 Good afternoon, brothers. So it's my job this afternoon to keep you awake. You ready for that? Anybody take a nap during free time? You know what Jesus did in the boat? He took a nap. So a couple announcements before I get started. There was a packet of information that was given to you at registration. It's with your registration materials. There's a handful of ministry resources that we will be going over tomorrow. Some of the things that we use for unbound ministry. So just make sure in the morning session that you bring those materials with you because I'm going to point out some things, hold up those documents, and tell you how to use them. The second thing is remember that there's a box for Q&A. Sometime tonight or tomorrow we will start going through some of those questions and answering some of the key questions that come up. And finally, the sign up for ministry. That's not ready yet, but after this session it should be available in the table outside. You'll sign in on a screen. I also want to encourage you. There's going to be two names next to each time slot and each location. And what we always do at the priest retreats and several of our trainings is we always want to encourage you to bring a friend. And this is important for a couple of reasons. One, we want as many people as possible to be able to at least witness what an unbound ministry session looks like. And so you may have been talking with some folks who, you know, maybe they're not ready for this ministry today or they're not really ready to share, but they certainly want to see it and they certainly want to be a part of it. They can come with you and serve as an intercessor. So they're going to be praying silently for you. You may want to bring someone that you know who you're close to, someone that you trust, that can be a sense of support for you in walking out your freedom, or maybe you want somebody that doesn't know you, who, you know, someone that you've connected with over this week that would be great to bring them with you. So try to think about who you might ask to bring with you to your ministry session. We are going to, we have 19, 19 or 20 people that will be prepared to start ministering tomorrow, tomorrow evening and then all day Thursday. So we will minister to as many of you as we possibly can. I can't promise you that we will get to everybody. But if you go to our website, which is heartofthefather.com, we actually have a network of unbound ministry teams across the country and around the world who are equipped to minister to you. And so you can look that up and see if there's a team near you. I think that's all the announcements I have. Okay. So this afternoon we're going to dive into the second key. The second key is the power of forgiveness. We're going to talk about forgiveness. So the first key was what? Repentance and faith. Repentance and faith. The second key is forgiveness. I'll begin with this scripture, Matthew 26 verse 26 through 28. It says, Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat. This is my body. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus gave his very blood for the forgiveness of sins. He poured out his blood for you and for me. How many of you want to be like Jesus? Show of hands real quick. Everybody wants to be like Jesus. Good. I'm in the right place. How many of you want to love the way Jesus loved? How many of you want to treat people the way that he treated them? How many of you want to protect them the way Jesus, like the way he was with the woman caught in adultery? How many of you want to be like that? How many of you want to try that walking on water trick? That's one of my prayers. Just once, God, that'd be awesome. It's good to have these prayers. So it's a way of creating intimacy with the Father. I asked the Father for a couple things. One of them is I want to see an angel sometime in my life. How many of you would like to see an angel? It would be amazing. If we want to be like Jesus, then we need to learn how to become vessels of forgiveness. Because Jesus was a vessel of God's forgiveness for the whole world. When Jesus says this is my blood of the covenant, a covenant is the basis for a relationship. So Jesus is saying the basis for this new relationship, this new covenant will be my life given for you. My life given for the forgiveness of sins. So how many of you know that forgiveness is pretty important to Christianity? If you were to describe to folks who are not Catholic or not Christian, you know, what is Christianity all about? A good way to sum it up would be Christianity is the message of the forgiveness of God. It is the forgiveness of God. It is the center of our faith. It's the message of forgiveness. Paul says it like this. He says, and this is the message. He says we're ministers of reconciliation. And this is our message that God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's sins against them. That's the message. And how many of you know in order to proclaim the message, we need to embody the message, amen? We need to live forgiveness if we want to be like Jesus. Our message is the message of God's forgiveness. It's very easy to preach the gospel and tell people about Jesus. It's very hard to forgive those who have wounded you. They're both proclamations of the gospel. There's also no more powerful weapon than the weapon we have been given, than the power to forgive. Jesus gave his life for the forgiveness of sins, and we can be like him, advancing the kingdom as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Do you know that when you forgive, you are advancing the kingdom of God? You are making a declaration of the kingdom. We say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive. To say, thy kingdom come, thy will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And to say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive is really saying the same thing. We're proclaiming that the love that we have received, the mercy that we have received, we extend it to others. It's good to give as we receive, because as you give away what you've received, what does God do? He gives us more. Amen? What happens when all you do is receive and receive? What happens when all you do is eat and eat and eat? You get constipated. We don't want to be spiritually constipated. We need to release. We need to demonstrate what we've been given. People have even been doing studies, scientific studies, medical studies, on the actual physical, real physical benefits of forgiveness. And they're coming to the conclusion that forgiveness is one of the most healthy things that you can do. It affects everything from anxiety to hypertension, muscular issues, even heart disease. And I've seen this throughout my times of ministry. I was praying with one woman who had experienced a great trauma at the hands of one of her doctors. Her doctor performed a surgery on her and gave her no pain medication. Just gave her Tylenol, and then he went off on a vacation. And she had all sorts of complications from the surgery. It resulted in tremendous trauma, a lot of fear, and a lot of pain. And as a result of all these complications, she ended up with an intestinal disease. And I didn't know this, but as we were... I was taking her through the five keys and I led her through the key of forgiveness. She looks up at me and she's just like, Whoa, what's happening? I said, I don't know, we just forgave. She said, I'm feeling this heat throughout my whole body. She said, you know, ordinarily I'd be so filled. She had C. diff. She said, I was so filled with gas, I would be burping in your face right now. She said, all the gas, all the pressure is gone. And when she went home, she verified it with a doctor that the Lord had healed her. It's amazing what happens when we forgive. We open ourselves up to the reception of grace. Another woman came to me for ministry and she, again, many issues related to forgiveness. And before she came into the session, she was like, oh yeah, I should ask him to pray for my feet because my feet have been really, you know, in a lot of pain. Of course, she forgot to ask for me to pray for healing. So she gets amazingly set free. She's just full of joy. She gets back to her seat and she goes, oh man, I forgot to ask for healing. And then she looks down and she starts to move her feet and she realized all the pain was gone. God can do so much in our lives when we open ourselves up to the power of the gospel through forgiveness. We really see it as one of the most important or the hinge keys because I would say that the majority of us that find ourselves in spiritual blockages or bondage, it's primarily because of unforgiveness. And I would say that unforgiveness is one of the greatest tactics of the devil. So I want to make three points about forgiveness. Three points. Number one, why is forgiveness important? Why is it important? Number two, what is the source of forgiveness? And number three, why is it so hard or why do we fail to forgive from the heart? I want to expose to you 15 reasons that we've discovered over time, 15 reasons why we fail to forgive from the heart. So it's a three point talk with 15 sub points for number three. So don't get excited when you get to point number three. We're just getting started. Number one, forgiveness is important. In Matthew 6 verse 12, Jesus teaches us to pray. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Did you notice that the instruction about forgiveness, about how to pray for forgiveness, is followed by a warning about the devil? Did you ever notice that? It's not a coincidence. Because the enemy's strategy is to hold us into a pattern of unforgiveness. He goes on and he says, For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Now don't get this passage wrong. We know that the Father wants to forgive sins. He wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. We also know that the Father has given His one and only Son so that we might receive the forgiveness of sins. It's not a lack of desire or will on the Father's part that keeps us from receiving His mercy. There is no lack in the Father. He is eternally running towards His children. Amen? He is eternally running towards His lost children. So the lack is not on the Father's side. There is something about unforgiveness that literally blocks us from receiving God's love. Unforgiveness will block us from the awareness of God's love. Whereas forgiveness will release it in our lives. The second reason it's important is because unforgiveness is real bondage and it subjects us to torment. In Matthew 18, we read the parable of the unmerciful servant. It says that the master turned the unforgiving servant over to the jailer to be what? Torture. It's an image of what unforgiveness does to the human heart. It subjects us to torment. When we begin to agree with the lies, we talked a lot about this morning, the lies of our deceiver, we come under the influence of those lies. The same thing happens when we come into an agreement with the devil who is also called the what of the brethren. He's the accuser of the brethren. And we come into an agreement with the accuser of the brethren in our hearts that we are subject to his torment. The second point is that we know the source of forgiveness. When Jesus carried our sins to the cross with his arms stretched wide, he looked down and he said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. He didn't just say those words for the people that were standing there. He didn't just say it for the Pharisees or the scribes. He was speaking those words over you and me and all humanity. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And in that moment, the power of forgiveness was released. Those words are eternal. They are spoken by God himself. And those words are alive. And we simply need to learn how to access the power of those words and allow our will to line up with his when we speak those words in the name of Jesus, I forgive. Many of us make the mistake of thinking that we forgive on our own. It's all up to us. It's a matter of striving and kind of ginning up the emotional strength to be able to forgive. But we know that it's God who changes the heart, amen. We just need to make an act of the will and surrender to his power. He's already provided the power to forgive. The power comes from the cross and it's coming from the awareness that Jesus Christ has forgiven my sins. He's my savior. And if his power is good enough to wash, if it's great enough to wash away my sin, it's enough for the sins of the whole world. If we've received forgiveness through Christ, now we have the power that we need to forgive. So those are the first two reasons and you've probably heard that before. But it's good to review it again, right? The third point and really the main point of this talk is, you know, if we've heard a good talk, if we've heard a great homily, maybe you've given a great homily on forgiveness. We know that it's important and we know that there's a source. Why is it so hard? Why is it so difficult? Why do we so often fail to forgive from the heart? I want to give you one basic reason that covers all 15. And that is deception. We are deceived about what it means to forgive. We're deceived about the mercy of God. We're deceived about what forgiveness will look like. All of these are going to be expressions of that deception. One priest that we knew would bring communion to a woman who was homebound. She was elderly. She couldn't make it to mass. And he would bring her communion but before administering communion, he would lead her in the Our Father. And whenever they got to the point where it says, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, she would say, forgive us our trespasses as we... And after like the third or fourth time, he realized what she was doing. She was deceived. She believed that as long as she didn't say the words, she wouldn't be responsible for the action. How many of you know that we're called to live as we pray? And to pray as we live. There isn't meant to be a disconnect. And sometimes these deceptions creep into our thinking and they keep us from entering into the power of forgiveness. When I was doing a parish mission in Canada, this man came to me for ministry. He had committed adultery and it was just a real mess. And I led him through the keys so wonderfully set free and God was doing a healing in their marriage and they were on the way home. He had brought her to the forgiveness talk and he said, honey, I don't care if you ever forgive me. I just want you to be free. I want you to be healed. And on the way home, she said, you know, I had all 15 reasons why I wasn't going to forgive you. But then she turned to him and she said, I surprised myself when I stood up and I said the words and God gave me the strength that I needed and I really did forgive you. Number one, so sometimes when we can expose these deceptions, sometimes they're hidden in our hearts and we're not aware of it, but if we can expose it to the light, we can then find the freedom to make this act of the will. Number one is quite simple. I don't want to. I don't want to. We were ministering. There was a conference in the Ukraine. This woman stood up in the back and she said, that's right. I don't want to forgive my husband. He did this and this and this and this. We're like, we're not looking for examples here. I want to hold on to my anger until I get revenge. Only when this person feels pain like I do, then I will forgive. We don't want to because we have chosen bitterness or anger or revenge to be our companions. How many of you know those are not good buddies? Those will torment you. And so some of us, we imagine a scenario in our mind where we have all the power and they don't and they are miserable and they come to us with tears in their eyes and they get down on their knees and they beg for forgiveness and then we say, yes, then I'll forgive. How many of you are still waiting for that to happen? Sometimes people express it this way. I will forgive, but I won't forget. It's a way of holding yourself back. It's an attempt to protect yourself. The deception is this. We think that holding on to unforgiveness will protect us, but it actually blocks us from God's love. There's no advantage to holding on to unforgiveness. It doesn't help you at all. Number two is a lack of faith. You don't believe that it's possible. You say things like, do you really know what they did to me? Do you know how vicious or evil it was? And so you don't believe that it's possible for you to forgive. You don't believe that it's possible for your heart to be transformed. Matthew 19, 24, Jesus is teaching and he says, again I tell you it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and he said, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. It's so good to take your impossible to Jesus. You ever wonder what Jesus' face looked like when it says he looked at them? What did that look like? People took notice when Jesus looked at someone and he presents them with something that it seems impossible. Who can be saved? And Jesus says, with God all things are possible. So many times people will tell me, you know I just don't think it's possible for me to forgive. And you know what I say? You're right. You're right. It's impossible for you to forgive. It's impossible. But with God everything is possible. Would you like to give God the opportunity to forgive through you? And I've never had anybody turn me down. We need to be aware, not so much of our own ability, as Father Boniface was sharing, but the ready, present power of God. And again it goes back to, will we proclaim the gospel? Will you proclaim the gospel to those who are hurting? Will you believe for them that forgiveness is possible? Have you ever been in a group of folks who are complaining a lot and they're whining about this or they're whining about this person or another person? You want to know a secret? How to shut that up real quick? Just say, wow, sounds like you need to forgive. Would you like to do that right now? Ends the gripe session immediately. It's amazing. They might not seek you out, but it works great. Just proclaim the gospel. Believe for them that it is possible. Number three, I forgot. A lack of awareness of the need to forgive is one of the most common things that we see. You see, you go through things in life and people were not there for you to help you process it or understand what happened and you experienced this hurt or this trauma and you don't know what to do with it and so you just kind of allow it to drift into your unconscious and you let it go and you're really not aware of this need that you have to forgive. And it doesn't really go away, does it? Sometimes it shows up in your attitudes towards certain people or your relationships going forward and these patterns that you learned in relationships. One woman we were praying with, we went through the five keys and we said, is there anything coming to your mind? And she said, I see my grandfather. Was your grandfather good? Oh yeah, my grandfather was wonderful. During the war, my father went off to the war and he was a soldier and my grandfather took care of me and he was like a dad to me and he loved me and he brought me to church and he did all these wonderful things to me and here is this image of this joy and it would have never occurred to her that the pain and the trauma she experienced was when her father came home because everyone would have celebrated that and that would have been such a joy for most people, oh, your father's home your father takes you home but what she had in process was the pain of losing that relationship with her grandfather because her father took her away and so we become unaware of our need to forgive simple things like in the name of Jesus I forgive my dad for not seeing how much I needed my grandfather. Number four is similar if we don't forget we minimize it we find a way to make the pain a little bit more tolerable by telling a story about what happened after we led one woman through the keys she still felt oppressed and someone asked her is there anyone else that you need to forgive and she said oh well when I was 12 my cousin tried to rape me but that's okay because he didn't penetrate me now you're thinking what I'm thinking that's not okay that's never okay but you can see how a little girl who's 12 years old and maybe she was close with her cousin and she trusted him and she has this traumatic event and she just has to compartmentalize it find a way to make it a little less painful and so we wrap it in this story and that's yes it may minimize the pain a little bit but it doesn't take it away it doesn't bring healing and freedom we need to take responsibility for the things that have happened and how they have affected us and make an act of the will to forgive number five is fear and this is based on a misunderstanding of what forgiveness is many people are afraid that if they let go they will be hurt again and somehow more vulnerable to abuse and so we identify ourselves with fear or hatred or retaliation as a means of protecting of ourselves and we think if I forgive then I will be like a big walking target people will just hurt me again and I need to carry around this mistrust for these people we want to be clear we want to say this forgiveness does not mean returning to an abusive relationship how many of you know that forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things they are not the same to forgive is to give up your right to be offended it's to give up your right to hold on to that offense and it's an act of the will it's not a feeling when you forgive you recognize that no matter how intentional an act may have seemed or how malicious it was that they did not fully know what they are doing and we decide to give up our right to be offended but we do need to protect ourselves from physical, mental and sexual abuse and we need to get help just because you forgive does not mean that you have no boundaries just because you forgive does not mean that you don't seek justice or you don't press charges or you don't do the right thing and confront that person but withdrawing from evil does not excuse us from the battle the battle to forgive the one that brought evil upon us we often say it like this forgiveness takes one person and the power of God reconciliation takes two people and the power of God but one of the things I've started to recognize at conferences and people come back and they tell stories is that when they do that when they make that act of the will and they say in the name of Jesus I forgive amazing things actually happen because I believe that when you forgive you release God's grace to that person you are opening the door to God's grace and many people tell me that after they forgave at the conference or after they forgave during the session you know a couple weeks later that person called them and said hey I was just thinking about you you think we could go get a cup of coffee you know it's amazing the stories the way in which God is preparing not only your heart for reconciliation but also the other person number six number six is the failure to take responsibility again we sometimes put a limit on God's mercy by defining how far it can go how many of you felt challenged this morning when we heard it mass that if someone takes your cloak you are to give them the tunic as well how many of you there is a part of you that's like oh no no way really how many of you felt the injustice of that and what we really want to say is God like I want to be like you but I want to be like you know Jesus light you know Jesus who just gives away the cloak or Jesus who just walks a mile how many of you know that's not Jesus and Peter is like this he tries to set a limit on the mercy of God Peter goes up to Jesus in Matthew 18 and he says lord how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times Peter's thinking I got a good solid biblical number seven that's good enough right after seven done I wash my hands he's out of my life seven Jesus says to him I do not say to you seven times but seventy times seven in the Old Testament the number seven is the number of completion it's the number on which it's the seventh day God rests he enters his creation he rests when Daniel goes to goes to God and says seventy years are up can we go home the angel says not seventy years seventy times seven years you see they'll return from Babylon but they're not going to be free until Jesus shows up what is Jesus saying he's not saying forgive a certain number and that's it he's saying forgive until it is complete that's our standard he's not changing it he's not going to make it easier we have to decide if we're going to take responsibility it's his job to change the heart but we need to take responsibility to forgive until it's complete sometimes we've we tried and we prayed and we're like well I tried but we're still carrying around resentment we're still carrying around bitterness we need to take responsibility for that and continue to forgive because we don't want to be Jesus light do we we want to be completely transformed into the image of Jesus the one who said father forgive them for they do not know what they're doing he said those words from the cross amen in agony suffering the most excruciating death he said those words he made that act of the will for you and for me I love what Pope Francis said he was speaking to priests he was speaking about confession and he said the mercy of God to the people who come to confession get a desk job pretty harsh but I think that applies to all of us if you're not prepared to represent the father if you're going to be the older brother in the story at least don't stand in the door just get out of the way because people need to see the image of the father through you Paul speaking about forgiveness tells us that not forgiving gives Satan the advantage do you want to give Satan the advantage in your life 2 Corinthians 2 verse 10 anyone whom you forgive I also forgive what I have forgiven if I have forgiven anything has been for your sake in the presence of Christ to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his designs unforgiveness is a design another translation says we are not ignorant of his schemes unforgiveness is a scheme of the devil and Paul is very careful to make sure that forgiveness is taking root in the early church how many of you know a church that's been broken up because of unforgiveness how many of you know a community that's been destroyed because of unforgiveness how many of you know even in your own families relationships lives that have been hindered people that haven't moved on they haven't grown in maturity because of unforgiveness it is a tactic it is a scheme of the enemy I love what the catechism says about forgiveness in the family it says that as family members we are to lavish forgiveness on one another that's our primary job in the family I often tell my kids that our job is to just butter each other up with forgiveness whenever there's wrongdoing whenever there's something gone wrong we are to forgive first that's our job to demonstrate the mercy number seven the person represents someone else a fancy word for this would be projection projection so let's say you have a new bishop you have a new president of the university you have a new whatever it is fill in the authority figure you have a new mayor or whatever and you just don't like the guy there is something about him you don't like you don't like the way he chooses food you don't like the way he combs his hair you can't handle his homilies you just don't even want to be in the same room with this guy and you know he's saying mass or he's leading a meeting and you turn to the person next to you and you're like what's with this guy and the person says oh isn't he wonderful oh we're so lucky to have him as our bishop and oh he's the best thing that ever happened to us and you're like are we talking about the same person there's like steam coming out of your ears like don't they see what I see you see sometimes well I shouldn't say sometimes I say for all of us God has a specific plan and he brings these people into our lives for a purpose just as Esau confronted Jacob with his sin and caused Jacob to have to wrestle with God for the blessing these people are brought into our lives almost like a mirror so that we can see through our response to them what's going on in our heart thank the Lord for those people right some of you are thinking that person right now it could be that the person that you have such a difficult time forgiving even the littlest thing might act a lot like or speak a lot like your father who wounded you very deeply or someone else in your story who hurt you or betrayed you or rejected you in a major way sometimes we take that pain and we take that anger and we take it out on the next guy the next authority figure in our life the next person who's supposed to be a spiritual father to us and so God will use these people in our lives to expose our hearts and make us aware of the hidden pain that we haven't dealt with number eight this is a big one I would encourage you to circle this or underline it or whatever you have to do the person we need to forgive is ourselves some people live completely unaware of the fact that they can and they should forgive themselves some of us are really good at preaching the gospel to others oh man brother he can take care of your sin and his love is big enough for you and you preach that message so well some of you are incredible confessors and you know how to just show God's mercy but then you get home and you look in the mirror and you preach a different gospel you say things like you're such an idiot how could you do that again you're such a fraud you shouldn't have even been a priest you shouldn't have even entered the ministry and you find yourself agreeing with the lies of the accuser and when bad things happen to you you say well I deserve it I should have known better and what are you doing you're actually preaching two different gospels one is for everybody else one is for everybody else but another is for you and it might never occur to most people that we can actually forgive ourselves if you can hold a fence towards yourself then you can certainly forgive yourself and so we make friends with things like self bitterness self condemnation I prayed with a woman she had shared that when she was a contractor who was working on their house they decided to go on vacation and so while they were on vacation they gave the contractor the keys to their house so he could work on it and while they were gone the contractor took everything from them and then burned down the house everywhere I go I get the same response oh man and you're thinking what I'm thinking which is oh this is going to be hard it's going to be hard to forgive this man for doing something so intentional so destructive but as we led her through the forgiveness you could hear in her voice you could hear from her emotion that she actually had forgiven she really did but what she hadn't done was forgive herself for being foolish and when we let her say in the name of Jesus I forgive myself for being so foolish but not being more trustworthy with my possessions she broke down and wept where was the bondage it was in the bitterness and the anger and the ways that she was directing that towards herself many parents do this those of you that hear confessions of parents parents hold on to a lot of guilt and a lot of shame for how they failed as parents you know I told myself I would never do this and I would never speak that way to my children the way that my father spoke to me and here I am using the same tone of voice and saying the same things and they carry around a lot of guilt you know they say it's the one thing I wanted to do do really well in life we can help them to make a decision to say yes to the power of the gospel by declaring it over themselves you know this morning you learned how to lead someone else to Jesus I believe it would be good practice for all of us to wake up in the morning and proclaim the gospel to ourselves because we forget don't we I've been following the Lord for over 20 years and I still forget the gospel I forget how really good it is and there's always a temptation there's always something in our sinful nature that wants to draw us to the other side of the cross where we don't need him where we're self sufficient where we're good enough we're depending on our own strength number nine is a poor self identity in order for you to say in the name of Jesus I forgive you have to know who the I is and if you don't know who you are in Christ and your identity in him it's going to be very difficult for you to forgive one woman was unjustly accused of wrongdoing in her job by a co-worker and she lost her job and so she was trying to forgive but she just couldn't and inwardly she would rage against this woman and wish that she were dead the reason it was so hard for her to forgive was not because of what was done it was because of her identity which was wrapped up in her job she felt that the co-worker hadn't taken away her job but had actually taken away her life and sometimes we need to come to an understanding of who we are and our value because of what Jesus has done not because of our job, not because of our money not because of the things that we have or the things that we do I have a friend whose name is also Matt I promise you it's not me and he was fishing on a major river in my city in a motorized canoe which I'm pretty sure is illegal so he's flying down the river in a motorized canoe and he's fishing and having the time of his life and as he's motoring down he hits a rock and the whole canoe just tips over and in a moment's notice he reaches back grabs his bag from the canoe and he goes into the water canoe goes over and it's he's not retrieving it so in this backpack sort of thing he's got a ziplock bag and in the ziplock bag he's got his phone, his wallet, and his keys the holy trinity of what we need to leave the house with and so he's hanging on to this thing for life and this canvas bag is filling up with water and it's filling up fast and it's getting heavy so he's trying to swim back to the shore and it's literally dragging him to the bottom and the water is up to here and he just puts his mouth above the water and he cries out I'm not gonna make it and he hears a still small voice son let go of the bag and he hears that voice and he gets mad I don't want to let go of the bag and he's fighting with it and fighting with it and finally he's literally he's swallowing water and he decides I've got to let go of this thing and he lets go of the bag and he just kind of calmly gently floats up to the surface of the water he does a nice little back stroke gets to the other shore and this is what he said he said I couldn't let go of the bag because I thought my life was in the bag and I had to let go of what I thought was my life in order to save my life some of us are holding on to things whether it's our position it's money it's popularity it's what other people think of us it's our ministry you know you can make an idol out of ministry you can even make an idol out of out of a commandment of the Lord you know I know people that have shipwrecked their lives you know on the Great Commission you know we can make an idol out of anything even good things that God gives us and when we draw our lives from our achievements and our success and we hold on to those things when something happens to take that or threaten that we have difficulty forgiving and forgiveness helps us to let go of those things and to really say that from a place of who we are in Christ in the name of Jesus as a child of God I forgive you and so the I is the person who you are in Christ when we were in England there was a woman who had been ritually abused satanic ritual abuse for many years and her mother was the culprit and she struggled greatly with you know demonic attack and she would black out and she would have these manifestations and she would threaten to kill ourselves and send text messages to the team you know with a knife and it was just like it was this overwhelming thing but the team knew she's going to have to forgive her mom it's going to be it was so hard for her to even think about her mom and what this team did amazes me to this day instead of you know oh we're going to take her through the five keys we're going to do deliverance we're going to do that they formed a love team and this love team consisted of four or five people and they made a decision that every single day this woman would receive a text or a phone call or something from the love team people who would affirm her in who she was even if it was simple as that dress you were wearing today was beautiful I love what you did with your hair or sending her scriptures what were they doing they were actually building her up in her identity she needed to know from a Christian community who she was because she didn't have a sense she didn't have a clue of where she ended and her mom began and it was after a year of this that she came in she listened to this talk and later she texted the team and she said I want you to know I forgave my mom today and I used all my own words and that part just blows me away I used all my own words number ten bondage to evil spirits it's really important that we understand that there is real spiritual power behind the unforgiveness so many times this is the second key and it's usually after repentance we'll go to forgiveness but some people will go to forgive and they say in the name of Jesus I can't I can't say it or it gets stuck in their throat and the reason why it feels impossible for them to do that is because they've made friends with all this other stuff and so sometimes we have to go to the third key which is renunciation and they have to they have to say in the name of Jesus I renounce resentment in the name of Jesus I renounce revenge in the name of Jesus I renounce a spirit of murder sometimes where they actually daydreamed about killing that person and all these other acts of the will maybe they need to renounce a vow that they made you know I'll never trust that person again and so sometimes you need to deal with the spiritual bondage first and then you come back to it and you say now can you try to forgive and they say in the name of Jesus I forgive and they're able to say it number eleven I'm not ready this is going to take a long time it may take time for you to forgive it may take more than one opportunity but many times we can use this as an excuse to never enter into the process of forgiving I found that people who put off forgiveness or they procrastinate it many times the reason they do it is not that they're not willing it's that no one has ever really listened to their story most people in order to forgive they just have to know that there's at least one person on this planet who has heard everything the depths of their pain and can help them to put into words what they need to forgive there was one man who came to a conference who could not get over the death of his son his son was killed in a car accident which was caused by another man who actually lived in his town and so every time he saw this man he was reminded of his anger and everything that he was lost and everything was directed towards that man now he was in a small church and the people in that church surrounded him and they gave him sympathy and everyone had pity on him and they said oh you poor, poor man it's going to take you a long time to forgive and what they were saying in their desire to comfort him was actually stay a victim stay where you are and there's a time for tears there's a time for comfort there's a time for pity but when someone wants to be free they don't need your pity they need your faith amen there's a difference between compassion and pity what would happen if those firefighters outside of 9-11 as the tragedy unfurled what if they just stood outside and hugged the people that had come out of the building certainly would be a good thing to do but when people need compassion they need action if I was walking along the road and you were crying out from a pit help me, help me get out of this pit I don't want to be in this pit anymore and I'm carrying a rope it would be a tragedy for me to get down in the pit with you and wipe away your tears and say, oh, you poor thing no, I need to hold the rope and with Unbound we have this we have these five keys, that's our rope we hold on to the rope and we say you can do it you are almost there one step at a time, you're gonna get out of this pit and so with this man he was able in a very short amount of time to just tell his story to another man and then be led someone who would believe in the power of the gospel and lead him to say in the name of Jesus I forgive the man who caused the death of my son I forgive him for all the pain that he's caused me, I forgive him for all the lost moments that I never had with my son I forgive him for the pain he's caused my wife in the sleepless nights he later wrote us and said after I forgave that man I really did experience freedom and the next time I saw that man I went and I told him I forgave him and I embraced him as if he was my son that is the power of the gospel you don't believe it it happens all the time I can tell you story after story of just incredible people in the genocide in Rwanda in other various places who have literally adopted their siblings murderer literally gone to prison say I forgive you you are now part of my family it's unfathomable it's outrageous but it's true God's power is present to release you from your bondage and God may have prepared your heart today now maybe you're not ready and that's okay many people simply need to find someone and tell them what happened before they can make that act of the will number 12 we have not accepted the gift of forgiveness for ourselves we are still trying to earn our salvation we're still trying to make ourselves worthy of his love there's this part of us sometimes where it's like I thank you for your mercy I thank you for wiping my slate clean but I'm going to prove to you that you made a really good decision I'm like a really good draft pick and you're just going to be so happy because I'm going to prove my worth to you and if you're living from that place of striving then you're not really receiving the treasury that God has for you somebody wounds you or steals from you or robs you you will not know how to forgive because in the kingdom you cannot give what you are not willing to receive and likewise we cannot receive what we're not willing to give it's the way the kingdom works in Matthew 18 we learned about the unmerciful servant the unmerciful servant goes before the king and says please please give me more what does he ask for time he doesn't ask for forgiveness he doesn't ask for mercy he has a very limited view of what this king is capable of and he asks for time just give me time I'll pay you back I'll give you what's just and the king unbelievably gives him forgiveness he says I'll wipe your debt completely free it's gone but there's something happen between the king's proclamation and what he actually hears because he doesn't act like someone who's been forgiven he acts like someone who's been given what time are we living freely are we living as people who have been given what God has given to us something like slaves who have been given more time are we trying to pay God back or are we living from His mercy because if we don't understand and receive that full gift, that free gift then we won't be able to be like the Father when it's our turn to give and so that man ends up choking another servant and he ends up back in prison you could make the point that forgiveness is something you do for yourself that's one motivation it will kill you I've heard it describe that unforgiveness is like drinking a glass of poison and expecting the other person to die have you heard that before I think Oprah said that too so it's gotta be true if Oprah said it, it's true so yeah you see that poison and you're like ew, gross, I don't want that so that's a good motivation to forgive but as Christians we have an even greater motivation to forgive the higher motivation is based upon the awareness of how much God has forgiven you I don't know about you brothers but the longer I walk with Jesus I'm not less aware, I'm more aware of my need for forgiveness I'm more aware of how much how much it cost Jesus and how much debt has been paid for me if I were to Venmo you a million dollars right now that'd be a happy thought, wouldn't it anybody appreciate that if I could just put that into your account that'd be pretty pretty good it might make you feel warm inside but how are you gonna experience that how is that gonna get real for you what would you do go ahead let your mind go there paying off the bills putting a new roof on the church getting something nice for mom the reality of what you've been given really hits you when you start to give it away right when you start writing checks when you start living from the awareness of what you've been given I don't think we've ever even scratching the surface of the ocean of mercy that we're in and we've been invited to explore and what we've discovered that there's no end to it there's no height, there's no death we can't get to the bottom of it and it's that awareness that allows us to look at the speck in our brother's eye and say oh man that's that's nothing look at my plank it's huge look at what God has done look at what God can do for you number 13 I've already forgiven I've been there, I've done that I tried that's the best I can do and so we just bury it thinking that we have forgiven in Matthew 18 Jesus says so my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from forgiveness is most powerful when it takes place at the level of our heart and it comes through the place of pain it's one thing to forgive on a very surface level we say oh that's okay I let it go but it's another thing to say in the name of Jesus I forgive my teacher for humiliating me in front of my friends in the name of Jesus I forgive my my friend who betrayed me who rejected me in the name of Jesus I forgive my father who said I would never amount to anything so we need to stick with forgiveness right? John the Baptist said we need to keep with repentance until we bear fruit if we need to stick with repentance as a lifestyle we also need to stick with forgiveness as a lifestyle it's not once and done how do you know when forgiveness is complete it's actually simple you know that forgiveness is complete when you can sincerely ask God's blessing on the person who wounded you Luke 6, 27 and 28 Jesus says I say to you that here love your enemies do good to those who hate you bless those who curse you pray for those who abuse you when you can do that with sincerity in your heart you know that healing has taken place a lot of times after the five keys I will lead that person to pronounce a blessing upon the person who had wounded them and I say you know thank you I just lead them to say thank you Lord that I've forgiven my dad and God I just ask that you bless him and I ask them how do you feel when you say that and they look at me like kind of shocked they're like wait a minute I actually meant that I actually meant that blessing and we become aware that something in us has been healed number 14 false expectations I grew up in a covenant ecumenical community and growing up in the early 1980s and I saw a lot of young people, young adults come into our community and a lot of them these really healthy family relationships and they see the way that we were living and they say things like oh wow now I'm with God's people now I'm safe I'll never be hurt again the reason why you guys are laughing is that you know that God's people are actually some of the best at hurting you right not the Benedictines right love each other all the time okay anybody that's ever been a part of an order or a mission together you're doing the work of the kingdom together you know that there's a vulnerability there there's a vulnerability there with your bishop or your brother priest and you need each other and it's when those unspoken expectations are not met that's when we receive the deepest wounds my brother my older brother started dating his wife he actually met his wife at my wedding one of my wife's friends he noticed her and they started dating and so we had been married for almost a year before they got engaged and they would say stuff like oh we're just so perfect for each other we've never had a fight I don't think we're ever going to have a fight we're just not made that way you know my wife and I are just like trying really hard not to laugh not to put them down but you know we knew what was coming you know we knew that no matter how compatible you are no matter how perfect you are for each other there's going to be disappointment and so when we experience disappointments like these it often results in a huge resentment and that resentment festers and sometimes we even hold resentment toward God we had false expectations about how God should have loved us or should have protected us we say things Lord I thought if I gave my life to you everything was going to get better that's what the guy on TV said you know I should have a car by now and instead my life got worse I gave my life to you and my family rejected and nobody understood and my friends left me and this is a reality sometimes and so evil comes into our lives and we begin to blame God for evil we don't understand his heart we don't understand his intentions now we do not teach people that they need to forgive God it's not necessary to forgive God because his attention for us is always good and he's always loving us even through the worst of circumstances and he's always working all of those things for our redemption but the danger is that when we experience this the danger is not that we tell God how angry we are the danger is when we get quiet you know I've read all the Psalms and David's got some spicy prayers doesn't he he's got some angry prayers he's got some out of control prayers he's got some God what are you doing prayers have you ever prayed some of those you know that God's not intimidated by your anger right he's not like oh man I just can't handle you right now please go have a time out you know you're just too much for me your emotion is just too much God wants our emotion he wants to hear our disappointment he wants to hear even our anger because if we express our anger to him you know that's actually a sign of trust it's when we get quiet and when we get distant that breaks God's heart because we say well I guess I just can't expect an abundant life in Christ I guess I guess this is it for me and I'm just going to level off at this point and I'm not going to ask anymore and I'm not going to seek anymore I'm not going to pray for healing anymore I'm not going to pray for my parish to be renewed I'm just going to coast or I'm just going to hold back and what we need to do with folks who suffer this way sometimes we just need to let them express their heart to God and say God I don't understand I don't know where you were doing when my sister died of cancer and I prayed that she would be healed and she didn't she wasn't healed Lord I don't understand why there wasn't a father in my life I don't understand but then to repent say Lord I know that you're good I know that you have a plan for my life and Lord please forgive me for judging you or blaming you for the evil that's come into my life forgive me for thinking anything less than the truth of who you are you have given everything for me number 15 and this is a really powerful one for a lot of people that holds them back it's a victim identity when we identify ourselves as a victim rather than a son or a daughter of God many of you have been victimized in forms of injustice Jesus himself knew what it means to be a victim he knows your pain but he never took on a position of helplessness or identified himself as a forever victim he is our victim he is our sacrifice for sure but listen to his words tell me if you think he sounds like someone who is helpless or hopeless this is John 10 verse 18 Jesus said no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord I have the authority to lay it down and the authority to take it up again this command I received from my father so what was Jesus thinking as his friends deserted him as he was falsely accused as he was slandered as he was brutalized as he was stripped naked as he was nailed to the cross he never took on the identity of a helpless hopeless victim he said I am a son on a mission from my father and I will stay that way to the very end even as he is enduring all of those victimizing experiences so what is a victim identity it means you have embraced helplessness and powerlessness and you believe there is nothing that you can do to change God life somebody else owes me something and I am going to sit around waiting for someone to do something about my pain sometimes we hold on to our pain and our resentment because it becomes a very nice excuse for the life that we are living the question we need to ask is if this is Jesus's attitude in the face of incredible victimization we need to ask this question am I going to allow what someone else has done determine how I live remember we are following Jesus what we see in him we want in our own life if he didn't allow his victimhood to determine his destiny should we should we allow what has happened to us determine how we live you see when we begin to take up our identity as who we are in Christ it helps us to overcome helplessness which brings victory over hopelessness to forgive means to take your power back to take back your life I have a friend who was sexually abused by her stepfather and she shares her story with you she said my mom married my stepfather and he started sexually abusing me when I was 8 years old I was terrified it happened almost every day and even every night it makes me sick to think of that little girl trying to put her mind anywhere else than where she was this went on for 3 years during this time my mother and my grandmother started getting involved in the charismatic renewal and they began to talk about the name of Jesus they told me about God and that he was listening they told me that I could pray for anything I was 11, New Year's Eve and I started praying I asked God that if my stepfather came to my room that night he would give me the strength to tell my mom what was going on I remember instead of disappearing into myself like I usually did I got really angry I believe that God filled me with a righteous anger and the will to fight back the next day I got my mom alone while my stepfather was still asleep and I told her it was the hardest thing I'd ever done I couldn't stop crying my mom grabbed me and my brothers took me to my grandmother's house she told me I'd never have to set foot in that house again and I was safe my mom and my grandmother brought me upstairs and they prayed with me and I began to feel at peace then my grandmother did something that spiritually saved my life she asked me if someday I could forgive my stepfather for what he had done only by the grace of God I did I forgave him that day so much was lifted off of me and it was a lot she shares later in her story how her brother was also abused and her brother never told like she did and he was never ministered to in the way that she was and she sees the huge difference in their life and how he he can't feel anything except for pain and she lives in an awareness of God's forgiveness she said to her brother I no longer feel that my stepfather has a hold on me and I don't find my identity in being a victim my friend took her power back that day in Jesus name the question we need to ask ourselves is this you may have been victimized but am I a victim or am I a child of God I search for my inheritance do you want to forgive the question is an act of it's a matter of the will it's not a feeling it's a decision let's stand up if you want to just close your eyes that's okay but I'm just basically going to ask the Holy Spirit to come Holy Spirit I ask that you would just reveal to our hearts maybe just one person one person who's hurt us one person whom we need to forgive just like with the other keys this is just practice it's just giving you practice in saying the words out loud there's power in our words so I just want you to think about what that person did to you and how it affected you how it impacted you and we're just going to say it out loud together you know you can just focus on your words you just say it loud enough that you can hear say in the name of Jesus I forgive I forgive I'll just whisper that person's name four now whisper what they did now it is possible that maybe two people came to your mind that can happen too so just in case there was more than one just say in the name of Jesus I forgive whisper the person's name four and whisper what they did now we're just going to renounce a few things related to that say in the name of Jesus I renounce bitterness I renounce good in the name of Jesus I renounce resentment in the name of Jesus I renounce unrighteous anger in the name of Jesus I renounce retaliation and revenge in the name of Jesus I renounce a victim identity this is just ordinary part of repentance and faith and conversion is letting go of the pain that we've received and for some of you you've never done it out loud I just want you to experience what that's like so let's just take a moment to thank the Lord for the power that he gives us to forgive just thank him for the cross thank him for the deposit that was given thank you for the power that was released on the cross Jesus thank you for your most precious blood thank you that we don't need to live in bitterness anymore thank you that our hearts can become free we pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen Thank you