Trust

all right i'm back so as we've been doing on wednesday nights for those who are new i'm going to let you know i'm going to ask you how's the beginning part of your week been with the show of your hand one being the worst week you've ever had five being the best you've ever had and anything in between i want you to hold up your hand and show me how your week's been so far we got a four got some threes twos oh four wow how's your week been nice all right hold him up hold him up hold him up all right if you feel comfortable i want you to find look across the room look around the room everyone hold your hold your hands up hold your numbers up look around the room look around the room look around the room if you feel comfortable i want you to go find somebody that has your same number that you haven't talked to yet go find somebody that means you can stand up and go and i want you to ask them about their week what's been the best part if it's if they got a four or five why is it so good they've got a one two why is it so bad go find somebody ask them how their week's been i want you to learn all about it learn all about it all right you can go back to your seat go back to your seat all right well somebody tell me what have we been talking about on wednesday nights tell me louder trust thank you all right so i'm sure you can imagine what's happening up here this is not me redecorating the church this is an actual um thing we're gonna use okay so here's what we're gonna do actually i need two teams of two people okay i need two teams of two people you can raise your hand to volunteer anybody nobody wants to come on mandy all right mandy all right tyler come on you can be her partner come on tyler okay i pick i pick the people who are picking other people all right here we go and i need one more team all right come on mari do you want to choose your partner do you want me to choose them for you hmm come on eloise all right here we go okay we have two teams we have mandy and tyler everybody give it up for mandy and tyler we have amari and eloise everybody give it up for mario and eloise they might be the favorite all right here we go okay so everybody all four of you come join me over here to the beginning of our obstacle course okay i want you to stand right here at the trust okay eloise you come up here with me and man do you come up here with me all right guys yep we're gonna go one team at a time should we rock rock paper scissors see who goes first all right tyler you're first come on amar you can stand up here with me all right mandy here's what's going to happen tyler's going to be blindfolded by one of our fancy cic t-shirts and with only your voice in the microphone you're going to direct him through yeah through the obstacle course until he reaches this truss okay you'll be deducted i'll take i don't know what i'm gonna deduct if you hit something then you'll be deducted okay you gotta like do it well you know you can't just like plow through everything okay i'm gonna time it the team who has the best time is gonna be the winner all right everybody give it up for him that is so weak come on give it up for him okay so everybody give it up for tyler he's gonna go first okay mario will you blindfold tyler using our cic t-shirt make sure he can't see anything but also make sure he can breathe uh you can use the sleeves yeah use the sleeves and tie it around his face you're gonna need your glasses i'm just kidding okay all right so mandy's gonna tell him all right can you see anything i'm a little nervous i'm not gonna lie yes i'm sorry i forgot to say you have to stay on the carpet you cannot come off the carpet okay the strip of carpet is your playing field if you go off you have to go i'll deduct points or something i don't know okay all right i'm not making this up as i go along here we go all right tyler are you ready i was gonna make you spin around but that seems cruel okay all right mandy are you ready as soon as you start talking and giving direction i'll start the time all right everybody cheer for tyler let's go straight straight straight straight i'll tell you and stop keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going stop step over over step okay left go left a little left left left straight straight straight straight straight straight straight yeah stop uh you might can squeeze through there okay go sideways to the left yeah there you go there you go keep going yeah there's a little corner there okay uh keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going keep going okay stop go straight straight straight okay turn your body okay go straight to the right to the right to the right straight straight okay straight lift your foot up you're left okay straight straight okay go lift do the left okay left left okay straight straight go straight stop go sideways to the right just step side no no keep your butt yeah steps up sideways like sideways listen keep going sideways go we're timed here you gotta step it up son okay go straight go straight go straight here you go great job everybody give up for tyler let me have the t-shirt all right they did it in one minute and 43 seconds do you think you can beat it okay tyler will you blindfold tomorrow please you oh no no no you lost all right eloise i'm gonna give you the microphone you have to beat one minute and 43 seconds okay are you ready are you sure all right everybody give it up for amari hang on i need you to breathe okay all right eloise i'm gonna give you the mic and then i'm gonna start the time you ready go straight straight straight okay stop stop you're going off you're going come on stop to the left left okay um step over left a little straight right okay good stop straight stop turn like straight stop um left left straight stop right you're going on straight you're going off right left left left um keep going left straight stop right okay stop forward all right thank you give it up for eloise and amari all right here you go elise you can have this thank you you guys can go be seated okay they did it in okay they did a minute and 15 seconds but he stepped off so i don't know maybe it's tied all right so for a second i want to talk about and if i could get a couple guys to help me put these chairs back um they all go in that corner over there thank you thank you thank you okay so what did you notice about the two different ways the two different styles that they used to direct their person anybody you don't have to raise your hand what did you notice what did they do differently what did mandy and eloise do differently did anybody catch it okay eloise got to see it first yeah what else what was it about i didn't plan this but this worked out beautifully who was side by side the first people were side by side what did mandy do she walked beside him the whole time right all right i mean they both made it to the end right but who made it to the end without stepping off you know okay great observation great observation all right what else did you notice anything else say it louder no okay all right that was great so in this obstacle of trust right you have to use your vision is taken away you have to use your the your hearing only and the person's not holding your hand but there's verbally walking you through it right you got to kind of see the course but when your site is kind of taken right it makes it way more difficult okay um just like with trust you know sometimes if you can't really see right you are blinded by whatever it may be stress brokenness whatever right you need to have that person walking beside you to help you rebuild that to feel more comfortable okay everybody give it up for our volunteers thank you very much all right all right thank you guys so much oh it's so good to see y'all tonight is it all right if i sit on a stool again i promise you i'm not going charismatic all right but i enjoy it with this type of setting this type of conversation i really enjoy uh the the more the more laid back approach and and kind of honestly it's really i just don't want to be like far far away from everyone i really miss hanging out with you all so anyway this this month we've been talking about trust and we we established a few different things on how trust works and we we we defined it out a little bit we we started out with uh looking at how maybe a way that we could conceptualize it with a triangle as far as trust being about logic empathy and uh authenticity or being genuine and how as an individual we can sense when someone's not being trustworthy or when we're not put we're ourselves are not being trustworthy when we're i don't know when we're lacking that set that sense of one of those things and as brother dan's handing this out last week we got into trusting again and it's about trust after we've been betrayed or after we've been hurt and it's a front and back sheet uh but the front side it's got it's got these uh it's got the circles got this diagram and it steps it out and it talks about trust trusting again putting it into a process putting it into making it something that we can define out something that we can take an emotional situation we can take a a very hard situation and we can kind of step it out into areas that we can somewhat now somewhat i say get through this and see ourselves getting through hurt we may not as as i've said before i heard i heard a preacher say before we we never get over some things but we can get through them and then we can as time goes on time doesn't just heal wounds because if you just leave a wound open over time you'll die right if you don't go to the doctor and it's a big enough wound you'll die but it does take time to heal with proper care with proper attention to that we we looked at matthew 5 38 said jesus said you've you you've heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth right but we all know that a bunch of eyeless to olives toothless people would be run around if we stood by that that's a samuel not not jesus that's what he goes on to say but i say to you do not resist even one but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek turn to him the other also so turn the other cheek uh it's it's we take it as a physical turning of the cheat and and that was what it was meaning but it also means uh it can be emotional it can be it's something personal to us it can be something internal of how do we turn the other cheek uh peter asked this he said uh he said you know master he said shall i forgive my brother seven times but jesus said 77 times or seven times seven seventy times seven forgive and forgive how do we do that how do we because it's so easy to say i right i forgive but it's so hard to really do it's so hard to really forgive someone i told i told you guys last week it was it's it's easier for me or i've in my personal experience it's been easier to ask someone for forgiveness than it has been for me to forgive right because when when i've been hurt when when i've been betrayed i didn't do anything but i was a i was hurt in this why why am i giving anything up uh and that's that's what we're gonna get to tonight we're going to talk through the we set this the stage last week of of looking at the this the post-betrayal syndrome and we looked at how uh it affects us in the in the emotions and the things we go through uh duron i forgot to do this before i started but there's a setting there it's like it's pre serv it's like uh it's sunday school setting on the lighting and it's for the live stream or i'm gonna just be sitting in the dark here uh and oh yeah see i just wanted to be in the spotlight that was that was it but as you can see this post betrayal syndrome it's it's broken out into five steps it's broken out into five stages and the first one when it's it's physical and stage one physical and mental versus emotional and spiritual it's when we get out of balance all right that's why i borrowed sister sloane's table tonight because before but generally speaking okay it's been found that before we we were betrayed before we get to a discovery of an event a lot of times we've gotten and it's not it's this is not this is not saying something this is not laying fault or blame this is just looking at where we were people are and where we are uh generally speaking before an event okay something's out of whack something is out of balance we we tend to to be focused on the physical and mental of going about life versus taking time slowing down being balanced in the emotional or the spiritual side and we're kind of like a table with just one leg or just two legs i didn't feel comfortable enough balancing it on just two legs but it's not really good just a little bit of something and it's going to break down right just a little bit of something and it's all going to fall apart that's that's generally where we are in stage one we're treading water so to speak in stage two it's actually where it breaks down we discover that we've been betrayed and and please let me uh let me try to be clinical with this that way we're not all crying okay i don't i don't want us all to like i'm not a good i'm not good with that people start crying i'll be like all right it's over we're done dismissed right but no that's that's not what it's about this is about looking at it if we can from an outside perspective looking in and let's see how our body our minds our emotion react so in stage two we break down of the body the mind our world view depending on how deep this this betrayal was it can break it can break us down physically our our body can shut down mentally we can we cannot be able we cannot be able to think we cannot be able to comprehend uh there's all kinds of different things that go with that our world view depending on how deep this trust and how tied we were to that individual our entire world can be shattered in just a minute and i mean and then in stage three this is where our body kicks in our instincts kick in to where we're like okay this isn't going to kill me i feel like i've gotten hit by a train that i can recover you're still alive and your body starts automatically doing something even though you may not even have the will to live even though you everything else is shattered there's survival instincts you still got to eat you still have to to breathe you still have to to go to sleep and you still have to wake up it the quality of those things are not it may not be very good but you still you're still doing that now this this involves and we looked at some strategies there on what to do in that self-care strategies of of at least trying to be mindful of having times to meditate to pray to read so having times to watch our diet to at least be understanding of those to do physical exercise some people may even take up karate or kickboxing or uh something in order to get get this inner frustration this inner uh emotion channeled somewhere um and then we we closed out that at our ending last week and this is where we come into stage four so at at this point in time this is this is where you have the first the shock of betrayal and then it's followed by stage two the physical mental and emotional and then the drive to survive and then as stage four sets in it's adjusting to a new normal that is something that is not easy to do my my entire world has been shattered i'm in shambles how do i go on i'm eating i'm sleeping i'm going to work i'm going to school um i'm i'm just surviving day to day how do i get past the point of being able to how do i how do i think about tomorrow how do i think about next week how do i get that back how do i plan for the future and this is this is where it starts first you it depending on and this this goes in different types but you may it's important to grieve that to let your body feel that to let your body to acknowledge to yourself that i have been hurt i have lost something i have i have felt betrayal i have uh this my expectations are shattered now uh we grieve over what we believe we had and now do not have we grieve over what we wanted and what we will not have going forward we grieve over a certain expectation we had of what relationship should include we grieve over broken promises shattered trust and unmet expectations it feels as though our world or a piece of us has died and most likely deep down inside a piece of us has there's something in us that's been killed off we've got to be careful because we can come real cynical right and we'll get we'll get to that but we have to allow this is this is a point that we have to allow ourselves to to admit to ourselves because right one of the easiest things to do when we've been hurt is to just go on like we haven't been hurt and i'm not saying this is please take this in moderation i'm not saying we need to we need to go on facebook and shout to the world or you know we don't need to shout to the world i've been hurt but admitting to ourselves that hey this happened to me this this was real this is being real with ourselves and it may be in small steps of being real with ourselves on how we were affected uh one part of the grieving process is to write out things you've experienced or gained from the process so how what did i learn from this process that's something what gifts did i receive from this experience how am i better stronger wiser and i know these are taking a very they're taking a positive note but it's important because if we're not we'll become cynical right we we do have to focus at this stage it's important to focus on the positive what are new boundaries that i have because what walls and another way we could look at it is we could build walls right but we need to be aware of where those walls are and we need to be aware of when those walls are hindering us because they very they can just as much as they'll keep people out they'll keep us in so that's something this is about self-awareness in those situations it's about understanding how of where we are one one way though is what will i no longer accept if if a situation was abusive or if a situation was was someone being taken advantage of what what will i do to prevent that from happening again how can i use this experience towards my next step or my best step what has this experience prepared me for these are all questions that if you're if you're in that it may take a minute to really find a good answer it may take a minute to say what have i learned from my world being shattered wow all right so much for positivity right i've learned that i hate everyone and everything like that's that's not what's asking maybe maybe you write that down but maybe then you come back to it later right what have i learned in this and then as you progress in step four you may have to re-prioritize some things and those things being friends familia relationships things like that and that is let me qualify that okay with the scripture all right the bible says uh in matthew 10 jesus in matthew 10 34-39 jesus said this now this is some strong there's some strong medicine from jesus all right he said do not think that i've come to bring peace to the earth i have not come to bring peace but a sword for i have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a person's enemies will be those of his own household whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it this this is a strong verse this is a hard ver or hard a hard parabola or scripture that that jesus spoke it's a hard teaching for us to look at and us to see jesus he wasn't saying that we're to hate our family at all he wasn't saying to hate those he wasn't saying to hate our mother-in-law or our father-in-law and i mean that's i don't know some of you already may be taking that scripture to heart i don't know all right i'm not here this is not family teaching all right but that's not what he was saying the the intent in the end of that scripture was if we look at the proper order of our life if we look at this table it's out of balance it's wonky it's not really good and that's what jesus was talking about when those relationships get out of balance i cleared this with pastor first guys i wanted to make sure that i was on the same page with him the proper order of our life should be god first family second and then our ministry those at any point in time that those get out of balance we're we're that we're we're bruising for a cruising is that yeah i'm sorry cruising for a bruising there we go all right cruising for bruising for recruiting yeah y'all knew what i meant we're we're we're out of whack and that's what jesus is talking about in these scriptures if we love our our parents more or if we love our children more or if we love anything more than him it's out of balance it's out of whack that and he'll correct that he will he will send something in and it'll mess us up and that's where our worldview when our worldview gets shattered and we're broken in in pieces we're like why why did it get broken why did my world view change so much why then do i lose out on god or why then do i lose out in my religion right because i've seen this you've seen it i've seen it when when someone when a catastrophe hits someone it's so easy to blame god it's so easy to blame a church it's so easy to to blame this or that because that's that's human nature to because it hurts so bad to take to take some of that to internalize some of that it's it hurts so bad but in reality if those relationships that that betrayal came from if those relationships that those issues that that trust if it doesn't matter if if if we go to church all right and we're we have because of relationship if we go to church because of our parents if we go to church because of our husband or our wife or of our friend it's going to mess us up if we believe in god or if we have a relationship in god based on because i because there are loving people right and and this is this is for mature saints okay i'm saying this as for this is not the meal this is not the milk but this is the meat of the word if we're simply in a church or if we're simply doing something for god to please someone else we're out of balance we're we're we're we're going to wake up one day and our world is going to be in shambles because we didn't put god first family second our friend second and ministry third okay we that and then friends i was i lib in there when we when we get that balance messed up that's where stage four comes in okay because when when our world has or we've faced betrayal and everything's been thrown aside and and everything's been leveled out it's important for us to come back to all right where am i at what do i start with it's easy to say i'm going to start with someone but really we start with jesus first and foremost when we're building that back jesus this is me i have nothing else there's nothing else in me there's nothing else i have nothing to offer and it may take it may take some time this is this is where i found the patience of god to be incredible because in that building back process we're going to get it wrong again we're not going to be perfect in it we're not going to be the best at it but we can build it back and we can wait and god will wait he'll be like nah that ain't right it's kind of like when you ever watched a kid trying to put on a shoe like like come on this is a shoe come on you got this and they they're they're going to be on the wrong foot it doesn't matter every single time they're going to be on the wrong foot are they not like it i don't know why it feels weird they can't walk straight but it's going to be on that's how we are when we when we start this process back we're going to be on the wrong foot the shoe's going to be on the wrong foot we're going to mess up and god's going to have to have patience on us we're going to have to let him right we can't get too mad we can't get too discouraged in ourselves because he'll have patience on us but we have to keep going trying and trying again this is something in james 1 27 it says religion that is pure and undefiled before god the father is this to visit the orphans and the widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world this is another part here people get real tired of religion and i don't blame them religion is doing something by rote it's doing something by habit it has no power it has it has nothing other than tradition religion is hollow but pure religion pure actions right you know why visiting the orphans and the widows those are the orphans and the widows there are two things that can do nothing for you you can't gain anything out of that you can't get anything from orphans or widows generally speaking this is the way this is the way the bible was set up and a widow was generally very weird but are very very weird oh man i am sorry i am not mean that very poor in the bible this situation the bible uh widows were very poor because property transferred from the men and so a widow couldn't give you anything and an orphan couldn't do because they didn't have someone to give them property so that that pureness that's something when you're building back if anyone that's been discouraged by church okay and i say that loosely anyone that's been discouraged by religion it's because they they had their foundation wrong if if you have been discouraged by church by religion you've had your foundation wrong because that's not what it's about it's about god it's about serving others it's about being pure in it and until we get it right in stage four we'll we'll never will never progress we'll never get past that point of we'll keep coming back to that where's my world how do i build my world without a sure foundation how do i build my world on sinking sand right we'll just it'll just keep falling it'll keep falling when we build it on jesus christ on love on doing unto others as they would have as we would have them do unto us we'll we'll build on those things on pureness we'll we'll start to progress and that is when we'll get to stage five stage five's healing rebirth and a new world view how do we know we're healing it's not it's not like going to the doctor to where you go in get a checkup yep you're coming along nice or no you got an infection we need to put some antibiotic to it it's not it's not that because we can't see it no one can see it we can we can do our best to have a counselor we can do our best to have a guide uh in this but then it's still up to us to give them good feedback to give them good to be open with them and in this process healing can look like making sense and meaning out of what happened out of the event and also along with a willingness to change it represents healing at this you may also notice that while the triggers are still there they do not carry the same emotional charges they did in the past so it doesn't mean that you're never going to be affected by that again okay like it doesn't mean remember we can get through things and some things we it's we just can't get over okay and and i'm not saying that we it gets to the point of where we can control that right to where we're self-aware enough to say no i'm not going to allow this to affect me in a big way yeah we may have to be conscious about it we may have to be intentional about it but it's we we have self-control in that of i'm i'm i am going to control this it's not going to control me uh many people they'll notice physiological changes uh improved energy levels better sleep greater ability to focus and concentrate so many of the things that started going wrong and downhill in stage two of where of where the mind was was being just overtaken and where maybe like physical illnesses came on a lot of these start to heal themselves because our body's healing our internal our emotions are healing our our self we're healing this if if you haven't allowed yourself to go through that it may not it may not heal up you may be plagued with that that's when i that's why i like processes right so if you find yourself stuck at one point you can look at it all right where can i where can i go back to what am i struggling with here what am i focused on what am i missing what am i not admitting to myself what am i needing to do here to get over this hump and if you don't if you if you don't do that introspection if you don't do that prayer that internal that internal work bitterness can set in very easily because anger or bitterness is just anger that's kind of set there too long it's kind of gotten hard and i don't know if you've ever fought bitterness before but that's not something you want to fight it it will the bible says it's it's like a root it's there it's there and then it'll spring up and it'll offend many and you'll be looking around what in the world's going on what has happened why is that because you may not even be aware of it and that bitterness is sprung up and all of a sudden no one can be around you and it's super easy to do it's it's super easy to to allow ourselves to get there that's why it's why i wanted to teach on this that's why i wanted to look at this to to help us to be aware of what are what are some of the symptoms of bitterness of how do i make sure internally that i'm not that i'm not holding the sin holding this resentment allowing this to solidify in me and how do i get it out now that that's a lesson for another day per se like how to but that is something to be aware of where am i in that process now this is something as as this this stage kind of this there's not a timeline to this there's not a it's not exactly a five-step program here where you're just mechanically doing these things this is not a mechanical process this is a very deep emotional process and conflicting emotions will spring up bittersweet reflections and then confusion even and if you look at it there you can you can have conflicting emotions about this event you can be scared of it happening again but you have to be aware that you can make it through it you can't overcome it you have the confidence because you've tore everything down and you rebuilt it you know the signs to look out for if that was to happen again and you know about more about yourself and more about others that fear can be healthy but it can also be detrimental that's something to be very aware of am i being too fearful here am i being overly am i allowing this fear to rule me that i can't answer that for you okay i can't i can't say yeah you've allowed fear to rule your life too much but you can you can in be honest with yourself in this point am i am i allowing this to affect me too much am i allowing this to rule my life now this is where we as we as christians can do something really good revelations 12 and 11 said and they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony for they love not their lives even unto death this is where that testimony can take an effect now this is not testimony service this is not something you stand up and and we don't we don't have those so if you don't know what those are those are uh if you're from the country those are services where you're just sitting there and somebody's like hey why don't you testify and we're like wait a minute what well i just thank god for being alive and then the next 10 people might say the same exact thing all right it just depends on it's kind of an old old thing i don't i don't know we're not doing that that's not the testimony i'm talking about all right but i am talking about our experience if we see someone that's struggling with the same thing that we've struggled with then we can help them especially if they ask us i know i had a had a van kid one time and i used to drive a church fan and i would pick these kids up and and it was the most fun i've ever had in my entire life probably and i i had this kid he was i don't know 14 15 you know guys raging hormones and him and his mother would just like button heads all the time she was like can you talk to him what talk to him get him to act right i was like all right so i i remembered i put myself back in being a 14 15 year old guy and you have i i don't know maybe not every 14 15 year old but rage issues right hormones are going wild you're like i don't even know what's up and what's down i have no idea what's going on anything that anyone would say or could say it could set you off at a hair trigger and you're like i want to punch a wall i don't know and so i told him i was like dude i was like listen to me i was like listen anytime your mother says something to you and you're like i want to say something back just shut up he's like but i just shut up he's like but i'm just shut up just shut your mouth just shut your mouth don't say a word you don't have to you just just shut up that's all you gotta do just just be quiet just shut it down he's like but i wanna i don't care it doesn't matter just be quiet and i don't know a few weeks later she was like i wanna tell you what harley did he was like i was getting onto him about something he started he goes no no i'm just gonna be quiet and he shut up and that was the end of it in this that that me going through that and me being able to put myself back in those shoes was able to help him get through that moment that's that's how our testimony works that's if we can learn from what happened to us we can help someone else that's when we really start to overcome it that's when we really start to climb out of it that's when we really start to see the other side and we look at it as a learning experience of hey look i know what it's like i know i've been there done that this is this is just something real simple this is something you can make it you can do it and if we can do that we can really start to help ourselves even more because we when we help someone else somehow or another it it helps us i i don't know the the law of it i don't understand all of it but it helps us now that gets us to forgiveness so we've done all five of those steps and we still haven't touched forgiveness how in the world right because jesus jesus was talking about this how many times shall we forgive a brother 77 times how many times shall we forgive him he's hurt me forgive him again forgive him again forgive him a million times but jesus didn't go into all the turmoil internally that we have to get over in ourselves we didn't he didn't talk about us humbling ourselves he didn't talk about us getting over that hump of our ego of our of our being it's it's easy to say right some people say i will never forgive them for what they did and if someone says that that's rough i hope i hope to never say that i hope to never hear that said but it's super easy because that's an emotional reaction mark twain said said this forgiveness is the fragrant the fragrance the violet sheds as the hill that on the hill that has crushed it forgiveness is the fragrance the violent sheds on the hill that is crushed it so it it's crushed but it gives something nice out the old saying holding on to anger a grudge or unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die it's easy to talk about right it's easy to use these old sayings forgiveness is the cancellation of a debt by the person who's been hurt or wronged true forgiveness retire requires the ability to see others in realistic terms both good and bad and to hold them accountable to natural consequences yet still be able to feel compassion empathy and or some degree of positive feelings for them forgiveness is a doorway for us to move past our experiences with betrayal man that's easy right it's not that's a that's an internal thing that we all we all struggle with forgiveness now before before before i dive into forgiveness because there are some steps in forgiveness there are some things that we can break down in this and to look at and you'll see there's a model there it's called the reach model and we'll get into that in just a moment but so many times in forgiveness our focus gets on the betrayer on the individual that has betrayed us because it looks like they're getting off scot-free it looks like there's no repercussions for their actions well guess what that's not our job we have to let that one go that's that's that's it we have to release that because we will kill ourselves trying to bring about balance to their life or kill ourselves trying to get repercussion on them like we will we will harm ourselves every single time there is a there's a there's a rule in this it's called the if then rule all right and this this is if you feel safe and valued then reconcile because forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things okay and so if someone's been abused if someone's been physically harmed reconciling with that individual may not be safe okay that's that's just an example here being around that person may not be the best option because you you could wind up dead but if you do not feel safe and valued then do not reconcile but still forgive so forgiveness reconciliation is more of a physical set down talk through but a forgiveness it's all right here it's every bit of it is right here in your heart it's not a physical it's not even sometimes sitting down talking through it if you're able to that's helpful but that's not where forgiveness is all right here it all starts right here now there's a window of willingness that a betrayer may have okay i'm going to focus on the betrayer for just a minute because we can get we can get uh to distracted by that it's super easy in fact this the studies show that a lot of times that the ability of someone to get over something has to do with the betrayer being able to either admit guilt or feel guilt or not and that should not be the case we should not allow someone else to hold the keys to our redemption to our forgiveness right we should hold the key and we do so the window of willingness best case scenario of a betrayer the person who hurt us expresses sincere remorse acknowledging what we're done what was done an apology asking for forgiveness and restitution now it's somewhat easier to forgive someone if they've done that it's somewhat easier to forgive someone that admits they're wrong that it says i'm sorry that's what we're taught right we heard a brother or sister say i'm sorry all right i forgive you that's what we're taught but that's not the way the real word work real world works uh in fact there's there's a next one and if you want to look at it it's a window of willingness so it's wide open then on the second one the person makes excuses i did it because i did it because of this or well this was my reason they tried to explain it away that wind is closing just a little bit okay and this is not i'm not pronouncing judgment i'm saying these are this is a way for us to look at it on on our interactions with those individuals um the the next step be the betrayer is rationalizing or just justifying the reason for betrayal the word you may be used in this scenario i did it because you made me do this i did it because uh you made me feel this way i did it because it doesn't and that's that's about three quarters closed on a window there's there's not a lot of help right because a lot of times we want to empathize because this is more this is a person that we've cared about we've loved we've cherished we want to empathize we want to help them but when that window's there this is we have to when that window starts closing we have to be aware we have to be careful here because we can try and find someone else's battle when we're not done fighting our own all right now the when the windows closed it kind of looks like complete denial and unwillingness to take responsibility you can't you can't you can't help that okay that's not your battle you have to forgive and pray for that individual so now and let me let me clarify this point on you can't help that all right if you're still in the water and you're struggling to swim and they're still in the water and they're struggling to swim two struggling people are going to do nothing but drown one another okay that's in that scenario until you're on solid ground and by solid and you can cast a line that's a very dangerous situation for you to be in it's a very hard place for you to live because you will in in love and maybe in all the best intentions something will go wrong with that that's where it takes to have a good spiritual coach it takes to have a good counselor someone that's looking out for you that has your back that's watching out for you that there was a guy i had a bible study i had done a bible study with this guy and his family and let me just tell you this lady she was probably she wasn't even 30 i don't think but this lady could cook like nobody's business i'm like she could bake pies better than any grandmother i know all right i'm i'm not lying i i it was amazing i love giving these people bible studies because i'd go over their house they would cook i could just set their knee and like okay well that's a good bible study y'all but great bible studies i mean i've done weeks of that probably i don't even know it went through all of like search for truth with them which is like 10 12 weeks long and towards the end of it i noticed i noticed being he was he was he grew up in a rough life and he i noticed that he had he had the best intentions of anything okay he's a good guy and he wanted he had he'd found jesus and he wanted everyone else to have jesus and that was all well and good that was good i mean he had a hat with jesus on it he was wearing the work all kinds of stuff like he was he was all in and he's like i want to bring my friends to bible study i was like you know let's let's wait i want to bring so he brought his friends to bible study and he hung out with those same guys that that he had been wanting that he had been hanging out with before and i saw ben start slipping i saw i just i saw it and there was nothing i could do about it i tried with everything i could to pull to keep pulling him but ben wasn't on solid ground at that point and i told him that ben you need to wait you need to wait and he wouldn't he wasn't on solid ground that's that's where that comes into play we've got to be very careful in this stage because we're almost there okay don't allow don't allow our egos don't allow our over empathetic self to get in the way of us getting on solid ground and then being able to help someone of them being able to use our testimony that's that's very important because it can it can it can just pull us right back in and we have to start right over again all right that's uh that's that's a sobering thought uh to to think through and to think about but it can happen it's very easy now there is a there's a there's a couple processes for forgiveness and i'm i'm coming to a close quickly guys the first the first process is a four-phase process the person who's been hurt needs to fully face and confront the negative emotions and feelings experienced by the vent so they need to acknowledge that and then the second step is realize the suffering continues as long as they continue to focus on the painful event during this stage make a commitment to forgive now that may not mean you've forgiven at that point but you've made a commitment i'm going to start if if i can use the analogy again of cleaning my room i'm going to clean my room it may get worse before i get finished but i'm going to do it i'm going to get there i'm going to figure this out i'm going to be able to solve this then but give the for it for the forgiveness work make a commitment to prevent the pain from being transferred to others including the person who hurt who done the hurt that's important because our automatic nature we talked about that last week is to lash out to strike out to to to do harm that's that's our that's our nature but that's where we call we have to deny ourselves right deny our very nature and wwjd what would jesus do here in the final phase of forgiveness uh recognize the benefits from the forgiveness work find meaning in the experiences and recognize when the pain and the suffering is let go healing will take place and then in this reach model and that's the one on on their handout tonight if you have a pen uh this one this one i i thought was a little easier to remember uh because it's it's whatever that is acronym it's got the acronym with it so reach is recalling the hurt so making sure we we we understand we're calling the hurt e is empathizing with the offender an attempt to understand what they've been thinking that led that what they may have been thinking that led to the action so empathizing that doesn't mean we're sympathizing doesn't mean we're feeling sorry for them we're trying to put ourselves in their shoes to understand what they may have been thinking now we may not be able to but we got to try we got it we got to do our best because we're giving what we're doing there is we're giving someone the benefit of the doubt right we're giving them the benefit of doubt we're we're saying we're we kind of do that to ourselves don't we well i did this because well if you only knew why i done that so if we're going to do that about ourselves it would only be fair for us to do that about someone else of putting ourselves in their shoes trying to think with a loving kind perspective of why did they do this a is altruistic forgiveness is seen as a gift the hurt person is able to give this is like pure religion we're giving forgiveness not there's nothing we can receive back there's nothing there's nothing they can do for it it's something we have to give that's something internally that we give okay it's an altruistic move c is commitment now this is it says a public declaration to forgive whatever public means to you okay i once again i'm i'm a private person i'm not gonna get on the rooftop and shout it out all right that's just not my style but a a counselor a mentor an elder a pastor that type of situation is what i would highly recommend in stating that commitment i'm i am going to forgive this person i am starting this it's an accountability partner per se and then h is hold hold on to the decision to forgive especially when that decision becomes a challenge right because it's super easy to forgive and then that person does something else and you're like then it brings it all back up that's not forgiveness forgiveness right because if that was forgiveness we'd all be in trouble when jesus forgives us he washes that away it becomes like it never happened and if every time we messed up he brought everything else back up right we'd all be in a pretty terrible boat so that forgiveness means we wash that we it's a clean slate and it's hard it's not easy this is not easy teaching this is not an easy easy thing to do but in order for us to be able to be a balance table for order for us to be able to hold up what life is going to throw at us we've got to get through that we've got it we've we can learn to trust again and we can learn to thrive again we can learn to grow again we can learn to build again so as as i'm ending tonight there are there are some questions here and this they're on the back of the sheet that i've given you if you've if you've experienced betrayal in in a deep way if you've experienced hurt go through this list and and talk through it maybe to yourself write write down some answers uh do some in introspective thought on this of who do i need to forgive what is what is this doing for me can i forgive there are several questions here that we can look at to make ourselves i don't know to kind of check ourselves to make sure we're where we are where we need to be all right if you would would you stand with me tonight i want to make sure that i forgive because it's it's something that if we don't do it's not it doesn't hurt anyone but us it's like drinking poison and hoping someone else dies it's not gonna work i in it's not easy i'm not i'm not bringing this as a as an easy thing to do but it's important our salvation depends upon it our livelihood depends upon it our life depends upon it what kind of quality of life can we have if we don't forgive amen it's rough but we can forgive i wonder if we can let's uh let's bow our heads and let's let's talk to the lord for just a minute god i know we've all been hurt different times god i know we've all struggled in different areas of forgiveness god but god i ask you lord to help us god give us the strength give us humility god give us the desire god to forgive purely completely god to to let it go into into your hands god to let it go into wherever it's not our job god and god i ask you lord to help us to remember that to know that god that that we're here just to serve you god and help us lord to build our lives in that manner you first family second ministry third god i will be sure to give you all the praise and the glory and the honor that i'm so thankful for all that you've done for us god i thank you for bringing us through and helping us to get over god we'll be sure to give you all the praise all the glory and all the honor in jesus name we pray amen