Forgiveness, it has been said, is an act of radical self-interest. Forgiveness can look like pardoning, letting go, healing, or reconciliation. One key metaphor for forgiveness is turning the page, and asking the question, “Am I willing to move on from the story I am telling, so that I can embrace the next chapter that is waiting for me?”
[00:00:01] Hey, this is Josh Reeves. You're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. On Friday, October 23rd, we're thrilled to welcome Lyssa Rankin and Jeffrey Rediger. They're going to be speaking on the topic of their new book, Relationsick, and it's about how toxic relationships can affect our health. The next day, Saturday, October 24th, they're going to bring all their great healing wisdom that we've read about in their many books to a workshop from 9 a.m. to 12. So you can get
[00:00:29] tickets to one or to both these events on our website, milehighchurch.org. Forgiveness for today is the message this morning. Early in my ministry, a woman named Chris came to see me who had a very challenging relationship with her father. Her and her father had been estranged for 10 years, and he gave her a call one day to let her know that he had received a
[00:00:55] diagnosis and didn't expect to be on the planet for all that much longer. And she was surprised, but she was immediately called to invite him to move in with her. She would often share with me, he is not a bad man, but he wasn't a good father. Everything that she was looking for in the father
[00:01:17] image, pride, love, support. He was just incapable of giving her the way that she needed. And yet, even though he was a bad father, she proclaimed, I'm going to be a good daughter, and I want to do this. In ancient times, forgiveness wasn't a heart-transforming process. It was more about
[00:01:43] following laws. If you made a mistake, you asked God for forgiveness by making an offering or a sacrifice. You let things go in that regard. It wasn't until Jesus came that we learned spiritual forgiveness as a
[00:02:07] technique. That to really forgive is to have a transformation in your heart. For Jesus, to practice forgiveness was to practice the nature of God. It was to recognize that God loves everyone no matter what. So when you're forgiving someone, you're practicing God's love for them. This was not just about forgiving
[00:02:31] someone. This was about transcending the human way of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth to literally bringing the kingdom of heaven on to earth. Jesus also said to not hide your light under a bushel, to shine your light freely. To me, this is a great statement about forgiveness. And I invite you to
[00:03:01] ask yourself the question this morning, what dims your light? What dims your light? For me, it's when I think the light is my ego light as opposed to the spirit light. James Thurber said there's two kinds of light, the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures. That glare is my ego because I think I'm in control of the light. I'm going to shine it extra and try to press you. Or I think I need to dim it to
[00:03:30] let you shine over there. Or I get caught up in the light and I'm blinded by the light. Rolled up like a deuce, another roller in the night. So there's that kind of hubris. And really, I'm limiting the spirit within me from being all that it is. The other thing that causes me to dim my light is other
[00:03:55] people's behavior. Their bad behavior. Don Miguel Ruiz has those four agreements and there's that one, don't take anything personally. I can't do it. I can't do it. I gotta process things for a while. It could be something major, like a breach of trust. It could be just an unkind word. But it causes me to
[00:04:20] want to hide, isolate myself, lock myself in a little prison and throw away the key. I get scared. I get awkward. I get hurt. I think that if I'm shining my light, it could cause damage to me. Jesus also said that nothing anyone can do to you can defile you. Only what comes from you can do that. And I
[00:04:43] think all of us have experienced the toll that negative behavior of other people can have, not just on our spiritual being, but our psychological being and our emotional being. There's a new book that just came out this week from Lisa Rankin and Jeffrey Rettiger called Relation Sick. It's available in the bookstore. And if you've been coming a mile high, you know that they're going to be here on
[00:05:10] October 23rd and 24th. But in their book, they share, when it comes to chronic stress, like the kind we experience in unbalanced relationships, our nervous system becomes chronically dysregulated and the body never adequately relaxes, which directly impacts our ability to heal. For me, it's not just the relationships itself. It's how we relate in them. Even if you're the good,
[00:05:37] righteous one, we get to ask ourselves, why am I opting in to continuing to experience this toxic behavior? Why am I not drawing boundaries for myself and with other people? Why am I trying to fix something that someone should be able to fix for themselves? We see that we can, in our own way, not that their behavior is our fault, but that we can contribute and make ourselves sick and dim our
[00:06:04] light in the process. They continue, if you're relation sick, it doesn't matter how many medications or supplements you take, how much healthy food you eat, how many yoga classes or workouts you do, how many high-tech procedures or biohacking interventions you undergo, or how positively you think about or meditate on being healthy. As long as your relationships are still unhealthy,
[00:06:29] your health is likely to suffer. Forgiveness is an act of self-interest. Forgiveness is good for your health. Forgiveness is about getting back to your light. This person's bad behavior is not my source. The power and the light of the spirit within me is my source. When we
[00:06:55] get back to shining our light, forgiveness is the natural byproduct of that practice. Chris came to see me a couple weeks after her father moved in. She said that everything was going all right, except for one big problem. On the surface, all was cordial, but she shared with me, Josh, I'm around him for 15 minutes, and I just want to strangle him. I'm so filled with anger. I thought
[00:07:23] I had done my forgiveness work, but it's still right there. Once a year, 20 years of minister, at least one person walks in and says something to the following effect, Josh, I thought I forgave that SOB 10 years ago. And my answer is always partially the same. You did forgive that SOB 10 years ago. It's just you're not the same person you were back then.
[00:07:54] Forgiveness is never a one-time event. As we grow, sometimes like revolving around our experience again and again, there's new ways of looking at it, new ways of understanding who we are in relationship today to what happened back then. We get to forgive over and over, and yes, it's hard, but it's healing for our soul to be willing to practice that forgiveness, to do our own work,
[00:08:21] including forgiving ourselves. As Chris and I continued to talk, this was the discovery that she made, that she forgave her father for not giving her the love, pride, and support that she was looking for. But she realized her whole life, she kept this unconditioned, unconscious image
[00:08:43] of her father as the only source of love and pride and support in her life. And it played out in every area of her life. She had trouble receiving love in relationships. She had trouble having pride and a sense of worth about herself. When support was offered, she immediately rejected because it was still held to the source. So what was she called to do? Not only to release her father, the man,
[00:09:11] from that role, but she came upon this conclusion to herself as I need to replace dad with universe. I am open to receiving love, pride, and support from the universe. She began with nature.
[00:09:35] When I feel the warmth of the sun, I feel the love of a holy presence. When I feel my feet on the ground, I feel anchored in divine wisdom. When I hear the wind blow the leaves in the trees, I know that there is something always listening for me, always rooting me onward. It was then that she moved to trust life even more because that was part of her issue, is not trusting life because it had
[00:10:05] provided for her an incapable father. So she opened up in relationships, not in a big, dramatic way. She just invited a coworker out to coffee. She called up an old friend to catch up. She took these little risks to be vulnerable. I loved something I heard a therapist once say, I take the necessary steps and challenge myself in loving ways to keep expanding and exploring new ways
[00:10:32] that demonstrate my trust. As she opened her heart to receiving love, pride, and support through the universe, she grew in her trust. And there was a restoration of her relationship with life, feeling loved and supported again. If you take anything from my message or hear anything from
[00:10:54] my message today, it is this. Your unforgiveness affects all of your relationships. Every single one. Your unforgiveness affects every one of your relationships. So even if you don't want to forgive for the person that you're forgiving, forgive them for yourself and for everyone around you.
[00:11:18] I remember walking through the experience of divorce and having a very challenging time with having anger around that. It wasn't just at a person. It was this life experience of learning that I was not as in control of my life as I thought I was. That love is not in my control. And I remember getting some groceries, being with my daughter and walking up to the apartment and I had a big box of groceries
[00:11:46] and there was a 12 pack of soda water on the top. And we're walking in my sight of my line of vision is obscured. And so I say to my daughter, please don't stop in front of me. And so she stops in front of me. And so I trip and the sodas fall out and they spread all over the floor. And here I am carrying groceries. I didn't want to get walking up to an apartment and I don't want you facing that lack
[00:12:13] of control, being humbled. And I pick up one of the cans and it's got a hole in it. It's spraying me in the face. And so I have this anger I'm losing control of and I throw it on the ground. And I look over at my daughter and there's a tear forming in her eye and a look of sadness on her face. My daughter is very emotionally mature. So I probably could say to her, honey, it's not you. It's not you. Daddy's
[00:12:43] feeling out of control right now. Daddy's experiencing his own anger right now. But for her, how could she interpret that incident than seeing how could my dad get so angry at me for making a simple mistake? And I knew in that moment, not that I wasn't trying to do my work, but that forgiveness in my life needed to be my top priority. And if not, it was going to negatively affect my most important relationships.
[00:13:12] You don't have to forgive for the person. Sometimes it's for everyone around you. Why do things fall apart? So they can get better. We have to take that forgiveness and practice it with greater clarity, with a greater stride. And when we do so, we can bring love back into our lives. How many of us grew up around someone that maybe loved us very much, but they lived in that state of unforgiveness to where
[00:13:41] it got taken out on us? How many of us have people that we love, but because of our inability to practice a greater forgiveness, we have hurt in some way unintentionally? Yes, they love you. Yes, they forgive you. And yet that intimacy that we seek in our deepest relationships, that trust that has to be there
[00:14:03] can be affected. Forgive for yourself and everyone around you. It's not an endless process, but it is a regular practice. Chris came to see me after her father had passed away. And she shared with me, Josh, it was kind of a miracle. The last two months of his life,
[00:14:29] we were closer than ever before. I felt that I saw him and maybe it was because the pressure was lifted off his shoulders, but I felt seen and loved by him for the first time. I get it. Not all the stories end up with that kind of happy ending. For many of us, we have to see through the fractures
[00:14:53] of our relationships to the soul that reminds us that deeply we are one. That even in spite of appearances, there is a love that binds us. This can give us that inspiration to continue to give, to continue to love and allow the healing to take care of itself. Again, it's not ours to control,
[00:15:14] but to let go of and allow. So what does forgiveness for today look like? First, forgiveness is an act of self-interest. Forgiveness is about getting back to your own light and being committed to your own thriving no matter what. No one gets to take your thriving away from you. No one can dim your light.
[00:15:43] It's always up to you. Shine your light. Second, remember that forgiveness is not a one-time event, nor is it an endless process, but it is a regular practice and it may need to be a daily practice for you. What is a ritual for forgiveness that feeds your heart? Is it listening to music? Is it writing in
[00:16:09] your journal? Is it taking a quiet walk? Perform the ritual and you can say, I forgive you, but allow it to be a demonstration for you. Just like when a prayer is answered, we don't say, look, I did that. In the same way, we do our work and forgiveness begins to demonstrate itself. We're back to our old whole self again, renewed and living life on high.
[00:16:37] Lastly, forgiveness is not for one, but for all of our relationships. As we continue to practice forgiveness, our relationship with that person may not get better. We may need to release it completely, but all of our other relationships will benefit and grow. And one last point, and this may be the hardest one, but this is what I would call religious science or science of mind forgiveness.
[00:17:03] And it's the idea that forgiving them is not enough. You have to want the highest and best for them. Forgiving them is not enough. You have to wish them well. The spiritual principle behind this is in when we think we're putting someone else in the prison of our blame and judgment, we're really imprisoning ourselves. And until we can want the highest and best for them, we are not free from
[00:17:31] that prison. You don't have to provide it for them. You can release them, but you can wish them well. You can pray knowing that healing, clarity, God's grace visits upon them and that they're able to live a great life. Can we wish that they experienced the consequences of their actions? Absolutely. But we can also pray for their healing and well-being. Our founder, Ernest Holmes, he put it this way.
[00:18:00] If you wish to be happy, take all unhappiness out of your mind and bury it. If you want God, stop thinking about the devil. If you wish to live in the kingdom of heaven, forget hell. You are to find the roots of your life in pure spirit to see the basic unity of all, the fundamental mathematical and logical necessity of such a unity. Lose your sense of being separated from your good and you will find
[00:18:29] that you are united with it. Why do we forgive? Because we fall under the illusion that we've been separated from our good, that someone or something can actually get in the way of you and your light. Impossible. They may annoy the hell out of you, but if we bring it back to our own heart, not blaming
[00:18:54] ourselves, but starting with forgiveness of ourselves and we bring ourselves back into the light, back into our light, back into spirit's light, we can begin to shine and the byproduct of that is healing, deepening growth and better relationships all the way around. Moving into prayer this morning, invite any of our prayer practitioners to stand and join in conscious. They are available to offer you a prayer for
[00:19:20] forgiveness after the service and just delving into that one ocean of consciousness, allowing ourselves to be submerged in this mile high awareness of a love and a spirit that rises above all obstacles. I simply choose to release right here and right now any story, any judgment, any blame,
[00:19:47] any unkind act of self-responsibility that punishes myself. I realize these no longer serve me, that they may have served me in forming an identity that affirmed my brokenness, but if I want to affirm my wholeness, I now must rise above, let those go and allow the truth through me in my life to be told and
[00:20:10] demonstrated right here and right now. The truth of who each one of us is, precious children of God. This is true of me and it's true of everybody else as well as much as they may choose to try to prove it otherwise. Knowing that there is a divine love that is the healing back of all seeming fractures.
[00:20:35] A divine love that is wholeness even in the most broken of experiences. A divine love that carries us forward, that wants to make things better. I allow this love to make itself known through me, to know more than I think I do, to demonstrate in and as harmonious relationships, physical health and
[00:20:59] well-being, and living a great life. Allowing this great life to be the truth of who we are now, we allow it to get underway and participate fully in it. And so it is. Thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast. This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you. To make a donation, please visit milehighchurch.org.