Loveology – Love Never Fails

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Today we are in a series that I've really, really enjoyed.

It's a series on love and relationships that we have affectionately entitled Loveology.

It is the study of love.

Here's the thing week one and two, we talked about one of the most important love relationships in your life.

We talked about marriage, and it's been a really powerful thing.

I've heard so many great stories from people.

We had our XO conference, which was just an amazing experience.

And then last Sunday, Pastor Aaron Burke, one of my dear friends from Tampa, came and preached an amazing message on how we can be single and secure.

Now, can I tell you the truth about teaching in a relationship series?

There is really no topic that seems to hit everybody.

We preached on marriage and we got comments from people.

What about the singles?

Then we preached on singles, and the married people were like, What about us?

And it's like, there is no message that's good for everybody.

And so today I try to think of something that would apply to everybody, and here's what's gonna happen: either everybody's gonna love this or everybody's gonna hate it, but either way, we're all in the same boat, everybody.

How does that sound?

Um, anybody remember 2020?

Anybody love that?

That wasn't that a great year.

So fun.

Um, 2020 was one of those years that was terrible for a million reasons.

It was such a hard year.

We were so disconnected, everybody was angry about everything.

And and I'll never forget my wife said to me, She goes, You know what I think is the saddest to me, just in our little family, is she goes, You love to travel so much.

And we had this amazing trip planned to celebrate me finishing my doctoral degree, and it got canceled.

And she goes, You love the world so much and you love to travel so much that anytime I would watch you watch TV, if there was someone who went on an airplane or they went hiking somewhere or they saw a beautiful place in Europe or whatever, she goes, I would watch you, and you would just be like a balloon that was slowly deflating.

You'll go, Oh, it was so sad.

And so for my next birthday, Liz goes, I want to do something awesome for you.

And she sent me on a dream trip to the country of Iceland.

I don't know if you've ever been to Iceland, but it's amazing.

And she didn't want to go, so she sent me and one of my best friends, Pastor Ryan, and we went and had a great time.

It was February, the whole place was completely white.

I literally saw nothing green, it felt like for the whole week.

And it was just this beautiful, beautiful scape.

Everywhere we went was an adventure.

We hiked through snow caves and ice caves, which was amazing.

Uh, here's a picture of me and Ryan together, just having fun, adventuring together.

I just wanted you to know that I could do that, everybody.

That's me on top of a glacier, on top of a volcano.

So if it exploded, it was gonna be explosive, everybody.

It was fun.

So we did this, and then so much fun.

I ate fermented shark.

I give that zero stars.

I do not recommend that.

Uh we had a great time together on the trip.

And the reason this place was so high up on my bucket list is one of the things near the top of my bucket list is I've always wanted to see the northern lights.

I've always wanted to see it.

And so Iceland is famous for it.

And we go in the peak season of the year, which was February, to see the northern lights.

And here's something I learned when I was there.

In the same way that like meteorologists can tell when rain or a storm is coming, they can tell when the northern lights are going to be seen.

The same way we have a radar, there's a radar for it, and here's what they do.

I didn't know this.

They rate those, the chances of you seeing them on a scale from one to nine.

One is like it's not happening, you ain't gonna see nothing.

Nine is like it's gonna be fireworks in the sky.

And they said it never gets to a nine.

They said usually it's a two or a three, but if you get to a four, you're gonna see it.

If it's a five, you're definitely gonna see it.

The first couple days we were there, we had like ones and twos and threes.

But the last day, we got a five.

I was freaked, I was freaking out.

I was so excited about this.

One of my bucket list items was going to come true.

I was texting everybody.

I know I'm like, tonight's the night, I'll send you pictures.

It's gonna be amazing.

We booked this expensive tour because they would know where to take us.

And we drove for like an hour and a half into the middle of nowhere.

There was no city lights, there was nothing else going on.

And on the way, I learned a really interesting thing.

Our tour guide said, Okay, everybody, I need you to take your phones, I need you to turn them off.

Don't just put them away.

I need you to turn them off.

And here's why.

If you keep looking at that light, you won't be able to see the northern lights.

He said that there's this thing, it's called light pollution.

Light pollution is when your eyes are just so inundated by the light from your phone or the light of street lights or incoming cars that you can't see the beauty of the actual northern lights.

And so for the last hour of the ride, I put my phone away and I was like, God, please come through.

Like, I really want to see this.

Spoiler alert, he didn't, so I have to go back, everybody.

I didn't see the northern lights.

They lied about that five.

But I left with this picture in my mind of I wonder how many of us miss out on the thing that we want to see because we're so focused on something else.

I wonder how many of us we miss out on the beauty and the joy and the splendor of this life because our eyes are so polluted by something else.

And in the series called Loveology, I just kind of wonder how many of us miss out on the beauty of love, like real beautiful love, because our eyes have been so polluted by something else.

That there are two chapters in the Bible that the whole chapter is dedicated to one topic, two chapters only.

The first one is in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, it's called the faith chapter, the hall of faith.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It's all this story after story after story of people who had amazing, audacious faith.

Romans chapter, I mean, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is another one of those places in the Bible where the whole chapter is based on one topic, and 1 Corinthians 13 is the chapter of love.

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

And I was as I was thinking through this love ology, what's a topic that I can preach that will help and apply to everyone, regardless of your age, your stage, or your season of relationships?

This applies to friends, it applies to co-workers, this applies to marriage, this applies to dating, it applies to everybody.

And I was like, what is it?

And I was reading 1 Corinthians 13 and it jumped off at me.

Here it is, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 13:1

Paul says, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but I do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.

Pause here.

He's like, if if I could somehow interpret every language and speak every language fluently, and if I could even hear the voice of an angel and know what they were saying, but I didn't exhibit love, I'm nothing but noise.

He goes on and says, If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing.

What is he saying?

He's like, if I'm the most spiritual guy you know, if I know the Bible forwards and backwards, if I can do all of it, if I could speak all the natural languages of the Bible, if I do all of it and I don't exhibit the love of God, what good was any of it?

I am nothing.

Then he says, if I give all I possess to the poor, and if I give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing.

He's like, if I give everything away and all of my generosity is nothing but a show and a game, I'm literally worthless.

Then he says, Here is what love is.

Love is patience.

Love is kind.

This means love defers.

Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

How awesome would it be if home was full of all of this stuff?

Then he gives us a list of four things.

I preached on these on week one in the series.

He says, love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And then the next line, the next three words, like leapt off the page at me.

Love never fails.

And I read that and I was like, well, that's cool, but like it does sometimes, right?

Like you ever love somebody and it didn't go the way you expected it to go?

You ever trusted somebody and they betrayed you?

Have you ever given your heart to someone only for them to break it into a million little pieces and hand it back to you worse than you gave it to them?

Like, what does it mean that love never fails?

Well, to help us understand this, I'd like to take you to into my world for a second.

Um, I'm a collector of quotes, I'm a curator of quotes.

I love good quotes.

Because a good quote can drive the point home.

Here's a couple examples of just good quotes that'll help you.

Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Beautiful.

Here's another one.

To err is human, but to forgive is divine.

Alexander Pope.

Here's one.

God helps those who help themselves.

Who thought this was in the Bible?

This is not in the Bible.

This is your boy, B.

Frank, Benjamin Franklin.

Okay, here's one.

I like this one.

This is from a rap artist.

Um, this is one of the best raps I've ever heard ever in RB music.

I can put you in a mansion somewhere in Wisconsin.

He made mansion rhyme with Wisconsin.

Makes no sense at all.

Just a good quote.

Okay.

There is someone else, I might cut that for the next service.

Um, there's someone else who is a quote machine that I love so much, a famous Hall of Fame baseball player.

Here's a picture of him.

His name was Leroy Page.

His nickname was Satchel.

Everybody called him Satchel.

Satchel was an all-time great, and he was cocky as can be, and I love that about him.

One of the things he would do is he started playing baseball in the late 1920s in the professional leagues, but it was before the segregation rules had changed.

He was a pitcher in the Negro League, and he was just the best of the best.

Eventually, when segregation stopped, he played in the majors and made the Hall of Fame.

He was that good.

He was so cocky, though, that one of the things he did that I found so funny is if he was facing a really cocky batter, one of the things he would do is he would turn around to his infielders and his outfielders and say, guys, just sit down.

I got this.

It's only cocky if you can't back it up, everybody.

And he would do it.

He was such a good pitcher.

Now, one of the things about him is he faced unimaginable racial discrimination.

People in the stands would say things, throw things, hurl inserts at him, insults at him that were so unimaginably bad.

And because of it, he got really quick with his words, and he had a really sharp way of responding to people.

Like, let me give you a funny example.

He would say things like this If you want to be a good pitcher, keep the ball off the fat part of the bats.

He would just say stuff like this, is like, okay.

Here's another one that he said, and this was in response to people being mean and racially motivated.

Work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody's watching.

That's fun advice.

And then he said this phrase love like you've never been hurt.

Love like you've never been hurt.

He says this as a response to people who were angry, yelling, throwing stuff at him, cursing at him for the color of his skin.

Love like you've never been hurt.

And that sounds like awesome advice, doesn't it?

Like, how can we possibly love like we've never been hurt?

How is that possible?

Well, years ago I stumbled across a book by a pastor named Jensen Franklin titled Love Like You've Never Been Hurt.

And the whole premise is this how can we?

How can we allow our hearts to return to the way it was before hurt and pain and offense and betrayal got in and devastated and decimated our hearts?

How can we learn to love in that way?

You see, the truth is in every one of our relationships, we carry a backpack with us.

And the backpack is loaded with our best moments and it's floated with our highlight reel, but it's also weighed down by your worst moments.

That backpack is weighed down by those things that were said over you.

Often our identity gets shaped by the words spoken over us early and often in our lives.

And we carry that with us everywhere we go.

And the problem is when you get hurt, every new relationship after that bears the brunt of the pain that someone else inflicted on you.

And if you like go to the Bible and you're like, the Bible will help me with this, like I got bad news for you.

It doesn't.

Like, think about the Bible.

Let's go to the book of Genesis.

Um, Joseph.

We meet Joseph, the favored son of his father, sold into slavery by his brothers.

He bounces from house to house, season to season in his life.

Certainly had to feel like God had forgotten all about him.

Eventually, through a whole series of providential miracles, he finds himself at the right hand of Pharaoh as the second most powerful man in the whole known world.

And in this point, God speaks to him and gives him a dream, and he says, Here's what I want you to do.

There's gonna be a famine, a drought that comes through the land, so store up food now.

So he does this, he stores up all this food.

Time, some time passes, and eventually this group of people come and they throw themselves at Joseph's feet.

And when Joseph realizes who it is, he loses his breath.

Because bowing before him are his brothers.

If this were a movie, it would be a best-selling movie.

It's it's almost too good to be true.

His brothers who had betrayed him are now begging him just for food to live.

I don't think anybody in this room would judge us for saying things like, Well, if he if he wanted to not do it, if he wanted to have them put to death, we would be understanding because they betrayed him.

But what does he do?

He chooses the difficult path of forgiveness and he forgives them.

So many people in the Bible that we admire had this rocky past and a lot of hurt.

David goes on to be king and one of the greatest kings ever.

Early in his life, his father didn't believe in him, his brothers despised him.

Later in his life, his own father-in-law tries to get him murdered.

You thought your family was jacked up, right?

Like he this is his life.

And he has a moment, it's like, what do I do?

Do I become bitter or do I become better in this?

Even Jesus.

Like, were anyone to be exempt from this, it would be the Son of God, and yet what happens to him?

He finds himself betrayed, sold so like sold into captivity, falsely accused, falsely charged, and then beaten within an inch of his life and nailed to a cross in the most excruciating form of punishment and crucifixion.

In that moment, if Jesus had cursed all of his creation and all of those who turned their backs on him, I think I would understand.

And Jesus from the cross utters these words, Father, forgive them.

Like I wouldn't say that sentence.

I wouldn't even come to that thought.

I would be so angry and so hurt that these people who I have loved have betrayed me.

And Jesus' response, what comes out of him when he's filled with that pressure and that pain is nothing but love and forgiveness.

Jesus even said this in the book of Luke, chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

Jesus said to his disciples one time, things that cause people to stumble are bound to come.

Other translations translate it this way: things that cause offense are sure to happen.

Doesn't that sound terrible?

Aren't you like Jesus?

Be more positive.

I don't think Jesus is like, I'm positive, you're gonna get offended by some stuff.

That's what's gonna happen to you.

If you were to summarize Jesus' own words, it would be you will get offended.

You will have moments in your life where your friends, the people you love, the people you trust, they're going to hurt you so bad and they're gonna hand you a choice of what to do.

And your choice is do I throw it in the backpack and do I carry it into every single one of my relationships, or do I choose the harder path, the path of more resistance, and do I choose to let go of that thing so I can love like I've never been hurt before?

Over the years of pastoring, I've had so many conversations with people.

I've had conversations with people in this room, people in North Lakeland, people, anytime I talk about forgiveness, people say things to me like, well, that's good as a general idea, but you don't know about me.

And you don't know what he did to me, you don't know how she walked out on me, you don't know how she had an affair for three years and hid it from me.

You don't know what my kids have done to me, you don't know they stole the business from me, and they unload their stories on me, and they're so painful.

And I'll say stuff to them like, I hear you, but forgiveness isn't even about them.

Forgiveness is about you, it's about your heart getting free.

And over and over and over I've heard this.

I'll forgive when I feel like it.

If I could offer you a thought today, it's that forgiveness is not an emotion, it's a choice.

And if you're waiting for the feelings to catch up for you to make the choice, you'll be waiting for the rest of your life.

But you know where you will be waiting in the prison and the captivity of offense.

Holding on to that offense never hurts anyone.

It just lets what was done keep hurting you.

Why do we do this?

Why do we choose to forgive?

Well, the reason we choose to forgive is following Jesus is a daily exercise in choosing the path of forgiveness.

In the book of Romans, Paul says it like this He says, For if while we were God's enemies, timeout, while we were so far estranged from God, so distant from Him that He would consider us an enemy, while we were in that position, we were reconciled or brought into right standing with Him through the death of His Son.

How much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life?

If Jesus did it for us, and if we're going to be followers of Jesus, I got some good news and some bad news.

It's the same thing.

Forgiveness isn't an emotion, it's not a feeling, it's a choice you make, and the choice you make is to be free or to love like you've never been hurt before.

So here's what happens in churches all over the country.

We have people that come to church and they hear the message of Jesus, they hear the message of forgiveness, and they go back to their homes, and they're adults that have grown adult children in the same town that they won't even pick up the phone and call.

That there's there's estranged relationships where it's like you're you're separated, you're trying to figure out are we gonna move forward in marriage or are we gonna pass forward in divorce?

Which one are we going to do?

And you won't even talk to each other.

You get husbands and wives who are so mad at each other that they sleep in the same bed and don't say a word to each other.

The only noise they make is when they pass each other in the hall and it's like on the way by each other.

Why do we do this?

Let me offer you some advice.

Use your words to initiate forgiveness.

Start making the choice of choosing to forgive.

Let me show it to you like this.

If you were to look up this word in the dictionary, nitroglycerin, you would get two definitions that seem contradictory, and I think this is a beautiful picture.

Nitroglycerin is the root ingredient in dynamite, which is used to explode or to create massive devastation.

Nitroglycerin, also, another definition is when measured in pill form, can actually be an ingredient that saves your heart.

Can I tell you what unforgiveness does to us?

Carrying that offense is like nitroglycerin.

You get the choice.

The choice is will I explode and everything else and everyone else in my life catching this trap?

No, or will I choose to let it be something that I forgive, and my heart receives that as medicine?

One of my favorite people in the whole Bible is this brother named Peter.

If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and Acts, Peter's all up in it.

And what I love about him is he is a hot mess.

Like of all the disciples, like he doesn't seem to have it together at all.

And it's funny because he's one of the few people that we know in the Bible, one of the few disciples that we know that was actually married.

And there's this moment where Peter comes to Jesus and he's like, Hey, I got a big question for you.

And maybe this was about his marriage, maybe this was about his mother-in-law.

I don't know what it was about, but here's what Peter asked Jesus Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?

Up to seven?

Up to seven times?

Now we don't know exactly what this means, but it's believed that the Pharisees, the religious elite, said that if you forgive someone three times, then you're good.

Like you've done your part, now you're off the hook, nothing to worry about anymore.

And so Peter's like, okay, look.

The Pharisees say three.

How many times do you say?

What if I double it and just for good measure I add one?

Seven.

Is seven times good?

If my wife, if someone, if a friend hurts me, if they betray me, how many times is seven good?

Jesus answered, He says, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy seven times.

Now this is interesting because this little phrase seventy-seven is not the number seven seven, it's not Luca's number.

It is seventy-seven is literally seventy times seven.

It's four hundred and ninety times.

If you were to take a day and you were to multiply the amount of hours by the amount of minutes in an hour, and you were to divide it by 490, what you would find is Jesus is basically saying if you were to be awake 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you'd have to forgive in full, one time every three minutes.

The point is, it's an insurmountable amount of forgiveness.

What is Jesus trying to teach Peter and what do I want you to understand today?

It's that forgiveness is not about keeping score, it's about losing count.

Forgiveness isn't about trying to keep score and keep record of who's right and who's wrong.

It's about forgetting all of that so that you can love and you can enter into relationships as if the offense or the hurt or the betrayal never happened in the first place.

This is what forgiveness is.

I told you.

I mean, I've had every counter argument you can imagine over the years.

I've had people come and cry in my office.

I've had people come in my office and tell me stories that were so nauseating that when they left, I had to shut my door and lay on my couch for 30 minutes because I know people walk through unimaginable pain.

If you find yourself fighting me, if you find yourself when I'm talking about people that have hurt you and betrayed you, if a face or a picture or a name came to your mind, let me tell you what forgiveness is not.

Number one, forgiveness is not a feeling, it's not an emotion, you don't do it when you feel like it.

Forgiveness is not pretending you were not hurt.

And this is what a lot of people think it is.

It's like I'm just, well, fine, I'm just gonna shove it down and wear a mask and act like everything is fine.

It's not that.

Forgiveness is not condoning what was done.

And let me just say to you: if you have been hurt, betrayed, abused, if someone's left you, stabbed you in the back, if that's happened, no one's condoning it.

Forgiveness is not trusting the offender.

They may have done something so egregious to you that no amount of forgiveness will ever cause you to want to be in the same room or to be vulnerable with them again.

Forgiveness is not relieving the offender of the responsibility.

There may be a consequence at play.

Sometimes forgiveness isn't even reconciliation.

Sometimes the person who hurt you are dead, buried, and gone.

And you'll never get to have the conversation where you say to them, I choose to forgive you.

But one of the things I say often about forgiveness is forgiveness is a one-player game.

It doesn't require two parties in order to forgive.

It's you saying, I'm choosing to make the decision to be free rather than to try to get even.

I'm choosing to live and love like I've never been hurt in the first place.

If this is what forgiveness is not, let me show you what I think forgiveness is like.

And this is this is fun.

Anybody in the room want to admit that you are just addicted to ketchup?

Anybody here want to say this?

It's important.

Like, wow, that's a lot of hands.

Um I had a buddy back in the day who was like ridiculously addicted to ketchup.

Like, we go to lunch at least once a week, and I mean, probably a dozen times in our friendship, someone would stop by our table and be like, got yourself a lot of ketchup there, don't you?

Like, that's a lot of ketchup.

We would go to five guys, and you know the little the little trays they give you for your peanuts?

My dude would fill it to the top and overflowing with ketchup.

Like, my man loved some ketchup.

Now, if you go to the store today, Publix, Walmart, Target, wherever you shop, and you get Heinz ketchup, it's gonna be in one of these.

We have made the bottles of ketchup weak.

This is what we've done.

We are raising a weak generation because all you have to do is squeeze it and the ketchup comes out.

But is anybody old enough and tough enough in your heart to remember when ketchup came in glass bottles like this?

Anyone remember this?

I think forgiveness is a lot like a glass bottle of Heinz ketchup.

Why?

Well, first of all, if you're old enough to remember, getting the top off of a brand new bottle took an act of God, is what it took.

You need a pair of pliers or a grown man is what you needed to get that thing off.

And then when you finally got the lid off, what happens?

You try to pour the ketchup out, right?

But the ketchup was a lot like a Dairy Queen blizzard.

When you turn it over, what happens?

You could wait five to seven business days, you're getting nothing.

Not coming out.

And then people would resort to all kinds of weird things.

They'd shake it, nothing happens.

They would try things like um hitting it, nothing happens.

Uh what I this is this is my own issue.

Um, I never trusted glass bottles of ketchup at restaurants because you know someone stuck their knife or their fork that they had eaten off of up in their or their tongue.

Come on, somebody, like weird stuff, right?

But here's what you need to know.

Heinz figured it out, they just didn't communicate it well.

But these these bottles, these glass bottles were vacuum sealed and they were pressurized, and what would happen is take the lid off and they figured it out.

If you would just take something, and right there at the top of the bottle where the Heinz 57 logo was, if you would just take a knife or even your hand and it would come pouring out.

They didn't teach us any of this stuff in school, but it's the stuff we needed to know, everybody, right?

How is forgiveness like ketchup?

Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to open yourself up to the possibility of it, and that can be really hard.

Because we think by holding on, we're holding them accountable.

Can I tell you the truth?

By holding on, you're only holding yourself in the tyranny or the captivity of offense.

And then what do we do?

We start to make the decision to every day we just tap a little more.

We just wake up and we decide today's the day that I'm not gonna live in offense.

Today's the day that I'm not gonna live in hurt, today's the day I'm not gonna live in that betrayal.

Today's the day I'm going to choose to forgive.

And every single day when you don't feel like it, what do you do?

You keep tapping, and here's what I want you to understand.

If forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling, you make the choice, and then the feelings follow.

Every day you make the choice.

First thing we need to understand about forgiveness is forgiveness isn't a feeling, it's a choice.

The second thing we need to know about forgiveness is sometimes the worst thing done to you can bring out the best in you.

Can I tell you some of my favorite people in the whole world?

Are people that have walked through pain so unimaginable that if we told their story, every single person listening would be in a million tears.

Why?

Because what forgiveness does and what unforgiveness does is it hands us a choice, and here's the choice.

As a result, will I get bitter or will I get better?

Some of my favorite people in the world have stories of pain so bad, and here they are as adults whose lives are so much more beautiful and they're so much better instead of taking the path of bitterness.

Conversely, all of us know somebody who's been so bitter.

It's literally whatever happened to them, which was an event.

It wasn't a forever moment, but it was an event when that happened.

From that moment on, they've never been the same.

Will you choose bitterness or we choose to be better?

Um, if you grew up in church, you went to school, Sunday school, chances are you heard that in the Bible there's one sin that the Bible calls unforgivable.

Chances are you heard what it was was blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

That's true.

But there's another one that Jesus himself said.

It's in the book of Matthew, chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

This is in what's called the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus says this.

Here's the other one.

Jesus says, For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

So it's like if you just do for others what God did for you, God's gonna forgive you.

And then he hits you with this conjunction that hits like a thousand-pound brick.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive yours.

According to Jesus, it's unforgivable not to forgive.

So for a lot of us, we hear a message like this and we think, oh, that's good.

It'd be great if I could do that, but I can't, and you don't know my story.

There's no way I could do it.

Let me take it from something that you should do to something that you are commanded by Jesus Himself to do.

Unforgiveness has this way of burrowing itself in your heart and decimating you from the inside and out.

In the early days of access, uh I had a buddy who was like my best friend in the world.

We did everything together.

We hung out together, we were college buddies.

We kind of, he was the first person we brought along to our team.

I loved this guy so much.

And over time, like it just kind of got toxic and bitter, and and there was there was a moment of offense where I had to have the hard conversation as the pastor to say, I love you, I have to let you go.

My best friend in the world had to let him go, and our whole friendship was immediately decimated.

It was so hard, and my heart was, I love you, I want to bless you, I want to help you get to whatever your next season is, and this is what we did, and we helped him and we blessed him, and it was everything as best we could, we did the right thing, and then here was the problem our relationship was still completely in tatters.

Months went by, and there was a conference that we both were going to, and I went with like four or five guys from our church staff, and he and his wife showed up and we ran into them.

And you ever had this moment?

You ever see someone you don't want to see?

And when you see them, they do this, they walk away from you.

He sees me at the conference, he did this that I was like, Oh, come on, God, of all places, why here?

Why we weren't talking?

There was a it was like even though there was a thousand miles of distance geographically between us, it might have been a hundred million light years of distance emotionally for us.

Because the guys on my team didn't know the whole story, they're like, hey, we should hang out, we should have dinner.

So we had dinner, we sat at opposite sides of the table and didn't talk.

We went to the service that night and we sat like eight seats apart from each other on the same row.

And the speaker was this lady who was unbelievable.

And this sister gets up and preaches this message on betrayal and forgiveness, and she tells her story of how God had helped her heart to heal after the person who was her right hand person betrayed her, stabbed her in the back, and left and was spreading lies.

And I sat there eight seats away from my buddy with my hands folded in my laugh.

I didn't do any preach it, sister.

I didn't do any of that.

I just sat there and didn't move.

And as soon as the service was over, I was like, all right, guys, I love you, I'm out, bye, and I just took off.

You you could have cut the tension with a chainsaw in that moment.

I didn't see him that night, I didn't see him the next day.

Two weeks of silence passed.

And in this time, I said, God, I I like try.

Try to forgive.

It was waking me up in the middle of the night, it bugged me.

And one day, I remember exactly where I was.

Exactly where I was.

I got a call from him.

He hadn't called me in months.

I saw his name on my phone, I was like, all right.

I answered the call, I was like, what's up, man?

And you could hear that he didn't cry.

This is a grown man.

And he goes, dude, I I gotta I kept stopping every few words.

I gotta apologize to you.

He goes, I want to apologize.

He goes, ever since we were in that service together, God has been keeping me up at night.

I knew I had to obey and I knew I needed to ask for forgiveness, and he tells me everything he did, and all that he was like very specific about forgiveness.

It wasn't just a hey, I messed up, forgive me.

It was like I did this and this and this.

And the thing he said that to this day, it still like moves me, is he said, um I tell you what I'm most sorry for.

I'm sorry that I put my best friend in the position that I put you in to have to fire me, your best friend.

He goes, I can't imagine how hard that was.

I had to pull off the road because I was crying so hard.

I pulled into a Chick-fil-A, it was right there.

I'm like a Jesus chicken and I'm having a Jesus moment.

So afterwards I got myself a Jesus Oreo cookies and cream milkshake, and uh sure did.

And um moment changed everything.

I wonder who's on the other side of your life, who you have carried the pain and you love others, but you love like you've been hurt, not love like you've never been hurt.

You love others really well, but the truth is, every single person you see, you see through a broken worldview that's that is shattered by and marred by pain and hurt and abuse and betrayal, and it devastates all of your relationships.

What would it look like if you just made this decision to say, today's the day I choose to forgive?

I choose to let go because holding on is keeping me from moving on.

And what if we as a church were known as the people who were the people that no matter how bad we've been hurt, and hear me, I'm not negating anything you've walked through.

But how amazing would it be if we were the kind of people who said, no matter what's been done to me, there's nothing I can forgive that I myself haven't been forgiven of by more, by my Father in heaven, through Jesus coming from me?

What would it look like if all of us just made this decision to say I'm more concerned about being free than I am with getting even?

And what would it look like if we made this decision to be people who love like we've never been hurt because love never fails.

Will you bow your head and close your eyes with me all across this place?

As I pray, if that person came to your mind, would you just take a step today and make the decision to start the process of saying, God, I don't care what the stakes, but I'm gonna choose the path of forgiveness.

So, God, that's our prayer.

Give us the courage to be the kind of people who actually do it, who live it out, and who actually pursue a life of forgiveness.

God, I thank you that when we forgive, we set someone free, and the person that is ultimately the most free is us.

So, God, I pray for a wave of freedom to sweep over our church.

God, may we experience love and friendship and relationships in ways we never could have imagined because we've let go of the stuff that's been holding on to us.

God, we'll be careful to give you the praise and glory for it because you are worthy of that.

In Jesus' name.

Your head still bowed and eyes still closed.

If you're here today and you say, Jason, I don't even know if I'm right with God.

I'm talking to you here in South Lakeland, I'm talking to you in North Lakeland, talking to you at church online.

If you would say, Jason, I don't know if I'm right with God, but today you want to make the decision to follow Jesus from this day forward.

If this is you, would you raise your hand right now?

Because I want to pray with you.

Thanks.

Yep, thank you.

Thank you.

Wow, thank you, thank you, wow.

The forgiveness we extend is only an extension of what's already been forgiven and given to us.

If this is you, I'm gonna invite you to pray this with me.

Say, Jesus, today I give you my life.

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

Jesus, from this day forward, I choose to follow you.

I believe that when you died on the cross, you bought my salvation and my forgiveness.

So, Jesus, I receive that gift today.

And from this day forward, I'll live for you.

Jesus, I love you and I give you my life for the rest of my life.

And it's in your name I pray.

Amen.

Church fam, we just had people everywhere pray to make that decision.

Come on, let's celebrate like it matters.