Week 2 · Lesson 1
Understanding Forgiveness
Week 2 of 23 · Unforgiveness and Grace
Who could you tell me about right now, word for word?
Something somebody did to you, and you could run the whole thing back this second. What they said. What you said. Where you were standing. And it has been years.
That is not a good memory. That is a bill you are still holding.
Key ConceptThe Debt Is Real. You Are the One Paying It.
When somebody does you wrong they hand you a bill. Something got taken. Your safety, your name, your trust, years of your life. That is real and it should be paid.
They are not paying it. That is the whole problem. They moved on. Half of them do not remember. Some of them are gone and cannot pay.
So who is covering it?
You pay it in sleep. You pay it in how you treat the next person, who did nothing to you. You pay it in energy, because carrying something for six years is work and you have been clocking in without a check.
It feels like holding somebody accountable. It is you making payments on a debt they walked away from.
Journal Question
What actually got taken from you? Write the thing itself, not the story around it. Then write what carrying it has cost you since.
Teaching PointFour Things Forgiveness Is Not
These four are why people shut down the second somebody says the word.
Nobody is asking you to say what happened was alright. It was not. It starts by naming exactly how bad it was, because if it was nothing there would be nothing to forgive.
You will remember and you should. Forgetting is how people end up back in the same room with the same person. This is putting the bill down with your eyes open.
This is the big one. You can forgive somebody and never speak to them again. You can forgive somebody and still not have them around your kids. Forgiveness is about what you carry. Trust is about what they have earned. Two different things, and nobody separates them for you.
The weakest thing you can do is stay controlled by somebody you say you hate. If a person from six years ago can still change your whole mood by walking in a room, who is running who?
Teaching PointThree Signs You Are Still Paying
You run the conversation in your head. What you would say if you saw them. You have had that argument two hundred times and won it every time, and they do not know it ever happened.
Somebody says it and your chest tightens and your jaw sets. That is not memory. That is your body still on the clock, guarding a door that closed years ago.
You cannot get paid by the one who owes you, so you start collecting from whoever is close. The person you are with. Your kids. Somebody who bumped you at a gas pump. He never took anything from you, but somebody did, and he is standing there.
Activity
Which of the three is you? Then write the name of somebody you have been collecting from who never owed you anything.
ScenarioThe One You Would Not Say Out Loud
There are the obvious ones. The one who lied on you. The one who was not there when it counted. The one who put hands on you.
Then there is the other one, and part of this room is thinking about her right now.
It is the parent.
Maybe she was there but she was not there, in the room and gone at the same time, and you learned to stay small so you would not add to it. Maybe he left and you built a whole way of being around not caring, and you got so good at it you cannot tell anymore if you are acting.
Maybe you were the one taking care of her at nine, because somebody had to.
And here is what makes it impossible. You love them. So you cannot even be all the way angry, and the anger goes somewhere else and lands on people who never touched you.
Spiritual Takeaway
He said it while it was still happening to Him
Most people who tell you to forgive are standing at a distance from anything like what happened to you.
He was not. He was beaten by professionals. Lied on by men who had eaten His food. Sold by somebody in His own circle for a set price. Left by every friend He had when it got serious. And killed by a system that knew He had done nothing.
And this is the part. While it was still going on, nails already in, not after He was safe and not years later when it had cooled off, He said Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.
Understand what that is and what it is not. He was not saying it was fine. This is the same man who walked into the temple, saw people running a hustle on the poor in God’s house, made a whip, flipped the tables and drove them out. He confronted men to their face who were standing there planning how to kill Him. He never once got run over.
So this is not a soft man telling you to let it go. This is a man with all authority, who could have called it off at any second, deciding not to spend His last hour collecting.
Colossians 3:13 says forgive as the Lord forgave you. Not as they deserve. Not once they say sorry. The way it was done for you, which was while you were still in it.
One name. Say it out loud when you are by yourself, and say the sentence: I am not collecting from him anymore. You do not have to feel it yet. Say it before you feel it and let God do the rest.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 2 Lesson