Forgive One Another | The One Another Way - Ephesians 4:30-32 | Matty Finlay

Well, hey, good morning, and once again, welcome to Silverdale.

If you've never met.

If we've never met, my name is Maddie.

Have the privilege of serving as a part of the team here on our Bunny House campus.

And this morning I have the joy of opening God's word with you.

So if you would pull out your Bibles for me, I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And if you would go ahead and grab these worship guys, these outlines you're one of these to follow along as we go this morning.

We find ourselves in the midst of a series called The One Another Way, where we're looking at how Jesus is called, followers of His, to interact with each other, how He's called us to love one another, to care for one another.

And this morning we're gonna talk about how we are called to forgive one another.

But before we get to our text this morning, I want to lay a little groundwork for us so that we're all operating from the same place.

You see, forgiveness, the way we approach it, the way we receive it, the way that we offer it, is often dictated by what we've seen and learned in the past.

And for some of us, that was really, really healthy.

Some of us have seen forgiveness play out in really healthy ways.

And for others of us in the room, it maybe wasn't as healthy.

So what I want to do this morning for just a moment is I want to give us a couple of guardrails, a couple of principles, if you would, that will kind of shape and guide the way we look at our sex this morning.

So if you're taking notes, I want you to jot this down.

Here's the first one forgiveness doesn't always mean forgetting.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean forgetting.

How many of you have heard that saying that forgive and forget?

Everybody, right?

Like we were taught it as kids, we teach it to our kids, and for kids, it's a really helpful saying, right?

Like we don't want kids, we don't want our children being mad the whole time because Big Brother took a toy away from them, right?

Or because someone at preschool called them a silly name.

Like it's a really helpful saying to help them understand how to forget some of those hurtful things.

However, that same principle doesn't apply all the way through life and in every situation.

Forgive and forget is often unhelpful as we begin to talk about things like abuse or adultery.

In fact, there is a study that you'll find in the National Library of Medicine that suggests that forgetting, which would typically include minimizing the wrong, suppressing the memory, seeking to restore trust immediately, can produce what is known as the rebound effect, which would actually lead to greater distress later on and further down the road.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean forgetting.

Here's the second thing I want you to jot down is this.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean reconciliation.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean reconciliation, it doesn't always mean that that friendship, that relationship has to be reconciled, has to go back to the way that it was.

Forgiveness doesn't always mean that we have to allow somebody to stay in or come back into our lives.

And now while those first two may cause you to breathe a little easier and maybe you're kind of elbowing the person sitting next to you saying, I've been trying to tell you that.

The next two might be a little harder for us to hear.

They sure are a little harder for me to say to you this morning.

Here's the third principle I want you to write down.

It's this that forgiveness doesn't come with exceptions.

Forgiveness doesn't come with exceptions.

And we'll see this in our text here in just a few moments.

But followers of Jesus don't get to pick who and what we forgive.

We don't get to decide who is worthy or deserving of forgiveness and who may not be.

Yes, we may need boundaries, yes, reconciliation may not be trust possible, trust may need to be rebuilt, consequences may remain, but unforgiveness cannot.

Forgiveness doesn't come with exceptions.

Here's the last principle I want you to jot down.

It's this that forgiveness isn't a one-time decision.

I wish, I wish there was this process that I could walk you through this morning.

We could get to the end of it and we could all say, Awesome, amen.

I forgive that person, I forgive that thing, now I can move on.

But that's just not how it works, is it?

Forgiveness is often a process that can take more time than we've ever anticipated.

And it's important for us to have these guardrails in place this morning.

It's important for us to have these principles in place because as we talk about forgiveness this morning, you're gonna hear everything I say.

You're gonna interpret the word of God based on the framework you have right now, the situation you find yourself in.

You're gonna interpret, you're gonna try to interpret the word of God through the lens of the current hurt that you're experiencing.

You're gonna try to interpret the word of God through the unforgiveness in your life.

And for some of us this morning, we'll sit in our seats and we'll say something like this Yeah, but Maddie, if you knew, you would never ask me to.

And the way we think about forgiveness is gonna be dictated by how we feel about a situation or for many of us, a person.

So, what I want to do for us this morning for just a moment is I want us to pray together.

I'm gonna ask that God would give us ears to hear his word, a mind to comprehend and understand it, and a heart that would receive it and be obedient to it.

Let's pray together for just a moment.

Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word.

God, we recognize this morning that as we talk about forgiveness, we begin to step into, to address, to touch deeply personal, hurtful, and complex things.

So God, as we hear your word this morning, would you stare in our hearts and lead us to be obedient to you?

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

And everybody said, Amen.

Alright, so Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

If you get your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 4, verses 30 through 32.

Ephesians 4:30–32

Say this.

If you don't have a Bible in front of you, it'll be on the screens behind me.

It says this, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

Right before Paul writes this, he told the Ephesian church that they had to rid themselves of unwholesome talk.

Then he moves into this passage that he tells us it's possible that the way we live our lives, what we say and do, can grieve the Holy Spirit.

That sin in our lives can cause the Spirit of God sorrow, that bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice, all things we need to put away because they are sinful and cause the spirit to grieve.

Then Paul tells us what we should do in their place.

Look at it again with me, verses 32.

It says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

Paul says that we are to forgive one another as God in Christ forgave us.

One of the ways that we, one of the ways that the church, one of the ways that the followers of Jesus are called to live our lives is by forgiving others as Christ has forgiven us.

Notice that Paul doesn't start with our ability to forgive.

Paul doesn't start with our hurts.

The argument Paul makes for us forgiving others is because of the forgiveness that we have received.

We are both called to forgive and given the ability to forgive because we have been forgiven.

So what does that forgiveness look like?

If Paul tells us that you, Christ follower, follower of Jesus, you're called to forgive as God in Christ forgave you, what does the forgiveness that God has given us look like?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

I want to show you that this morning.

Number one, if you're taking notes, jot this down for me.

We forgive candidly.

We forgive candidly.

In order for us to begin the process of forgiveness, we have to be candid and honest about the hurt that was caused.

Do you remember the story of Joseph in Genesis?

Joseph finds favor with his dad, his brothers don't like it, so they make this plan.

They're gonna take him, they're gonna kill him.

Then the little brother says, Hey, let's not kill him, let's throw him in a pit.

They end up selling him into slavery.

They go back, they tell their dad that an animal had killed him, and then Joseph's life takes this series of dramatic twists and turns.

He's falsely accused of sexual assault, he's thrown in jail, then eventually, by God's grace, he's promoted to the second in command over Egypt.

And then there's this moment famine strikes the land.

Joseph's family have no food, so they come to Egypt looking for something to eat, trying to save their family.

And the brothers have this interaction with Joseph.

They don't know it's Joseph, but Joseph knows that it's them.

Eventually, Joseph tells them who he is.

But in Genesis 50, verse 20, we see Joseph make a powerful statement in which he addresses his hurt very candidly.

Genesis 50:20

Look at it with me, verse 20, says this.

He then goes on to say, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

But first, Joseph acknowledges the hurt, he acknowledges the sin.

Forgiveness is not denial.

Joseph called their sin what it was evil.

He named it before he explained how God had redeemed it.

Forgiveness begins with candidness.

We've got to name the sin.

We see the same thing with Jesus.

The cross itself acknowledges the seriousness of sin.

Romans 5.8 says this, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

There's this candid recognition of sin that God still, in spite of it, chose forgiveness.

Christ still died for us.

Sin was not ignored, it was acknowledged as real and it was addressed appropriately.

Listen to me this morning.

Forgiveness doesn't say, well, it's not a big deal.

Forgiveness doesn't say, well, that wound or that hurt is small, so it doesn't matter.

Forgiveness starts with candidness.

It starts by us saying, I acknowledge this hurt, I acknowledge the pain, I acknowledge the wrong, but I also understand that my God is bigger than those things.

I understand that my God is greater than those things.

Here's the second thing that we see we forgive completely, we forgive candidly, and we forgive completely.

If we are going to forgive like God, if that is the calling on our lives to forgive as God in Christ forgave us, we have to be people who forgive completely.

It means that we have to surrender what we feel we have a right to and the retribution we feel like we're entitled to.

It means we have to give up the right to punish somebody else because of the hurt they may have caused us.

It means that we've got to stop collecting payment from that hurt in the form of gossip, manipulation, humiliation, the silent treatment.

It means that we keep no record of wrongs, husbands, wives, it means that we've got to stop using that hurt as a weapon against our spouse.

Well, you did this, so I'm gonna do that.

Complete forgiveness means I completely surrender what I believe is my right to unforgiveness and bitterness.

I completely surrender what I believe is my right to get you back.

There's this story in Matthew 18.

Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, and maybe you know that story.

But there's a servant who's racked up a debt, a debt so large that he will never be able to repay his master.

It's this astronomically sized debt.

And when his master comes to collect the debt, the servant begs him for grace.

Matthew 18, 27 says it's out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

The master forgives this astronomical debt that he was never going to be able to repay.

And then Matthew 18, 28 tells us this.

But when that same servant, that same one who had just been forgiven this debt, went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.

And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe.

The servant who had been forgiven this astronomical debt went to collect what he was owed, a debt that was equivalent to about a hundred days' wage.

Small and insignificant in comparison to the debt he was forgiven.

And when his servant, when a fellow servant, couldn't repay that debt, he threw him in prison until it could be paid.

But look how that passage finishes in verses 31 through 35.

It says this when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed.

And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all of his debt.

So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

As we have received the grace, forgiveness, and mercy of God, we are called to extend that to others.

What I believe Jesus is teaching us is that a heart that has experienced and been transformed by the mercy of God will share that with other people.

Could it be that you've grown hard-hearted and unforgiven?

Because maybe you've never experienced the reality of the grace and mercy that God has for you.

Could it be that you've never understood the insurmountable debt that was paid for you?

But we also gotta remember those guidelines that we said earlier, right?

As you talk about complete forgiveness, it may not mean reconciliation.

We can forgive and still keep boundaries in place, right?

Like it's so important for us to grasp this idea of complete forgiveness because when we hold on to unforgiveness, we are the ones who suffer.

You know that.

When I was at Carson Newman, my last two years that I was there, we had this assistant coach that came in.

And this guy was anti-Jesus, anti-church, anti-everything that I believed I stood for as a follower of Jesus.

And he made those last two years for me pretty miserable, if I'm quite honest with you.

He tried to undermine the influence that I had with the team.

He would speak negatively about me at every opportunity that he got, and he took away opportunities that I had to share my faith and to try to influence others to follow Jesus all while at a Christian school.

When I graduated, what I thought, what I believed was out of sight, out of mind, right?

Like I'd never think about him again.

And then there is this moment that happened.

And I'm scrolling through my social media feed and I see his name come up, and he was engaged at the time, and I found myself getting angry.

I found myself, this this anger welling up inside of me, and then I'd set my phone aside, or I'd get a text from a teammate who would talk about him or throw his name out there, and the whole time I would see him, anytime I would think about him, like I would go from zero to a hundred so quickly.

This anger would dwell up inside of me, it would ruin my day, it would ruin my night.

I would respond to people unkindly because I was so angry at this guy.

You know the crazy thing about that whole situation?

He never thought once about me.

Not one time.

He couldn't give a lick where I was or what I was doing.

He'd moved on with his life.

But every time I saw his name, he ruined my day.

I had given, I had allowed my bitterness and unforgiveness to give him power and control over my emotions and my feelings.

I had allowed unforgiveness and bitterness to take hold of my life.

And some of you this morning, you are living, breathing examples of that right now.

Even as we talk about forgiveness here and now, your blood's boiling.

You're sitting in your seat, and you are so angry even now.

And I'm sure if you could say, Maddie, if you knew what they had done, you'd never tell me to forgive them.

Listen, I need you to hear me this morning.

Nobody is here to minimize your pain.

Nobody is here to minimize what you've experienced and what you've walked through.

But what I am here to remind you of this morning is that the word of God teaches us that the only way to move forward is to move toward forgiveness.

But I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying.

I'm not telling you to forgive because you'll feel better.

I'm reminding you this morning that we forgive because God forgave us.

Here's the third thing I want you to jot down.

Is this that we forgive humbly?

We forgive humbly.

We first forgive candidly, we then forgive completely, and we forgive humbly.

2 Corinthians 5, 21 says this, for our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As Paul writes to the Corinthian church about salvation, he tells them that Jesus knew no sin.

He was perfectly innocent, but he was made to be sin so that we can become righteous.

Jesus was innocent but bore our guilt so that we could be set free.

Jesus traded places with us, he took our guilt and gave us his righteousness.

Here's what that means for you and I this morning.

In and of ourselves, we are guilty as charged.

We are sinful and therefore we are guilty.

So as we approach forgiveness, we do so from a place of humility, understanding that the only thing that separates me from somebody else is the grace that I have received from Jesus.

That without him, I'm just a rotten, broken sinner, too.

It means that we have to see those who have hurt us as more than the worst thing that they may have ever done.

It means that we have to understand that people are not perfect, but neither are you.

Neither am I.

We don't see forgiveness as something we offer because we are better than others or more pure than others or more righteous than others.

Instead, we humbly understand that I am not a savior graciously looking down on an inferior sinner.

I am one forgiven sinner extending another the mercy that they desperately need.

When I was in school, I remember sitting in a human services class.

It was this kind of general ed class that was part of my psychology minor, and we needed it to graduate.

And it introduced us to a variety of topics, but there is this teacher, her name was Dr.

Tanya Ramsey.

And there's something she taught me in that class that has changed how I viewed the way people have treated me.

And how they treat each other.

It's four words that have helped me and I think can help us move towards forgiveness with humility.

If you're taking notes, I want you to jot this down this morning for me.

It's this hurt people hurt people.

Hurt people hurt people.

We need to begin to wrap our minds around the reality that more often than not, people who hurt us or wrong us do so from a place of their own hurt.

Listen to me, understanding someone's behavior doesn't excuse the sin.

It doesn't erase the responsibility.

It just simply helps us see the offender as a broken person in need of grace rather than a monster who's beyond grace.

Hurt people hurt people.

Many of you know that my dad and I haven't always had a wonderful relationship.

Today I couldn't be prouder to call him my dad.

But through the process of coming to know Christ, through sitting in Dr.

T's class, hearing those four words, I began to wonder about my dad.

I began to wonder why he treated me the way that he did, why he treated mom the way that he did, why he acted the way that he did.

And what I began to learn is there were a lot of things that I didn't know about my dad.

There's a lot about his past that I didn't know.

I had heard little snippets here and there, I'd heard bits and pieces here and there.

But I never understood who my dad was, I never understood what he'd experienced.

I didn't really have any of that information.

So as I began to wonder about him, I began to ask questions.

As Ted Lasso would say, I began to be curious and not judgmental.

And I began to ask my dad some things I had never asked or heard before.

And the more that he shared, the more I found out, the more I began to understand.

Not excuse, but understand why he acted the way that he did.

See, for 20-something years of my life, I lived mad and angry at this man.

I would have told you he was a monster.

But the more I learned, the more humbled I was.

Because what I began to learn is my dad was just a broken man who had never been given the tools to deal with his own hurt.

That I had lived so angry at this man.

I never once tried to understand his brokenness.

And once I did, it gave me an understanding into why he was the way that he was.

Again, it doesn't excuse behaviors, it doesn't take them away, but it does help us understand.

So if I can lean in here for just a moment and speak to the husbands and the fathers in the room, or maybe the guys joining us online.

Many of you, many of us, we carry wounds and hurts that we have never talked about or shared with anybody.

And we've been led to believe that being a man simply means we swallow those things down, we bury them as deep as we can, and we often live by the principle, not that we forgive and forget, we just forget.

We're just gonna leave it back there and act like it never ever happened.

But hurt people hurt people, and that includes you.

So it's our responsibility as the spiritual leaders of our homes, it's our responsibility to lead our wives and our children to deal with the hurts in our lives so we don't reproduce them in our families.

Talking to somebody, being a part of a ministry like celebrate recovery is not weakness.

It is you saying I love and value my family enough that I'm gonna deal with the mess of my past so I don't reproduce it in my kids and my wife.

I love my family enough.

I'm gonna lead them spiritually well enough that I'm gonna try to deal with this stuff so in 10 years my kids are not sitting in a counselor's office talking about how I hurt them.

We have to lead our families, men, to a place that we deal with the hurts so we don't reproduce them in our families.

We have to forgive humbly.

And then here's the last thing that I want to show you this morning this is that we forgive continually.

We forgive continually.

What's so hard about forgiveness is that more often than not, it's not just this one and done type deal.

Typically, forgiveness doesn't consist of us saying, I forgive you, I forgive them, and then we just move on, right?

Forgiveness is often this continual process of bringing that herb before the Lord, naming it, asking for God's grace to forgive that person who caused it.

You know, right before Jesus shared the parable of the unforgiving servant that I told you about earlier, Peter approaches him and asks him a question.

Look at it.

Matthew 18, verses 21 and 22.

Matthew 18:21

Peter came up and says to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

As many as seven times?

And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

In Judaism, forgiving somebody three times was considered sufficient to indicate that you had a forgiving spirit, that you had that offense had been forgiven, if you would.

And when Peter asked that question, no doubt that he kind of asked it with his chest puffed out just a little bit.

He said, Well, it is it seven times, Jesus, like I feel pretty good about myself.

And Jesus blows him out of the water with his response and saying 77 times.

What Jesus was telling Peter, what Jesus was telling those of us who follow him, is that we forgive without keeping count.

We forgive without keeping count.

We forgive continually.

Forgiveness may begin in a moment, it may begin with a decisive action, a decisive moment of surrender, but we'll likely need to reaffirm and revisit that surrender over and over and over again.

I've shared this with you guys before.

My wife loves our front yard to look great.

She wants that deep dark grass and all the rest of it.

Well, before we bought the house that we moved into, the people who owned it before us, they had this really wonderful idea that they were gonna put river rock all the way around the outside of the perimeter of the house and the perimeter of the party, of the of the property.

You know what grows really, really well in river rock?

Weeds.

And lots of them.

So typically, what happens in my house is there's a Saturday morning where my wife will be like, hey babe, what are you doing today?

Like, very college football, like I'm gonna watch this game, watch that game.

There's weeds in the rocks outside, and I know that's my cue to say, yes, ma'am.

And I go to the garage and I get my bucket and I go outside.

Do you know how you get weeds out of river rock?

You painstakingly get on your hands and knees, and you move rocks one at a time, and you pull the weeds out, and you get in the bucket, you put the rug back, and you move the next rock, and you move it out, and you pull the weed out, and you go on so on and so forth.

And then you can't forget it once you've done all that, you gotta spray it with the weed killer, right?

And then there's this moment that you step back, you look at the work you've done, you smile, you feel good, and your wife says, good job, baby, it looks awesome.

Then you know what happens a couple weeks later?

Those same weeds go back in that same river rock.

And you know how you get rid of weeds in a river rock the second time?

The same way you did the first time.

You go back and you painstakingly move every rock, and you pull every weed, and you put the rock back, and you move every rock, and you put the rock back, and then you spray with the weed killer.

And it's this painstaking process that you go through again and again and again and again around the whole perimeter of your house, around the whole perimeter of your property, because the people before you thought it was a good idea to put river rock around your house.

But can I tell you this morning?

Forgiveness is often like pulling weeds out of river rock.

We're gonna walk through the process.

We're gonna painstakingly uncover where the herd is.

We're gonna seek to pull it out by the root, and we're gonna take a step back.

We're gonna breathe.

We're gonna think, man, that feels good.

That looks good.

And then there's gonna be this moment.

Maybe it's days, maybe it's weeks, maybe it's months, maybe it's just hours.

Wait.

Well, you have to revisit that thing again, and you have to go through that whole process again.

You have to uncover the herd, try to pull it out by the root, give it away, surrender it to God, take a step back and breathe.

It doesn't mean that you never forgave in the first place.

It just often means that sometimes those wounds are gonna take a little more time to heal.

Forgiveness is hard work.

But when we forgive candidly, completely, humbly, and continually, it'll change our lives.

And it may even change somebody else's in the process.

I want to tell you a story as we close this morning.

2008, I'm a sophomore at Costano, and I give my life to Jesus.

There's this moment, I'm at a church service, chapel, not too dissimilar to this, right?

I'm sitting kind of in the middle on the right-hand side of a row, and this guy presents the gospel, and I walk down front, I surrender my life to Jesus, pray this prayer of surrender, and not exactly sure what that looks like for the next season of my life.

I just know that everything I've heard about who Jesus is, like, I want it and I want to follow him.

And then if you have been around in any of those moments, you know that there's this thing that happens and it's kind of weird, but it just is what it is.

And people start crying and they're hugging you and you're telling they're proud of you, and you don't really know why people are crying and what they're proud of.

You just kind of embrace it in the moment, and you're crying, and everyone's snotting on each other, and it's a tall thing, right?

But then there's this moment while all that's going on that this girl, I'm kind of like down in front of the stage, just like I would be here.

And this girl kind of walks across the stage and she leans down in front of me and she says, Hey, can I talk to you for just a second?

I'm like, Yeah, sure.

So we we walk across off to the other side, and I'm smiling from E to E, right?

I'm thinking she's about to hug me, tell me how proud she's of me, like it's gonna be awesome, we're gonna cry, she's gonna cry.

We get to the side of the stage and she squats down, she looks me, and she gets me dead square in the eyes.

And she says, I hate you.

And then tears begin to fill in her eyes.

And she says something that has changed the rest of my life.

She says, But if God can forgive you, I can too.

And she gets up and she walks off.

I don't know that girl's name.

I don't know why she hated me.

I can assume based on the way I live my life, why I can assume based on the choices I'd made and the decisions I made why she would have hated me.

But can I tell you anytime I feel bitterness and unforgiveness swelling up in my heart, I see her face, and I hear her voice.

Her hatred of me was real.

I knew it when she said it.

But I also believe her forgiveness was as genuine as the day is long too.

And when I feel that welling up inside of me, I think of her.

Because that moment changed the rest of my life.

That sent me on a course to forgive people, to see some relationships restored.

All because she was willing to be obedient to what God was doing in her life.

So this morning I want to finish with just a couple questions that I want to ask you.

Do on the bottom of your outline this morning.

This is the first one.

Who do you need to forgive?

As we've talked about forgiveness, whose name do you hear?

Whose face do you see?

Whose name begins to cause your blood to boil and to get angry and for your stomach to be a nuts?

Whose debt are you trying to collect?

And what would it look like for you this morning to surrender that to God?

What would it look like for you this morning to say, God, I'm tired of carrying this thing.

I want to give this to you.

What would it look like for you?

Maybe even this morning, to say, God, I don't know where to begin with forgiving this person.

Would you help me?

Maybe this morning you need to candidly name the hurt.

I don't know what that looks like for you.

What I do know is that the word of God says that we are to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us.

So what I'm here to ask you this morning is, will you take that first step?

Will you take that first step?

We'll have pastors and encourages down front.

Maybe you want someone to pray with you, pray for you.

We would be honored to do that.

Maybe husbands, wives.

Maybe this morning you just need to hold a hand and let them know.

Maybe you need to come pray together.

Maybe you need to send a text.

I don't know, but I want you to be obedient to what God is doing in your life.

So I'm gonna pray for us, and I'll invite you to stand and we'll respond.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you so much for your grace and your mercy in our lives, God.

We are grateful for the given forgiveness we have received.

Can we ask that you would empower us to extend it to others the way you've given it to us?

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.