From Bitterness to Forgiveness with Phil Pringle

Thanks for joining us today. Such a pleasure to have you with us. I'm Phil Pringle. This is my podcast where I'll be sharing the Word of God, which will strengthen you, inspire you, equip you, and empower you for life. Let's go. go.

Hey, everyone. I believe in the local church. Ever since we started our church way back in 1980. We've been planting churches all around the world in major cities, villages, towns, and we have seen ourselves plant churches now in over 60 nations in the earth. Last year, we planned to plant 20 churches and we ended up planting 45. This year we're going to plant another 42 churches.

I'd like to invite you to become a partner with us in this grand plan that God has called us to, planting His magnificent church all around the world. It's not an inexpensive exercise to plant churches. It costs us a lot to support pastors when they're just starting out and their families and their structures, their circumstances, renting houses, needing a car. And in some of these places, they're very poor and we want to help them rise up and plant great churches in their nations.

You can help us by jumping over to our website, C3 Church Global, and there you will find a giving section, and you can give towards helping us plant churches all around the world. I'm praying for you that as you give, the blessing of God will rest upon your life in abundance. In Jesus' name, God bless you.

If I'm wounded in my heart, is it because I took offense, but it really wasn't intended? Or did people really reach out and try to wound me? I mean, either way, can I help you find a pathway to freedom? One of the most incredible scriptures that I have found lately is Mark 6, verse 3, where the town of Nazareth, where Jesus was born, came out to see him. And it says, they all said, isn't this the carpenter, the son of Miriam and

the brother of Jacob and Joseph and Judah and Simon? I mean, Jesus had brothers and sisters. Aren't his sisters here with us? And it says, and they took offense at him. So it's one thing when people initiate an offensive action against us that wounds us, but it's another thing when people didn't intend any offense at all and we take offense that wasn't even intended. And we live in a time when this happens more commonly than it ought to.

So we've got to decide if I'm wounded in my heart, is it because I took offense, but it really wasn't intended? Or did people really reach out and try to wound me? I mean, either way. Can I help you find a pathway to freedom so that you're not carrying the heaviest weight in life that you can carry as a grudge and to actually get it off our shoulders and the torment that goes around in our mind when we nurse and rehearse a hurt, a wound in our lives.

And they can be hard to get rid of because it just lays there in our heart open. And we keep thinking about it, thinking about it. And especially if we hang out with the wrong kind of people who just feed into it and they're kind of toxic or septic. We need antiseptic friends who don't take us there and actually help us heal and get beyond that so we can move on and not stay stuck in the past.

You know, let me tell you a story about in the early days of pastoring. Chris and I had started a church in a town called Littleton in New Zealand, just out of Christchurch. And this little lady came to Christ, whose name was Prim, beautiful little English lady and her husband. They were both in their 60s and he didn't come to church. He didn't want to come to church. So I went around and visited him and I said, hey, John, it's great to have Prim coming along to church.

Would you like to come? He said, well, you'll never get me along there. I said, why not, John? And he was wheezing as he talked, like coughing. Splattering as he talked. It's like you got the weather, not the news when you talk to him. And it was challenging. But he started, I said, tell me your story. So he started to tell me his story.

He said, well, I got to my retirement age and I had a printing business and I decided I'd bring in and a manager so I could go out and play golf and enjoy life, and he could look after the business. He didn't do a background check on the guy, and he was a bankrupt. He owed money everywhere. So soon as he was a partner legally with John, the creditors all swooped in and took everything.

They took John's superannuation fund. They took the business, sold all the printing machines, took his boat, took his house, everything. everything. And so he was bitter. He was more than just wounded. He was deeply sour, and there's nothing going to fix it. He just hated God, hated people, didn't want anything to do. He's completely demoralized. So I just let him keep talking. And days went by, and I would go back and visit him and just talk it through with him and say, hi, how you doing?

Not try and and resurface the problems he was facing. He said to me, look, you know, if there is a God. I just want him to kill that guy. That's what he told me. He said, I've got a gun out in the front room. If that guy goes past, I'm just going to shoot him. And he said, if there is a God, my only prayer is that this God walk in front of me while I'm driving so I can run him down. That was where his bitterness had morphed into just murderous thoughts.

I mean, that's where some people live. I'm thinking, it's serious. There are outcomes that are serious. There are consequences to harboring an unforgiveness, an offense. So eventually, I managed to get him to pray a prayer. I said, John, why don't you just at least pray a prayer to ask Jesus to help you get willing even to be open? He said, oh, yeah, all right. And he's grumbling and wheezing and coughing. He also smoked like chain smoking.

And so he prayed a prayer. He said, all right, Jesus, and as much as he could, and I led him and helped him and prayed for him. Well, the next day, I rang him up in the morning. I said, hey, John, how are you after that prayer today? And he was talking on the phone. He said, well, actually, I'm feeling pretty good. I said, John, you're not wheezing. You're not coughing. He said, I know. I said, that's a miracle, John. That's incredible.

He said, yeah, yeah, it is a miracle. But he said, you know what? That's not the big miracle. I said, what's the big miracle? He said, well, every night when I would go to bed and go to sleep. Before I went to sleep, I would reach in to my heart, and I had like a cage in there with that guy in the cage. And I'd take it out. I'd open the door, and I'd pull him out, and I'd just pretend to stab him in my mind until I was satisfied.

And then I'd close the cage, put him back in there, and go to sleep. He said, but last night, I took that cage out. I opened the door. I took that man out. And I said, I forgive you. And I let him go and I'm free. He said, I'm free. I can't believe how free I feel. I'm not tormented, but I'm literally free. That was how John got healed of his offense. When he found Jesus, give him the ability and the power to forgive, just like Christ did on the cross.

All the people who had betrayed him, all the people who had left him, all the people who were whipping him and putting a spear in his side and nailing him to a cross, he said forgive them father they don't know what they do he forgave it can be very challenging, but it's the key to freedom i'm praying for you right now that whatever's happened in your life wherever you've been wounded that you'd be healed in the name of

jesus i declare freedom Freedom will come to you as you let go the past so that you can take hold of your future.

Hit subscribe. Look forward to talking with you again soon. Hey, thanks for jumping on this podcast today. It's been a pleasure sharing with you. Check out more content on Instagram or on my YouTube channel. Just search Phil Pringle. Or else you can go to my website, philpringle.com and check out my latest books, artwork and my blog. Look forward to talking again soon. See you then.