Jordan and Kristen Ministries
Join us for life-altering teachings along with prayer for you and your needs! As the Bible teaches us in Matthew 18:19-20: "If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." So please feel free to submit your prayer requests (preferably through the Facebook page), and Jordan and Kristen will pray over them personally.
Jordan and Kristen Ministries
Exploring the Complexity of Forgiveness: A God-Centered Perspective
Ever wrestled with the jagged edges of forgiveness? You're not alone. On this week's episode, we're pulling back the curtain on this challenging concept with the same warmth and laughter you've come to love us for. Kicking off with Kristen's heartfelt prayer for anyone experiencing tough times, we're reminded that even in the face of uncertainty, there's strength to be found in God's love.
Strap in for a thought-provoking journey where we explore the bumps and bruises that come with practicing forgiveness. We question the depth of our own forgiveness when past grievances rear their ugly heads and propose a different perspective - could forgiveness be a decision rather than an emotion? We'll discuss the physical and emotional toll associated with the process of forgiving, and why it's so essential for our wellbeing. Join us in this intimate conversation, as we share, learn, and grow together. You'll want to be part of this enlightening discussion, trust us!
Good news everybody. It's that time of week again. It's time, once again, for the Jordan and Kristen record show. I am way too excited for this. For some reason I've had no caffeine, but I am ready to go. I know, every Tuesday at nine o'clock, when we go off the air, our listeners are just inconsolable. They miss our friendly, familiar voices. They count down the days and the hours and the minutes until we're on again. They listen to our podcast over and over again just to hear those familiar voices. Well, good news. Your week long wait is over, and we got a great show for you tonight. Our topic is actually going to be the importance of forgiveness. Before we get to that, though, kristen, can you please pray for everybody in the audience? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm picturing like the fireside chats in the 40s Everybody's waiting by their radio and I think that is what you're saying.
Speaker 1:That would be like FDR's fireside chat, if he had way too much espresso before he did it. I know this is a regular speech. Do you guys in FDR announcing the attack on Pearl Harbor like that? No, well, good evening everybody. The Japanese have attached today a date that will live an end for me. Go ahead, kristen.
Speaker 2:It's really like sped up. This is not sped up, this is actual speech. Well, thank you, lord, that you love for us to have fun. You are the joy that is our strength. God and Lord, I just pray for someone right now who's going through a rough time, who just, it has, feels like they have no direction or no way to turn. Lord, help them to know that you are with them and you have ordered their steps. Lord, and I pray for all of us to just lean into you, to what you have to say. Lord, you are speaking to us. Help us to hear you in the whisper and just go deeper into your presence and understand more of your character and who you are, because when we know who we are in you, lord, then we will not doubt. We will not doubt what you can do in our lives, lord, and we just thank you, lord, so much for all the plans that you have to prosper us and not to harm us. In Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 1:Excellent job, baby. You are, by the way, a gorgeous woman. Did I ever tell you that?
Speaker 2:Oh well, this is why you are my husband successfully.
Speaker 1:Well, I just wanted to preface the conversation with that, because you said you wanted today's episode to be about forgiveness, and so I'm just hoping that this is because I've done something that requires forgiveness. No, no. Have I told you how beautiful you are, by the way?
Speaker 2:Then that works every time. By the way, Guys guys, don't forget that, that that it really does work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that and paying for a vacation yes always helps.
Speaker 2:Well, you don't know, it has nothing to do with you, but I was thinking. It's not you, it's me. I was thinking today and this week a lot about forgiveness and just how hard it is and, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't feel like I'm successful sometimes in forgiving. I feel like I say I've forgiven, and then it comes up over and over and I'm like I never gave it to the Lord, I just buried it. I buried the hurt, I buried the anger, and now catalysts comes along and boom, the top comes off.
Speaker 1:I think part of the issue is what you said there. I don't feel. I think too often people think of forgiveness as an emotion as opposed to a decision. Right, because if somebody hurts us, let's say, even physically, that bruise is still going to be there, right? And I think sometimes people just feel like they can't forgive somebody because they say, well, I don't understand, I said I forgive this person. In my mind, I'm saying I forgive this person, but I still feel that pain, I still feel the anxiety, I still feel the depression, maybe even the anger towards that person, and I guess I just can't do it. And and my message to them would be no, no, no, no, no. You can do it, but it's not always instantaneous, especially if it's something, it's something deep, and I think that's really, you know, I think why you have to go to the Lord with it, but also understand that, like so many things, it's a process.
Speaker 2:You're right and I love how you had said about it you can't look at it as an obligation, because then you won't really do it, because I feel like that's see, that that's the hard thing. You know, people always say remove toxic people from your life or people who are not you know it is it is.
Speaker 2:It's definitely good advice, right. But what if it's some? But it's complicated sometimes. What if it's a person you can't remove? What if it's a family member that you have to see? Sometimes that's for a lot of people, that's, that's a reality that there are, and then those people hurt. If you get in a situation where you have to see this person over and over and you're getting hurt over and over again, how do you deal with that?
Speaker 1:as far as you know what you said about it, or even if you don't, have to see them if somebody has, you know, abused you, even if it's maybe the person's not even alive anymore.
Speaker 1:Maybe you know you grew up in a household where your father was abusive to you, maybe he died 20 years ago and you don't have to see him anymore, but you're still living with that pain and I think what you have to understand is forgiveness isn't transactional, it's not and it's not a task that God imposes on you because he just likes to give you difficult, unpleasant things to do. It's an opportunity, right? It's not, don't think of it so much as an obligation, but an opportunity to to tell that person you don't get to live in my head anymore. Okay, I forgive you means I don't. I don't hold on to your anxiety, to the depression, to the anger anymore, because I don't want you to control my life anymore. It's no different. I think I told you. It's it to me. It's no different than if you had a tumor in you and a doctor said okay, well, good news.
Speaker 1:We can we can remove this surgically forgiveness, is that surgical knife? Okay, you wouldn't say well, you know, I'm not going to do that, I'd rather hold on to the tumor, that's ridiculous. You would say, okay, yes, I accept, this is what has to happen, and you'd go forward with the procedure, and that's what. That's really what forgiveness is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And when you said about if it's been a person that so many people live with, things I know I have were words that were spoken to me as a child by someone on a playground, I'm like why am I still allowing that to be a record in my head, you know, or you just live with those things? You need to get those things out and like that, that cancerous tumor, or if it is somebody you've had missed that opportunity to forgive, like they have have passed away. I heard a girl tell me that she had her father had passed away and she said but I was still able to forgive him and God still gave me that freedom, even though that person passed away. It's God gives you that, those opportunities you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think sometimes we don't take advantage of the opportunity. I was going to say sometimes other people don't, but I'm going to throw myself in there. Because why the heck not? Because if someone's hurt you and you don't forgive them, it's like you have this built-in excuse for immaturity, for behaving badly. Sometimes it built an excuse for self-righteousness. Sometimes you see people I mean you and I both know people who are like full-grown adults, who never move forward in life because they have to play like the victim and everything, and they'd rather hold on to that, to feeling like a victim, than they would to just get past whatever it was that was done to them and to actually, like you know, step into their calling.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not even okay for me. But bringing it back to the personal experience, the situations that are hard to forgive to me are not even feeling well, I guess, in a way, yeah, feeling like a victim, but it's more like feeling like a doormat, like the enemy has me so lied to that I feel like if I forgive this person, or I just am in this area of feeling shame, which we know is not from God and I just feel like a doormat, you know, and God has never called me to feel that way because he's the lion.
Speaker 1:Well, what happens, I think, a lot of times is when you're hurt, you get angry at somebody, and angry is one of those emotions. Anger is one of those emotions that makes you feel very powerful, and so you don't like you're saying, you don't want to feel like a doormat. If I forgive the person, I'd rather hold on to my anger because now I feel like I have power over that person and when it's actually the opposite is that person has power over you?
Speaker 2:You're right, because, and that's the thing vengeance is mine, says the Lord. So he validates my hurt and he validates all that I'm feeling. But that's the thing of bringing it to him, because he's the lion, yes, he's the lamb, yes, he's the comforter, but he's not happy when someone hurts his precious one.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You are his precious one, I'm his precious one, our listeners are his precious one, and he's that lion. He's going to take care of it.
Speaker 1:The Bible says touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm, so don't worry about that, I take some. When God says vengeance, is mine what he's not saying to you vengeance, is this really fun thing that you don't get to enjoy? I'll enjoy it. Right, as though God really takes some enjoyment in inflicting punishment on these little creatures like we are.
Speaker 1:In fact, what he's saying is I'm going to take the burden of vengeance off of you. Don't trouble yourself with that, don't come out of your joy. You keep being you. I'll bear this cross for you. That's what he's saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what I think to myself when I think of what I have to forgive. I think about people, like during the Holocaust, who had to forgive.
Speaker 1:That's real stuff.
Speaker 2:Forgive the family members, to forgive excuse me the people responsible for killing their family members and show Christ in that way, and that person came to the Lord. I think of that all the time. That is always something in my mind of like OK, if God, the Holy Spirit, can enable someone to forgive through that situation, then I can forgive in what I have to forgive, Right.
Speaker 1:Well, let me give you some medicine here for people who might be at home struggling with forgiveness. I'll give you a method you can try If you are having difficulty forgiving somebody. Find something that you've done wrong, something that you need forgiveness for, and go ask forgiveness for that.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but isn't that the hardest thing to forgive ourselves? But?
Speaker 1:there's. Yeah, that's true, but I'm not talking about figuring yourself, I mean someone you've wrong.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, because one of the principles I've noticed in Christianity is a lot of times, in order to give something, you have to get it, and so what I would say is go get forgiveness for yourself for something that you've done wrong. Ok, think of this. Shouldn't be hard, because every day we do things that we can apologize for, absolutely. Go apologize to somebody else for something you've done wrong. Maybe you haven't even thought about it, maybe they haven't thought about it. Get forgiveness from that person. When you get forgiveness from that person, it's easier for you then to give forgiveness to another person.
Speaker 2:That's for sure. And I just want to say to the person who feels you know we all have different personality styles. If you feel like you asked for forgiveness and somebody has withheld that forgiveness from you, you are again back to the doormat thing. You're not called. Yes, god convicts us, but then God forgives you and you can do what you can do to say you're sorry and reconcile the situation and understand certain situations take times and there's a process and that forgiveness. But you shouldn't have to feel like you are now forever in this state of you can never be forgiven, that it is done. You ask God for forgiveness and you go to the person If it all appropriate, depending on the situation. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:If it all appropriate, depending on the situation. Yeah, that's a good way to say it.
Speaker 2:Well, isn't it? You know true that there are great areas and there's.
Speaker 1:God calls for us to apologize, but he doesn't call for us to grovel. Okay, there's a big difference there. So when you've done your part, you've asked for forgiveness. At that point it's on them, and if they're not going to give it to you, that's fine. That's between you and God, and God forgives you and you just go on with your joy. All right, chris, in the last minute we have, do me a favor and pray for all these good people, okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, lord, you validate us. You never dismiss us. Other people may overlook us, other people may make us feel certain ways, but that's just it. It's just a feeling, and feelings come and go, but, god, you are constant and your love for us and our identity in you, that's the thing. That's for sure. That is what is definitely set in stone, god. Help us, help us, god, you know it's a test for us sometimes, lord, to forgive, but we have been forgiven. Thank you for your forgiveness, lord, and help us to live in victory as we forgive and to see things through your eyes, which I believe is the real key here. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Isn't that part of the attitude?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking about that too, like seeing things through God's eyes, helps a lot. Sometimes you'll see a different perspective for the person too. Excellent point.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. Well, listen. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it was useful to you. Thanks, as always, for joining us. We'll see you next week. Try not to get too upset now. We're going to be right back. You always watch the podcast. If you miss us too much, all right, anyway, we'll see you in a week. Until then, as always, be blessed and be a blessing. Love you.