Forgiving What You Can’t Forget | Lysa TerKeurst | Elevation Church

my message title is forgiving what you can't forget and I know the minute that I say forgiveness a lot of you are like oh please not this today you don't know what I've been through this week because the minute I say forgiveness you start to feel like I'm going to attach this to the hardest thing that's ever happened to me and I am not in the mood right I understand that that's why I'm going to preach this message with great tenderness let's go of the Lord Lord 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 in 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 how how much you understand when you cried out from The Garden of Gethsemane my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death and then Lord You Prayed the same prayer I've 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 hell 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 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 pre preaching a message on forgiveness in a very week that I've struggled with being hurt it's 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 Hur 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 sat 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 750 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 walk through some really hard stuff a lot of you know my story you know it's 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 10 years our family changed into something that I never thought it would be

I was married almost 29 years and my marriage ended in an incredibly devast ating 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 the 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's nothing like mine but here's what I know to be true about all of us we've either just been through some 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 are we about 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 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 um I remember looking in the river mirror and thinking how long has it actually been since I washed my hair now you was short hair you will not understand this but um 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 and whip 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 appointment is 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 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 like 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 he said okay okay why don't we start with your pain and he handed me a big stack of 3x5 cards and I said great very well acquainted with my pain I will definitely be able to participate in this activity and so he had handed me this stack of 3x5 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 had 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'm 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 in the message I want to say to you I am 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 you 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 steak 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 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 Ed in my pain do you know what a trigger is yes it's 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 and I 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 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 forgiveness failure every trauma is two parts it's fact and 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 Ked 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 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 right and he said why don't you say this out of obedience to God I am choosing to forgive this person for the fact of what they did to me and then take a piece of red felt and lay it on top of that card and then say and whatever my feelings will not yet allow for the blood of Jesus will surely cover it right so I went card by card by card and said I forgive this person for this fact

of how they've hurt me and whatever my feelings will not yet allow for covered it with a red card hard 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 now that doesn't

justify what they did at all and maybe we didn't participate in sin 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 origin forgiveness I used to feel like I would just have to grit my teeth like I forgive you and like conjure up some forgiveness from me 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 6 veres 9-13 I find it pretty amazing that when Jesus J was asked how should we pray think about of 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 Hallowed 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 14 and adds 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 studied that's in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray that forgiveness is one of the 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 Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come 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 in evitably 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 frappa your latte and way laay 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 prayed for this morning I have already pre forgiven you and just because you laid down an offense 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 where wherever there's unattended to anger bitterness resentment desires for Revenge right near that passage it's instructed we are instructed to forgive and if we don't the evil

one comes close it is like dropping 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 4: 2-7 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 firstborn 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 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 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 6wh 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 at the door right and it says sin is crouching at your door ites desires to have you but you must rule over it let's look at one other place in scripture Ephesians chapter 4 starting in verse 26 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 29 to say do not

let any UNH wholesome 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 grieve the holy spirit with whom you were sealed 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 hurt 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 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 pulls 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 decision ISS have you ever been there well let me read you what the scripture says Galatians 6 7-8 do not be

deceived God cannot be mocked a man reaps what he SWS whoever SWS to please their flesh from the flesh will reap destruction whoever SWS 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 hmon and he is bent on destroying the Jewish people Mori Esther's Uncle finds out about Hon's plans Esther has access to the king and so through the course of time Esther is able to reveal Hon's plot to

the king the very Gallows that hmon built I want you to listen to what scripture said the very Gallows that hmon built to kill the Jewish people are the very Gallows that he was then hanged on Esther 7:10 so they hanged hmon on the Galls that he had prepared for Mori Romans 12: 19-21 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 it 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 ve 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 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'ts in my vocabulary so I had forgiven for the hurt that had 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 a cooler with ice in it I like to put my water and my diet coke don't send me a message about that I understand how bad 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 diet 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 still 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 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

break 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 maker 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 ice fell into that bucket y'all I did the MC 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 boogie board because I'm going to 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 cuz 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 to 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 box back on just to

clarify and then I laughed and I played wow and for a few minutes I wasn't a woman who was living in pain I was that same Carefree 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 2: a.m. in the morning and just feeling the weight of all of I all that I was facing 2 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's 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 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 San ification 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 70 * 7 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 it's 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 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 praise 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 hey thank you for watching the Elevation Church YouTube I want you to subscribe that way you can know when we go live and post new content make sure leave me a comment let me know what spoke to you today where you're watching from and what we can pray for you about and if you'd like to support the ministry financially you can click the give button now and help us continue reaching people around the world

for Jesus Christ thanks again I'll see you next time