front. I'll be over here at the side

and I would be happy to pray with you, but I just want to

invite you now to take this moment and ask God to meet with

you. Ask him what he wants to say.