When Forgiveness Hurts but Healing Depends on It

What Love Really Looks Like

Guest: Well it goes one step further. Like, what does love really look like? You know what I'm saying? Like, like if we're if we're loving our enemies and we're we're like trying to reconcile with people, you don't get to a place of reconciliation without being able to communicate the truth. And so a lot of times we're we're loving from a distance and we're not addressing this. It goes back to what you said at the very beginning.

Guest: It's so funny that because I all I saw when you were sharing this was the picture of Christ on the cross. Love is painful. Yeah. Love is discomfort. Sure enough. Yeah. You know, love is carrying your cross up the mountain, waiting to be crucified.

Guest: I don't like the confrontation. I don't like the confrontation of having to speak the truth to somebody and deal with a difficult situation, right? And so if I'm not, if I just go and I I slip off and I do the forgiveness thing, maybe I write a letter and I burn it, you know, do that whole process, but never confront the person. Am I really showing love? Because what I'm saying is that, what I'm saying is that I I recognize an issue in an individual. I see sin and my brother. They've wronged me. And because of my pride and my unwillingness to do the uncomfortable thing, I'm willing to let them sit in their center. That's not love at all. That's hate.

Guest: We're in a conflicting society where love is accept me, accept this, comfort, you know. That's what it is. Like it love everyone, you know. But no, that that's not what love is. And so, in regard to confronting others with love, it means addressing

Love As Discomfort And The Cross

Guest: the truth. And so, yo, welcome to another episode of Rebuilding Life After Addiction. Uh, here is your co-host Robert Grant, and I got my host here, the one and only JF to the double T. I don't know what the double T is.

Guest: What does that even mean? We're like opening

Truth, Confrontation, And Real Reconciliation

Guest: the show looking very spiritual today. I have a Bible on my lap. I've got coffee here. Yeah, my coffee has been done like ages ago, dude. Kind of nursing mine. This is like called cover number six today. So

Matthew 5:23–26 Read And Reflected

Guest: what what verse did you share with me earlier?

Guest: Yeah, we came from Matthew 5, uh 23 through 24. Sweet. Check it out, check it out.

Guest: It says, Um, therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. And then it goes on to say, agree with your adversary quickly while you are on the way with him. Lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Surely I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny.

Guest: Dude, when I read that this morning, as I'm going through the Bible, um the Lord kind of just pressed to my heart when I was walking my dog the other day to get back into the gospels. And so um where it's better to start than Matthew, right? You know, sometimes they say start in John. Yeah. But I've been in the Gospel of

Show Open And Hosts Introduced

Guest: Matthew, and this kind of just wrecked me this morning because it caused me to reflect back on some of the past relationships that I had, or some things that um I've been unwilling to address. And I think at times we could look at this verse and clearly understand in the world that we live in today and modern culture and society, the offering or the sacrifice that we bring to the altar generally can be associated with a tithe, right? But it goes beyond that, right? I I think sometimes it's not just about us offering up our money to God, but it's offering up our praise, our service, yeah, right. And I think there's some things, as Colossians tells us, to do all things unto the Lord, to do it well, right? And so, man, when you don't have a right heart, and when you are um wrestling with this unforgiveness, this hatred within your heart, which he actually talks about furthermore before this passage, about how it's considered murder, yeah, you know, and so he's like, Man, I need you to deal with this hateful, murderous spirit that you have deep within you before you can come to me.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, that's good. So, how do we uh culture today, right? It's like disagreement, especially in in the world of everything being hyper politicized, disagreement is also oftentimes viewed as hate.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Like, and so how do we navigate that, especially as Christians, right? In today's culture, because the scripture is clear here, like like I mean, you show up at church, you write your check, and you got all this offense going on. And like you're giving the Lord your money, you're but you're not being obedient. Yeah, you know

Gifts Rejected Without Reconciliation

Guest: what I'm saying? Like, like the church will take your money, but God's rejecting your gift, right? So, like, what do you like? How do we navigate that? Because I've seen especially in the last several years, right, where it just is a disagreement between people that I know from the church that I've seen in different churches and whatnot, that used to be best of friends, but they have either disagreements with something that's happening in culture, something that's happening politically, and then it turns into this type of offense and hate. And so how do we get into I guess the question I'm trying to get to is like, how do we get to this place where as Christians, like we can like disagree without a devolving right into into because this is a relevant conversation right now, you know?

Guest: No, it it is, man, and I the first thing that comes to my mind is our pride, but we don't have all the answers to everything, yeah, and we have to understand how to be better listeners. And speaking from experience and from an individual that has dealt with addiction and trauma and all types of hangups and hurts from my past, I've gotten really good at suppressing the things that I don't want to address.

Disagreement Isn’t Hate

Guest: Yeah, that's good. And there's resistance there when it comes to me having to address these matters because it's me having to face the very elephant that's in the room. And so it's easy for me to look busy and to appear to others that I'm doing well and everything's under control and I have no issues, and I come to the meetings with a smiley face, and I'm dressed apart, and my family looks all put together, but in reality, because nobody can see it, I have all these skeletons in my closet. Yeah, and I don't address them and I don't deal with them because I'm not really able to have that conversation without lashing out, as the young kids would say, crashing out nowadays, you know. And so, like, I feel for me, man, I I I dealt with this recently, and if I can just be transparent and honest, like I had an issue when we moved out to California, and my wife's uncle, you know, hurt me pretty bad. And there was a season in my life where I said to myself, man, I

Avoiding Issues And Spiritual Pretending

Guest: forgive this man. And the Holy Spirit kind of brought it to my attention when we did this um time we what was it called? It was um uh a life map. It was an assignment that we had for leadership, and we did this life map, and during this life map, I was speaking about him and I just wept and I was in tears. And it was a vulnerable moment because I was in a room full of others, and I'm out here speaking, and I just began to cry as I'm like sharing this intimate moment with the audience about how he's impacted me and like what he had done. Right. And it was in that moment that I realized that I hadn't truly forgiven him. Yeah, like I was still holding on to something, like it it broke me that bad, and I ended up having a conversation with him, and I was talking to my wife about this this morning in the bed, and I said, Hey, you know, it's pretty interesting how me releasing him is beneficial for me, but also it allowed me to understand that I didn't have to tolerate him anymore.

Guest: Yeah, right.

Guest: And I think there's a big difference between forgiving someone and then tolerating somebody. And I think sometimes like you don't have to tolerate that character, that foolishness, that arrogance, that pride, whatever it is that they do, right? But you do need to forgive, yeah, right, because you've been forgiven.

Guest: Isn't it interesting how like I noticed in its me and I I hear it with other people, but I know I have a tendency sometimes when I'm looking at grievances or issues that I've had with particular people, what I end up doing is like I end up thinking of the worst possible scenario, and then I work back from that and use that as justification to not forgive. Right. It's like, well, Jesus wouldn't expect me to forgive if they had abused me. Right. You know, Jesus wouldn't expect me to forgive if they had done this, insert the worst thing here. It's the same thing people do with the abortion argument, right? They say, well, what about rape and incest? And the rest of us are like, Well, what about the other 99% of the abortions? Right. Like, let's let's talk about those, you know what I'm saying? And so we have this tendency to whenever there's a conflict or an issue we have to deal with, we we like imagine the worst possible scenario, and then we use that as an excuse to not forgive or not do the right thing, period, right? And so it's it's hard because like what you just said is powerful. Like, yes, there was a conflict, there was an issue, but what about all the other good things that had happened? Yeah, you know, what about the the character of God in that person, the life of God that exists in that person and and the areas that they have impacted you positively, yeah, you know, versus letting the disagreement or the main grievance blow the whole relationship up?

Guest: Well, what's wild, I'm grateful that you brought that up because it allowed me to realize one, you know, Mike, if you ever do get the opportunity to listen to this, I still love you, man. Like you're an amazing individual. You actually showed me a lot about myself that I never knew was there to begin with, and have drawn out some great potential and some character qualities that needed to be developed through uh the workspace that you've opened up for me. But I want to go on to sharing something that you mentioned about how we can ignore the good that happens and and what it brings about. And here I am. I lose my train of thought. Holy Spirit help me.

Guest: Um Well, I think we have when I can jump in there while you're getting it back, but we have the tendency to catastrophize every situation. Right. Right. It's and I I'm I'm terrible at that. Right. Like I I'm one of those people that a little bit ADHD, constantly thinking three steps ahead. And so that can be really good with vision mapping and planning for the future and doing things at a much faster pace than most other people would do. But man, it's got its downsides. Right. Because when something bad happens, I'm also thinking three steps further. Well, I wonder who else they told. I wonder what else happened. They must have meant more than they actually said.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: You know, they they planned for this thing to happen, and very rarely, I know I have a chance, like I we don't give the I don't give the benefit of the doubt all the time. Like if somebody does me wrong, I'm only thinking about how it impacted me. And maybe not looking beyond that and saying, hey, what what was going on in their life at that moment? It doesn't justify the behavior, but it can bring some context. Yeah.

Guest: You know? So the point that I wanted to make was what if the very grievances that we have

Forgiveness Story And Tolerating vs Forgiving

Guest: were meant as an opportunity for God to use to build something up in us.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Because the great commandments are love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah. It's easy to love those that love you. It's harder to love those that disagree with you. Yeah. And I think it's not strange that scripture tells us that what the enemy meant for evil, God intended for good.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: And so these are not moments of setbacks, but they're actually moments of setup.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Right. It's it I I love what your wife said a long time ago, and I'll take this, it was a decade ago. I remember chapel service. She shared this message, and she was using the illustration of a bow and an arrow. And she basically said, with greater resistance comes greater distance. And so there's there's resistance that happens in these moments. It's like it's God bringing you through a fire to refine you because there's something in you that he had to use with the individual that caused the offense to bring you to a place of intimacy with him so that he could heal. Because it wasn't the person that affected you.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: It was a it was something that was unaddressed way before this individual. This just happened to burst the bubble.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: You know what I mean? Yeah. I think it was on Mr. Craig Rochelle said something to the effect of we're most offended by like what we're what we're offended about in others is typically the thing that we're dealing with the most inside of us. Right. And so a lot of times it's it's what they do that offends us. It's really not even the action. There's a deficiency in us that we haven't dealt with. And it drives us to this place of being easily offended. Cause, you know, it's it's funny the things that will irritate me, the things that will get under my skin. Right. Like I can be, I can be cursed out, you know, and whatever. Just walk away. Like I don't, I don't need to, you know, somebody wants to honk or drive like an idiot. I'm not doing the road rage thing. But then somebody will just say something minor. Right. And it will it will hit an issue inside of me. And it's like, I gotta get revenge for that. I gotta deal with that. And um, it's funny you talk about that. Jesus doesn't give us a pass. The next few verses, I mean, you go down Matthew chapter five and go the second mile, right? Talking about literally, you know, what with the Roman soldiers literally shoot volunteering, they're forcing you to go a mile with all their gear, doing the second mile, you know, and then go on further again. No more pass, love your enemies. Like, yeah, like so I I've got to deal with issues with the people that are my brother and family, spiritually, whatever,

Catastrophizing And Charity In Conflict

Guest: right? But then I've also got to be able to like love my enemies as well, and that is um what does that say about us though?

Guest: And I I think sometimes is what do they say? We act like our stuff don't stink, right? And so it doesn't, and I'm just saying it's always somebody else will always point the finger. We always look at the speck in someone else's eye, but ignore the log that's in our own. And I think the reason why we do that is because we're afraid to be worked on, yeah.

Guest: Yeah, I think that and that's why the people that you put around you matters a lot. Yeah. Because like if if I'm not around people and we're not around people that we can like trust, like we've got to love everybody, but we don't we don't have to bring everybody into our home. Right. And so I think that like I need people that when I'm dealing with some of this, and like that I can I can straight up say, hey, I've I've got an issue with what you just said to me.

Guest: Right.

Guest: And the response isn't going to be met with boxing gloves. You know what I'm saying? It's gonna be met with, well, let's unpack that together. Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of times we end up in some, especially with Matthew, the verses that we read talking about if your brother has something against you, I think a lot of times we end up in more conflict than necessary because we're really not intentional about who's in our life in the first place. Yeah. So we're we're rubbing the wrong way with people that really we shouldn't have had in our lives, and we're creating conflict. And really by not removing people or not being more discerning, yeah, it's impacting our walk with God. Right. Because we've just allowed anybody, I mean, even the scripture talks about be careful who you allow to lay hands on you. Like, and and we're like a bunch of spiritual junkies these days. I mean, I mean, think about the words we're receiving from people who have no credibility on social media, right? And like we'll hear it, and yeah, but but I think I don't want to go into all that, but it is just important to be sure.

Guest: So let me ask you this, Justin. Then then what does that really mean then to because we've addressed some of the issues when it comes to the offense and all that, but what does it actually mean to reconcile with that person? Right? Like, I know that you talked about going the extra mile, I know that you talked about loving your enemy, um, and and but like let's break this down, like you unpack it practically, like like because that's the hard part, right? It's almost like vision casting. Like everybody can share a vision, but it's actually executing on that vision. Yeah, that's the hard part, right? So it's like, man, I want to do this, I want to share this with this person. Maybe they are dead, right? Yeah, and I don't have that ability to do that. What does that look like?

Guest: You know, like yeah, I think, but I think there's there's two layers to that, right? Number one is it like obviously you can all you can only do your half, right? So you can't force anybody to engage. Reconciliation is an important thing, but it it requires work on both parties. So if you've got an individual that's willing to reconcile, of course, then you can extend forgiveness, you can walk through what that looks like, how how are you made whole, you know, and figure that part out. But if they're not willing to reconcile, then that's more of an internal spiritual thing that you've got to deal with, right? Or maybe they're not safe. Let's go to the extreme, right? Maybe they're not safe. Like you can forgive them, extend forgiveness, all of that. But like, I mean, I would never suggest somebody bring an abuser back in their home.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Like, that's just common sense, you know. So you you really have to kind of figure out what what the relationship looks like, you know, and I've even gone gone so far, like man, teen challenge. We've had people on staff that have literally stolen from us, like while working for us, right? They leave, they go out, they relapse, they call, they need help, and we let them back in. Like, and and most people would say maybe that wasn't smart. But like in those scenarios, I would always pray through it and always

Resistance, Refinement, And Growth

Guest: extend grace, you know, in those type of moments. Now, now on sometimes did it backfire. Absolutely. Yeah. But like pray for those who spitefully use you. Right. You know, you know what I'm saying? Bless them. And and I think each individual's got to determine like who they can allow back in, you know, and dealing with some of these situations.

Guest: Right. No, that's good, man. No, I like that. It's it's hard, right? And I I love what Paul says that we've been given the ministry of reconciliation. And I I think that's the heart, right? As the Father reconciles us back to him, it's our mission and assignment to reconcile others back unto him. Uh, because as it has been freely given, so freely give. And I think I think often at times why this is such a challenging passage of scripture is because we haven't yet learned how to receive it ourselves. Yeah. And so, how could we offer something that we've yet to receive ourselves? Yet we'll say, Well, God, I I can forgive others, but I can't forgive myself, or I've been forgiven by God, but I'm not going to forgive that person because of what they've done. It's like, hey, hold on, hold on. Have you truly received that forgiveness that you you claim you've received?

Guest: You know, and so well, it goes one step further. Like, what does love really look like? You know what I'm saying? Like, like if we're if we're loving our enemies and we're we're like trying to reconcile with people, you don't get to a place of reconciliation without being able to communicate the truth. And so a lot of times we're we're loving from a distance and we're not addressing this. It goes back to what you said at the very beginning. I don't like the confrontation. I don't like the confrontation of having to speak truth to somebody and deal with a difficult situation, right? And so if I'm not, if I just go and I I slip off and I do the forgiveness thing, maybe I write a letter and I burn it, you know, do that whole process, but never confront the person. Am I really showing love? Because what I'm saying is that what I'm saying is that I I recognize an issue in an individual. I see sin in my brother, they've wronged me. And because of my pride and my unwillingness to do the uncomfortable thing, I'm willing to let them sit in their sin. That's not love at all. That's hate.

Guest: It's so funny that because I all I saw when you were sharing this was the picture of Christ on the cross. Love is painful. Yeah, love is discomfort. Sure enough, yeah. You know, love is carrying your cross up the mountain, waiting to be crucified. The the point that I I wanted to make to that is because we are we're in a conflicting society where love is accept me, accept this, comfort, you know. You know, if we want to get into the LGBTQ, RS T U V movement, um that's what it is. Like it love everyone, you know, but no, that that's not what love is. And so I know that has really nothing to do with this passage of scripture, but in regard to confronting others with love, it means addressing the truth.

Guest: And so and that's where it goes back to, right? Because we gotta like go first your way and then be reconciled, then come back, right? Go reconcile with the brother, go confront them, yeah, go deal with the issue, yeah, you know, then come back and bring your gift. Yeah, and that has to happen first, yeah, right. And I mean, love is also like like that part of reconciliation and love and all of that, like God desires to reconcile us to himself, right? But also part of this is that not everybody will be reconciled, right? And some will be rejected, right? Like that's the part of eternity we don't talk about a lot, right? Like, you know, in a it's it's doomsday, turnerburn preaching, whatever. It's just it's the truth, it's the gospel.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Like everybody has an opportunity to go to

Offense Often Reveals Our Own Wounds

Guest: heaven, but the unfortunate part, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord. So some of that is that if like like people reject it or the person you're trying to deal with rejects the reconciliation, you dust your feet, man. Then you move on. Got to.

Guest: Yep. You have to dust your feet, man. That's awesome. Dude, so we're good. 130. Uh, we're good. Yeah, yeah.

Guest: You wanna yeah. Well, that's awesome, man. I think that's a great, great stopping point. Did you have one more thing you wanted to add?

Guest: No, I just wanted to challenge um whoever's listened to this, just to like ask the Holy Spirit before you can even like enter into prayer. I think just Lord, search my heart, you know? Pray the pray the psalm of David. Ask the Father to search your heart and and have him reveal that to you. I think sometimes we miss the fact that we've been given the promise of the helper, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit. Um, and he leads us into all truth. And so let him lead you today and um guide you into that truth so that you can love your neighbor well. Um, and that's what we desire for you here at Rebuilding Life After Addiction. Thank you.