Forgiving What You Can’t Forget (Lysa TerKeurst)

Thank you so much that you came and you died for us so that we might have life and be set free. Jesus, you are so well acquainted with the hurts and the heaviness of what we walk through as humans. You loved us so much, and Hebrews that you tell us that you came to be a merciful and faithful High Priest. And how true that is because you know the grit and the grime and the gruesome heartbreak that can happen when we are hurt, betrayed, overlooked, devalued, lied about,

cheated on. Lord. You know, right before you went to the cross, Lord, you gave us these amazing words to give us an insight into how much you understand. When you cry out from the garden of Kosemite, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. And then, Lord, you prayed the same prayer I prayed so many times. Everything is possible for you, God, take this cup from me.

But then, in your great mercy, because you are a God of freedom, you reminded us at the end of that prayer these nine glorious, health shaking, demon quaking, earth shattering words. Yet not what I will, but what you will. God, Lord, help us to trade our will for thy will, because we are so confident you will. And all God's people said, amen, you can have a seat. So my journey with forgiveness.

You know, it's kind of ironic that I'm preaching a sermon today on forgiveness when this very week I have struggled to forgive something hard that has happened. You know, I feel like sometimes life is like whack a mole.

Did y'all ever play whack a mole? It's like, we get one thing taken care of, and it's like kind of calmed down, but then three more pop up, and then those three you work as hard as you can to get those to calm down, and then two more pop up over here and one over here, and it just feels like we're never going to get to the place where life can be tied up in a neat, nice bow and where things just all line up, the birds sing, the sun shines, and you think, ain't nobody

hurt my feelings today? Wouldn't that be amazing? Right? So Yeah, preaching a message on forgiveness in a very week that I've struggled with being hurt. It's a tough thing. But as I was praying about it, I thought, Lord, thank you for bringing this hurt so fresh, so I can preach this message with the deep tenderness that a message

on forgiveness deserves. You See, sometimes when we hear that word forgiveness, like I said, we will attach it to the hardest things that we have ever walked through, and we will feel like some of us like forgiveness is such an unfair gift that we now have to give to the person who hurt us the most. Have you ever felt that way about forgiveness? You see, I have

an attitude toward forgiveness. As a matter of fact, when I set out to write my book Forgiving What you Can't Forget, I did over a thousand hours with a theologian studying in the Bible exactly what God's word says about forgiveness. That is a lot of hours. But before you get all impressed, I want you to know about seven hundred and fifty of those hours I was looking for the loophole. Surely, God does not mean we are to forgive everyone, right, surely, But what I discovered is

that forgiveness is an absolute command by God. Forgiveness is an absolute command by God. But here's the comfort. Reconciliation is not a command that you always have to reconcile. God would not put us in a position where we have to stay close enough to someone who has used us, abused us, and let that person keep doing it over and over and over. Forgiveness is not their ticket to

keep hurting us. Absolutely not. So. While forgiveness is a command by God, reconciliation is very conditional, and I think we're going to see that as the message goes on. Why did I even start studying forgiveness with an attitude because I walked through some really hard stuff. A lot of you know my story. You know it's inconvenient to be a private person who lives a very public life, and so when hard things happen, everybody knows about it.

And even if I chose not to tell the story, the media would get a hold of it and they would tell the story for me. So, for those of you who don't know what my family and I have walked through the past ten years, our family changed into something that I never thought it would be. I was married almost twenty nine years, and my marriage ended in

an incredibly devastating way. I was heartbroken. I felt so incredibly betrayed, and though I fought and begged God to save my marriage for years and years and years, I would forgive, and then things would fall apart. I would forgive, and then things would fall apart. I would forgive, and then things would fall apart. And in the end, I walked through the devastation of an unwanted divorce. It was hard, it was awful, and it was something I never thought

my family would face. But I'm not unique with that story. So many of you have a very similar story to me. And you came to church this week and you were just hoping that I would preach a message about how bad people really are, you know, and then you walk in here and you're like, dang, she's preaching on forgiveness. Great, you know, But I just want you to know I understand the hurt. And maybe your story is nothing like mine, but here's what I know to be true about all

of us. We've either just been through so hurt, we're in the middle of some hurt, or we're about to go through some hurt. And you go, wow, that's not very positive. No, I'm positive we've either been through some hurt, we in some hurt, We've had to go through some hurt, right, And so I think this is a message for all

of us. In the middle of one of the hardest parts of my journey, I was in one of those places where it was hard to get out of bed, and I remember I had scheduled a counseling appointment, and I drove up to the counselor's office and I remember looking in the riover mirror and thinking, how long has it actually been since I washed my hair. Now, you

with short hair, you will not understand this. But for those of you with hair that's more complicated like my hair, you know, the top knot is God's gift to us, right, because you can just have dirty hair whip it up into a top knot. And so as I looked at my reflection, I thought to myself, I look awful. And then I was walking into the counselor's office and I had a second thought, I can't remember if I put

on deodorant today or not. And I thought, you know, I can deal with dirty hair, but I'm not walking in my counseling a point of stinking. And so I went to the bathroom and I thought, I am a resourceful girl, and so I opened up the bottom cabinet and there was no deodorant in there, but there was peach air freshener, and I thought that'll do, and so I applied the peach air freshener to me, and I walked into that counseling session, and I smelled like a

freshly baked peach cobbler. I really did. The counselor looked at me. His name is Jim. Jim has been such an incredible gift to me and my family, and so I looked at Jim, and Jim looked at me and he said, catch me up. How are you doing? And I said not well at all. I said, I'm hurting so bad. I just don't want to get out of bed some days. And he said, huh, well, today is a good day then for us to start working on forgiveness. And I looked back at him and I said, are

you high, Mike? Truly? Like I just said, I am hurting, and now you say we have to work on forgiveness. Yeah, I'm not going to do that today. And he said, okay, okay, why don't we start with your pain? And he handed me a big stack of three by five cards and I said, great, very well acquainted with my pain, I

will definitely be able to participate in this activity. And so he handed me this stack of three by five cards and he told me to write one thing on each card of something that had been done that had hurt me, something that had been said to me that had hurt me. Just write down all the facts of

the trauma that you've experienced. And so I did. I wrote card after card after card after card, and then he told me to lay out the cards on the floor of his office, and I did that, and before too long, the entire office floor was full of those cards. And as I turned and placed the last card and I looked at all of that pain, I thought to myself, no wonder, I feel so heavy inside. No wonder, I don't want to get out of bed because look at

all I have been carrying. And so I looked up at Jim, and Jim did the best thing that anybody could do in a situation like that. He looked back at me and he said, I believe you. What's been done to you is terrible. It should have never happened. And if no other human ever dares to say these words, I'll say them to you. I am so sorry. I'm

so sorry. And in that moment, something in me softened, and I realized I have been waiting all this time for the person who hurt me to give me that gift, to acknowledge how badly they've hurt me, to say that they were sorry, to do some kind of repentance and

to promise they would never ever do it again. But if I continue to wait for that person who hurt me to say they're sorry before I can heal and move forward, then I am allowing that person to hurt me twice, because that's a choice they may never ever make right. And I realized in that moment, I didn't really need that person to say that they were sorry. What I needed was for another human to bear witness to the pain of what I'd walk through. And so

I want to do that for you today. Before we even get into the scriptures and the message, I want to say to you, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that they said what they said. I'm sorry that they didn't say what they should have said. I'm sorry that they hurt you. I'm sorry that they stole from you. I'm sorry that they belittled you. I'm sorry that they abused you. I'm so sorry for what you've gone through. But friend, you deserve to stop suffering because

of what another person has done to you. Right, deserve to stop suffering because of what another person has done to you. Forgiveness It's my choice. It's your choice. We can take a stake and drive it in the ground today, on this very day, and say I refuse to keep suffering because of what they did to me. Forgiveness is my choice, and I choose to receive this provision from God to help my human heart heal. That's what forgiveness really is. Now here's the other thing about forgiveness that

can seem very very complicated forgiveness. It can seem if we forgive that person, then that's us saying that what they did is now okay, and it's not okay. So that's not what forgiveness means. Forgiveness can seem like, well, okay, if I participate and I forgive, does that mean that I can't ever process this Again, That's not what forgiveness means.

You can keep processing, you can keep healing. And also, for a long time, I felt like a forgiveness failure because I would say that I forgave that person, and then a minute down the road or a week later, all of a sudden, I would get triggered in my pain. Do you know what a trigger is? Yes? Is so complicated, right, don't you wish we could time triggers like Tuesday night would be a good time for a trigger to hit,

and so let's schedule it. I'll be in the bathtub, I'll be taking communion and I'll be listening to praise songs, right, and then a trigger can hit me and I will just cry it all out in the privacy of my own bathtub. Right. But that's not how triggers happen. Triggers just happen in the middle of our every day. And have you ever been hit with a trigger. You've already forgiven that person, but then a trigger hits and the pain feels so fresh, and you think to yourself, I'm

bitter still. I must be a forgiveness failure. You're not a frigid giveness failure. Every trauma is two parts. It's fact an impact. Therefore, forgiveness can be two parts as well. We can forgive for the facts of what happened, and that satisfies the command of God to forgive. At the same time, we can also walk through the healing process of healing from the impact and forgiving for the impact. What that person did to us. It cost us something. That's the impact, and that is going to take time.

I used to think that triggers were such a curse, But now I see it as God's mercy, because if the full impact would have hit me at once, it probably would have killed me. So how good of God to let the impact leak into my life over time. As I'm healing, I've already forgiven for the fact. But then when an impact hits me, when a trigger hits me, and I realize an impact is nothing more than an indication. There's a little more healing needed right here. There's a

little more forgiveness needed right here. So I had all those cards laid out on Jim's office floor, and then he handed me a stack of red felt squares and he looked at me and he said, Lisa, I think you should just go card by card by card, and you should make the choice to forgive. And I said, that's great, except my mouth will say it, and my feelings haven't signed up for it yet. So what do I do about that?

red card. The blood of Jesus will surely cover it. And when I was done and I looked back, I didn't have all that pain staring back at me. I saw the beautiful work of Jesus Christ. Jesus died so that we could receive God's forgiveness. And as we receive God's forgiveness, we simply must cooperate with his forgiveness as his forgiveness flows to us, because we are not perfect, and we have also sinned and fallen short. But that

doesn't justify what they did at all. And maybe we didn't participate in in in that situation where they hurt us, but maybe we've been carrying some bitterness. And so as we receive God's forgiveness as it flows to us, we must cooperate with it and then let us flow through us to other people. We don't have to originate forgiveness. I used to feel like I would just have to grit my teeth like I forgive you and conjure up

some forgiveness from mimy. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness originates from God, flows to us, flows through us, and it goes to other people. So what does God's word say about forgiveness? I want to start with Matthew chapter six, verses nine through thirteen. I find it pretty amazing that when Jesus was asked how should we pray, think about all the things that could be taught in that moment of how you can pray. This is Jesus and the people are

asking him how do we pray? So if I was put in charge of saying the ultimate Lord's prayer, I probably would never have thought that forgiveness should be such a big part of it. And yet Jesus knows the human heart so well. He answers the people, this is then, how you should pray our Father in heaven, how it would be your name, your kingdom, Come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as

we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And then he goes on in verse fourteen and as another little section, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Isn't it incredible that of all those words that we just study, that's in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, that forgiveness

is one of the main subjects in that prayer. And this is supposed to be a daily prayer. In other words, each day when we wake up, we should pray something similar to this. We should pray our Father in heaven, how would be your name, your kingdom? Con Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, that daily provision. That's how I know this is a daily prayer. And then make

forgiveness part of that prayer. How incredible would it be if we laid in our beds before our feet ever hit the floor, and we wake up and the day is fresh, and there's new opportunities, and we decided one of the main things we're going to do before we get out of bed, is that we are already going to pre forgive the fools that hurt us that day. Right, wouldn't that be so amazing? It would be so amazing.

You know where I got this idea years ago? Pastor Steven preached a message on a fence, and he brought up a fence up here was anybody else here? It was so amazing, right, And so I started doing this, And how great is it that as I walk into my day, inevitably it's like I'll be happy, happy, happy, and then somebody bumps into my happy And it used to be that they would hijack my day because of their foolish situation whatever they were doing to me, right,

But now I'm like, oh, you do, you boo? You get all stirred up right here in the coffee line because they frapaid your latte and waylaid your whole day. Okay, I got it right. I mean, if that's the worst thing that happened to me today, I would still have

a pretty good day. But you do, you boo, because you know what, You're the person I brak for this morning, and I have already preforgiven you and Just because you laid down on a fence does not mean I'm going to pick it up, carry it with me, and let it ruin my whole day. Right. It is incredible what can happen when we make forgiveness part of our everyday routine, eating, sleeping, breathing, loving, forgiving. But there's one other thing I want to point out.

In this section of the Lord's Prayer. Right after we're instructed to forgive, it says, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. There is a pattern throughout scripture, and it is all throughout scripture wherever there's unattended to anger, bitterness, resentment, desires for revenge. Right near that passage, it's instructive. We are instructed to forgive, and if we don't, the evil one comes close. It is like drop dropping blood in a body of water

and it draws the sharks near. Let me show you a couple of other passages where we see this very thing. If we go all the way back to Genesis in Genesis chapter four, verses two through seven. Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. Adam and Eve had two children, Cain and Abel, Right, two brothers. Abel kept

the flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord, and Abel also brought an offering fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flocks. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Now some people, as we've studied these scriptures, you know, some people really are concerned.

Why is it that the Lord favored Abel's offering and not Cain's offering. Theologians have debated this, but I'm going to give you what I personally see in the scripture. Here it says that in the course of time, Cain brought his offering, but Abel brought his first fruits, right his first born. And so I don't know if that's what it is, but I do know that whatever it was, the Lord was not pleased with Cain, and Cain was

very angry and his face was downcast. Now, if you've studied the Bible before, you know that Cain goes on to murder his brother Abel. But there's something that happens in between Cain being very angry and Cain murdering his brother. The Lord himself comes and talks to Cain. What how many times have I just prayed? Lord? I will not tell anybody, but if you can just come right here into my closet, let me see you and tell me

what to do. I will listen, right. And I know that that's not going to happen, but if it did happen, I would keep it a secret, just between me and you. But look what happens here. Cain gets that. The Lord comes to Cain and says, in verse six, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you

must rule over it. Unattended to anger, and sin is crouching out the door, right, and it says, sin is crouching out your door, desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Let's look at one other place in scripture Ephesians, chapter four, starting in verse twenty six, in your anger, do not sin do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do

not give the devil a foothold. And then it goes on in verse twenty nine to say, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not greet the Holy Spirit with whom you recealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other, just

as in Christ, God forgave you. We don't want to reduce our life down to the limitations of living heard. There is a big, beautiful world out there, full of such possibilities that you do not want to miss. And if we are so stuck on the hurt that has been caused to us and we think about it over and over and over and over, that's just allowing that trauma to traumatize us over and over and over. When cruel things have been done to you, it is life altering,

but it does not have to be life ruining. Forgiveness forgiveness is God's provision for us to heal. Forgiveness is actually a gift from God. Now, if I were you and I was sitting there and I was thinking, Okay, that's nice, But what do I do when the person who hurt me seems to get away with everything? What

do I do about that? Because honestly, as I take an assessment in my heart, sometimes the very thing that pull's bitterness back into my feelings is that it feels like they're off living in happy, happy world and I'm here dealing with all the pain and the fallout of the decisions. Have you ever been there, Well, let me read you what the scripture says Galatians six seven through eight. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh

from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. God will not be mocked. There's a story of Esther, and there's several characters in Esther, but there's this one character that his name is Hayman, and he has bent on destroying the Jewish people. Mordecai, Esther's uncle finds out about Hayman's plans. Esther has access to the king, and so through the course of time, Esther is able to reveal

Hayman's plot to the king. The very gallows that Hayman built. I want you to listen to what scriptures said. The very gallows that Haman built to kill the Jewish people are the very gallows that he was then hanged on. Esther seventeen. So they hanged Hayman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Romans twelve nineteen through twenty one. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written it is mine

to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heat burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil. Sin is crouching at your door, but you must rule over You must rule over it. Do not let it have you. Do not give the devil a foothold in your anger. Do not sin, Do not give the devil a foothold, Lord, deliver us from the evil one,

And forgiveness is such a powerful part of that. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. I think that the very vest the very best time to forgive is before we're ever offended. But the next best time to forgive is right now. You know. I started doing these things as I was working on forgiveness because I really had reduced my life down to the

limitations of living hurt. I really had done that. I don't know if you can just check your heart and see, are there places where I've limited myself because of the hurt that I've endured? Right? And so I started doing these things called rebellious acts of resilience. And what a

rebellious act of resilience? First of all, I love the word rebellious because I'm such a rule follower that it kind of feels good to say I'm doing something rebellious, honestly, But what a rebellious act of forgiveness is is for me to start listening to the I can'ts and I don't in my vocabulary. So I had forgiven for the hurt that it happened to me, but I was still dealing with the impact very much. So I went on

a beach trip with some friends. And on this beach trip we had a little house and the ice maker wasn't working. Now I am very into ice, especially at the beach. I like cold things, very very cold. I have this thing about the beach. I like to pack it cooler with ice in it. I like to put my water and my Dike Cob. Don't send me a message about that. I understand how that it is for me. I understand that police use it to clean blood off

the road. I got the whole thing, okay. But I like my water, and I like my Dike coke, my little sandwich, and I put it in a cooler with some ice, go down to the beach, and that is my happy place. I just love it. The problem was I quickly discovered the ice maker was broken, and I had an out of portion reaction to the situation at hand. I was like yet another thing he's taken from me. You see, if he would have been faithful, then we

would still be married. And if we were so married, he would be here and he would fix the ice maker. But because he isn't here, I can't have ice, you know. And I'm like, it's ice, Lisa, like it's ice, right, But boy, did it flood me with I can't. I can't. I can't. That's reducing your life down to the limitations of living hurt. And so I stopped myself after being very embarrassed at my overreaction, and I said, but what if I could? What if I could? And so I

googled instructions how do you fix an ice maker? I am terrible with written instructions. They were utterly unhelpful. But then I remembered the YouTube, y'all, and so I YouTube directions, how do you fix an ice maker? And I thought, what's the worst that can happen? It's already broke? What if I broke it more? Okay, you know? And I tinkered with it, and I looked at the video and I did what it said and I fixed that ice

mak God. And in that moment, it wasn't like I epically healed, but I absolutely epically proved to myself I still have a lot of life to live. I reduced, I refused to reduce my life down to the limitations of living hurt. And when that I fell into that bucket, y'all. I did the EMC hammer dance around the kitchen, right. It was glorious. So then my two friends who were with me, they said, hey, Lisa, let's go down to the ocean. And I thought, great, I've got my cooler now,

all prepared. So I get my book, I get my towel, I get my chair and my little cooler and I'm headed down to the ocean. And my friend Jess, who was with me, she says, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I have a boogie board for you. And I said, why do I need a boogy board because I'm gonna sit in my chair and read my book. That does not require a boogie board, right, And she said no, no, no, no, We're going to play in the ocean. I said, oh, I don't do oceans. There are sharks in there that

eat people every day. There's like shells that cut your feet, jellyfish that sting. I don't do oceans. And we sat down on the beach. She grabbed her boogie board. She went and jumped into the water. But before she did that, she laid my boogie board right in front of me because she had carried it down for me, and I was looking at her. I was looking at that boogie board, and I saw her laughing and smiling, and I kept thinking, I don't do oceans. But then I stopped myself again.

I'm not going to reduce my life down to the limitations of living hurt. Therefore, what if I did? What if I did? And before my overthinking brain could kick in, I grabbed that boogie board. I went and I jumped into the ocean. It was disastrous. The wave took me under. My bathing suit bottoms came down. It was like a

whole situation, you know. I stood up. I did get my bathing suit bottoms back on, just to clarify, and then I laughed and I played, and for a few minutes I wasn't a woman who was living in pain. I was that same care free person that I had been for so long. I can't I don't listen for those types of words, because even after you've forgiven, sometimes you stay stuck in this place where you just feel like you can't move forward rebellious acts of resilience. You can,

and you will, and you should, and it is good right. Indeed, the best time to forgive is before we're ever offended. But the next best time is now, if you're physically able, will you please stand. I have something that I've written that I really want to share with you. This is a declaration. And when I wrote this, it was a message really to myself, because I remember waking up at two am in the morning and just feeling the weight of all that I was facing. Two am is such

a complicated hour, isn't it. It's like too late to call your late friends, too early to call your early friends. So it is just you, right, And so often I would pray just the simplest prayers, like Jesus, I love you and you love me, and that's all I've got. And so to comfort myself, a lot of times I would pull out my journal and I would write declarations. So this declaration was something that I wrote for myself, but I'm so grateful I get to share it with

you today. This is forgiveness, making the decision that the ones who hurt you no longer get to limit you, label you, or project the lies they believe about themselves onto you. Somewhere along the way, they got hurt, really really hurt. Maybe they really aren't necessarily bad people, but chances are maybe they're unhealed people. But honestly, aren't we all unhealed people? Do we ever really get to the place where we're like, finally I figured it all out,

like I'm not going to do anything else or wrong. No, we never get to that place. On this side of eternity. We can grow, we can go to counseling, we can study the Bible, we can allow God to have his way with the sanctification process, all of that. But you see, if if I look at people who have hurt me and I just say to myself like they're such bad people, then forgiveness will feel like a really unfair gift that I have to give. But if I just change my

perspective and I say they're unhealed people, it helps. And something happened to them along the way. I don't have to know what it is. But if they're doing something cruel to you, something cruel has been done to them, it doesn't make it right, It doesn't justify it. It's just a fact to consider. When people have a deep wound, they feel they must protect the pain from that festering place is often what they'll project. So you must make the decision that their offense will not define you or

confine you by the smallness of bitterness. The sum total of your one incredible life must not be reduced to the limitations of living hurt. The completely delightful, beautiful, fun and brilliant way God made you must not be tainted by someone else who lost their way. You've got much too much going for you to be stunted by anger or haunted by resentment, or held back by fear. Grow into God's grace by giving forgiveness kindly and receiving it freely.

Throw your arms up in victory and declare, I'm free to forgive so that I can live. Do it once, do it twice, do it seventy times seven. Make it an undeniable fact that you are indeed bound one day for heaven. This forgiveness message you dare to declare is evidence of Jesus in you that not one soul can deny. Sing it like an anthem that the one who was crushed will not have their joy hushed. Scatter it like confetti, coloring bland, surviving with the radiance of thriving. Release it

like the fantastic fragrance everyone loves and always wants more of. Now, put your fingers on your pulse. Go ahead, you can do it. Do you feel that it's your heart is beating, pumping, willing you to press onward and upward your life, your future is full of possibility, new joys that you do not want to miss. So maybe it's time to get carried away dancing to that song, you know, the one where you can't stay down when its rhythm gets turned

all the way up. And if it's not a pray song, if it's not a Jesus song, sing it to Jesus anyways, Right, it's time to get moving and on with living. This, my friends, is the power of forgiving.