Snow Globe – Forgiving Yourself

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

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Today we are in part two of a series.

The series is called Snow Globe.

To get us going, I had this thought for you today.

What can you give a church that has everything?

Come on, you have someone in your life that's hard to buy for?

Anybody have this person they're hard to buy for?

My wife says I'm hard to buy for.

And I've always thought that is so dumb.

I buy for myself every single day.

Like I'm easy to buy for, right?

I don't know if you have a person like that's hard to buy for.

I think that you are hard to buy for.

You say, what do you mean?

Like, what do you give a church that has everything?

What do you give a church that meets needs around the world that gives hundreds of thousands of dollars away to missions?

What do you give a church that meets needs in the city and needs on the four corners of the world?

What do you give a church that feeds hungry children and is consistently serving other people?

What do you give them?

And here's what I think you give them: rest.

Rest for their souls.

You give them what money can't buy, which is peace.

Today we are in part two of a three-part series that's really about forgiveness.

And here's what you discover when you forgive, your soul rests in a way that you can't understand.

Part one of the series last week, we talked about what does it mean to be a person who is forgiving others?

I have heard from so many people who have taken steps of forgiveness and it's changing their life.

Today I want to turn it inward and I want to talk about you.

How do you forgive yourself?

How it's called forgiving myself.

Next week is a hard one.

Next week's gonna be fun.

But talk about what does it mean to forgive God?

Now, this is kind of curious because how do you forgive God?

How do you forgive someone who's perfect, who knows no sin, who can never do anything wrong?

How do you forgive him?

Well, the truth is you can't forgive him, but some of us, we've pointed our finger at God and we've blamed him for things, haven't we?

Haven't you prayed for someone who was sick and you had to sit in their funeral?

Haven't you prayed for a miracle in a relationship and it didn't quite go the way you expected it to go?

What do you do when your anger, your hurt, and your resentment is pointed at God?

How do you forgive him?

Next week is gonna be one of those bring your tissues, it's gonna get real up in here kind of Sundays.

Today, I want to talk to you about you.

How do you turn forgiveness to the hardest person in your life to forgive you?

How do you forgive the person who is at all of your worst moments?

How do you forgive the person who was there for all of your bad decisions?

How do you forgive the person who was involved in every single fight you've been in?

How do you forgive, how do you forgive you?

I don't know if you have a story that is your go-to story in life.

Some of us have stories that if you're at a party and people are like, hey, tell us your name and tell us something crazy that happened in your life.

You've got the story.

I don't have the story.

A few years ago, I thought I got the story.

I'm so excited.

My wife and I got selected to be contestants on a game show called Supermarket Sweep.

I was pumped about this.

I was working out every day.

I was gonna smoke those other fools.

We were gonna win$100,000.

I was gonna do it.

And right before the game show, right before it was taping, got canceled for some reason on us.

So bummed, I thought for the rest of my life I could say I won$100,000 on a game show, but I didn't.

I didn't get the story, right?

I do have a story that if I'm with pastors, if I'm with church leaders, and they start telling stories about like what's the craziest thing you've walked through, or what is what is the most painful experience you've had, I've got one that it immediately comes to mind.

I don't have to think about it, I immediately know what the story is.

It goes like this some 15 or 16 years ago.

Our church was way smaller, and we were meeting at the YMCA on Cleveland Heights, and there was a Sunday, it was Super Bowl Sunday, and I was preaching, and there was no stage, and so I was eye-level with everybody in the room.

And as I was scanning the room and talking, there was a person sitting right over here to my right, your left.

And I just kept looking and kept catching eyes with him.

And the whole time I was speaking, he looked like this eyes as wide as he possibly could, bigger than the state of Texas.

And as soon as the service was over, like everybody walked out the doors, but he walked up to me and he goes, Bro, I gotta talk to you.

Like, okay, what?

He goes, I gotta talk to you.

I said, Okay, what?

He goes, I need to talk to you, and he talked to you.

I'm like, Go ahead.

Um, right here.

And he goes, Ah, I can't.

And he walked off.

It's like, okay, whatever.

So that night at the Super Bowl party, our church was small, so we all kind of gathered together to watch the Super Bowl.

At halftime, he goes, come here, come here, come here.

He goes, I gotta talk to you.

I'm like, we've been down this road.

What do you want?

He goes, No, no, I gotta talk to you.

He goes, um He goes, Um, this week I was helping my dad with the project, and I didn't mean to.

I didn't do it on purpose, but I accidentally stumbled across something my dad is doing that is so bad.

It is so sinful, it is so egregious, it is so audacious, it's terrible.

I don't know what to do with it.

And he told me what he caught his dad in on accident, and it was everything he said and more.

This was terrible, it was egregious, it was disgusting, it was sinful, it was nasty.

I couldn't believe it.

And then he goes, What do I do?

I said, Well, you probably have to confront your dad and talk to your dad about it.

And he went, Oh, I was hoping you wouldn't say that.

Well, because maybe you can come with me.

And immediately these words flashed through my mind, I don't get paid enough for this.

That's what I thought.

So, being the loving, generous pastor I am, I showed up at his house a few days later for this awkward intervention to confront his dad.

It went terrible.

It was such a terrible experience.

Um, I don't know if you've ever had that moment where you feel like you're gonna throw up.

Anybody have this moment?

I felt that for like three hours straight.

It was terrible.

We sit down, we make small talk, and eventually the dad goes, Well, hey, why is why is Jason here?

And he goes, Well, funny you should mention that.

And then he went, uh, and he did this huge gulp.

He goes, Um, dad, I didn't mean to, but I found this.

And his dad looked like a deer in the headlights.

He goes, Well, what do you mean?

It's not, it's not that big of a deal.

It doesn't really hurt anybody, it's not that big of a deal, right?

It's not that that's not that big of a deal.

And he starts spinning the story.

I said, Sir, stop.

It's a terrible thing.

What are you doing?

Immediately the man dissolves into tears and he says to his son, I'm so sorry.

I can't believe it.

I never meant for you to find this, I never meant to hurt you.

Please forgive me.

And immediately after that was over, I thought, oh, I can see the finish line.

I am done with this terrible moment.

You know that moment after you throw up and it's so gross, but you feel better, you're like, whoa, whoa, I felt like that.

And then it got worse again.

He goes, Um, well, now that you know, we should probably tell your mom.

And I'm like, you guys have a great time with that.

I catch you on the flippity, I'm out, right?

And he goes, No, no, Jason, you should stay.

And immediately I thought, I don't get paid enough for this, you know what I'm saying?

And they called the mom in, the husband confesses to the mom, I'm dying a thousand deaths.

This is like Polk County Jerry Springer.

It was nasty, nasty.

Anyways, this is over.

Finally, I'm like so sick.

I go home, feel disgusted.

And then a couple weeks later, I had breakfast with the son, and I said, How are you?

We caught up, and I said, How's uh how's your dad?

How's he doing?

He goes, He's he's not good.

I said, What?

He goes, he's like he won't get out of bed, he's struggling in his life, and he keeps saying things like this.

He says things like, I'll never forgive myself.

There's no way God could forgive me.

And this last one, I still remember to this day.

He said, I'm haunted by what I've done.

Interesting language.

I want you to think about your worst moments for just a moment.

I'm not asking you to share, I'm not asking you to tell anybody, but do any of these feel like the story of your worst moments?

Over the years, I've counseled hundreds of people.

People have sat in my office and confessed to affairs, people have sat in my office and confessed to abortions, and these moments haunt them.

And over and over and over over the years, I've heard stories like I'll just never be able to get past it.

There's no way God could possibly forgive me.

I'm haunted by what I've done.

Do any of these feel true for you?

This last one in particular is interesting because of the second word.

It's it's the word haunted.

And haunted is such a funny word because it doesn't feel like a Christmas word.

It feels like a Halloween word, like a ghost and goblins kind of word.

It's not a red and green word, it's an orange and black word.

It just is not a Christmassy word unless you remember the story.

Where the man is haunted by the ghost of Christmas past.

I wonder how many of us that's our story.

Even in these beautiful seasons, it's like seasons of joy and love, and then it's like in the middle of the night, randomly you'll you'll wake up and you'll snap two and you'll be in a cold sweat because you're haunted by your past, haunted by your shame, haunted by that decision.

You would give anything to go back and undo, you're haunted by it.

What's interesting about this word haunted is it's associated with ghost.

I was kind of reading up on ghost, which is kind of some fun reading this week.

And there's an ancient word.

It's an old English word, we don't use it very often, but the word is the word wraith.

This is not a normal word.

Chances are you've never written or said this word before in your life.

Wraith is an old English word that literally means ghost or one who torments.

It's interesting because the etymology of the word literally shares a similar meaning with the word that we use all the time at Christmas.

It's the word wreath.

Wreath is the circle, it's the greenery that sits on your front door at your house.

How do these have anything in common?

Well, they don't until you understand how you create a wreath.

A wreath is greenery that's just been twisted.

Wraith is a ghost, and the the goal of a ghost is to twist your thoughts and to twist your memories and to twist your thinking into making you believe something that is untrue about you.

Interesting.

If you have time later, you should read up on what is called the psychology of your memories.

We don't actually remember everything exactly as it happens.

We just don't.

We remember a version of a story, we remember a perspective of a story, but we never know the whole story.

And so all we have is a perspective on our memories.

What's funny is over time our memories have the ability to change.

And over time, when we share our story with people, people put a stamp on it, it seems like.

For some people, we share our worst moments and they're like, oh, that's disgusting.

What is wrong with you?

And immediately our story now is stamped by shame.

For others of us, we share our story and we share our worst moments, and someone looks at us with love in their eyes and they say, I am so sorry you walked through this.

And immediately our story feels like it's glazed over with grace.

All of us, we don't really remember our stories exactly as it happens, but if we're not careful, what the enemy of your soul wants to do is to twist the stories of your past to make you believe the lie that you'll never be loved, never be forgiven, never be able to be accepted by God.

We miss it.

This is the reason that the theme verse for the series is so important.

In the book of Isaiah, some 750 years before Jesus lived, the prophet Isaiah said this.

He says, Come now, let's settle this.

Like, let's stop playing games, he's saying, says the Lord.

He says, Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool if you will obey me.

If you'll do the stuff that's the hard work of the soul, if you'll obey me, I'll change your life.

I think for a lot of us, the problem is our life feels like a snow globe.

Like when it comes to the issues of our life and forgiveness, we feel like we can see it from the outside, but we'll never experience it for ourselves.

Don't we?

It's like in Florida, one of the most popular Christmas songs is an old one, says, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

In Florida, we know that that song is true because we will never experience a white Christmas.

In Florida, if it gets below 60 degrees, we put salt on the roads and chains on our tires just in case.

Like we don't know, right?

All we can do is dream of it.

I wonder how many of us it feels like.

The verse we just read of our hearts being returned to white like snow or white like wool feels like nothing more than a pipe dream.

What would it look like for us if we moved it from a dream to reality?

To do it, you're gonna have to forgive others, but you're also gonna have to forgive you.

To forgive you, you have to answer a question well, what do we do with our shame?

What do we do with those worst moments?

What do we do with that spring break that we can't forget, that relationship that fell apart?

What do we do with that lie that we told that haunts us?

What do we do with that betrayal that we were a part of?

What do we do with our sin and our shame?

I'm gonna give you some good news.

If you're struggling, you're like, man, God can't possibly forgive me, your thoughts are twisted.

I want to show you something.

If our thoughts are twisted, if they can be twisted, they can also be untwisted.

If our thoughts get all messed up, they can also be put back the way they were intended to be.

So let's talk about how we do it, okay?

How do we get past our shame?

Well, here's what we tend to do with our shame.

The first thing we do is we can we can bury it.

And by burying it, all we're doing is pushing it down and thinking, like, I'll just deal with this later.

I'll get past it someday, I'll get past it later, but today is not the day.

And we push it down, push it down, push it down.

Every time we sin, every time we hurt, every time something happens to us, it is like our soul gets wounded.

Let me point something out to you.

Wounds only do one of two things.

They either heal or they get infected.

They either heal up or they get infected.

And I think for a lot of us, we think that by pushing it down and not dealing with it, what we think we're doing is we think we're actually helping ourselves because we buy into the lie that time heals all wounds.

Listen to me, time doesn't heal anything, only Jesus can heal your wounds.

Period.

Period.

If you don't deal with it, you'll never deal with it.

You can't heal what you're not willing to confront.

And so we shove it down and we bury it.

Can I tell you something?

This is the reason that our access groups are such a big deal.

You need people in your life who you stop burying it and you start to bear it, you start to show it.

Uh Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, said it like this in Proverbs chapter 28: He who conceals his sin does not prosper.

But whoever confesses and renounces finds mercy.

Can I show you something about the character of God that I love?

God is a God full of mercy.

What does mercy mean?

It means that God delights in letting his children off the hook.

Like when you confess your sins, when you deal with the stuff that's been dealing with you, God gets joy out of saying, I forgive you.

It's all good, move on.

We can't bury it.

The second thing we tend to do is we beat ourselves up over it, don't we?

I think about this person in the Bible named David, one of the heroes in the Bible.

You've probably heard the story of David and Goliath.

He had some extraordinary moments, but he also had some terrible moments.

At one point in his life, David has an affair with a married woman.

He gets her pregnant, and instead of confessing and admitting his sin, he literally creates a whole story to get her husband killed in war.

Like in the same moment, he has an affair, gets a woman pregnant, and murders an innocent man.

Terrible.

And yet, at the end of his life, it is attributed to David that he was considered a man after God's own heart.

Here you got David, this man who loves God, he's super emotional, and yet he he has this moment.

I want you to see this.

This is what he says.

Psalm chapter 38, he says, I'm drowning in the flood of my own sins.

Psalms 38 · chapter mention

They are a burden too heavy to bear.

Because I have been foolish, I'm utterly worn out and crushed.

My heart is troubled.

I wonder how many of us, we just feel this.

What David is saying, we feel it on an emotional level.

And because our heart feels heavy, we don't know what to do, and we think someone should pay for it, and so we turn on ourselves and we beat ourselves up.

We hurt ourselves.

Third thing we tend to do is we tend to blame others.

Don't we?

Like, don't we not want to sit in our own discomfort?

Don't we want someone else to be guilty instead of us?

If you've ever blame someone else for your issues and your sin and your past, you need to know that it's hereditary.

Even from the beginning of the Bible, God creates Adam and Eve, puts them in this place called the Garden of Eden.

Eden in Hebrew means pleasure and delight.

And even in this place of pleasure and delight, they sin and they mess up.

When God confronts them about their sin, here's what they say.

Well, but it's not really our fault.

The serpent deceived me.

So I hate.

It's not on me, it's on him.

It's not on it, could possibly be about, it couldn't be about me.

I wonder how many of us we bury it, we we beat ourselves up, we blame others when we really need to do something different with our shame.

Here is what it is.

And I want you before we put this up, I want you to hear this.

I've wrestled with how to say this.

Because this could just feel like, well, there it is.

There's the Christian answer.

That's what I expected him to say.

No, no.

I want you to see this.

We can believe God, not believe in God, but we can believe God's word.

That God is a truth teller who loves us and who wants to help us through our worst moments of shame.

Look what scripture says.

Paul says this, 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Therefore, if anyone and anyone means everyone, if anyone is in Christ, what does in Christ mean?

It is a term of relationship that determines your identity.

If you are in Christ, if you've made the decision to follow Jesus, he is a new creation.

The old has gone, the new has come.

Essentially, what Paul is saying is your former self, the one who committed all those atrocities and who did all those egregious sins, that person, when you enter into relationship with God, that other person is dead, buried, and gone.

God makes you new, not improved.

He doesn't just like wash you down and make you a cleaner version of you.

He makes you a whole new person from the inside out.

Let me say this to you.

If God's not beating you up, if God's not shaming you, why would you do it to yourself?

You're a new creation.

One of the things I love about the Bible is it is refreshingly honest.

Sometimes I think we can read it too fast and get a cursory overview, but we miss the nuance and the beauty of how honest scripture is.

There's a man that writes half to two-thirds of the New Testament.

His name is Paul.

But when we first meet him in the book of Acts, he doesn't go by the name Paul, he goes by the name Saul.

If Saul lived in the year 2023 and did what he did, he would be on the FBI's top-wanted, top list of like terrorists in the world.

He was a terrible person.

For fun and for sport, he hunted Christians.

He would capture them, beat them, abuse them, even murder them.

He was terrible.

Saul has a dramatic encounter with God that changes his life and literally, as a consequence, changes his name from Saul to Paul.

Paul goes on to live this extraordinary life.

And at this point in scripture, he's training a pastor named Timothy.

And here's what he says in 1 Timothy.

He says, Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

And here's the point of this verse.

He says, Here's a trustworthy saying.

Write this down, take it to the bank.

This is real.

Here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.

Jason, why did you tell me that?

Because if God can forgive him, he can forgive you.

Like I'm sure you've messed up.

You want to do a quick roll call of people who've messed up?

Number one, we've all messed up.

Hey, I've got some good news about me.

If you're like, man, what is wrong with him?

I've never murdered a Christian.

I've never hunted them for sport.

Neither have you.

If God can forgive him, what can he do for you?

Are you with me?

So if God's forgiven us, like we we gotta turn that back on ourselves and maybe for once just take a deep breath and let ourselves off the hook.

So I want to wrestle with this last question.

How do you get past your past?

I'm gonna give you three thoughts and then we're done.

Number one is you've got to stop trying to earn God's forgiveness.

Stop trying to earn it.

And we do this, don't we?

We think God couldn't possibly love me.

How could he possibly forgive me for what I've done wrong?

How could he possibly forgive me?

So we exhaust ourselves.

We serve relentlessly, we give ferociously, we try to do more and more and more to get him to love us.

Listen to me, you cannot do any more to earn the love of God.

Here's why.

Paul says in the book of Ephesians, one of my favorite sets of verses, he says, For it is by what?

Grace that you have been saved through faith.

You need to get this.

Grace is God's unmerited favor.

It means you cannot earn what God wants to give you.

It is by grace that you have been saved.

Grace is maybe the most powerful word in Scripture.

It is possibly the reason why the only adjective that feels adequate to describe it is amazing.

It is by his amazing grace that you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourselves.

Okay, I want you to get this.

It is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

If you could earn it, you would earn it and then you would take credit for it.

This is what God wants you to understand.

His grace is a gift to you.

All you have to do is receive it.

It's like this.

As our church has gotten bigger over the years, one of the things that I love is I run into people everywhere.

I run into people all over town and it's fun.

Sometimes my kids and I'll be walking into a store and they'll be like, how many access people do you think we'll see today?

And it's fun.

Like it is great.

The worst part about it is I can never have a moment when I go to a store without having showered first.

Like, because inevitably I'll run into about 60 of you.

That's how it's gonna work, okay?

But over the last couple years, especially as our church has grown a lot, I'll meet people and I'll meet people for the first time, or I'll see people that have known for years.

And a few weeks ago, I was in a restaurant having lunch, and the waitress came up, she was so happy to tell me, she goes, Hey, um, someone said that they're a part of your church and they wanted me to tell you that they love you so much and they paid for your meal.

And I was like, boom, shaka lock.

That's what I'm talking about, right?

Thought, should have bought dessert.

That's what I thought, right?

And I don't know who it was, so if it was you, thank you.

I love you, it was delicious, you are the best ever.

May God richly bless you.

That's what I think, okay?

I didn't know who it was.

But imagine the scenario.

You pay for my meal, I don't know who it is, and I say to myself, no, no, no, no one pays for me, absolutely not.

And instead of receiving the gift, I pull out whatever cash I've got in my pocket.

I'm like, here, take this, I have to pay for it because I it's mine, I have to pay for it.

Wouldn't we say that's dumb?

You should high step yourself up out of that restaurant and thank God and pray that God blesses that person who blessed you.

Why would you pay for something that's already been paid for?

And a lot of us exhaust ourselves trying to pay for a gift that God so freely gave us.

Look at what scripture says in the book of Matthew, Jesus says, Freely you have received, so freely give.

You've received forgiveness, so freely give it.

Throw forgiveness around like confetti.

Okay.

But if this is true about how we forgive other people, what do you think it means about you?

Freely forgive others, yes.

Freely forgive yourself as well.

Receive the gift of God.

Number one, we've got to stop trying to earn what's been freely given.

Number two, this is really important.

We need to learn to defeat every lie with truth.

What is this?

What does this mean?

Well, one of the things that Satan does is he likes to twist our thoughts and twist our minds to lie to us that we'll never be worthy of love, never be worthy of forgiveness, never really be able to receive the gift and the love of God, right?

This is what he does.

The only way to defeat it is with truth.

The way I've heard it taught is that what lies tend to do is they tend to take hold of our mind, and over time we tend to build walls around the lies to protect them.

I don't know if it's for control or if it makes us feel better, but what we do is we protect the lies.

Can I tell you something?

The only way to tear down those walls to protect the lies is to replace the lie with truth.

Well, what is the truth?

Well, first of all, you need to know where lies come from.

Jesus says this about Satan, the enemy of your soul, John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

When he, Satan, lies, he speaks in his native language, for he's a liar and the father of lies.

Yesterday in my family, we watched the movie Elf.

Have you seen Elf?

It's like one of my favorites ever.

Remember that scene in the movie where like Buddy the Elf is working in the department store, and they say Santa's coming, he's like, Santa! And then the next day it's just a man dressed as Santa, and he's like, You you are not sansa.

Like you're a liar, you tell lies, is what he says, right?

This is what Satan does.

It's his language, it's how he thinks.

He always speaks in lies.

So you have to identify the lies so you can call them out.

How do you replace it with truth?

Well, here's what God's word says.

First Corinthians, here's Paul talking.

He says, God, or Christ made us right with God.

He made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.

It is God's decision, it is Jesus' sacrifice that paid for your sins.

So you don't have to protect the lie anymore.

You can expose it to the light so that it has to run.

One of the lies that a lot of us believe in is we believe that God could never, ever, ever forgive me.

We believe things like, well, God, we say things like, well, God forgets my sins.

But God can't forget our sins.

God doesn't forget, he just chooses to remember no more.

If God is all-knowing, the term is omniscient.

If God knows everything, how could he forget?

He doesn't forget, he chooses to remember no more.

Here's what scripture says about this.

This is the book of Isaiah 43.

He says, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

This doesn't mean he forgets, it means he makes a conscious decision to choose to not remember.

What does this have to do with you?

If you deal with some shame, if it haunts you at night, every single day you can wake up and make a decision.

Yes, it's gonna be hard to forget, but you can choose every single day that I'm gonna be like God and choose to remember no more.

Number three, and then we're done.

You have to make this decision that I'm gonna allow God to turn it around for good.

This is what God specializes in.

This is God's business, if that makes sense.

Romans chapter 8 says this, and we know this is important, it means we have confidence in the fact that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

We have confidence in the fact that in all things, what all things is he talking about?

Romans chapter 8 says, in our present sufferings, all of your good and all of your terrible moments, in all of those moments, God is consistently at work in your story.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Over the years, I have counseled hundreds and hundreds of people who have walked into my office carrying a mountain full of shame.

Very often we'll sit down, we'll make small talk, and then we'll get to talking.

And I'll say, What's going on?

Why did you come see me?

Inevitably I see them go, and they sh they seem to cower in their shame.

Often they'll tell me their story, and very often it's it's sad, it's challenging, it's hard, it's egregious what they've walked through.

And I'm never trying to make light of it, but very often I'll just smile at them.

They're like, what is wrong?

Why are you smiling at me?

And I'll say something back to them, not that I'm smiling at your situation, I just know what God can do.

There can be a day when you sit on the other side of the table from someone and you use your story that God has redeemed to help someone who's walking through the same thing you're walking through.

If you've walked through hurt and shame, I want you to understand something.

God didn't choose that road for you, but he can use that story to help someone else.

I love this verse.

I'm gonna end with this.

In the book of Genesis, there's this guy named Joseph.

Joseph is this phenomenal person in Scripture.

The story of Joseph can literally be traced from house to house to house to house.

He starts in his father's house as the favorite of twelve sons.

His brothers are so jealous of him that they sell him into slavery.

He works in a master's house.

There's a moment when he's accused of something he didn't do, and because of what he was accused of, he's thrown into the jailhouse.

From the jailhouse, God redeems his story and literally promotes him to a place of prominence next to the king, and he lives in the king's house.

There's a moment at the end of his story when his brothers come and throw themselves at Joseph's feet.

And they say to him, like, please forgive us.

We realize we've messed up.

And I want you to see Joseph's response.

He says, You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Let me say this to you about your past.

It was intended to harm you.

That thing you walked through, it was a work of the enemy to try to devastate and destroy your soul.

It was intended to harm you, but God.

But God intended it for good.

I need you to get this.

Forgiveness won't change your past, but it can change your future.

When you choose to forgive, it doesn't change what you did.

But when you choose to forgive you, it can change your future.

What does forgiving do?

Forgiving sets someone free, and what you discover when you forgive is that it's you.

This makes sense when we talk about forgiving others, but what about your heart?

What about your shame?

What about your issues that you feel like are insurmountable?

How incredible would it be if you made this decision, like so many today, to say, God, from this day forward, I'm choosing to let go so that I can hold on to what you have for me?

I'm gonna ask you to bow your head and close your eyes all across this room.

And in this moment of introspection, I want you to think for just a moment.

What is the stuff in your life that weighs so heavily on you?

What is the decision you made that you would give everything you have to go back and undo?

What hurt from your past keeps on hurting you?

What if today you made a decision that you're gonna receive the forgiveness of God, but also you're gonna turn it back on you and forgive you?

That you're gonna walk out of here different, changed, whole, able to rest.

So, God, in this moment, I thank you that you are the great forgiver.

You set the model for us, you sent your son into this world to die for us, to forgive us.

And God, here's my prayer that as we've received your forgiveness, we will in turn forgive the world around us.

But maybe for some of us it's that we'll turn it inward and will forgive us.

Once and for all, able to walk in forgiveness.

God, I know there's people in this room that haven't rested well in years.

I pray that as we receive your forgiveness and we turn it in on ourselves to forgive ourselves, that we'll walk out and rest.

Thank you for it, God.

God, we choose in this place to stop holding on because it's holding us back.

We choose to let go so that we can take hold of the life you have for us.

God, we thank you that you redeem every story, that every test that we've walked through is the beginning of a testimony, that the messes in our lives are the beginning of the message you are writing through us.

God, thank you that you are writing an incredible story.

And we trust you that as you forgive us, we can forgive us as well.

Thank you, God, for that.