The New Year always brings the desire for a fresh start, a new beginning. We feel a sense of optimism that we can make progress that has perhaps alluded us before. Every New Year we make resolutions to eat better, exercise more, reduce debt, accomplish ambitious goals at work and spend more family time at home. You have some hopes and dreams for the year ahead. You want to see progress. You want to be in a better place at work, at school, in your relationships with friends and family, with your health, your finances and other areas of your life.
But, it may be difficult for us to make a fresh start if we haven’t dealt in a healthy way
with the negative things of the past. Grudges and regrets add up and weigh us down. They sap much of the emotional, mental and spiritual energy we need to move forward.
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which commemorates the gifts of the magi, who came from distant lands to worship the child Jesus, suggesting that his coming is a revelation for all people everywhere. Most famously, they came bearing gifts.
God wants to bring you the gift this year of removing your baggage so that you are free to live the life he has in store for you this year and not be weighed down by the past.
This weekend we begin a new Message Series for the New Year. We are calling it “Baggage.” This series is about dealing with the past, clearing out resentment and regret so we have the emotional, spiritual and mental health and energy to accomplish the goals we want to accomplish in the coming year, and embrace the good things God has in store for us.
What we’re talking about basically is forgiveness. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness simply means to cancel a debt. In finances, if a bank that holds, say your car loan, called and told you that they forgave the loan, it would me that your debt was wiped out. Even though you legitimately owed the bank the money, the bank decided to cancel the debt. By the way, if your bank does this, please tell Trish, our business manager, which bank is doing that so we can move our accounts there.
When it comes to forgiveness, when it comes to canceling a debt, it actually does mean that someone has to pay, someone has to lose out on something they are owed. Everyone is all for forgiveness until they actually have something to forgive, until they have a debt to cancel. To forgive a debt is to acknowledge that we will not get something that we are owed, that we legitimately were owed. We need to be careful about a sense of entitlement and thinking we are owed something when we are not.
When it comes to forgiveness, we are at one of three stages. The first stage is denial. Denial can take different forms. There is the denial that makes excuses. Some people don’t cancel the debt because they simply excuse bad behavior. Eventually this becomes unsustainable
and ends badly, such as in a melt down or a blow up.
Then there is another kind of denial in refusing to forgive. The refusal to forgive leads to bitterness, which hurts the heart, but worse than that, your bitterness doesn’t stay contained. You can’t control it, directed just towards the person who hurt you. It leaks into all of your relationships, eroding the trust with people who have not betrayed or hurt you. And if that bitterness turns your thoughts to revenge or payback, you’re placing yourself in a perilous situation in which your bitterness could rule your life and quite possibly lead to even greater loss for you.
If you’re in denial about the necessity of forgiveness we are going to try and challenge you out of it and help you look more honestly.
The second stage of forgiveness would be acknowledging that forgiveness would be helpful, but you have not done it yet or don’t know how. Maybe you have reached out and your effort was rebuffed. Or it didn’t come off quite right. Or you thought time would naturally bring about forgiveness, but you have discovered that time actually doesn’t heal all wounds.
The third stage is to actually go ahead and do it; you forgive someone and release the debt. Once you have canceled the debt it is no longer in your head and on your heart. And when you do it often enough you can become quite good at it. It can become a habit, a heart healthy habit. We are going to talk more about how you develop that habit in the weeks to come.
So as we kick this series and a new year off, consider who is someone you have to forgive? Maybe it is a parent. Maybe it is a sibling. It could be a boss or your former spouse. Maybe it is your current spouse. Maybe it is yourself. Name the person you have to forgive just to yourself.
Then evaluate where you are. Have you been denying the necessity of forgiveness by making excuses or simply refusing to forgive? Do you acknowledge the need but don’t know how to do it?
My hope for this series is that you would honestly come to recognize your need to forgive, identify more effective skills to actually make it happen, and develop those skills into habits.
Forgiveness isn’t natural, it is supernatural. It is a grace given to us by God because he loves us and wants us to be happy. Forgiving someone won’t change the past, but it can change the future. Forgiving someone might not change them. But it will change you.