November 16, 2003

The Climate of Healthy Relationships

Part 3: Forgiveness

Introduction: Forgiveness is the glue that holds two imperfect people together!
How can you make forgiveness the climate of your relationships?

1. ______________________________________________________ forgiveness.

Forgiveness is _________________________________________________.

Forgiveness isn’t ____________________ . You forgive with your

_____________________ not your _______________________.

Forgiveness isn’t ____________________ . You forgive with your

_____________________ not your _______________________.

2. ____________________________ forgiveness __________________________.

Ephesians 4:32, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 24:47, Acts 13:38, Ephesians 1:7, 1 John
1:9

3. ____________________________ forgiveness __________________________.

A. _______________________________________________ ahead of time.

Romans 6:10, Hebrews 7:27, 10:10, 1 Peter 3:18

B. Keep ______________________________________________________.
Ephesians 4:26, Matthew 5:23-24

C. ____________________ forgiveness; __________________ when asked.

For Life Group Discussion: What is the most difficult part of forgiveness for you?
Who do you need to forgive now? What is your next step?
 November 16, 2003
The Climate of Healthy Relationships
Part 3: Forgiveness

Opening:
ILL: How many of you remember the 1970 hit movie, "Love Story", starring
Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal? When Jenny lay dying, Oliver was weeping
and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry", and Jenny said that famous line, "Love
means never having to say you're sorry."
Do you buy that? I don't think Ryan O'Neal did! Two years later in his
1972 comedy, "What's Up, Doc?" with Barbra Streisand, she bats her eyes at
him when he apologizes and says, "Love means never having to say you're
sorry." O'Neal looks at her disbelievingly, and then says, "That's the dumbest
thing I've ever heard!" The comedy is closer to the truth than the romance!
It really is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. Any two people who love each
other have to say “I’m sorry” a lot—every day—multiple times a day. Why?
Because they’re imperfect! Relationships always involve imperfect people and
require lots of forgiveness if they are to work and last. The truth is that love means
having to say you're sorry often; love means forgiving the other person frequently.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to build a climate of forgiveness in
your relationships.

Offering and announcements:

Huge way-to-go! You gave $12,910 to provide turkey dinners for
Thanksgiving—that’s enough for 860 families! Thank you!
We have been looking for ways to help our community, especially the poor.
Randy Sylvia has been championing this cause since the first of November; here
are some options. (Handouts)
I told you last weekend that we are $180,000 behind budget for the 2003
calendar year, and we’d like to make that up these last six weeks. I know that
budgets don’t motivate most people. “Help us make budget” doesn’t make most of
us jump up and grab our checkbooks! So let me personalize it.
Our budget has four large categories. First, personnel. Your offerings pay
the salaries and benefits for our paid staff of 45 full and part time people. They
include maintenance and facilities staff, technical personnel, clerical and office
staff, and pastors and ministry directors. These are the people who make all that
our church does possible; and your offerings allow them to do that.
Second, ministry. Your offerings pay the expenses involved in providing the
wide range of services that we offer. For example, it costs money to provide a
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quality children’s program each week, or a junior high or senior high group, or
Life Groups, or starting a new church. Your offering makes all the ministries of
our church possible.
Third, giving. We give almost 20% of all our offerings away to help the
poor and needy, to help start new churches, to help other ministries that are doing
God’s work in our city and beyond, and to Christian missionaries around the
world. Your offerings are helping thousands of people here and around the world.
Fourth, operations. These include things like the mortgage, utilities,
insurance, maintenance, repairs, and equipment. I’ve had people tell me, “I don’t
want my offering to go for the mortgage or utilities; I want it to go straight to
ministry.” I tell them that if everyone had that attitude, we’d be meeting outside in
the cold. Every church, just like every family, has these expenses; your offerings
pay for them and make this possible.
That’s where your money goes—that’s what the budget is about. It’s about
doing God’s work—it’s about people—all of it, even the operations expenses. I
don’t look at our mortgage or utilities as investing in a building. It’s investing in
the people who use the building. Your offering is an investment in God’s work,
which is about people. Any questions?

Worship, Prayer, Sketch: No Accident.

Introduction:
That sketch has really happened. There are lots of stories of people who
decided to forgive instead of be bitter, to help someone instead of punish them. And
it illustrates a very important truth: who benefits most when you forgive someone?
You do! Forgiveness sets you free. It liberates you, the forgiver, from bitterness and
from the responsibility of being judge, jury and executioner. Often people refuse to
forgive because they want to punish the offender; but the person you’re punishing
most is yourself. You make yourself miserable! Kim did herself a favor and forgave
Ann.
It’s not just the forgiver who benefits; forgiveness also liberates the forgiven.
Ann experienced the relief of being forgiven. Forgiveness sets the forgiven free from
the need to defend herself; from the guilt of the past; and gives her opportunity to
change. When you are forgiven, you don't have to defend yourself any longer; you
don't have to live in the shadow of past failures; you can move on, you are free to
change.
Forgiveness needs to be the climate of your relationships; not just an
occasional thing that you do, but an essential part of the environment, just like the air
you breathe. Without forgiveness, relationships suffocate. How many of you have
any friction in your relationships?
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ILL: Modern car engines are manufactured to incredibly precise

specifications. The parts are machined and polished and fitted together down
to the thousandths of an inch. But no matter how perfect the fit, no matter how
polished the parts, there is still a tremendous amount of friction in an engine.
No one has invented an engine that can run without lubrication. So engines
need oil; oil eases that friction and allows the engine to run a long time without
blowing up.
Relationships are like that. Even with the two most perfect people, two
people who seem to fit together perfectly, two people who are polished and
mature, there is a great deal of friction. Forgiveness is the oil that keeps a
friendship or marriage or family running a long time.
When you lose your oil and the oil warning light comes on, what do you
do? You park the car right there, and get oil, because you know that to drive
very far without oil will destroy your engine. Just like your engine needs oil to
run, your relationships needs forgiveness to keep going. Has your warning
light come on lately? Are there unresolved tensions, lingering hurts and
bitterness? It's time to pull over and get some forgiveness flowing!
Forgiveness is the climate of healthy relationships, just like oil is a basic operating
necessity for a car. Forgiveness is the glue that holds relationships together; it is
essential to healthy relationships. How can we make it the climate of our
relationships?

1. Understand forgiveness.
Forgiveness is letting go and sending away.
Forgiveness means letting go and sending away. The New Testament was
written in Greek, and the word used for forgiveness, aphiemi, meant "to let go, send
away, cancel, remit, leave, abandon; to forgive.” It was used of the voluntary release
of a person or thing over which one has legal or actual control. It was often used of
the release of captives and slaves, and of releasing someone from a legal bond or
debt. To forgive means that I let go of the hurt and the resentment and the judgment
and the desire for revenge. I send it all away. I voluntarily release you from my
personal judgment, abandon my claims to retribution, and let you go free.
ILL: Have you ever been to a wedding where cans were tied to the back of the
couple's car, so that it made a racket when they drove off. Before the couple
got very far out of town, he would jump out and untie that garbage or cut the
strings; the racket could drive you crazy! Can you imagine leaving that tied on
for the whole honeymoon? Or worse, what would think if you saw that couple
drive by three years later, still towing all that garbage?
Some people do that! Not with tin cans on their cars, but with
unforgiveness in their relationships. Their spouse or friend or child fails, and
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every chance they get, they remind that person about his failure; they tie it on
and let it bang around; sometimes, they even pick it up and shake it themselves
just to remind them. In some relationships, people can't even hear each other
any more over the clatter of unforgiveness. You need to do what those
honeymooners did; stop the car, get out and cut that junk off and drive away
from it.
That is what forgiveness is: letting go and sending away the hurts and failures of the
past.
ILL: After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the famous general of the defeated
Confederacy, was visiting a Kentucky lady, who took him to the remains of a
grand old tree in front of her house. There she bitterly cried that its limbs and
trunk had been destroyed by Union artillery fire. She looked to Lee for a word
condemning the North or at least some sympathy for her loss. After a brief
silence, Lee said, "Cut it down, my dear, and forget about it."
That's what forgiveness is all about: cutting down, letting go, sending away, setting
free.

Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Have you have heard "to forgive is to forget"?
How many of you have tried to forgive someone for some great hurt, but discovered
that, try as you may, you couldn't forget? You forgive with your will, not your
memory. When you forgive someone, you don't necessarily forget what they did, but
you do choose to let go of the judgment and the hurt, and begin to focus on
something else. When you forgive, you may not forget immediately, but you make it
possible to forget in the future. You forget what is unimportant to you, and
forgiveness makes the offense unimportant; you decide that this thing isn't worth
hanging on to so you let it go. Forgiveness isn't the same as forgetting, but it makes
forgetting possible.
ILL: A man had a dog he loved very much. It was a valuable and well-trained
hunting dog, trained to sit at his master's feet when he had a rifle. One day, it
wandered onto a neighbor's property, and the neighbor, in a rage, got out his
rifle. The dog sat at his feet, and he shot the dog dead, then called the owner
and told him to come get his dog. The owner was furious, and began legal
proceedings; but he was also a Christian, and knew that he needed to forgive
the man. After lots of prayer, he decided to forgive him. He not only dropped
the charges against him, but he paid for counseling to help the man with his
anger.
But several weeks later, he went in to see his pastor. "I've tried to
forgive him, I've told him that I forgive him. When we talked, he cried and
begged for forgiveness. I am paying for counseling for him for his anger
problem. But I can't get the picture out of my head of my dog sitting there at
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his feet, looking up at him as he shot him. And every time I remember, it
makes me angry all over again. What is wrong with me? Haven't I forgiven
him?"
How many of you can identify with this man's question? You've tried to forgive, but
you couldn't forget, and you didn't feel any better. His pastor gave him wise advice.
He told him that you forgive with the will, not the memory, and that if he had
honestly and prayerfully chosen to forgive, and lived that out in his behavior, then he
had truly forgiven him, but the memories may be around for awhile. Given time, the
memories and the pain would subside if he had forgiven. If he hadn't forgiven, the
memories and the pain may never leave. When you choose to forgive, you choose to
forget, but it takes time for the memory to catch up with the will.

Forgiveness isn’t feeling better. When you choose to forgive, your feelings
may change, or they may not. Like the man whose dog was shot, you may be angry
for awhile. You forgive with your will, not your emotions. Just like it takes
awhile for our memory to catch up, it takes our emotions awhile too.
ILL: Corrie Ten Boom tells the story of not being able to forget a wrong done
to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and
couldn't sleep. God's help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to
whom she confessed her struggle after 2 sleepless weeks.
He said, "Up in that church tower is a bell which is rung by pulling on a
rope. After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First
ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there's a final ding and it stops. I
believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our
hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time,
we mustn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for awhile.
They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down."
Corrie writes, "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight
reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my
conversations. But the force, which was my willingness in the matter, had
gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped
altogether."
Choose to forgive, to let go and send away; the memories and the emotions will
eventually follow.
If you want to make forgiveness the climate of your relationships, you start by
understanding what forgiveness really is: forgiveness is a choice to let go and send
away. It starts in the will and eventually works its way into your memory and
emotions. You choose to let go of the rope, stop tugging on your grievances. Let it
go and send it away. Cut it down and move on!
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2. Receive forgiveness from God.

You can only give what you have. It’s much easier to give forgiveness when
you’ve received it. If you’ve never been forgiven, if you still carry the burden of
your own failures, it’s hard to set others free. But when you have been forgiven,
when you have experienced the freedom of being forgiven your own sins, it’s easier
to forgive others.
So here’s the good news: God forgives you! God has made forgiveness the
climate of His relationship with you. God decided to forgive you before you were
even born or ever sinned! Jesus came to settle the forgiveness issue once for all.
You can see it in the life of Jesus. For example, in Mark 2:1-12, some men
brought a paralytic to Jesus to be healed. "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the
paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
The religious leaders were offended: "Why does this fellow talk like that?
He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
Jesus said to them, "Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are
forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell
you, get up, take your mat and go home." He did!
Jesus has authority to forgive sins, and he does! “Your sins are forgiven!”
Have you heard him say that to you?
Not only was forgiveness a cornerstone of Jesus' work, but it was the message
that the early church leaders preached everywhere they went. For example, Luke
24:47 Jesus told the first missionaries "repentance and forgiveness of sins will be
preached in (my) name to all nations..." And in Acts 13:38, Paul preached,
"Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of
sins is proclaimed to you."
The letters of the New Testament refer over and over again to the fact of our
full forgiveness, such as Ephesians 1:7 "In him we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." And 1
John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our
sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
You are forgiven! This is the message of Jesus. You are forgiven! Do you
feel forgiven? Not always; but in those times, it is better to trust the unchanging
Word of God than your changing emotions. Tell your neighbor, "You are forgiven."
You are forgiven and you are forgiven completely.
Micah 7:19 “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins
underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” God has buried
your sins in the deepest sea—and then he posted a sign that says, “No fishing.”
Psalm 103:12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our
transgressions from us.” North and south meet, but east and west never do. You
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can travel north until you reach the north pole, and then you’ll start going south.
But you can travel east forever and never start going west. As far as the east is
from the west, that’s how far God has removed your sins from you—forever!
Acts 3:19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped
out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” The word “wiped out”
means “erased.” God takes a giant eraser to your sins and erases them, wipes them
out.
ILL: When you came in you were given a pencil with an eraser on it.
Would you write down a couple of your sins—not all of them—we don’t
have that much time. Just a couple. Now imagine Jesus standing here
saying, “Your sins are forgiven”—and erase those sins.
You are forgiven! And God’s full and complete forgiveness of you is the basis of
your forgiveness of others.
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each
other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
The reason that you can forgive is that God has forgiven you. Just like God has
erased your sins, you can erase others’ sins against you.
ILL: In fact, try this. Who do you most need to forgive? Write down a couple
of their sins against you. Now erase them, and as you do, say, “I forgive you.”
You are forgiven! Just as God has forgiven you, forgive others. Can you see how
hard it would be to erase someone else’s sins if yours were still written on the page?
Forgive as you’ve been forgiven.
Understand forgiveness; receive forgiveness; then offer forgiveness to others.

3. Offer forgiveness to others.

A. Decide ahead of time. Don't make it a matter of debate and decision each
time someone fails: "Should I forgive this time?" Make it a predisposition. You've
already decided to forgive every time, so you don't have to wrestle with that decision
each time.
This is how God has forgiven us! When Christ died on the Cross, He forgave
all of our sin, past, present and future, once for all. Once for all. The Bible uses this
phrase several times to teach that Jesus died once to pay for all sins. Once for
all—every sin was paid for, none was left out.
Romans 6:10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he
lives, he lives to God.
Hebrews 7:27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer
sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the
people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
Hebrews 10:10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the
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sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the
unrighteous, to bring you to God.
When I ask God for forgiveness, I don't have to wonder what He'll say this time,
because He has already said it, once for all: You are forgiven! God is predisposed to
forgive me. The decision has already been made. Before my life began, before I
made a single mistake, before I committed a single sin, Christ said, "I forgive you."
To make forgiveness the climate of our relationships, we need to make the
same decision ahead of time. I know that you’ll fail, so I’ve already decided to
forgive you.
ILL: Before our marriage began, in our vows, Laina and I said to each other,
"I know that you will fail. I want you to know now, that I have already
decided to forgive you. You never need to wonder if you are forgiven. Just as
He has forgiven me, so I now forgive you."
This predisposition, this deciding ahead of time, is based on some realistic
expectations. I meet people all the time who are disappointed in Christians because
they unrealistically expect them never to fail. I figured out a long time ago that
Christians fail. How many of you have said, thought or done something wrong,
something that might not be God's best, in the last week? See! So I have realistic
expectations of people; people, including Christians, including even the best of
Christians like my wife, fail; so I decide ahead of time to forgive them. That is what
Christ has done for me: forgiveness is the climate of our relationship. That is what
we must do for each other.
This is huge. If we do this, other people aren’t left wondering, “Will you
forgive me?” It’s already been decided. It’s part of the climate of our relationship.
That leads to a second thing.

B. Keep short accounts.

Ephesians 4:26 says, "Don't let the sun go down while you are still angry."
Resolve today's conflicts today; don't carry a balance sheet over to tomorrow.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24, "If you are offering your gift at the altar
(you're worshipping, in church) and there remember that your brother has something
against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to
your brother; then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your
adversary." Settle matters quickly—keep short accounts.
Many of you have heard me say that I can't remember ever going to sleep with
unresolved conflicts between Laina and me. We determined from the beginning of
our marriage to keep short accounts, to settle matters quickly, in a climate of
forgiveness. Don’t let things build up or fester; take care of it now. Just doing this
one thing would be a huge step forward for some of you! Keep short accounts.
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C. Ask for forgiveness. Give it when asked. Never assume that you are
forgiven. Never assume that the other person knows that you have forgiven them.
Always verbalize it clearly. Ask clearly and specifically. Don't say, "If I did
something...I can't imagine what...to offend you...I can't imagine why...would you
forgive me?" Say "I'm sorry", but be specific about what you did, the fact that you
were wrong, and asking for forgiveness. "I'm sorry that I got angry with you. It was
wrong of me to say that you have the brains of a slug. I was wrong; would you
forgive me?" Foggy apologies don’t get it done.
ILL: A correction printed in a Canadian newspaper: "The Ottawa Citizen and
Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn. In
correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn, published Oct. 15, we
incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our
original regrets were unacceptable, and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any
distress caused by our previous apology."
Clear as mud! Obviously they were having a little fun at Mr. Steyn’s expense. If
you want forgiveness to be the climate of your relationships, you must learn to ask
for forgiveness clearly and specifically.
When someone asks that clearly, you have to give a clear answer. The right
answer is "Yes, I forgive you." If you aren't ready to forgive, be honest. Say, "I'm
still pretty angry or hurt, and I need awhile to work through my feelings. Let's talk in
a little while." Sometimes you need to give people space to process their emotions;
that's ok. But sin needs to be confessed, forgiveness needs to be asked for, and then,
when it is asked for, it needs to be clearly given. “Yes, I forgive you.”
ILL: Peter Gillquist in his book Love is Now gives a beautiful portrait of
forgiveness. His wife Marilyn had put their 4 year old daughter Wendy down
for a nap in their bedroom. Before long, she heard Wendy jumping on the bed,
so she went in and told her to lie down. A few minutes later, the jumping
resumed, and this time Marilyn gave her a clear warning: "If you jump again,
you will get a spanking. Besides, mommy's favorite lamp is on the table next
to the bed, and I'd feel terrible if anything happened to it. Now be quiet and go
to sleep." Back in the kitchen for the third time, Marilyn thought she heard the
sound of a bouncing child. Just before she reached the bedroom, there was a
distinct crash.
After the spanking, Marilyn took Wendy in her arms, hugged her and
said, "I spanked you because you bounced on the bed after I told you not to."
Then she swept up the remains of the lamp and discarded it in the trash can,
while Wendy watched with dismay. Marilyn hugged Wendy again and said,
"As far as the lamp is concerned, mommy loves you and forgives you, and I'll
never mention it to you again.
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The next day Marilyn was walking through the apartment and
inadvertently stepped on one of Wendy's toys and smashed it. She felt terrible.
Wendy ran over and piced it up and said, "Mommy, I forgive you for that, and
I'll never ever mention it to you again."
We need that kind of forgiveness in all our relationships.