Family Matters//12PM// Elder John Swain Jr.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Love Quest International

Church podcast, where we seek to love all nations, equip the

church, mobilize the equipped, and serve all.

We're super glad you're joining us from whenever and wherever

you're at in the world. Welcome to the family to get

your Bibles ready, get some water, get some coffee, maybe

some tea, and get ready to receive.

Let's get into it. Everyone say maximum blessing.

Yeah, if you're going to get blessed, get it all.

Today we're talking about baptism.

We have our baptisms today. Amen.

Give a hand clap. And one thing we teach about in

baptism that whatever God got for you get it all.

I'm the guy that if I go to McDonald's and I was supposed to

get napkins, I want napkins in the bag.

Even if I never use them, if it's come with it, I want it OK.

I want the salt, the pepper. I want everything that comes

with it, right? Get it all.

Don't just get part of the blessing, get it all get maximum

blessing. Amen.

Because God's pouring out himself in a maximum way today.

I'm going to put I want you to strap up for an emotional ride,

say emotional ride because we going to go there today and and

I invite you to be open to the emotion.

Don't fight it, don't press it, don't try to constrain it.

Don't worry about what happens. We have people in our house that

are praying right now for God's will be to be done in each one

of our lives. Our prayer team, we got

ministers in the house and clergy in the house that can

govern that atmosphere in ways to make sure we stay safe.

OK? So whatever you need to

experience, let it experience it because why?

This could be your time and this could be the very experience

God's trying to register in you to get you through a place of

breakthrough and on your way in a more glorious fashion, OK?

Don't be afraid of the motion. Don't be afraid of the thoughts.

Don't be afraid and don't negotiate with your own soul,

OK? What do I mean?

Don't make something lesser when it's bigger, OK?

Don't make a big hurt, a small hurt because you're trying to

negotiate with your soul. And well, I don't want to make

it seem like it was that or it's ugly, OK?

Don't do that. Let God come and let you be

honest today. Hey, man, so we're talking about

my prayer is this that at the end of our message today, the

God who opens hearts while the word is being spoken is going to

wash over you, much like the waters of baptism are going to

wash over our folks getting baptized today.

And since himself is going to be washed out and washed away

today. So my subject today in our

family, don't put the top slide up yet.

We're talking about family matters.

Everyone says family matters. That's the series we're in.

Pastor set it up perfectly and want to be talking about

different elements of family as we go throughout this series.

And the topic I want to share today, I'm charged with sharing

today is this regarding family. Forgiving the family that hurt

you, forgiving the family that hurt you, that's family matters.

And sometimes you got to start there, you know, you got to

start. You got to dig the hole first

before you put the post in. You got to dig the hole to put

the foundation of the building in before you build on top of

it. You know, you don't want a house

go, you can clan go won't help them.

Clan clap. It's all right, go ahead.

It's like doing a rental when the walls are messed up and

rather than fix the walls, people just put new drywall over

it. You walk in and it looks fine,

but just wait 2-3 years and let the mess underneath begin to

come out. And now you're upset that folks

covered it versus really dealt with it.

Sometimes this is the stuff you got to deal with first before

you do all this. Shout out to my Northern Soul

Ministry team. They told me a lot about

renovation and building. Amen.

So forgiving the family that hurt you.

The first thing we want to talk about is this.

Our goal today is to expose, equip and excite, OK?

We're going to expose some things about this topic, then

we're going to equip you to deal with it and then we're going to

release an excitement. Excitement is not an emotional

state of agitation. It is a more of a, a desire and

a willingness to move to action. We're going to excite you, going

to encourage you to move to action as it relates to this

topic in the subject matter, and we're going to have you do it

with great joy. OK, Now, excitement in this

topic doesn't mean you're just always cheering, but it means

you are fully engaging as you move to action Amen.

So as we look at family, there's a lot that goes into this family

is one of the biggest things that we, we have understanding

about, but we don't talk about we, we just like, well, you, you

supposed to get it. You're just supposed to

understand it, right? A lot of families problems, a

lot of the hurts that come that you have to be forgiven for,

forgiven of come from your expectations.

So the question is this, who told you that?

Whatever your idea about what you expected from family, who

told you that? Where do family expectations

come from? Why did you expect that?

Forgiveness suggests that there's been a brokenness that

happened, but brokenness suggests that there was a

wholeness at one time. There was an expectation at one

time, but it got broken. What made you, who told you that

was the proper expectation to have about family?

You have to examine that. Where did it come from?

Because sometimes that's really the problem.

It's not what you're experiencing, but you've gotten

a picture from romantic comedies and what you see on television

from watching other people's families from outside the house

rather than inside the house. Sometimes that's where you get

your expectations from. And the issue with your hurt is

not even maybe what you experienced, but it did not line

up with the expectation that you formulated.

And if you and if you and if you formed your expectation

improperly, you've already set yourself up for failure or to be

hurt in a tremendous way. Where do family expectations

come from? They come from movies,

television. They come from what you've

experienced. They come from social media.

They come from what you watch. They come from why you are

waiting for your friend to come down to go out and play and you

hear their parents in the house arguing.

They come from all of that. OK, So we have to deal with

expectations. The question next question is

this, what should family do? Hurt involves broken order.

First off, there's a broken order that's happened.

Now the kind of family hurt I'm talking about, it's not just the

relational hurt, but the structural hurt.

What's relational hurt? Relational hurt is when some

people acting together relationship.

I do something to you and you see able to hear it and see it

and you're in a position to respond or protect yourself.

But I do something that hurts you.

Relational hurt, structural hurt is I'm a father or a father

abuses, a child sexually abuses or physically abuses.

That's also what we're talking about.

That's a structural break. The child doesn't know.

The child is not incapable of defending themselves.

There's a broken order. There's the expectation that

families should do things. Fathers should not molest

children. Mothers should not molest

children. Fathers should not do this.

Mothers should not do this because of the nature of

children as they find them ready.

Fathers should not abuse their elderly parents either.

Forgiving the family to hurt you.

OK, so there's a sense of what should family do?

Where does that expectation come from?

Hurt involves broken order. There's a sense of something

should have been done a certain way and the order was broken.

Next question, What do you expect of family?

What do you expect? It kind of Harkins back to the

first one. What do you expect?

What do you expect of them? Why am I saying that?

Because sometimes your hurt comes not from what family did,

but again, from what you put on them.

And particularly when you didn't tell them, you just posed a no.

Because if you love me, you would just know.

And it's really interesting that we feel that way about people.

But when? But when people do that to us

and say, John, you just posed to know, My response is how was I

supposed to know? Right.

When it's on the other side, we can tell people.

I can tell my wife, you just posed to know.

But then she tells me what, John, you supposed to know.

My response is, how am I supposed to know?

Why is it that, oh, that's OK for me, but not OK for her?

What do you expect? The family That becomes really

important as well. OK, I got some technology issues

here. So next slide, what do you

expect? Why do you expect things of

family? So first one is what, the other

one's why. What is the objective aspect?

Why is the motivation? And this is important because

this speaks to whether you love me or not.

The why It speaks to what? The motivation for those things.

The why. OK, yeah.

See if you're see if you can download that for me.

The why do you expect things of family hurt involves misplaced

expectations. Next, why do you feel justified

in your anger at family hurt? This is what keeps you in a

broken position. I'm stuck.

This is why people feel justified.

I'm stuck. I didn't ask for this.

Pastor did a message on that a while ago.

It was really powerful. I didn't ask for this and I

can't do anything about it, so they owe me.

I didn't ask to be in this family.

I was just born into it. I didn't ask for this.

It's just happened to me. I feel justified in my anger.

Why? Because I didn't ask for it.

Therefore, if I'm angry or if I'm hurt or I'm upset, I have a

right to be. This is why people get stuck in

family hurt and family is in a unique way.

Why? Because you were never asked to

be born into your family. You could choose the job, you

can choose the spouse. Even I know spouse is part of

family, but but in terms of the, the the the parent child

relationship, you didn't ask for that.

And that justification of that hurt can sometimes cause you to

feel that you are justified and right and cause you to dig in

and to stay in and not be released from it.

I'm not going to move out. I'm not going to forgive unless

I'm paid in full. Somebody owes me and somebody's

going to pay for any forgiveness is given.

I'm justified and I was wronged. Now it's time to really begin to

expose the most important part, Amen.

The most important part. You got to recognize that it's

bigger than you. It's bigger than you.

With all of what I just said being true, we got to expose the

fact that it's bigger than you. It's not just about you.

Even though it may have happened personally to you or you may

have been the one who caused hurt personally, it's bigger

than you. It's a spiritual war between

kingdoms. Pastor said this on Wednesday.

It says this, that you were born into a war.

Genesis 315 says, and I will put enmity between you and the woman

and between your offspring and her offspring.

It's a family fight. It's a war you've been born

into. It's bigger than you.

Why some of the hurt has happened to in your family

because it was never about you. The enemy that's out to hurt God

was use your family to get back at him.

You ever seen the movie where you stop John?

Too many movies flooding my hair right now.

The movie where the, the, the hero is over there and the, and

the, and the evil person has the family member and they're

holding him hostage and they're threatening like this.

Knowing what if I threaten them, you won't do anything to me, or

even if you do something to me, I will hurt them in the process

and therefore hurt you. Families are in the midst of the

war between God and the enemies of God.

It's bigger than you. It's not just about you.

So you have to have a bigger perspective about it if you want

to rise above it. If you think it's all about you,

you want to stay in that cycle. But if you understand it's

bigger than you, that means you got bigger help to help you

breakthrough. The proximity of the war comes

between your family. That's why we talking about the

family series, Matthew 1036 says.

And the man's enemies will be members of his own household.

That's the proximity of the war. The enemy's trying to show that

love doesn't work because God is love.

And if I can bust up your household, then I can bust up

your bloodline. I can bust up your generations.

I can bust up everything. I'm trying to show that the

enemy's trying to show that love doesn't work, the proximity of

the wars and family relationships.

The only way you're going to win the war is doing it God's way,

Psalm 127 says Except the Lord builds the house.

They that labor in the city, they labor in vain who build it,

except the Lord keeps the city. The watchman wakes put in vain.

Now I highlighted 2 things here. Pastor, put these up or on

Wednesday, you ought to come out on Wednesday.

Do your soul a favor, do your soul in your bloodline a favor.

Come out. The Lord builds the house.

But after you build, you got to keep, it's not enough to follow

God in building. You got to follow God in

keeping. You got to follow God in the

maintenance because inevitably there will be disrepair.

That happens if you're using something, if you are vigorously

engaging in your family, you will have scratches, you will

have arguments, you will have beef, you will have brokenness.

You have to learn how God maintains order in the midst of

those things that naturally occur in living life with

family. Amen.

So I want to equip you with this mindset now.

Matthew 1037 says this. He who loves and takes pleasure

in father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who

loves and takes more pleasure in son or daughter more than me is

not worthy of me. You got to have a wholeness

shift and change your expectations.

The way you're able to forgive family that hurts you is to

understand you got to love God more first.

You gotta have your focus on Him first and foremost.

That has to be the supreme thing because as long as you love in

your family or dealing with your family or putting more weight in

your family than your love for God, you will always miss God's

ability to be able to repair and rescue and restore.

The brokenness has come through your family.

So you got to change your expectations.

Are you going to love God more? I told you He's bigger than you.

They did me wrong. I'm justified.

But are you going to love God more?

They've been doing it for a long time.

But are you going to love God more?

Let's flip it. I've been the cause of hurt and

I can't forgive myself. Are you going to love God more?

It's bigger than you. You got to shift expectation of

loving God first. Matthew 1030.

I believe it says this. And you should love the Lord

your God out of the whole of your heart.

Why is that important? Because it begins with loving

God, not forgiving others. OK, I've I've said this before,

this is God. This is the hurt.

I can go away from the hurt, but get no closer to God.

Sometimes how I go away from the hurt can actually put me farther

from God, but it is impossible that when I'm faced with

overwhelming hurt, if even I just take one small step towards

God, I've automatically put the hurt behind.

I don't want to get dramatic, but it's part of my gift set.

Even if that step is like it's a crawl on your knees, it don't

feel like a step. It feels like I'm more broken

than I'm whole. Even if you make that towards

God, if you fall towards God, if you cry towards God, if you just

put your momentum and your weight towards God, that is a

step towards wholeness and away from this automatically.

So you have to begin to decide I'm a love God first.

And the thing that keeps people from that is that they want to

have a clean house before the the cleaning service comes.

I want to clean my house before the person who's equipped and

capable and able into my favorite cleaner, we'll bring

fresh sourdough with her, comes to your house and does the work

for you. They got tools you don't know.

They got equipment you don't know.

They got skills you don't know, but too often we want to click

the house clean first before we love God.

God, how can I love you when I'm filled with so full of rage and

anger at my family, what they've done?

Let me deal with this first before I say I love you, I don't

want to be hypocritical. God is saying you got to love me

first. You can't deal with that unless

you love me. There's no way you won't even

handle it unless you deceive my love first.

Scripture says this. We love God because He first

loved us. Love was God's idea, not yours.

There's nothing we do in this life at all that was not first

God's idea. What you talking about then?

Sin is God's idea. No, not sin.

Sin is the corruption of what God's idea was.

The idea began with God and the enemies counterfeited it.

Now this is really, really important.

It's the equipment part, right? Love God first, bigger than you.

Look, I'm giving you the tools. Now.

How many of y'all know I can go down to Home Depot and get a bag

of tools that don't make me a builder?

It's a lot harder to apply the tools properly than to go buy

them, right? So the real work is not even

knowing the tools. The real work is applying the

tools. And you can do all the YouTube

that you want and YouTube is good, but there's nothing like

having some a master with you who knows the work and the tools

teach you how to apply the tools.

Let me tell you, don't you come up here.

This is my, this is my, this is my son here.

There's nothing like we're doing work right here as a car Angel.

Act like you're fixing the car Angel.

He's an actor too. He can do this.

Act like you're fixing the car, Agent.

There's one thing to YouTube it. It's something else to have a

math to come over here and go like, no, you turn it this way

to be there with you. That's the presence of God

working with you through it. That's what loving God will

allow you to do. You cutting steak, you man, you

ain't fixing the car. Go ahead and sit down there.

But we can cut steak too, though we like we do steak together.

The idea is this and I messed up the I messed up the musician.

So it's like I can't play behind steak man.

I'm gonna let you finish that part.

But the idea is this, getting the tools is not enough.

Saying I have the tools is not enough.

You using the tools based on your own knowledge isn't enough.

Now, you may get there eventually, but when you take

the tools you have and you go to the master and you say master, I

need you to teach me to use these tools.

I need you to walk with me in using these tools.

I need you to move within me as I use these tools.

And when I fumble, I need you to show me how to correct the

things that I'm doing with these tools and with master.

And I'm giving you permission. If you see me beginning to use a

tool improperly, I'm giving you permission to come in and

correct me before I misuse the tool, whether that's through you

or the people you send in my life quipping.

Here's the biggest part of your quipping.

Luke 2334 and Jesus prayed. Father, forgive them, for they

know not what they do. You got to shift your heart

understanding, You got to lift blame, cleanse the venom out.

That's not forgetting responsibility.

It's just getting rid of the poison that's going to kill you.

Jesus pray, Father, forgive them, for they're not what they

do. Jesus prayed this prayer when

he's being nailed to a cross between two thieves.

The Romans who had a history of crucifixion and cruelty in many

ways. For all the great things they

gave, that empire gave roads and water and and aquaculture, I'm

not going to get into anything deeper than that.

For all of that that they gave, they also were expert in cruelty

in many ways. They knew how to crucify people.

They were doing three of them in a row and the and Jesus knew

that the people that put them on the Romans were crucifying them,

but they were doing it at the direction of his friends and his

family and his coworkers and people he went to temple with or

church with or he did life with. They were the ones that were

exhorting the cruelty, though the Romans were executing the

cruelty in the midst of that, he says, Father forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

Hold on, Player. It seems like they're very

intentional about what they're doing.

He's saying, Father, forgive them.

They really don't know what they're doing.

Now here's the challenge. Is that what God's asking of you

to look at your family? What Jesus tells me from that

picture is this. Maybe your family doesn't really

know what they were doing. I can look for my own family.

He says, well my family, my dad, the ex wives heir to me, he knew

what he was doing. But when I took a step back, saw

it was bigger than me and I looked at it through the lens of

God, I began to say God, who is the man versus what did he do to

me? And you know what I began to

learn? I learned this about my father

and it's led me to my freedom. I learned that he was born out

of an affair. His mother had an affair with a

married man. His mother got pregnant.

The married man had a family, lived on the other side of town

and didn't care for them in a small town, so everybody knew.

I learned that my father went to high school with his half

brother, who has never acknowledged his family.

He had no shoes. His brother had shoes, he had to

hustle pool. His brother had everything paid

for. I learned that his mother was a

a numbers runner. That's the illegal lottery.

That's where the people got the ID for the lottery from the

numbers people. No, true.

They legalized it. And then his stepfather was a

drug dealer. And I learned my father really

never knew his father to any degree.

And he did know the Lord, and all he knew was brokenness and

pain and hurting his family. And then he married my mother,

went to college, He was a senior, my mother was a

freshman. They started dating.

He went home to visit her. And my mother's father said this

to him. She's yours now, your

responsibility. They weren't married.

My mother's stepfather said she's your responsibility to a

man that don't know anything about family.

And he paid for a college and they moved to Chicago where

there was no family around. They moved for opportunities.

He's discriminated against as an African American in his in his

business, in his career. Had an opportunity to work for

the one of the largest drug store chains in the Midwest at

the time. That gave him the worst stores

all the time because he was black and he knew it.

But my father had a way of turning bad things around for

good. And the stores they gave him

became the best stores in the whole company.

And that record continued until just very recently when the

company was sold. But yet he had no relationships,

had no nobody to question, nobody to call on, didn't know

the Lord. And when everything in him now

he's not. He said this.

I don't think he'd mind sharing me sharing this.

He wasn't faithful to my mom. But is it any wonder because he

was born out of unfaithfulness. That's what he knew.

Maybe he had to come to that conclusion.

Otherwise he couldn't stand the the the pain of knowing that

there was a different way. My folks in the headline was he

married 55 years. So my father was working on

business and working on providing a better life for us

for a lot of reasons. So maybe he didn't have the

nurture and the care that I needed to have.

My father was grew up this way. When they told him you can't, he

said I'll show you. When he said you blankety,

blank, blank, blank, blank. I'm gonna let you fill in the

exhibitives, you can't. He says, I'll show you.

So you motivated me and he raised me with I can't, not

knowing when my father told me I can't, I said OK versus I'll

show you. He did for me.

Would it work for him? And in that context, now I

haven't learned the story. And then being married 55 years

until my mom passed, I said, Oh my goodness, yes, I was hurt.

Yes, he did things that were wrong, but when I understood he

was not equipped to be a man, he was not equipped to be a father,

he was not equipped to be married.

He was not equipped to have peace.

He was what he fought against in his career.

He was on his own all alone trying to find his way in the

world from a child and to the time he died at 80 plus.

When I understood that, but he said I'm not going to divorce

your mom and your mom not going to divorce me.

I'm not saying you have marriages that are not good, but

because he wouldn't quit even though he wasn't capable.

I don't know divorce in my family.

So when it get so when it gets hard with my wife quitting any

option and because of relationship, I know the

problems in his background where he came from, I can stand

against those traps that would try to get me into the same

problems with my wife. He passed on to me grit.

He passed on to me an ability to find a way to make a way to not

let anybody limit what you can do.

And it was that entrepreneurial spirit that allowed me to come

to Canada knowing I couldn't work.

God will figure it out. God, there's a way, and my

father has taught me tools. He's giving me the courage to

say whatever happens, we can get something done and do it

legally. Just to be very clear, Jesus

prayed, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're

doing. When I saw my father's life and

perspective, then I was able to understand He didn't know what

he was doing. He really didn't know what he

was doing. And I even put it in the context

of this here. He didn't know he was in the

middle of a war between God and his enemy.

He didn't know he was a pawn being used in order to throw

accusations against the holy, loving God.

He didn't know that he was being manipulated in certain actions.

He had responsibility for what he did, but he wasn't just

fighting on his own. There was forces that was trying

to motivate him and move him into destructivity.

Forgive them for they know not what they do.

The next slide here. Next slide.

So now I want to excite you. Keep going.

Now here's the motivating part. We've exposed that how you got

there is because of expectations, false, unmet,

unmaimed, those kind of things. You got to examine that.

We've equipped you to let you know it's bigger than you, and

you have to love God first, even with your pain in your mess.

But in order to deal with the pain in the mess, you got to be

willing to say, God, I'm gonna love you first, even above my

justified hurt. But here's the part that ought

to motivate you. You got to know.

I also want to say you got to understand that they didn't

really maybe know what they did. If Jesus can say it about them

and he was perfect in love and honor and insight, then surely I

can say about my situation. They really didn't know.

And here's the exciting part. When you're able to use these

equipping tools in the way God's ordained them, then you can

release the hurt and the pain and you can release them.

Releasing them can release you. Giving forgiveness can help you

receive forgiveness. Some of the reasons you can't

receive your forgiveness is because you're holding on to

unforgiveness for others and you this is what you just to

bargain. If I choose to receive, that

means I'm going to have to give it.

No, I want to hold on to what I have, so I'm not going to

receive forgiveness from myself. Releasing them can release you

next one. Releasing them can release them.

You're forgiving them releases you from the bondage and the

pain and from the venom and the toxin of whatever's happened,

whether you committed it or been on the receiving end.

But releasing them can also release them.

See the part about Jesus on the cross?

Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're

doing. You got to keep reading that

story because down a little further a thief hears that and

one thief says, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom.

Jesus releasing them. Help this other thief find

release and forgiveness in God for his own stuff.

Releasing them can release them to forgive themselves.

My wife, her grandfather, early Chinese man, grew up in a

traditional Chinese family and didn't say I love you too much.

It was at a Christmas Bible study and it just opened up in

her. She start crying and those kind

of things she says, you know, I'll go into my grandfather's

store in Vancouver. She was black.

He's Chinese. And she'd say grandpa and he'd

look away because you know, she she wasn't full of Chinese.

He said you never said I love you.

And after this Bible study, she decided I was going to say I

love you to my grandfather. She forgave.

She released. She did.

She replied the tools in the presence of God she gave, she

released and we got home that night.

It was late, what was early here, and she called and she

says Grandpa, grandpa, so want to tell you Merry Christmas.

And I said want to tell you I love you.

And I heard it on the phone. He said I love you too.

Her releasing him helped him to release himself.

It's bigger than you. Your forgiveness can help other

people forgive themselves. Your forgiveness can help other

people be released next one. Your forgiving your family can

help you reclaim the inheritance for you and your bloodline.

The truth be told what the enemy's plan is, is to use pain

for you to forget what God has given you.

I never want to be what you've hurt me so bad.

So you leave behind the gifts and the calling gods put on your

family and for your bloodline. You leave behind the things that

God has deposited for you for your future as you move forward.

You leave behind the talents and abilities that God has given for

it to pass through you to your to your children, to your

future. You get so so you get so

offended. I don't want none of it at all.

Then you find yourself wondering, like an orphan, who

am I? Because you let a fence rob you

of part of your identity. That was the blessing in that

family. I told you when I was able to

forgive and look back, I saw my dad gave me some things.

He gave me grit not to quit. He gave me entrepreneurship to

go anywhere in the world and do whatever God needs me to do and

not feel like if someone doesn't give me a job, there's no way

it's going to work. Nothing wrong with working the

job, I'm please understand, but the idea is I'm not depending on

that to say my yes to God. He gave me humility in his last

days by asking, son, forgive me before he passed.

It's never too late to ask and seek for the forgiveness that

you need to seek. He gave me a lot that I could

have left if I'll just let the pain of experience dictate and

lead. So part of this is reclaiming

the inheritance of your bloodline.

We talk about that in baptism. When you go down in that water,

you coming up to this new life, there's a there's a bloodline

inheritance you're reclaiming. The Scripture we talk about is

when Moses, when Moses went through the water and they

brought the riches of Egypt with them and then the waters closed

over and 400 years of family bondage was drowned in the

water. Their bloodline was reclaimed

through those waters. That's what we're talking about.

And forgiving family love has grown folk business and it is

the hardest thing you will ever have to do in your life.

That's why you need a big God and a grown God to do it.

You can't do it on your own. It's really important you really

understand that. So there's no time like now,

there's no time like now, there's no time like now.

Or what if my family's passed on?

You can still forgive. What if the people I've hurt who

have passed on you can still ask for forgiveness because it

begins first and foremost with God, even more so than them.

So we're going to take some moments right now and put this

to work. I'm going to encourage you.

You can sit where where you are and just spend some time

thinking about the family hurts that you've experienced, the

family hurts that you've caused. My dad told me this.

He said, son, when you point at someone point at my wife, I

don't want anybody to think I'm being rude or anything.

When you .1 finger at them, son, you got 3 pointing back at you.

What hurt did I 'cause how did I contribute to the pain?

How did I let the pain go on and not forgive when God was calling

me to forgive? How did I contribute to the

pain? By not getting to know their

story and who they were so I can release that thing.

So I'm going to take some moments right now.

The Holy Spirit is here. Our Father is hosting us in this

room, and He set you up for this time.

The day is your day. You can let it go.

You always could. But God has set up a special

place in time to give you the extra help you may have needed

collectively in this room. See, because we do it together

in this room, you got the testimony of my faith and what

forgiveness of my family's done for me backing you and your hard

decision you got to make. You got my testimony telling you

forgive and let it go. It's going to be all right.

You're not being irresponsible. You still can set boundaries so

people don't take advantage of you.

They were wrong to have hurt you, whether they've said it or

not. But look what comes out on the

other side. You got the faith in this room

to lift your hands and to stand with you.

There's no place like now. There's no place like here.

So I'm gonna ask you this. Think about this and let the

Holy Spirit bring to your remembrance.

Now what is it you need to forgive your family for?

What is it you need forgiveness from your family for?

What hurt have you caused that you need to What hurt in your

own family have you caused, whether that's your bloodline

family or whether that's your church family or it heard have

you caused? I just want to just share this

in this time. You know what hurt it would

cause me if one day my son left the house and just didn't come

back and he left because of something that I said that hurt

him, that maybe I wasn't even aware of it or have the depth to

which it hurt him and he just left and never said anything.

As a Father, Can you imagine how much that would hurt me?

Can you? If you can't raise your hand?

You know, it's the same way when people come to church and they

just leave and never say anything.

What hurt have you caused? And you're leaving?

So just take time. I'm gonna ask you to close your

eyes. Why?

Because it helps you to focus on what God's doing in your heart.

It's going to take a couple minutes as the Holy Spirit

eliminates, illuminates to you any forgiveness of your family

that you need to forgive. Thank you Holy Spirit for

bringing up people's hearts, souls, and minds.

What needs to be forgiven even right now?

Prayer team, if you can just be praying unless you need to be

forgiven. If you need to do the forgiving

part, do the forgiving part and pray later.

Let it come up, let the images come up or let the issue come up

because I believe the day God is saying we're going to deal with

this and you won't have to see it anymore.

God has the ability and power to do that.

Holy Spirit of God, we thank you for right now that you're

revealing the hearts. You're going deep into the

hearts of everyone here and under the sound of my voice,

deep into the hearts to unpack the pain, unpack the

forgiveness, unpack the bondage, unpack the the hurt people have

for what they disappointment in themselves they have for what

they did and didn't do. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that

you're reaching deep right now in the places that maybe never

even been touched before. We Father, we pray that there's

an anointing in this room and floods every heart that they are

allowing you to go into places they've kept off limits before.

Pockets of pain, hidden dark rooms of hurt that they've never

discussed with anybody. Sometimes you can be hurt by

someone who did nothing wrong because your expectation was

misplaced. That still qualifies.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for going places that no man can go.

Thank you, Father, for your love entertaining the hearts and

souls of everyone here in ways that we can't reach within

ourselves. Thank you for bringing

restoration and healing and wholeness in those places.

God, Thank you God. The right now forgiveness is

being given, pains being released, and identity connected

with that pain is being disconnected and eradicated.

Father, we thank you that the blood of Jesus washing it all

the way, even right now and even as people are forgiving and

releasing the people they're forgiving and also being

released to forgive. Father, we thank you that

forgiveness, divine Kingdom forgiveness, is flooding this

room and flooding the hearts and souls of the people.

For those, Father, who don't know how, we thank you for your

grace to help them in this moment.

Yield. Thank you for Your grace to help

them in this moment. Yield the Lord.

You're not too far gone to forgive.

It's not too late. Don't be deceived by said by

thinking to yourself, well, that you know, that's been a long

time doesn't need going back. Remember, it's bigger than you.

There's things God wants to release through you, maybe to

the next generation that are blocked up by the stuff you

don't want to address and don't want to deal with.

And don't make excuses. Well, that's what everybody did

back then. Don't make excuses and don't

make excuses for yourself. Father, we're going to pray now.

I'm going to activate a prayer. God's already doing the work.

But I want to extend our faith with you and to let you know

this entire house and this entire heaven that God has is on

your side tonight and on your side right now.

Father, we thank you right now, God, that you are releasing pain

and hurt. We thank you, Father, that

family hurt from ejection, from abandonment, from sexual abuse,

from verbal abuse, from emotional abuse, from relational

abuse is being broken even right now, Lord, and being cast out

and removed. We thank you that wholeness is

coming in behind that abuse and bringing wholeness.

God, We thank you, Father, that people that have the grace to be

able to say, God, I see now they don't know what they were doing.

Father, we thank you that you're going very, very deep into the

hearts and lives of all of the all of the people here and

families that seem to be irretrievably broken because of

pain or unforgiveness now can be healed and can be mended.

God to your glory. Father, we thank you God that as

forgiveness is flowing in these areas of life, God people not

only forgiving themselves, what they didn't do for how they

didn't take advantage of opportunity, of how they didn't

serve God sooner, how they didn't yield to God earlier.

We thank you God, as people are forgiving themselves tells us

well God, that riches and inheritance and goodness and

glory has been pent up, now is being released down the

bloodline. We thank you, Lord, that people

are experiencing your love, your love, your love, your love.

They're experiencing your love, your great loving kindness.

You're loving in ways that only you can do, Lord, and we thank

you for that. And Father, we thank you for

testimonies not to prove to us, but give them a testimony of

what you've done. Give them a testimony to tell

their family members and their friends and their kids about.

I couldn't forgive, but God entered my heart and I was able

to. I had a heart time, but I chose

to love God more and now I'm transformed and my family is

just, I don't know, turned around God give them testimonies

to tell to their own families and to their own souls and to

their Diaries. God where they kept Diaries of

pain, give them testimonies of transformation to book in those

God and then change the chapter. We thank you for that Father.

As our worship team continues, continue to let God do the work.

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's sermon.

We pray you were challenged, equipped and encouraged.

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