Get Free From The Hurt That’s Holding You Back

Do Something Great With Your Life

Session 5: Get Free From The Hurt
That’s Holding You Back

Edited Transcript

 

Patrick Morley

 

Good morning, men.  Awesome. We are celebrating this month our 33rd anniversary of this Bible study, which is difficult for me to believe because being 37 years of age and we’re going to do that with the event next week featuring John Rivers.

For those of you who are online one week from now, we want to encourage you to use this event of a very outstanding Christian business leader as an opportunity for you to invite a few new guys maybe to your small group, if you have a small group or maybe you could use this to start one.

Then today, we are going to do something we do once a year since the year 2007 and that’s to award the Jim Seibert Distinguished Service Award.

We only give one award at Man in the Mirror and this is it. “A disciple is called to live in Christ, equipped to live like Christ and sent to live for Christ.”

The born again piece, the growing and then the serving. We say it here from time to time, a Bible, a small group and what else, serving someone else will solve 90% of your problems, hyperbolae, but there’s an idea in there that has a ring of truth to that.

I’m going to begin by asking the former Jim Seibert Distinguished Service Award winners to stand and remain standing and then hold your applause and they will recognize all the previous winners in just a moment and some are going to be posthumously recognized including Jim Seibert, the first winner and then not present today, John Barber, Jim Angelakos, Don Walborn, not present, Tom Watson, (he didn’t ask my permission not to be here this morning), Tom Watson, Keith Thomas, back here, Steve Jones, Steve Hall and would you guys just remain standing please, Jeff Taylor, he’s not here. John Anderson, don’t stand John. He just had foot surgery and then Fred Mateer.

I wonder if you can join me in just thanking these men for their service. Thank you men for your past and ongoing service as well.

Then, the recipient of the 2019 Jim Seibert Distinguished Service Award is a man who arrives here. He’s one of the first to arrive every week and one of the last to leave. He buys sausage biscuits for himself and a couple of the other men and then they enjoy a breakfast here. He grew up in the Panhandle of Florida. He went to the Florida State University on a football scholarship. Then taught school for 35 years and for the last 15 years, he’s been officiating middle school and high school basketball games both boys and girls.

Joining us today is his wife. I would like at this time for you to join me in recognizing and honoring the 2019 recipient of the Jim Seibert’s Distinguish Service Award, Charles Musser and his wife, Barbara.

I’d like you both come up if you would? Awesome. Thank you, men for that very warm appreciation. Charles, first of all, Congratulations.  It’s an honor to be able to present this award to you and it’s so nice, Barbara, to have you to be here today as well.

This is the award. We changed it up a little bit this year. It has something that looks really, really classy. In fact, I want one of these but since I don’t serve very well, I probably won’t ever get it, but anyway, the Jim Seibert Distinguished Service Award presented to Charles Musser, Man in the Mirror Bible Study 2019 and then the text for the award is Ephesians Chapter 3 Verse 14 through 21. Charles, on behalf of all the men, congratulations.

Charles Musser:  Thank you.

Patrick Morley:  You want to say something?

Charles Musser:  I’m just blessed. I enjoyed coming here and helping these men and you’ve helped me greatly. I thank you very much for it.

Patrick Morley:  Awesome, great. Thank you. Barbara. Thank you, Barbara.

All right. If you would, please turn in your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 13, love doing that award. That’s really a great thing and by the way for those of you who are online, you might consider … The reason we are leaving this online, I don’t think we’ve ever left it online before, we might have, but I don’t remember.

We want to leave this online as sort of an example for something you may want to consider doing with your own group as well.

Today, the message is … New clicker. The IT guy has a very difficult job because if it doesn’t go well, everybody, all eyes are on the IT guy.

If everything goes perfect, which is what it usually happens, nobody even notices the IT guy or gal at all.

Given the circumstances and given the great job that Brian does week in and week out, why don’t we give Brian a big one, two, three, [ooha]. Okay. There you go.

The title of today’s message, the PowerPoint didn’t get changed. I’m just not having a good day here. All right.

The title of today’s message is Get Free From The Hurt That’s Holding You Back. The first thing I want us to talk about is who doesn’t want to be a 4^th Seed Christian.

WHO DOESN’T WANT TO BE A 4^th SEED CHRISTIAN?

Matthew Chapter 13 Verse 23, “But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop yielding a 160 or 30 times what was sown.”

Who doesn’t want to lead a great life? This is a great way of describing or what it means to be leading a great Christian life is to be the fourth seed in this Parable of the Sower is to produce 36 to 100 times what has been sown into our lives and then the big question of course is what’s holding this back.

WHAT’S HOLDING US BACK?

For what’s holding this back, if you would, turn to Matthew Chapter 13, excuse me, Chapter 18 Verse 21, Matthew Chapter 18 Verse 21, I’m still working on figuring out how to use this new Bible. I love this new Bible. It doesn’t love me yet, but I love it.

Patsy and I, my wife, we were camping and I went into this little camp store and it was really a nice camp store and they had a coffee machine and they were selling coffee and then I noticed they had this little honey bottles there.

I said, “I’m going to buy. I’m going to get a cup of coffee and I’m going to put some honey in it.” It was a little honey bottle about an inch and a half tall, something like that.

I poured the cup of coffee and then I put the whole bottle of honey into the coffee cup and the woman who was working at the camping store said, “Wow, you sure do use a lot of honey.”

I looked at her and I don’t know she just take me the wrong way. I said, “Well, what are you lady, the honey police?” She did not count the coffee to me that day that’s for sure.

That happened a couple of years ago and then there’s been kind of an accumulation of incidents like that.

About the middle of last year I started saying, “You know God, why am I so angry?” Why am I so prickly? Why am I so fragile? This isn’t who I’ve been. Why is this who I am becoming? I began praying about and just asking the Lord to show me why am I so angry?

Thanksgiving Day, evening, the night of thanksgiving, I woke in the middle of the night and I’m going to read you the note that I journaled to myself the next morning.

Woke in the middle of night, Lord revealed to me source of my growing anger, bitterness of heart, prickliness, did I say that too that I was prickly, yeah, fragility, and cynicism. I was holding grudges, which is another way of saying that I was not forgiving others.

Then he led me through a prayer of forgiving others and forgiving me for not forgiving them. This is not to say that there are not legitimate grievances but rather since there are legitimate grievances, forgiveness is needed.

Accumulated forgiveness is like a festering wound that gets infected when not treated.

My list is pretty long. I decided to make a list of these things that I had been led through. It kind of all came to a head at the gala, the Man in the Mirror gala that we had before thanksgiving.

When we had made all of the arrangements and we were very concerned about the experience of the gala attendee. Part of that is parking.

We contacted the venue and we told them about our concern about parking and they said, “Don’t worry about it. We do this all the time,” but we were still concerned. We called them back again. They said, “Don’t worry about it. We do this all the time.”

Then a third time, they assured us, “We have this. We’ll take care of it. We do this all the time.”

Then on the night of the gala, some of the guests couldn’t get their car to leave the venue for over 1 hour after the event was over.

I was so red hot. I was so angry. I was embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. I was going around the little groups that were waiting for their cars and just telling me, “I’m so angry at this venue for what they’ve done. I was just laying there.”

I thought that they would at least help be somewhat and then apologize to them for it, but what I found was, is that and of course now we know what they do all the time. “Yeah, we do this all the time.” Okay, well now we know what it is it they do all the time.

This bitterness just, I mean, I could not let that go. I was just so angry about that. That was in early November and then this kind of all comes to head on Thanksgiving, but there are other things too.

You’ve heard me tell my Airstream stories with my punch list and whatever is 27 items and I could not get the dealer. I could not get the dealer. I could not get the dealer to actually fix anything.

They love to look it over and say, “Yeah, that’s the problem.” But now, I could not get them and I literally had to drive all the way to the factory service center in Ohio, two day trip up and two days back in order to get the thing fixed. I couldn’t let that go either.

Then I had some other things that were going on as well. I had a contractor who had done some work on our house and I needed to get some additional work done.

I must have called the contractor six times and the contractor would not return my call. It’s somebody who’s a friend on top of it and it just really, it just stuck with me and I could not let it go. I just wasn’t able to let it go.

I forgive myself for hating him but I couldn’t forgive him for being such a jerk. Then I got sick. The church has many critics but no rivals.

The church is a great organization especially I just heard this week a pastor talked about how they want to be life struggling for structure not structure struggling for life. That’s a very brilliant concept there.

Our church is life struggling for structure. It’s a great church, but I got sick. I mean really sick and we started going to church online. I was just too sick really to go. I couldn’t keep doing this and keep doing everything else. Some things had to give and so we started going to church online.

I got to a point where if I heard one more person stand up in front and talk about how we’re family when no one knew, not one person had ever express any interest in me.

Nobody asked where is Pat? The church hurts. The church hurts. Business hurts, church hurts, I was having a hard time letting that go.

Then you have the main source of hurts, you have work hurts too, right. You get overlooked. You get whatever. You got thrown under the bus. You get disrespected or not respected. All of the things that happened and then the place where we have the most hurts is family hurts or people hurts, relationship hurts.

I’ve got all of the normal things that are going on just like you and then there is Facebook, my Facebook hurt.

Facebook, it’s great we use Facebook. I love Facebook for the benefits that it produces, 95% or 98% or whatever percent you want is good, but Facebook encouraged me to start a page, an author page and to build that up.

I started noticing that I was communicating with friends, but only a small percentage of the friends will actually able to see the post. Then they started sending me notices, “You can contact more friends if you pay us $10 and this many more friends if you spend $20.”

I just became so bitter and so angry that they had basically, I felt tricked me, no I’m not saying they did, but that’s the way I felt that I got have been tricked into working to build this big Facebook thing and then those are my friends. Those are people that found each other and then I can’t talk to them. They won’t let me talk to them unless I pay them.

All of these things were adding up. I had become angry and cynical and there’s lots of cynicism.

Then, I become prickly. I become super sensitive. I’ve said finally, “Lord, I’m asking you what’s going on here? Why am I so angry?” Then the Lord showed me that night that I was holding grudges.

I was holding grudges, another way of saying it I had not forgiven these people. It doesn’t mean that they hadn’t done something wrong, but let’s take a look at the scripture.

Matthew Chapter 18, what verse did I say? Twenty one? Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me, up to seven times?”

I imagine that Peter probably thought that was generous, seven times. Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times but 77 times.”

Now, what does Jesus … Jesus is the master of hyperbolae, right? What does Jesus mean when he says 77 times? It’s just however many times it takes. However many times you get offended?

Now, what’s interesting here, Peter didn’t ask nor did Jesus say that how many times when my brother or sister comes to me and bows their knee and cries because they are so sorry for what they’ve done and they apologize and they beg for forgiveness, how many times should I forgive them?

Now, the scriptures that and we’ll look at a couple of more, the scriptures indicate that we are to forgive those who have sinned against us without regard to whether or not they’re sorry, to whether or not they’ve asked for forgiveness. What’s the next verse on the handout? Matthew 18 what? Thirty three?

After telling the Parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus says in the parable, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you.” There’s this idea the same grace that Jesus has extended to us in forgiving our sins. True or false? People deserve to be loved. Absolutely a false.

People don’t deserve to be loved. You think about the sins that you’ve committed and the person you’ve been and do you actually believe that you deserved to be loved? Why are we loved?

Because God is love, because God graciously loves us not because of who we are, but really kind of, kind of. I’m not going to say because it’s pushing it too far but you know what I mean.

True or false? People deserve to be forgiven. Absolutely false. Nobody deserves to be forgiven. It’s an active grace. The Gospel is that your sins have cut you off from God and from people. Your sins have cut you off. You don’t deserve love. You don’t deserve forgiveness, but God loves us anyway, but God forgives us anyway.

He gives us grace. He takes us terribly sinful person, you and he takes a big Holy Spirit gob of grace and he takes it in his hands and he hurls it down to the earth and he splatters all over you and forgives every sin and loves everything about you, not because of who we are but in spite of who we are.

Jesus is asking us to do the same thing for your mother-in-law, for your sister-in-law that just keeps needling you every time you get together, every time you get together or your brother.

Everybody has that brother or a lot of people have that brother or the father wound. You’ve got on your list of grudges is the father wound.

You have created a narrative about the father you had or the father you never had and you’ve created a narrative in there and if you will stop and think about it, you will see that within that narrative, there is a grudge, there is a grudge which is another word for unforgiveness.

What verse were we on? Thirty three. Then Verse 34, “In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” Verse 35, “This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brothers or sisters from the heart.”

On what condition are you … What are the conditions that you’re allowed to require to forgive your brother and sister from the heart? There are not conditions. Turn to Matthew Chapter 6. This is an amplification of the Lord’s Prayer.

In the Lord’s Prayer it says, “Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.” Then in Verse 14 it says, “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.”

Now, be careful about trying to push that too far, but the idea is, is that in human relations, when you go about and you’re not forgiving other people for their sins, then the Lord he’s withholding the …

You still have a little grace, but it’s not as big sloppy blob of grace I was talking about. It’s more like it takes a little, there’s a little watering can. I’m making this up as I go.

You got a little watering can of grace and he said, “Well, I’ll going to give him a little grace just to not to get through of the day but I’m not going to give him all of it, because he’s not forgiving the other people what they’re doing so why I should I forgive him for everything that he’s been doing as well.”

All right. Here’s the Big Idea for the day. No matter what someone has done, you can and should forgive them right now.

No matter what someone has done, you can and should forgive them right now. I’m going to ask you what is your list? What are the things that …

Now, for some of you you’re well aware of what’s going on here, but for some of us, this has been a blind spot and it’s okay, but now it’s not blind anymore.

This is a real opportunity for us that the title of the series is do something great with your life and you’re wondering what’s holding you back? What’s holding me back?

Well, this is one of the things that might be holding you back and so it might be family, we talked about that. It might be work, we’ve talked about that. It might be something going on in the world, rude drivers.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about my grudge against rude drivers. Hey, you know what? When you’re looking at one thing, you can’t see the other thing. When you’re looking at the father, when you can’t see all the good things your father did. When you’re looking at the father, when you can’t remember how he was working. He wasn’t there because he is working two jobs so that you could go and play sports and have enough money for a few extra activities.

What was I talking about? Oh, rude drivers. When you’re looking at the rude driver, you don’t see the good driver. I mean it’s just human nature. When you stop and you think about it though, what 99% of the drivers then they let you in traffic and they use their blinkers and they’re not … like that on the interstate the vast majority but you get to a point where you don’t see him.

Maybe it’s for you, rude drivers, or maybe it’s how the government is running. I don’t have enough time for that one. Maybe it’s some kind of a church hurt. What I’m going to … The final piece here is overcoming the hurts of the past and one fell swoop. Here’s what i am going to ask you to do. This is the application.

I’m going to ask you today to start a list. I don’t think it … I think this is so big. I don’t think this is something that we just sit here today and take 3 minutes and make out list of the places where we have been hurt, where we have a knock on somebody.

“Oh, there they go again. There they go.” If you have somebody say, “Oh well, there they go again,” or when you see somebody comes, “Oh, here he comes,” guess what? You need to forgive that person. Uh-oh, that’s all of us, right? That’s all of us, right?

I want you to take your time in your discussion time today at the end of it. The idea I’m going to ask you to write down the first five people that you should forgive or groups of people that you forgive to get you started.

Then, I want you to take your time with this and really think through who are the people or the groups of people that I have a grudge against, that I have a knock on.

Now, you don’t have the power to forgive them. If you did, you would have already done it by now.

You need to ask God to, by faith, believe that you can forgive them with the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s the only way this is going to happen.

Then, one more little thing, overcoming the hurts of the past and one fell swoop, make the list. Make a second list. Make a list. I did this. Make a list of all the people who have really treated you well.

I tell you, I felt so good when I made the list of all the things that I needed to-to-to and people I needed to forgive but when I said, that’s not the only list.

There are also all these people who have really treated me so well like my wife and my literarily agent, people that I work with, the people who disciple me, the people who led me to Jesus, donors to the ministry, the retirement community where my father-in-law, mother-in-law lived, publishers, Chuck Mitchell, who has handled my business for all these years so I can do this ministry, even Amazon.

I mean I’m so grateful they just treat me so well. I mean and there are lots of companies too that really treat me well. Make two lists.

Then, following the Big Idea; No matter what that person or those persons had done, remember that you can and you should forgive them right now. Because why? Why should we do this? Because Jesus said that we should do this. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, our dearest Father, thank you so much for your word. Lord, there are many of us who have been …We have a ceiling on the greatness that we seek to do something great for you.

There’s a ceiling on that of unforgiveness, of grudges that have turned this into angry, bitter, cynical people in big ways. Maybe some of us are still able to disguise it or maybe some of us think we’re disguising it when actually everybody around us can tell.

Lord, I pray that you would make this a spiritual awakening of forgiveness for all of us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.