Kevin Thompson [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to Change the Odds, the podcast where marriage and family were never meant to be a game of chance. Hey, don't forget Change the Odds. The podcast is part of the Thrive family of podcast, Thrive Network. And so hop over, listen to Mark Clark. Check out Am I doing this right? Great time of year to look at Wesley Towne and better days and mental health, but all the podcasts are there. You can go check them out. But today, as we kind of wrap up the year, it's a great time for us to think about a very important topic. And that topic is forgiveness.
Kevin Thompson [00:00:35]:
So for the last couple of weeks.
Kevin Thompson [00:00:37]:
And months, we've been looking at this idea of what does it mean to be human, of rested, connected and engaged, as opposed to the way we so often live, which is an exhausted, distracted and isolated kind of way of life. And the difference between those two, the difference between being distracted, isolated and exhausted, a way that you die versus rested, connected and engaged, the way that you be human. So often the bridge between the two is that of forgiveness. For when you and I cannot reasonably forgive other people, it will distract us from whatever's going on in our life, obviously, it will isolate us as relationships are broken. And then there is this weight that comes down upon us and it becomes a very exhausted way to live. And yet, when you and I can give to others the forgiveness that we have received from God, then that begins to free us to connect with other people, to be energized in what's going on, and to engage in what really matters. And so for the next few minutes, we're going to talk about and go live into the Granite Bay Worship center where I talk on this issue of forgiveness? To the extent that you and I can forgive, we can actually be human.
Kevin Thompson [00:01:49]:
What does it mean to be human under the thought and the premise that you and I tend to deny the very thing God has actually made us to be. And we do so primarily in one of three ways. Either we underestimate who we are and we think that we're just animals. And so we're basically enslaved to our own passions, our own conditions, and we can't change ourselves or be changed in any way, and that's an absolute lie, or we overestimate ourselves into thinking either we are machines that can produce endlessly without any need of rest or rejuvenation, or we think that we are gods that can operate in absolute perfection, be right about everything, have no need whatsoever, and whenever we fall for any one of those three things, even though they have radically different expressions of themselves, Whenever we fall for any one of those three things, the outcome of that is we tend to be distracted, isolated, and exhausted. And what I feel like now is a perpetual state for many of us in which we live in this kind of just exhausted, isolated, distracted kind of flywheel that's continually compounding on us. But we see that Jesus invites us into a radically different way, primarily with the interaction in John 4 with the Samaritan woman. But all throughout Scripture, we see that Jesus is continually inviting us into a way of life. I'm currently reading Dallas Willard's new book about the Kingdom of God.
Kevin Thompson [00:03:26]:
Dallas Willard died 10 years ago, by the way, but yet he has a new book out, which is amazing to me. I'm telling Silas and Ella, look, if you pay attention, I guess build up the scraps, maybe there'll be something for you to publish. But literally, his family just took some old talks of his on the scandal of the Kingdom of God and what I so love about that book. And Dallas Willard is one of my favorite people of all time. He was a philosophy professor at usc. What I so love about that book is the invitation that Jesus was constantly making in which he's saying his kingdom is present right now. It's not something you have to wait for. It is literally available to us, and we can start living in a way that we're actually forever going to live.
Kevin Thompson [00:04:08]:
And God's kingdom is now defined by this very rested, prepared, engaged, energetic, connected community. And yet this world is made up of the complete opposite. And we have this opportunity right in front of us, not necessarily requiring the change of our circumstances, but instead a change in the internal core of who we are. As God plants His spirit within us, as we begin to fixate and to focus on the things that truly do matter, to give up many things. And so to embrace the very idea that being rested and connected and engaged is not only possible, but it's a better way to examine how do we deal with technology and noise and hurry, how do we handle those things in a proper way, recognizing we can't do away with them completely, but at the same time we don't have to be ruled by them. And then choosing in a very intentional way to let go of, to give up some things that we need to give up on. And last week we talked about the idea of lies. Well, in this closing session, I want to talk about another thing that I think so often produces these negative qualities in our lives that we many times don't recognize.
Kevin Thompson [00:05:27]:
The weight that we're carrying around and the impact that has upon us. And that is the idea of grudges. It's the idea of broken relationships. And as a pastor, it's so fascinating to me. One of the great privileges of my life is I get to be involved in so many of y'all's lives. And the privilege that I have in that is I get to see very similar people, go through very similar circumstances, and yet make radically different choices of how to handle those. And then, almost like a scientific experiment, as though y'all are a bunch of rats, I then get to see the outcome. And it's not uncommon at all for me to go home to Jenny and to say, hey, we never want to do this, because I have now seen what this leads to, and we don't want that.
Kevin Thompson [00:06:27]:
And one of the things that breaks my heart as a pastor is how often we allow broken relationships to take place in our lives when we are fully equipped to reconcile some of those relationships and at minimum, to get them into a rested state where forgiveness has been given. And we can at least say that from our end, our hands are clean, even if the relationship isn't necessarily restored. And not all relationships need to be restored. But to get in a place where we're not carrying that around all the time, I have so many examples in my mind immediately. And the powerful thing about being in Arkansas for 20 years is I could actually call the people by name and y'all wouldn't know who I'm talking about. But two brothers who both went to our church intentionally went to different campuses, and I was close friends with both of them would not be in the same room together. Something happened when mama died. There was a fight over some money.
Kevin Thompson [00:07:37]:
They wrote different stories of who was being wronged. And pastorally, I don't know all the details. Pastorally, they were just grieving in different ways. And instead of recognizing the grief that they were feeling that they were projecting upon one another, they actually began to allow that to fracture this very meaningful relationship. These two friends whose daughters were the same age, they got pregnant at the same time, and they lived very close to each other, and they were lifelong friends. And now they got the joy of watching their daughters be lifelong friends. And they were at all the competitions and they did all the sleepovers, and they did absolutely everything until one year in the junior year of the girls high school career, they had a spat one week, and it just happened to be the week, kind of like a Halloween, in which a party was going to be held. And Beth's daughter chose not to.
Kevin Thompson [00:08:34]:
Now Invite Sally's daughter to the party. And Beth begged her, please invite her. The consequences of this, it's just a little fight, but. But the daughter held strong. The mom chose not to now enforce her will, which could probably be the right actual decision. Now, the mistake that she probably made was not calling her best friend and just saying, hey, here's what's going on. It'll blow over. Let's let the girls handle it.
Kevin Thompson [00:08:56]:
But instead, the invitation wasn't given, the party was held, the girls split apart, which caused the moms to split apart. And decades later, they still don't talk. And what's interesting to me is rare was a conversation had with either of them in which in some way it didn't come up. And they're just carrying that burden. Here's the question I have for you tonight. Is there any relationship in your life in which you have not done your part to offer forgiveness? And if reconciliation is possible, to see that process, but it doesn't have to be possible. But is there any relationship where you are literally carrying the person around because of the offense that was carried out, in your view, from them upon you? And do you begin to recognize that Jesus is inviting us into a different way in which we, at minimum, give them the forgiveness that we ourselves have been forgiven of? It doesn't mean we excuse the behavior. It doesn't necessarily mean that we reconcile the relationship.
Kevin Thompson [00:10:12]:
But instead what it does mean is that we simply let them go. We stop carrying them around. How interesting is it when Jesus is teaching his disciples how to pray and he teaches them the Lord's Prayer that coming right out of that, right after the Lord's prayer, the part of the prayer that Jesus goes back into. And this prayer is full of all sorts of stuff. I love the idea of give us our daily bread. I want tomorrow's bread and next month's bread. I want all the bread I can get and store it up to know I don't have to worry about it. But he's like, no, just my needs right now.
Kevin Thompson [00:10:49]:
I love the words our Father. I want to pray my Father. He's mine. He belongs to me. But ours reminds us that we have a seat at the table, but we don't get to dictate who else has a seat at the table, which means anybody who calls on the name of the Lord has equal access to God's table, just as we do. He talks about his kingdom, the kingdom, which is the topic he covers the absolute most in all of Scripture. More than money, more than eternity, more than forgiveness. It's the kingdom of God.
Kevin Thompson [00:11:15]:
He could have gone into any of these topics, but after teaching on the Lord's Prayer, he then returns to the topic of forgiveness and says, if you forgive, so you will be forgiven. If you don't forgive, you won't be forgiven. Of all the things, he returns to that one. And what's interesting is the language that he uses there gives us the image of literally letting go. And so the concept is that as long as we're holding a grudge, we're holding onto that other person. I almost see it like we're holding the other person by the scruff of the neck and we're just trying to jerk them around to inflict upon them some semblance of the pain that they inflicted upon us. And what Jesus tells us to do is to let them go. Now, notice this.
Kevin Thompson [00:12:03]:
Whenever we let them go, that does not necessarily mean that we're in relationship. For us to be in a relationship, if somebody has a grudge against me and they let me go and I'm finally loose for us to be in a relationship, I then have to turn toward them and extend my hand, which means I'm gonna have to let go of some stuff too. They're gonna have to turn toward me and extend their hand. And then maybe under that scenario, we grasp hands and the relationship is reconciled. But forgiveness is not the reconciliation. Forgiveness is. I'm no longer going to hold you accountable for the pain that I'm dealing with in my life. I am now going to take prayer, personal responsibility sometimes for the harm that you did to me.
Kevin Thompson [00:12:46]:
I'm going to take personal responsibility for that and let God deal with you. Now, many times within the life of the church, the examples I gave earlier of the brothers, of the women and their daughters, those are actually relationships that should be restored. They should be reconciled. There are many grudges that we hold that really should be reconciled. There are others that shouldn't. You shouldn't be reconciled to that parent that sexually assaulted you. You should not be reconciled to your ex husband or your ex wife who cheated on you. You get those relationships into the best spots that they can be.
Kevin Thompson [00:13:26]:
But it doesn't mean you go back to the way things were. But for a good amount of us, we unknowingly begin to hold these grudges in life. And what happens is we just don't quite recognize the toll that it takes upon us. We were doing premarital last night. It was our last night to do premarital. And so I brought some Books that I give to them on the very last night of premarital. And so I'm just like. I carried this box of books and put them in my car from my garage to my car, and it wasn't a big deal.
Kevin Thompson [00:13:57]:
But carrying them from the back parking lot all the way upstairs to B building, and with my wife beside me, not wanting to show what I was feeling in the moment, I don't know if she noticed how fast I was walking. And it's one thing to carry something around for a little bit, and it's not that heavy and it's not that big of a deal. But the longer you hold it, the more difficult it actually becomes. And you and I live, I think, in a continual ignorance or denial of the cost of the grudges that we hold. And obviously, whenever we hold grudges, we're disconnected. But notice this. Not only does a grudge disconnect us from the person we're holding a grudge against, it actually subconsciously begins to disconnect us from other people as well. Because if you know somebody that holds a strong grudge and isn't doing the work to make reconciliation, isn't doing the work to exhibit forgiveness, isn't doing the work to figure out how to move forward, then whenever you're around them, whether consciously or subconsciously, you're always thinking to yourself, be careful, because if they'll hold that grudge against somebody else, they'll hold that grudge against you.
Kevin Thompson [00:15:08]:
And whether you know it or not, you begin to hold back part of your heart. Well, obviously there's an exhaustion aspect that goes with it because you're not carrying this weight around, and life is hard enough, we don't have to make it harder. And so anywhere that we can begin to let go of some things that we don't have to carry, it can make life easier. But whenever we don't, it begins to weaken us and exhaust us. And then an often unmissed characteristic of holding grudges is it begins to distract us. Because think about what a grudge does. A grudge ensures that we are constantly and consistently fixated on the past. And we're constantly reading the past experience into whatever's going on in the present.
Kevin Thompson [00:15:56]:
But a grudge means that we are more beholden to the past than we actually are to the present. Well, what would it look like if you and I truly began, even on this night, to just let people go? And in some circumstances, to recognize, when the consequences aren't that big, to recognize we don't even really have to go back and relitigate what happened. You know what, we had a disagreement. They think one thing happened. We think something else happened. You know what? In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. What would it look like if at church you just walked up to him and stuck your hand out and said, hey, man, how are you? This is an interesting thing about my personality, and I don't know where it comes from. I hope it comes from Jesus.
Kevin Thompson [00:16:44]:
Maybe it comes from Jenny. Either way, that's a good source. But I notice a pattern as a pastor, that I'm in a profession where, for whatever reason, sometimes people hold grudges against us. Sometimes deserved, but many times not. It's just life, circumstances, whatever. But I just had this pattern that whenever I would know about that, the next time I would see them, I would force myself up in their face and almost make them look me in the eye, go, hey, man, how are you? Just to break the ice away from this. Are they looking at me? Am I looking at them? Like, do they know that I'm here? Because I know that they're here, but do they know that I know that they're here? Just listen to that. And how exhausting that is.
Kevin Thompson [00:17:38]:
Imagine if you have to pick and choose where you sit and what service you go to and whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What if we just said, hey, I don't know what happened, but I don't like where this is, and I'm sorry, I'll own anything I need to own. But chances are we can just agree to disagree. But what would it be like if we just begin to let some of these things go? So let's just kind of quickly walk through just a few of the concepts here of this issue of forgiveness. What does it mean? What does it look like? And then we'll take just a couple minutes around the tables and we'll get Mark out here. So let's think about what does forgiveness mean and what does it not mean? So forgiveness does mean that I'm going to try to let go of the hurt and holding other people responsible. Forgiveness does not mean that I'm necessarily going to erase the memory of the offense. Top of page 45.
Kevin Thompson [00:18:33]:
That I'm going to allow the person to continue to hurt us. By no means. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to restore the relationship to a previous state automatically. It's not any of that. So forgiveness is about releasing the emotional and mental burden, not necessarily reestablishing trust or closeness. It could Be that because of what has happened, that they have actually lost that opportunity for me to trust them. That's okay. But I'm still gonna try to find a way to let them go, to stop holding them accountable for the weight that it's causing within my life.
Kevin Thompson [00:19:08]:
And so you recognize here one thing I love about. Let me tell you what I love about what I wrote here or AI wrote here is the basic concept. Here is a great way you can begin to see the condition of your heart is to look at your ears. That when you and I are holding a grudge, we begin to listen in a biased way to where everything we hear confirms what we have always believed. When you and I let go of a grudge, we can begin to hear in a more reasonable state and have much more empathy and understanding on what people are saying or doing. It's an interesting thing. In married life, you take a couple who is unhealthy, you take a couple who is healthy, they can go through the exact same situation, say the exact same things. And in a healthy relationship, even if the words that were spoken were not spoken perfectly, they hear the compassion and the mercy with one another, and those imperfect words actually draw them together.
Kevin Thompson [00:20:06]:
In an unhealthy relationship, a couple can go through a situation and actually say perfect words in how to handle it. But because they are unhealthy, they will hear and assume something underneath those words that weren't even said that isn't even there. And even doing things in the right way can actually injure the relationship even further. And so it all comes down to the condition of our hearts, of what's going on. So notice what forgiveness is. That forgiveness is both a point and a process. And so it's a point. It's a decision that there comes a point where I'm convicted about what has happened here, and I'm convicted about what my Christian command is to do.
Kevin Thompson [00:20:47]:
And I'm gonna make an intentional choice to forgive that person. But then I begin to work through a process in which forgiveness, and in some relationships, forgiveness has to be continually given. As seasons change, as things begin to move on, there's still a grief or a hurt. I'm still experiencing, maybe some of the consequences of what's going on. And so maybe I have to forgive in a repeated way, but it begins with a very specific decision. And then it continues in the midst of a process. And one thing that I think a lot of us, the reason that we carry some of our grudges is we might have a night or a moment which we go, all right, we're done with this. We're going to forgive.
Kevin Thompson [00:21:24]:
But then we wake up the next day or the next week, and some of those feelings roar back and we begin to think to ourselves, well, that didn't work. I guess I gotta hold onto this garage. No, that's the process you gotta work through to remind yourself of the truth that, no, there was a moment in which I forgave this. I need to reforgive this. I need to keep on in the midst of what's going on. So it's not just a one time act. Now, let's be honest. When it comes to broken relationships, there are times in which we hurt other people.
Kevin Thompson [00:21:53]:
And in those times, we have to take full responsibility for that. And so at the bottom of page 45, I have what I think is a very simple way to structure apologies. And so apologies should be structured in this very simple way. One, you address the person, hey, Jack, it's not some random thing. You look the person in the eye and you address them. Two, you name the specific offense, which means what you did, not what they felt. Hey, I'm so sorry if your feelings were hurt about this. Well, that's not an apology.
Kevin Thompson [00:22:39]:
You're actually blaming them. So instead, hey, Jack, I'm sorry I said this. So you own it. And then a third step, you specifically ask for forgiveness. Not just leave it there. Not just, hey, I hope we're all right. But then you say, will you forgive me? And there have to be times in which we have to leave space in which they can't answer that immediately. The bigger the offense, the consequences of the offense, the more we might have to leave space.
Kevin Thompson [00:23:16]:
I see this done wrong sometimes, specifically in marriages, let's say an affair has occurred and then the guy or whoever did it. But let's say, hypothetically, the guy then just says, hey, I'm sorry I cheated on you. Will you forgive me? Well, not yet. Like, I just found out, sometimes you gotta give space. But we also have to begin to show, hey, the ball's in your court here. I've done everything in my power. I'm owning it. And then I'm literally now placing myself in submission to you, asking now for this thing.
Kevin Thompson [00:23:56]:
And by the way, I think this is for the parents in the room, for the grandparents in the room. I think this would be a powerful thing for you to begin to learn. This is something we need to train our kids. And the way we train our kids in this is we actually model it to them by asking for their Forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't something so much that we teach our kids, oh, here's how you do it. I mean, there's an aspect of that, but long before that, they should see us doing that for them, because we make mistakes with them all the time. And so to own it, hey, Silas, I'm sorry I responded in this way. Will you forgive me? And then it models for them that, hey, if we're in need, that means at times they're going to be in need.
Kevin Thompson [00:24:38]:
And what would relationships begin to look like if we did this? So just notice the idea now of what a genuine apology actually does in many times is the first step to the healing. And so you acknowledge the series of mistakes. This is page 46. You take full responsibility. You recognize that the mistake can happen again, and so you have to take steps to prevent it. You're trying to make amends in such a way that this behavior won't be repeated. And then you hope to show compassion for others when they have made mistakes. And then you try to demonstrate real change.
Kevin Thompson [00:25:14]:
How do I know? I get this question all the time. Specifically, in the midst of marriage. How do I know if he really is sorry? Well, how do I know if she really is sorry? Well, do they change their behavior? Do they recognize the pain that they have caused? They own it. They make amends. They try to reconcile, but then they put steps in place to try to ensure never to create that harm again. If they are not putting steps in place to never create that harm again, then the apology really isn't worth anything. But if they're doing the work, then maybe it is worth something. I want you to just take a moment before we get Mark out here and just begin to think reconciliation is at the very core of what the Christian gospel is all about.
Kevin Thompson [00:26:02]:
Jesus reconciles us to God, and then he begins to create this community, this family, in which we're supposed to have healthy relationships. It doesn't mean we're going to be perfect by any means, but what it does mean is that we should take this so seriously that for us to look at a broken relationship in our lives should be significant. And then we should constantly be looking with introspection. What am I doing to contribute to this? And literally, is my clean hand clean by the forgiveness of Jesus, Is my clean hand now reached out to every single person in my life that it should be extended to? Or are there some people that I'm holding out of bitterness, out of anger, out of frustration? Or is there some people that I'm just refusing now to extend to them what God has extended to me. Recognize there is a cost that comes with that. And that cost is a disconnection. It is an isolation and it is an exhaustion that Jesus invites you into a far better way.