Move On

Amen.

Amen.

Well, if uh if you're just joining us today, we are we're a few weeks into a newish series called Move, and the premise behind this is really simple.

The people that live the greatest adventures in life are those most easily moved by God.

See, we we live in a world that offers us a lot to do, right?

We have a lot of motion, but there's a difference between motion and movement.

Motion is just busyness, it's just getting things done.

We have a lot of that, but it's hard to find something worth doing.

It's hard to find something that brings fulfillment and real joy and real satisfaction in life.

That's movement.

That's going to a place you've never been before.

And God created you to move.

God created you to live an adventure.

Your life is meant to be an adventure, lived with God.

You're supposed to love living your life, not wishing you had someone else's.

And so we want to move.

We want to learn how to move with God.

That's what we're looking at.

That's what we're studying because God is always on the move.

Last week we talked about dancing, which is a very natural place to start, right?

If you weren't here last week, listen to the podcast if you want to catch up.

But the idea was really simple.

In a dance, someone leads and someone follows.

And if we want to move with God, we've got to give him permission to lead us because he doesn't force us to follow him.

And so the question is: am I trying to get God involved with what I'm doing, or am I trying to get involved with what God is doing?

And there's a difference between those two.

I usually find myself on the wrong end of that, trying to convince God to be part of my plan.

Instead of spending the time asking him what his plan really is.

We've got to let God lead us.

Today I want to move on to a different kind of movement, and that movement specifically is moving on.

So today we're moving on to moving on.

That's the movement today.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is in life to move on to something new?

Like, have you ever had this experience I have this a lot where you come across something that you've never tried before, you've never done this before, some new piece of technology maybe, or some new experience.

And it is fundamentally better than what you had before.

There's no question.

And if you look at all the list of features or all the pluses, all the benefits of it, there's no question that it is just better than what you've used before, but you still hold out because you just don't want to change.

I'll never forget about seven, eight years ago when things like like Kindles were first becoming popular and the whole e-books thing happened.

I was like appalled.

I love to read.

More than that, I love the idea of reading, and so I buy a lot of books, and I read the first few pages of all of them.

And if you come to my house, you'll be like, wow, this guy, he's he's really well read.

Um I have no idea what most of those books say.

I just know the first the first few pages, I just lose interest.

But I love to read, I really do, and I do buy a lot of books, and I have certain books that are like my absolute favorite kind of books to read.

They're actually pretty boring to most people, but I love them.

And so when the e-books came out, I was like, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna sit and read on a screen.

All of a sudden I started to get very pretentious and I started to romanticize real books, like paper books.

I started saying things like, I'm not gonna read in front of a screen, even though I spent a lot of time in front of other screens, somehow that screen's a bad screen.

I started saying stupid things to Megan because she was encouraging me to buy one.

I started saying things like, you know, I just I I like the experience with real books.

Like, I like the smell of a book.

And that's that's dumb.

That's not true.

I mean, have you ever been in Barnes and Noble and seen someone sniffing books and being like, hmm, this is a good one.

This is a good one.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this one home.

Like, no, people don't do that.

I don't buy a book based on how it smells, but I started saying things like that, romanticizing real books.

I started saying things like, I just like the way the paper feels in my hands.

And and when you have paperwork to do at your job, you don't go, yes, oh, all this paper.

Ooh, this is so soothing.

No, it's paper is by nature, paper can cut you.

I mean, it's not it's not a comfortable thing at all.

I I just I didn't want to move on to the new thing.

I wanted to hold out.

And I'll never forget, I bought Megan a Kindle for her birthday.

She asked for one, and I decided I would set it up for her, which means I just get to play with it for like a day because I'm setting it up.

I get to use your new toy before you do, because I have to set it up.

That's really what it was.

And all of a sudden I'm just bombarded with all these features that are perfect for my life.

Like if you have a Kindle, you don't lose your books because they're always in the cloud, and I lose books all the time.

And if you if you have a Kindle, it always remembers where you were, so you don't need bookmarks, and and you can't ever forget where you were in the book that you started reading three years ago, but you didn't finish it.

That happens to me constantly.

If you're someone like me who highlights a lot of stuff or underlines a lot of stuff because you might use it later, you might be inspired by it, you want to go back to it.

You don't have to thumb through books and try to find all the stuff you underlined, you can just search for one word you remember, and there it is.

I mean, the list of features went on and on, but still I waited two years to move on to a tablet, to some other type of reading, because I just I didn't want to move on.

I wanted to hold out.

There's something about us as people that tends to live looking backwards.

I mean, there's something about us, something about how we're wired, where it's very easy for us to live looking back, holding on to the past with an iron grip.

Like that phrase that we hear a lot in our culture, the good old days.

We've all heard that, right?

You've you've all used it.

If you're above 35, you have used the phrase, the good old days.

Remember, remember the good old days?

You know, the good old days when people were like this and life was simpler and everyone was more moral and the world was just better.

It's always us complaining about the previous generation, which is funny because I was born in the 80s, and so my generation had video games and and you know, TV and cable and all this technology, and so we'll say things like, remember the good old days when like when you had to sit in a room with a friend to play a video game and not play online?

I mean, this is this what's this world coming to, right?

It's stupid.

But but you know what's what's interesting about that phrase, the good old days?

You know when that phrase originated?

1726.

That's the first example we have in history of the phrase the good old days.

And it was used in the exact same way that we use it.

It was someone writing about how much better the past was than the present.

And so what you have to think about is that since the 1720s, every generation has been pointing back, saying, those were the good old days.

Those were the good old days, those were the good old days.

And and every generation we've been a part of is the generation that apparently is doing it so badly that the previous generation says, Oh, I wish we had the good old days.

It's just how it is.

It's not because today is worse than it was in the 1720s.

None of us want to go back to the 1720s.

None of us.

It's that human nature, being what it is, we we live looking backwards.

The pull of the past is really strong.

And it's also really dangerous.

The way the past pulls at us, if we're not careful, it's like an undercurrent in the ocean.

You can find yourself stuck in a place you don't want to be in.

You can find yourself stuck in the past, unable to move on, unable to move forward.

We want to be people who move forward in life.

I mean, if there's one direction you want to move, it's forward.

But you cannot move forward if you cannot move on.

If you can't move on from what maybe has happened to you in the past, what someone did, what someone said, some experience you had that hurt you, and those experiences are real and they're traumatic often.

But if we can't move on from those, we'll never move forward into the life that God has for us.

So if we want to be people who move forward, we've got to move on.

It's always been this way.

Always.

In 1 Samuel, there's this man named Samuel, it's a well-named book, and Samuel is a prophet from God, and at that time in history, God led his people in a very simple way.

There was a prophet, he spoke to the prophet, the prophet then spoke to the people.

And that was the way God decided to deliver his information and his instructions, but the people, they got tired of that.

They didn't want that anymore.

So they wanted to move on, but not in a good way, actually.

And they came to Samuel and they said, Hey, this whole prophet God thing, it's not working for us, we want a king.

And we looked at this a little bit last week, 1 Samuel 8, 6.

Samuel was displeased with their request, and he went to the Lord for guidance.

Do everything they say to you, the Lord replied.

For they are rejecting me, not you.

They don't want me to be their king any longer.

Ever since I brought them from Egypt, they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods.

And now they're giving you the same treatment.

So do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them.

This is a great example again of what we talked about last week.

God will not force us to do things his way.

He often, often relents and lets us do things the way we want to do things.

And so Samuel is upset because the people are saying, look, we don't want to do this God's way, we want a king.

And even though he knows that's a bad idea, as soon as God says those words, do what they say.

That becomes a command from God to Samuel.

Samuel has now heard God tell him, find a king.

And he makes it his life's purpose to find a king, and they find one.

Samuel finds one who he thinks is the best king.

We actually meet this person in 1 Samuel chapter 9.

1 Samuel 9 · chapter mention

There was a wealthy, influential man named Kish from the tribe of Benjamin.

He was the son of some people that were the son of some people from the tribe of Benjamin.

His son Saul was the most handsome man in Israel, head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the land.

Saul is the first king.

And he's the first king.

What's the criteria?

He's handsome.

He's a looker, right?

He's like a male model athlete kind of guy.

So that guy looks like a king.

If we put a crown on his head, I mean, man, that guy.

Woo! That guy's a king.

Because look at history.

The greatest leaders are always attractive.

George Washington, right?

Look at that guy.

I mean, that's.

Abe Lincoln, he's a stud.

Winston Churchill is like one of my favorite leaders in history.

Winston Churchill.

I mean, that guy.

If you want to have some fun, research Winston Churchill's life.

That guy was hilarious.

Like one time in Parliament, because that's how they they do things over there, this woman yelled at him in Parliament because she she didn't like him.

She said, Sir, if you were my husband, I would put arsenic in your tea.

And Churchill responded, ma'am, if I were married to you, I would drink it.

Like he was awesome.

Winston Churchill was the man.

He was the man.

But it wasn't his looks that got him by.

Now, obviously, the criteria that they're using to choose the king is it's not the right criteria, but give them a break.

They've never had a king before.

This is their first election of sorts.

So they went with the whole looks thing.

And at first things go well.

At first, Saul, I mean, he's he's awesome.

He has instant success.

The people love him, he's winning military victories, and they all feel like, man, we nailed it, we've got the right king, but it doesn't take very long before this success sort of spirals into disaster.

And it gets so bad, it's such a train wreck that Saul is now unfit to be the king, and that means Samuel has to go find a new king.

And Samuel is, he's, he's rejected.

He's he's hurt.

Because he's the one that chose Saul.

He's the one that put his seal of approval on Saul, and now he's realizing his mistake, and he's crushed, and he goes into agony.

He goes into mourning.

He literally shuts himself away, and he just sits there and relives over and over again the mistakes that he's made, and he thinks about how big of a deal this is, and he can't get over it, and eventually God has to speak to him.

And we see this conversation in 1 Samuel chapter 16, and I love what God says.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

God addressed Samuel.

So, how long are you going to mope over Saul?

You know I've rejected him as king over Israel.

So fill your flask with anointing oil and get going.

In those days when you would find a king, when you would sort of have a commencement of someone coming into some big form of leadership, you would anoint them with oil.

You would pour oil over their head.

That was the ritual they had.

So he's saying, Grab your oil, get going.

I'm sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem.

I've spotted the very king I want among his sons.

That ends up being King David.

And so here's what here's what God says to Samuel.

He says, Samuel, yeah, this has gone really badly, but the time of looking behind you is over.

It's now time to look forward.

What God is saying is Samuel, I have moved on from Saul.

I'm over it.

I've moved on.

It's time for you to move on.

I have moved on.

You need to move on.

Here is God calling Samuel to move on from his mistake.

Moving on is hard, isn't it?

I mean, let's be honest, it's so hard.

Think about think about us as people and how easy it is for us to hold on to little things that people have done to us or said to us that have affected us and hurt us.

We can hold on to those things for years.

Like when I was in high school, I played basketball.

And when you look at me, you probably don't think athlete, right?

No one does.

It's actually my best tool as a basketball player is when I show up, no one even thinks to guard me for like the first three games.

It's very helpful.

But but I played basketball my whole life, and and I was I was the I was the starter on varsity, all conference.

Our team was number one in state, it was just a really small conference, but you know, that doesn't matter.

Um but I played and had some success.

That said, I've never looked apart.

I've never, even in high school, I didn't look like a basketball player.

I've always I've always been pretty short, and I've I've always been a little thick, just always have.

Since I was a kid, I've always been like that.

I've always had a little extra something here just for safety, you know.

If I ever get stuck out in the cold, I've I've got a few extra hours on a lot of you.

It's good.

I've always been that way.

And and you know, some people in here don't have this problem where if you sniff a cheeseburger, you gain a pound, you don't know what that's like.

I actually have friends, you might have friends like this, so annoying, these people, who will say, like, oh, I know it's it's it's hard for me too, it's hard for me to gain weight.

Like, shut up.

That's not a problem, that's a superpower, right?

It's like if only there were, if only they made clothes for skinny people.

Oh, oh wait, they do, yeah.

There's no short chubby jeans, they're skinny jeans, right?

Anyway, so I have this problem.

So I gained weight really easy, and even in high school, even when I was I was the starting point guard, I played more minutes than anyone on the team.

I was at every practice, I ran, I did all this stuff.

I still weighed a little extra than a lot of the other guys, even though they weren't even working out as much as me.

It's just how I how I am.

So I had this friend and he was on the team with me.

He wasn't like one of the starters, but he looked like he should have been.

He was thin and muscular, and he looked like an athlete.

And one day we're at team workouts and we had to do weigh-ins, and turns out I weighed less than he did.

And so, and remember, he's my friend, not my best friend, but we get along.

He looks at me and he goes, You weigh, you weigh less than me.

And I was like, I was like, happy.

This is a moment in my life.

I'm going, hey, huh.

Yeah, I guess I do.

And then he goes, Well, you know what they say, muscle weighs more than fat.

And and I just kind of like, I laughed it off.

I was like, yeah, I guess so.

But on the inside, I was like, you jerk.

I I so hope you gain so much weight by our 10-year anniversary.

When we come back, you know, our 10-year reunion.

I just I hope you really let yourself go.

And I didn't see the guy for like five years after we graduated, and then one day he sent me a Facebook friend request, and I clicked on his profile, hoping that he had let himself go, hoping that we had at least sort of evened out, but no, no, he's one of those guys that got in better shape after high school.

Like he lived in a gym or something, the jerk, the audacity that this guy had.

And here's what's crazy you cannot say his name to me without me thinking of that line that he said.

I mean, it was so small, it was impassing.

He was probably joking anyway.

And he's actually a good guy.

That kind of makes it harder, it makes it worse that he's a good guy, actually.

Like, ah, dang it, he loves God and all this stuff, and I just wish he was a jerk, because then I could be like, yeah.

Uh, but but he's a good guy.

And if you say his name to me, I mean, for the last 10 plus years, if you say his name, if I see him, the first thing that pops in my head is that that stupid comment that, well, you know what they say, muscle weighs more than fat.

That's the first thing.

And that's nothing.

That that doesn't rank in the top thousand worst things that have happened to me in life, but I hold on to it.

We all we all have a tendency to do that, right?

We hold on to those things.

And that's something that's so petty and so small.

So if it's hard for us to let go of those things, if it's hard for us to move on from that stuff, how do we move on from the serious stuff in life?

Like, how do we move on from what's really tragic, from what's really traumatic?

How do we get past those times in our in our past when someone has really wounded us?

Someone's really hurt us because in this room there are people who have been hurt deeply by people who shouldn't have hurt them.

How do we move on from that?

It's easier said than done.

And and this morning I want to suggest this one word to you that it really is, it really is the key to moving on in life.

If you want to, if you want to move on, and I hope you do.

I hope you do, because see, if you don't, what what you're what you're saying to yourself, if you refuse to move on from your past, you're saying that, hey, I choose to give the past authority over my present and my future.

If someone did something to you or said something to you years ago, and you hold on to that, what you're saying is I'm gonna let that person's words, that person's actions, affect me today and tomorrow, and tomorrow, because that's what happens.

Every time we relive those moments in our minds, it has the same effect on us.

The same hurt.

We experience the same emotions.

We allow the past to affect the present.

We can't live that way.

That's not how we're meant to live.

That's not how God wants us to live.

So we've got to move on.

How do we do that?

What's the key?

And the key is this one word it's it's forgive.

Forgiveness is it's the only way to truly move on in life.

You gotta you gotta forgive.

You gotta forgive aggressively, preemptively, constantly.

There's a conversation that we have between Jesus and one of his best friends named Peter.

Peter was a very, very special friend of Jesus, a leader in the early church, and Peter comes to Jesus and says, Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me?

Seven times?

No, not seven times, Jesus replied, but seventy times seven.

Now to give you some context, in the Jewish community at this time, forgiveness was a big deal.

Forgiveness was taught.

They understood that people aren't perfect, that people need grace.

And the rabbis of that era taught that you should forgive someone three times.

You forgive someone three times, that's that's an ample amount of forgiveness.

And if they continue in their behavior, after three times, you you move from forgiveness to whatever else you move to.

Resentment, hatred, I don't know.

And so when Peter comes to Jesus and he says, Hey, hey, Jesus, like I'm kind of getting where you're going with this whole ministry of yours, your teaching.

So the rabbis say three times, but I'm thinking you're gonna say like seven, right?

Double the rabbis, and then I'll add one just for good measure.

And Jesus says, No, not even close.

Why don't you think of 70 times seven, which is 490, and then then we'll we'll start talking.

And that's just preposterous, right?

490 times?

490 times.

Can you imagine if someone had been rude to you 489 times?

And then comes to you, and you're like counting in your head, and you're like, you got one more, dude.

You got one more, and I'm done.

I'm done.

And obviously, Jesus wasn't actually recommending that we keep keep a count.

You know, he doesn't want us to be opening up a journal with like scratch marks and going by fives.

He he's making a point, he's being hyperbolic because he wants us to understand that whatever amount of forgiveness we think in this world is appropriate, we're not even scratching the surface.

And sometimes we read statements like this of Jesus and we feel this pressure, we feel this burden.

We feel like Jesus is saying, oh man, here's a really difficult task to do.

Go try to forgive like this, and and now we have to live up to this, and it's impossible.

But you need to understand that Jesus is not giving you a burden, Jesus is actually offering you an opportunity to take burdens away.

Because Jesus knows that forgiveness is the only thing.

It is the only thing that frees you from the wounds and the hurts of the past.

It's the only thing.

You know, Steve was the pastor here for years, and and he's he's my personal mentor, one of my best friends ever.

I love Steve, and he taught so many messages standing right here that will always stick with me.

Messages that I'll always remember.

If you were here for a long time before I was here, he was older than me too.

He had white hair and all that kind of stuff.

Like he was super mature.

Um and so and so Steve taught these amazing messages, and he taught me about forgiveness, and I saw forgiveness in ways I'd never seen it before when he taught.

And I'll never forget this one message that he gave.

He was sitting here on a stool, because that's how Steve Steve did things, and he talked about how we can think about life and all the hurts and the wounds we have with this metaphor.

Every time someone hurts you, someone wounds you, it's like an arrow has been shot into you, and that arrow sticks.

And then we get another arrow and another arrow, and it doesn't take a lot of life before you've got a lot of arrows.

And now you're trying to live life with all these arrows in you, but the problem is every time you sit down, every time you roll over, every time you try to get some rest, you you've got these arrows in you.

It makes it impossible to rest and relax and have peace because you're just you're full of arrows.

Like a porcupine.

And so we've got to figure out a way to get rid of the arrows.

How do we do that?

The normal way, the human way, is you wait until that person realizes what they've done and comes to you and says, I'm so sorry for putting that arrow in you, I would now like to remove it.

And even when that happens, if that happens, which is rare, sometimes we go, no, no, no.

No, I I need to carry this one a little bit longer.

I need you to really stew in how much you've hurt me.

So before I let you take it out, I just need to show it to you.

I need to emphasize it, right?

Sometimes we we think that way.

But but more than that, the reality is that that just doesn't happen in life.

Like that jerk I went to high school with, he's never gonna come to me and say, I'm sorry, Justin, for calling you fat.

I'm really sorry about that.

He's not gonna you know why?

Because he's not a jerk.

And because it didn't matter, and he was probably joking, and I guarantee you he hasn't thought about that statement once since that time.

And I've thought about it a lot.

So we'll stop.

So he's never gonna come to me and say, Hey man, I just this has been bugging me for years.

Can I please take that arrow out?

It's not gonna happen.

So if we want to be rid of the arrows, so we can have peace and rest and and live life the way we're meant to live life.

lightly freely the way Jesus offers us then we've got to get those those arrows out we've got to take them out how do we do that I mean how how do we how do we do that well see here's here's where it really starts you've got to receive forgiveness so that you can give forgiveness because you cannot give what you don't have you can't you can't give what you don't have and so and so you've got to receive the forgiveness of God in your life so that you have the forgiveness of God that you need to forgive all the people who have hurt you so that you have the forgiveness you need to pull those those arrows out you need to receive that forgiveness you can't give what you don't have to forgive and it's amazing how often how often I underestimate the grace and the forgiveness of God we we become so used to to grace so used to these concepts in church and if you're if you're if you're new to church grace is just a word that's used in scripture often to talk about God's forgiveness about how we have grace.

There's mercy and grace.

Mercy means you don't get what you deserve.

Grace means you get what you don't deserve.

All of it kind of lumps together to be this unbelievable forgiveness of God and we become so used to this we sing about it we read verse after verse about it we know it we know it here but but sometimes we forget how intense and how unbelievable the grace of God really is and so we we don't treat it like it's oxygen.

Like it's a necessity for daily life and then we end up running short on it in our own lives and we don't have a lot of grace to give because we're not receiving what we need.

If you want to have the ability to take those arrows out to forgive all the people you need to forgive you've got to receive the forgiveness of God.

You've got to stop and realize how much forgiveness he's actually given you how much forgiveness you need.

That's one of the biggest challenges with our faith that's the difference between the the faith in Jesus and every other faith in this world I know that's not politically correct to say it but Jesus is fundamentally different and he's fundamentally better because it makes sense because every other religion in the world says this hey you do really well do good do better do more and then God will will will accept you Jesus says hey will you just admit that you can't do it will you just admit that you need some help?

Because if you'll just admit that I'll do it for you.

That's what Jesus says that's why Jesus is so different than everyone else in the world and so do you daily receive the forgiveness of God in your life I mean I need that forgiveness so badly.

We talk about this this metaphor of arrows and we'll we'll keep this going for a minute.

You know the the arrows I have found are the hardest to remove in my life it's the ones I put there myself because for every one I've got that someone else gave me I've got several that I gave myself I've got a lot of self-inflicted wounds.

And seriously those are the those are the the sins and the the hurts and the mistakes those are the the ones that I have the hardest time moving on from in my life it's not the things other people have done to me it's the things that I have allowed to happen to myself or even done to myself.

I have a really hard time moving on from my mistakes so if you've gone to church here for a while you know this I haven't talked about it in probably about a year maybe six months or so if you're new here you go um so I I dealt with an addiction of pornography for like 15 years.

Yeah that's awkward right when someone says that imagine how I feel okay so um and and and all jokes aside I deal with awkwardness by just being you know humorous is how I I cope.

You know pornography is this huge epidemic in our culture and it's it's it's so it's just from Satan.

I mean it absolutely is it it treats women like objects it it can it destroys someone's ability to have like a healthy sex life in a marriage it erodes trust and it it presents a fantasy that that is that's not even a good fantasy in place of reality.

All Satan offers us is something that's fake and counterfeit and destructive and that's what pornography is okay and so that said as a man I knew that and as a man I still took part in that because I had an addiction I was introduced to it at a young age third grade before I even knew Jesus and by the time I hit high school I was addicted I didn't realize I was addicted by the time I I really got to a place with God where I was I was broken because of this behavior I didn't I didn't have a clue where to start and and if you're a man not that that only men struggle with it but it is predominantly men and I'm a man so I can talk to you if you're a man that deals with that struggle that addiction maybe you don't even call it an addiction but you just say hey it's a battle or whatever come talk to me at any time.

Send me an email come up to me I mean find a way to get in contact with me go to the info desk if you don't have my email address they'll give it to you I mean they might give you a generic email address but it'll get to me and then I'll email you.

We'll figure it out.

Because I just want you to know that there's hope.

And I want you to know that you don't have to live in that and you don't have to fear what's going to happen if you start to deal with that.

You don't have to fear that I was reading a commentary on the book of 1 John that Ben Sykes who goes here wrote we're all going to be reading this in the next session of foundations and he talks about how God is light and how we fear light exposing us but light doesn't really expose our sin.

Light washes away the sin.

You know it can't darkness flees from light.

And so I just want you to know as a man I'll talk to you I'll meet with you I'll connect you with other men who have gotten to that same place.

I mean it's I've been in recovery for five plus years and so I'm by no means an expert but I'll do whatever I can because you can have freedom from that.

You absolutely can and so anyway yeah but it still is very awkward to say the word pornography so um so I I I got to a place where I realized how destructive this was in my life and how it had to go how it had to go and and I got counseling and I talked to my wife about it and that was fun.

And she forgave me she moved on but a year later even after a year of freedom I had not moved on I had moved on from the behavior but I had not moved on from the guilt and I had not moved on from the shame and so here she was forgiving me she had moved on and God had moved on but I had not moved on I was still I was still holding on to that to that arrow in me feeling like it was it was my penance to carry it feeling like the guilt and the shame that was just what I deserved and so I'm walking around with a self-inflicted wound that God wants to to pull out that God wants to heal because the mistakes I have the hardest time moving on from are my own and if you want to have the ability to forgive every every person that's ever offended you and hurt you no matter how light no matter how severe you got to start with with forgiveness in your own life and so I want to ask you this morning do you do you realize that when it comes to your sin that God has moved on that he's over it.

And he's not over it in the way that we say we're over it like that's it I'm over it I'm not taking this anymore no he's he's over it as if is in the sense that if you went up to God and said hey God I'm really sorry for my for my sin for this thing he would look at you and say oh I've yeah I'm totally okay I'm dealt with that God does not get angry about the problems that he's already solved and he has solved the problem of sin with Jesus Christ.

So he's not he's not like burning with anger for you he's burning with passion and with love for you.

He's not upset and disappointed in you.

His heart breaks for the pain you feel but he wants to empower you.

I mean that's not just wishful thinking.

Look at scripture Psalm 103 verse 12 He has removed our sins as far as the East is from the west Jeremiah 3134 God says I will forgive their wickedness I will never again remember their sins.

Psalms 103:12

And that's a crazy picture right like going up to God and saying hey God I'm sorry for what I did yesterday and he's like what'd you do yesterday?

You know that word that I said when I was upset and he's like oh I don't know what you're talking about.

And then you think God's playing a game with you.

And you're like what is this a test?

No?

I don't know what's going on.

But he's saying no I'm not even gonna remember your sin.

Micah 719 once again you will have compassion on us you will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean I love that.

Because it's not like God even just takes our sin and throws them into the ocean just in case they they can swim or something like that.

He steps on them and crushes them over and over again and then when they're crushed and they're broken then he takes them then he throws them into the ocean that is how God deals with your sin.

So when it comes to your mistakes and and your past and all the things that you feel guilty and ashamed for you need to understand that God is saying the same thing to you that he said to Samuel He's saying I've moved on it's time for you to move on.

It's time for you to move on it's time for you to move on and receive my forgiveness so that you can start to use my forgiveness to take out all those arrows.

To get rid of all that hurt so we're gonna wrap up this morning and I'm gonna I'm gonna ask the worship team if you guys will go ahead and make your way up this way and if you want to do that thing y'all do sometimes where you play music I don't know where you guys are I'm like looking behind me like they're a SWAT team or something about to come.

I'm like, where's the worship team?

They're in the dark.

You guys can just feel free to play anything or whatever.

But but I'm gonna ask us to do something really uncomfortable and I just admitted in front of a thousand people that I had an addiction to pornography so just deal with it okay um I'm just joking.

But I'm gonna ask us to sit for a moment in prayer.

This was actually Nathan's idea.

We didn't do this in the first service and he came up to me and said hey we should do this and I was like yeah you're right we should we should because we actually have the opportunity here not to just leave saying excuse me not to say we'll deal with this later we'll we'll get to this yeah I'll receive that forgiveness I'll start working on that but we can deal with a lot right now I mean God can do a lot in a moment and so what I want to ask you to do this uncomfortable thing is is we're gonna we're gonna pray while the worship team just plays some music and then that'll kind of go into into worship.

And so I'll just sort of feel it out and when I say amen whatever but I want to ask you to to think about two things two things number one your worst failure.

It's fun right it's a good you didn't expect this your worst failure whatever whatever failure and mistake in your life or in your past you feel like God must be the most upset about I want you to think about that.

And then I want you to think and this is even harder in some ways about whatever offense has been committed against you in life that hurts you the most someone else has done something to you.

And what you have to realize as you think through this as we pray through this is that God has moved on and he wants you to move on.

That doesn't mean he's dismissive of the pain you feel no but he doesn't want you to live in that pain he doesn't want you to live in guilt he doesn't want you to live in shame he wants you to live in freedom and in victory.

And that comes from forgiveness we're gonna receive his forgiveness and we're gonna do our best to begin a process of giving that forgiveness and when Jesus said hey forgive 70 times seven look when it comes to those offenses that have been done against you you may have to forgive 490 plus times.

You may say hey I forgive it today and then 10 minutes later in the car you're like you know what I'm not sure if I'm ready yet and forgive it again and tomorrow forgive it again and a year from now forgive it again.

Because every time you forgive it you get peace and eventually eventually that forgiveness it will destroy whatever hatred whatever bitterness whatever hurt that's there.

Forgiveness is the only way so if you if you bow your heads with me and pray Holy Spirit every single one of us in this room no matter how old we are no matter how old we are no matter what stage of life we're in we've all been hurt God we we're all we're all full of arrows we've got arrows that other people have put into us some are really deep God we've got arrows that we've put into ourselves we've got arrows that have been in us and we've tried to remove them in the past and we maybe got them halfway out but then we just we couldn't do any more God we don't want to be wounded people we don't we don't want to have our past hold us back.

We want to move we want to move forward in life and we can't move forward if we don't move on so Holy Spirit we want to start with whatever that whatever that frustration and failure in our own lives that self-inflicted wound we want to begin there Holy Spirit and so Lord you know you know what mine is and every person in this room knows what theirs is God right now as we as we think about about this failure in our lives this thing that we maybe worry that you are so disappointed in us that you're so ashamed God I pray that every single one of us hears these words and understands that these words are not just made up for an emotional moment but these words are your words that you speak to us.

You have moved on you have taken our sin and you've placed it as far as the east is from the west you have crushed our sin underneath your feet and you have thrown it into the ocean that you are over our sin that you have forgotten our sin.

And God we're not like you we we remember everything.

We have a hard time forgetting our our failures and our mistakes but Lord right now we are asking you for the strength to move on that you would give us the strength God to move on from our mistakes to move on from our failures so that we can move forward into the life that you have for us we need to receive your forgiveness to receive your grace and Lord I know saying that that there are people in this room that have never received your forgiveness before.

And I pray right now for those people that that right now in their hearts they would say Jesus I need your forgiveness I'm tired I'm tired of feeling the shame and guilt.

I'm tired of feeling the weight and the burden so take it off of me Lord let me trust your forgiveness we call that salvation by the way and Lord we we think about not only our own failures but but the wounds that other people have given to us God and I know that right now some of those might be minor but some of those might be so traumatic some of those might be criminal devastating and God we know that it was not your will that those things were done to us.

You aren't like that you're a good father you never intended for that person to say what they said or to do what they did to us Lord but they did it anyway because we live in a fallen world and God we we might be so angry at that person it may take us the rest of our lives to forgive but if that's what it takes that's what it takes because we're sick and tired of being affected by the past we're sick and tired of holding on to the hurt we don't want to hold on anymore Jesus we want to move on so Holy Spirit give us that ability right now to say in our heart I've moved on I have I have moved on just like you have moved on Jesus I have moved on I will move on from this I will escape this I will leave it in the past I will leave it buried I will leave it behind I will move on God help us move on help us know that you've moved on and give us the strength to follow you to move with you to move away from the hurt and the pain and to move toward life and to move toward joy and to move toward peace and love and everything you have for us Jesus because it's real oh Jesus we love you so much God I praise you for I just praise you for being real this is not a manufactured moment this is not about emotions God this is about our lives you died for us you pursue us you refuse to leave us alone and sometimes we wish you would to be honest because you mess with us oh but God if we're really honest we we need you we love you and when we're really honest with ourselves we can just surrender and say hey mess with me stir in my heart move me we want to move on this next song that we're gonna sing you already know how it goes because I think you inspired it but we cry out over and over again in this song that we are yours.

And see Lord when we refuse to move on from those those sins in our own life for those sins that have been committed against us it's like we're telling those things that we belong to them that they have power over us that they have influence over us that they have the control but right now this song that we're about to sing this is a declaration of us Jesus saying those things those sins of our own those sins that have been committed against us they don't own us they don't have power over us we are not theirs we are yours we are the children of God we are the children of God covered by the blood of Jesus the grace of Jesus we are filled with the Holy Spirit we have the power of God in our lives and we refuse to live life in the past we refuse to live looking backwards.

We're ready to move on and we say this in your name Jesus as we worship you.

Amen