Snow Globe – Forgiving Others

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Today, super excited, we're kicking off a brand new series of messages that will lead us from here all the way to Christmas.

This new series is called Snow Globe.

And over these next few weeks, I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful tools in the heart and in the lives of a believer and what God can do through us in this series, I believe, is going to change us, leave a lasting impact for so many generations to come.

A few weeks ago, I mean a few years ago, I had this really interesting moment in my marriage.

Kind of hard to explain, but there was a day when my wife came to me.

She goes, Babe, I notice our closet's getting really full.

Could I help you clean some of your stuff out?

And young married men, listen to me.

I in this moment, in my mind, I thought, no, absolutely not.

But as I was thinking, no, the word sure, babe, came out of my mouth.

Don't know how that happened.

And she goes, okay, I'll help you.

So we go in, and I can't explain to you how gut-wrenching this was.

I can't explain to you how gutted my soul felt.

But we're we're going through the clothes, and by we, I mean she was going through my clothes, and one by one she picked them off, and it wasn't enough to say, Oh, this would be great to donate.

No, no.

She picked it off and she always made some sort of snide comment.

She pulled one off the rack, she goes, Ooh, what were you thinking?

And threw it on the ground.

She pulled another one off and said, This was never in style, and threw it on the ground, each one weighing heavier and heavier on my soul.

At one point, I think she could see that it had like completely taken it out of me.

And she saw me kind of slunched over and she came over and she hugged me.

And I thought, oh, this assault is over.

We're done.

She's hugging me.

And I kid you not, as she's hugging me, she kind of leaned into me and reached over me and pulled another shirt off and threw it on the ground.

Before first service in worship, I leaned over and said, Babe, I'm gonna tell that story about that time.

You hurt my feelings, throwing all of my clothes away.

And she goes, Babe, that was a mercy kill.

You needed that.

Okay.

It's crazy.

And all of us understand the power of a spring cleaning.

All of us understand the power of going through your closet and getting rid of stuff or donating stuff that you don't really wear or use anymore.

There is something powerful that it does to us, but every once in a while I think we need to take inventory of our hearts.

We need to ask the question: is there anything in my heart that is cluttering it up?

Is there anything in my heart that I need to do the hard work of getting rid of?

Over these next few weeks, as we approach Christmas, I want to talk to you about how we can do the hard work of learning what it means to forgive.

So that our hearts this Christmas season might be free and clean and pure.

Here's what I'm gonna talk about the next few weeks.

Starting today, I want to talk to you about what it means to forgive others.

Next week, I want to talk to you about you and how can you forgive yourself?

How can you get past your past?

And then the last week might be the most powerful one of all.

I want to talk to you about forgiving God.

And if you're like me, you're like, ooh, that feels weird.

How do you forgive God?

How do you forgive the perfect one who created the universe and who speaks life over you?

How do you forgive the one who knows no sin at all?

I don't think we actually forgive God.

But if we could be honest, do you have any moments in your life where you felt like God didn't come through?

Moments you prayed for healing and you still had to bury that loved one.

Moments where you asked for reconciliation and the person still left your life.

How do you move past that once and for all with God?

It's gonna be powerful.

Today, I want to start us with the theme verse for the series.

It's found in the book of Isaiah.

Some 750 years before Jesus lived, the prophet Isaiah said this, Isaiah chapter 1.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

He's said, Come now, let's settle this, says the Lord.

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

He says, Though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool.

And then he drops this interesting little line on this.

He says, if you will only obey me.

You ever notice that you don't have to twist someone's arm to obey things that they want to do?

I've never had to coerce my children into eating a bowl of ice cream.

I've never had to say, you will obey me, you will eat this cookies and cream ice cream.

I've never had to do that.

I've never had to coerce my kids to watch a great movie.

I've never had to force my kids to get a movie theater popcorn with extra butter on it.

Come on, somebody.

I've never had to do that.

I've never had to force it on them because they wanted to.

The stuff we have to obey is the stuff that sometimes we don't really want to.

Why is it that some of us struggle with forgiveness?

Why is it that we believe that if we hold on to the offense, that in some way we're still holding on to control?

Holding on to an offense never hurts the person who hurts you, it only lets them keep hurting you.

So why would you hold on?

It's almost like the effect of a snow globe.

You ever seen one?

A snow globe is beautiful.

When you shake it, it's like you see all the beauty, all the snow come to life.

The funny thing about a snow globe is all you can ever do with the snow globe is enjoy it from the outside looking in.

I wonder for how many of us we think the idea of forgiving someone, the idea of our heart returning to pure and unhurt, unbroken again, feels no different than a snow globe.

It's a good idea.

But we feel like we'll never be able to get past just looking at it from a distance.

We'll never be able to experience it for ourselves.

I think some people think that when they make a decision to follow Jesus, it promises them a different life than Jesus himself ever promised us.

I think sometimes we follow Jesus, and so what we think is by following Jesus, we're never gonna be hurt, we're never gonna have offense, we're never gonna be betrayed.

But Jesus himself said this in Luke chapter 17, verse 1.

Luke 17:1

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

Like you're gonna have some hurts and some betrayals in your life.

There's gonna be some people you love who walk out on you.

There's gonna be some moments in your life that feel unforgivable.

So he says, so watch yourself.

Jesus is like, check yourself, oh you wreck yourself.

He says, if your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them.

And if they repent, here's what I want you to do.

Forgive them, anyways.

Like if they hurt you and they repent, you forgive them.

And then if it wasn't clear enough, he says, even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you, you need to know that seven is the number of completion in the Bible.

He's like, if they completely devastate you, if they completely betray you, if they completely hurt you, if they completely rip your heart out and stomp it into a million little pieces, still forgive.

If they completely hurt you, completely forgive.

If they completely betray you, completely forgive.

If they completely devastate your soul, completely forgive.

If they come back to you saying, I repent, you must forgive them.

And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

And then I love the Bible because of how honest it is.

It says the apostle said to the Lord, if we're going to do that, like if we're actually going to forgive like you're asking us to do, we're gonna need some help.

Increase our faith.

Why?

Because it doesn't take faith to forgive little offenses.

But what about the big stuff?

What about the big stuff?

About a year ago, I was out in the front yard throwing the football with my boys, and it was it was no big deal.

We're just tossing the ball like we do.

I always have to keep my arm loose in case the cowboys need me for the playoff run.

And so we're just out there throwing the ball.

And a man goes walking by, walking his dog, and I didn't recognize this guy, but he just went walking by.

And as he walked by, you could see he looked conflicted and he passed us, and so I just kept throwing the ball.

And I turned around, and the man literally went.

And he turned back around and he looked at me and he says, Hey, um, I need to apologize to you.

And I was like, For what?

I didn't even recognize this guy.

He goes, Um, a few months ago on July 4th, I was driving by and you had your fireworks set up in the front yard and you were blowing them up, and here's what you know, on July 4th, we have kids.

So like I get like$50 worth of cheap fireworks that really send off more smoke than they do fire, you know, and it was no big deal.

He goes, but I was driving by and I rolled down my window and it said, Hey, is that all you got?

And then I drove off.

And it's been really bugging me that I did that to you.

I didn't even remember this guy.

I didn't know he lived in my neighborhood, no idea who this guy was at all.

But in that moment I felt like Jesus.

I said, Go in peace, my son, your sins are forgiven.

Like, what do you do in the moment?

It's easy to forgive the little stuff, right?

But how do you forgive when you don't feel like forgiving?

How do you forgive that thing that you can't forget?

How do you forgive that sexual assault that happened to you when you were a teenager?

How do you forgive that uncle who walked into the room behind you and locked the door and said, Don't tell this to anyone?

How do you forgive the spouse that you gave your whole life and your best years and your whole heart to and they walked out on you?

How do you forgive the best friend who betrayed you?

Is there any pain worse than betrayal?

Is there, you trust someone to have your back, you get shot in the back, and you turn around and it was your friend that pulled the trigger?

Like, how do you forgive those moments?

If you find yourself being like, well, Jason, you don't know.

Like, you don't know, you don't know what I've walked through, maybe you're right.

Maybe instead of asking how do you forgive, maybe we should ask why we should forgive.

The book of Ephesians, Paul says this.

He says, Be kind and compassionate to one another.

Here's how you do that: by forgiving each other.

If that's not clear enough, here's how and why.

Just as in Christ, God forgave you.

What does this mean?

It means in the shadow of the cross, because of what Jesus did by laying his life down for you and for me, there is no offense that we can forgive that is in any way greater than the sacrifice that Jesus gave to forgive you and to forgive me.

Jesus Himself adds to this in the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 6, he says, For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

But if you do not forgive others of their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

So we should forgive, first of all, because it is replicating what Jesus did for us, but also there is something else we should consider that if we don't forgive, our Father in heaven will not forgive us.

Maybe you're like, well, listen, how do I do that with what I've walked through?

Let me tell you what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not.

Let's start with what it isn't.

Forgiveness is not forgetting.

And a lot of people think I can't forgive because I still am haunted by it.

I still wake up in the middle of the night tormented by what was done to me or what was said about me.

Forgiveness doesn't mean you forget, it just means you choose to let go.

Here's a good way to say it.

Holding on keeps us from moving on.

What is the point of forgiveness?

The point is setting someone free and it's not the person who hurt you.

Forgiveness is about setting someone free and discovering it was you who was set free the whole time.

You may never be able to forget what was done, but you can choose to let go for the sake of moving on.

Number two, forgiveness is not a feeling.

Let me say this to you: there is nothing wrong with having feelings.

Feelings are not always truth tellers.

Sometimes they're indicators of something, but they're not always truth tellers.

Some people wait, they're like, well, if I ever feel like forgiving, if I ever wake up one day and think, man, I should really move past this, then I'll do it.

That's a terrible way to live your life.

Forgiveness is not a feeling.

Here's what you need to understand.

When it comes to forgiveness, choices lead, feelings follow.

Forgiveness is a choice.

You and I can choose to forgive, and eventually the feelings will catch up to the choice you made.

Here's a tough one for people.

Forgiveness is not fair.

Okay, listen to me.

You're right.

But the point is not fairness, the point is freedom.

Don't we want fairness for everybody but us?

Right?

If someone hurts us, if someone betrays us, we want the strong arm of justice to come down mightily on them.

When we do something wrong, we want grace for us, right?

And here's what you need to remember.

Remember, in the shadow of the cross, there is no offense that is worth holding on to offense for.

David says it like this in the book of Psalms, Psalm 103.

He says, He, being God, does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

Like God, who is equal parts full of mercy and justice.

He doesn't always treat us the way that our sins would warrant.

Okay, if God does that for us, don't you think we should be people who do this for others?

And then to beautifully illustrate it poetically, he says, For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far, he has removed our transgressions from us.

It's not fair what was done to you.

But holding on is only hurting you.

That the final thing, forgiveness is not reconciliation.

I think for a lot of us, what we think is we think that if someday they'll come to me and if they'll ask me to forgive them, then I'll forgive them.

Then maybe the relationship can go back to the way it was.

No, no.

The relationship may never go back to the way it was.

Forgiveness is about your heart returning to the way it was before an offense ever happened to you.

If you are waiting for someone who hurts you to come and apologize to you, you may go to your grave waiting on an apology.

That there are people out there that you are probably holding a grudge against that have no idea that they hurt you.

That there are some people that know that they hurt you, but they are so stubborn that they will never ask for forgiveness.

If you are waiting for a person who hurts you to come and apologize, you're gonna wait a long time, and that whole time your heart is imprisoned in the tyranny of offense.

Forgiveness doesn't require two people.

I want you to listen.

Forgiveness is a one-player game.

You don't have to wait for someone else to come to the table and ask for your forgiveness.

In fact, for some of you, that moment of reconciliation may never come.

That person may die before you get the apology you feel like you are owed.

But I want to say this to you as clearly as I can.

Forgiveness isn't even about them.

Forgiveness is about you, forgiveness is about your heart.

So, how do we do it?

Like, how do you finally let go once and for all?

How do you fully forgive?

That thing that comes to your mind when I talk about forgiveness, that thing that causes you to boil in anger, that thing that causes you to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, how do you once and for all leave it behind and fully forgive?

I want to take you to the Bible and I want to show you three things that all of us are called to do so that we can move from being observers of the life that we want, like a person looking in a snow globe, to being the person who takes hold of the life free and light and healed and pure, for our hearts to return to the way God intended it to be.

Number one, how do I fully forgive?

I have to pray for them.

Pray for the people who hurt me.

Okay, can we be honest for just a moment?

Do you want to pray for the people who hurt you?

I feel like there's some preachers out there who are like, this is easy.

I want you to listen to me.

This is not easy at all.

I never want to pray for the people who hurt me.

I want to get even with the people who hurt me.

If I have to pray, I want to pray a prayer, like, okay, God.

You know what they did.

So, God, my prayer is that you will bless them with a permanent case of hemorrhoids.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I ain't trying to pray for them.

If you're looking for a pastor who's gonna tell you it's easy, you came to the wrong place, it is hard to pray for the people who hurt you.

In the early days of our church, um, every pastor in town celebrated us.

This is awesome.

Lakeland needs another church like what you're building.

We we need it.

And everything was great with all the local pastors until Access had a few hundred people coming.

And it's funny because I had friends who were friends with all these different pastors who would come to me or call me and be like, bro, did you hear what this guy said about you?

It's like, no.

And they would tell me things that he said, a man that I love, admired, respected, trusted.

When my back was turned to him, he stabbed me over and over and over again.

Maybe it made him feel better about himself, maybe it made him feel like he was the bigger person.

It destroyed me.

For years.

Every time I would drive past their church, I would pray.

Oh, I would pray, I wouldn't, I wouldn't pray.

I would, I wouldn't pray, I would curse them in my mind.

I would think to myself, we just go, we gotta get bigger than them or better.

And it was such a messed up way to live my life.

I'll never forget, I was listening to a sermon in that season of my life on honor.

Honor is one of the most important things you can learn.

Honor, it chooses to look past some of the negative things in a person's life to see and to celebrate the goodness and the imprints of God in that person's life.

It's easy to find dirt.

Dirt's all around us.

It is hard to find gold.

Honor is finding the gold and it is adding value and worth to a person.

And I listened to this message, and my whole my mind, the whole time I'm listening to it, is on this pastor and on this church.

And so I had a moment where I said, I am no longer gonna drive past this church and curse them, but instead, I sat down and I hand wrote a long letter, honoring, celebrating, making a big deal of them.

And I said, From this day forward, every time I drive past your building, I will pray for you.

To this day I've done it.

Now I wish I could tell you there was this awesome reconciliation and everything's good.

Never got the moment.

In fact, I don't even know if he ever knows that he hurt me.

It doesn't matter because my heart is free.

I love what Jesus said in the book of Matthew.

He says this, Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

He says, You've heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

And some of you are like, I found my life verse.

No, that's not it.

Says, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Like, I don't want that.

But this is the way of Jesus.

What does praying for those who hurt you do?

It either changes them or it changes you, but in either way, something changes when we pray.

First thing we do with an offense is we pray for them.

Secondly, if we're gonna forgive, we have to bless them.

And again, this is like the last thing I want to do.

Here's Jesus' words again in the book of Luke, chapter six, this time.

He says, But I tell you who hear me, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

What?

I don't want anything to do with any of that stuff.

I want to pull the pin and roll a grenade at them, but we're called to bless them.

This summer we did a whole series all the way through the book of Romans.

Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

We believe it was Paul who wrote this.

He said, Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.

Um, the year 2020 was a wild year for everybody.

Like all of us lived through like the perfect storm of political craziness.

Uh, there was the whole virus, there was masks, there was vaccination fights, there was racial tension.

You you name it, we were tense as a country, and for a whole year as a pastor, if I could just be honest, I felt like I couldn't win.

For a whole year, nothing I did was right, nothing I did was good, nothing I did was enough.

If I preached on racism and how, you know, like we should, you know, like actually love people and not be racist, it was offensive to some people.

Some people said I didn't do enough.

I could give you story after story after story, and for a whole year, people hurt me leave.

It was just, it was a messy year.

And I'll never forget, towards the end of that year, my wife and I were doing some Christmas shopping one day, and we ran into a person who used to go to our church.

Now, what's funny is people like they look around and they see the size of our church, they're like, Yeah, it's awesome.

Like, so many people come.

I love it.

I love that you come, and you are never allowed to leave.

Okay, I want you to know this, you are never allowed to go anywhere.

But people celebrate this, and here's the funny thing.

For every person that's in our church, which is thousands now, there are thousands in our city who used to go to our church.

And I noticed this weird thing would happen to me.

Like when I'd get around people who used to go, who left, I would just get weird.

But this particular guy we ran into, I had heard from his small group that he said things about me that I didn't even know.

Like he called me names that I had to look up what they meant.

It was very strange, very strange.

So we run into him, and I'm gonna be honest, my wife is a much better Christian than I am.

They they say the faster you are to forgive, the more mature you are.

My wife forgives so fast.

We run into this guy and Liz, like, oh, I'm just so happy to see him.

And I noticed that my physical countenance changed, where I crossed my arms and my shoulders got tense.

I wanted nothing to do with this guy.

I wanted to exit stage right as quickly as I could from this conversation.

And as he was talking, I had this realization I've got to forgive.

Not for him, for me.

I can't be afraid to be around town and run into people who've hurt me.

I'm not gonna allow the Decisions of other people to dictate the freedom of my heart and of my life.

So I made this decision.

Instead of people hurting me, getting me to do this, I made the decision that anytime I run into someone who's hurt me, I'm gonna throw my arms open and offer them a hug.

Why would you do this?

Because I'm not gonna let them dictate my freedom.

We pray for them, we bless them, and here's the third one.

You have to make the decision to do good to them.

And again, this is so hard.

Here's Paul's words in Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

He says, Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everybody.

He says, Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, and I will repay, says the Lord.

So here's what you do.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he's thirsty, pour that man a sweet tea.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not overcome, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

You ever been betrayed?

You ever had someone that you love just stab you in the back?

Many years ago, in the earlier days of our church, had a friend, a staff member.

Not just leave, like that's easy.

He rolled a grenade, said things.

He full-on betrayed me.

For three days, I couldn't eat because I felt so sick.

And as a pastor, I want to be like Jesus.

We we made the decision to let them go.

It was messy, got up on stage, honored, and celebrated them.

In my heart, I was like, I don't want anything to do with these people.

Our church celebrated them, they went off and did their own thing, started the ministry.

And I was so excited that they were gone.

Publicly, everything seemed good, everything seemed amazing.

Behind the scenes, only my closest friends and my wife knew what they had done.

And I'll never forget the day after their last Sunday.

I wrote the hardest check I've ever written in my life.

If we're called to pray for people, that's easy.

If we're called to bless them, offering a hug cost you nothing.

But I wrote the first check to their new ministry.

That if I could be honest, I didn't believe in.

I was so hurt, I was so betrayed.

But my freedom is more valuable to me than holding on to an offense.

My freedom isn't worth living in the tyranny and the prison of my pain.

So I wrote a check.

And nobody knows the whole story.

And I'm not responsible for what they do with that.

Can I tell you the truth?

Five days later, check my bank account, the check had cleared.

That means they got it and they cashed it.

Guess what I got in the mail?

No thank you card.

No phone call, no text message.

No, hey, we should get together and talk.

Thank you for believing in us.

No.

Radio silence.

I think sometimes we forgive hoping that we're gonna go back to the way things were.

It may never happen.

But your heart can go back to the way it was before the offense.

Because here's the take-home.

What is the first step?

Like, what do you do with this?

Like, how do you stop living on the outside, hoping that someday you can experience something beautiful?

And how can you start living a beautiful story in and of itself?

It's by forgiving.

Here's what Paul says.

So we read the second half of this.

I want to read the first half.

Ephesians 4.31, he says, get rid of.

This phrase in Greek is a beautiful phrase.

It literally would be the same as like that time the night before trash night, when you take your trash can and you roll it out to the street and you leave it there, and then you let go of it and you walk away from it.

That's kind of what it means.

Here's a better definition of what get rid of means.

Have you ever walked into a spider web?

Have you ever had this happen to you?

And for a moment, you don't care about anything else in the world but making sure there is not an eight-legged demon crawling on you.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

You don't care what you look like, you don't care to be dignified, you don't care who's around.

You don't pat your head and see if everything's okay.

What do you do?

Why?

Why would you do that?

Why did I do that?

I don't know.

Why would you do that?

Because in that moment, all you care about is getting free.

Don't care what it looks like, don't care what it costs.

You just want to be free from the fear.

Here's what Paul says.

Paul says, do whatever it takes to get rid of.

Doesn't matter what it looks like, doesn't matter what it costs you.

You get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander along with every form of malice.

Don't let anything collude, convolute, destroy, junk up your heart.

It says, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

There is no offense that you can forgive that will cost you more than what it cost Jesus.

There is no offense that you can forgive that Jesus hasn't already forgiven in many multiples of abundance.

So why would you hold on?

Why would you hold on to the pain?

Why would you hold on to the offense when you were called to be free?

Now, this is the part of the message where usually I give you some piece of take-home advice, but instead I'm gonna push it back on you.

Some of you, this whole message, have been fighting me.

There's someone who's hurt you, they've abused you, they've betrayed you, they've molested you, they assaulted you, they walked out on you, they left you, and you have carried it for so long.

In a moment we're gonna pray, but I think you should do something more.

I think you should do something symbolic, emblematic of the fact that you are leaving that pain here and you are walking out free.

Maybe for you it means you write it down and you rip it up.

Maybe for you it means you write it down and you go home and you have a ceremonial moment where you light that thing on fire, and as the final stages of the fire burn that paper to shreds, you make the decision as it is burned up, you are letting it go.

I counseled a lady many years ago who had some massive pain and trauma that led to divorce, and she made the decision to no longer be held captive by the offense, and she literally wrote down multiple things that happened on plates, and she went into her backyard and she smashed the plates against the tree.

And when the last one was smashed, she said, That's it, I forgive once and for all.

Had one person one time, this is crazy, they took some of their shoes and they wrote on the bottom of their shoes the offense that happened to them.

And I was like, as they were telling him, like, so you could walk all over them?

Like, what's the story?

They said, No, no.

They said, I'm gonna go walking and praying until that mark is rubbed off of the shoe, and when it's gone, I'm choosing to be done once and for all.

I don't know what you need to do, but here's what I do know: you need to do something to walk away from the offense and to step into forgiveness.

What is forgiveness?

Forgiveness is making the choice to let God heal my heart so that it can return to the way it was before an offense happened.

What is the point?

You are called to be free.

You are called to be free.

What if this Christmas was a different kind of white Christmas?

We live in Florida, it may never drop below 60 degrees.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

But what if this became a white Christmas of your heart?

The prophet Isaiah said, Because of what Jesus did, our hearts can be made white as snow.

What if instead of having a Christmas, another Christmas marred by the pain that was done to you, you and I had a Christmas characterized by forgiveness, healing, and grace?

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

And would you take just a moment and would you allow God to bring to your heart that pain?

That area in your life where you just know that you need to forgive.

If this is you in a moment, I'm gonna choose.

I'm gonna ask you to do something.

I'm gonna ask you to choose to forgive.

So, God, in this moment, give us courage because it takes a lot of courage to trust you.

And give us strength because we don't know if we can do this in our own strength.

But God, we ask you in this moment to help us be more like Jesus and to forgive.

God, I can't imagine the stories, the hurt, the pain, the atrocities so many of these people have walked through.

But I thank you that in light of what Jesus did for us at the cross, there is nothing we can forgive that you haven't already forgiven us of in abundance and more.

So, God, today we make this decision.

We're gonna stop holding on.

We're gonna take hold of the life you have for us.

Thank you, God, that forgiveness is freely available to us.

May we be like Jesus and offer it to the world around us.

Thank you for it, God.