Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Love Quest International
Church podcast, where we seek to love all nations, equip the
church, mobilize the equipped, and serve all.
We're super glad you're joining us from whenever and wherever
you're at in the world. Welcome to the family to get
your Bibles ready, get some water, get some coffee, maybe
some tea, and get ready to receive.
Let's get into it. Everyone say maximum blessing.
Yeah, if you're going to get blessed, get it all.
Today we're talking about baptism.
We have our baptisms today. Amen.
Give a hand clap. And one thing we teach about in
baptism that whatever God got for you get it all.
I'm the guy that if I go to McDonald's and I was supposed to
get napkins, I want napkins in the bag.
Even if I never use them, if it's come with it, I want it OK.
I want the salt, the pepper. I want everything that comes
with it, right? Get it all.
Don't just get part of the blessing, get it all get maximum
blessing. Amen.
Because God's pouring out himself in a maximum way today.
I'm going to put I want you to strap up for an emotional ride,
say emotional ride because we going to go there today and and
I invite you to be open to the emotion.
Don't fight it, don't press it, don't try to constrain it.
Don't worry about what happens. We have people in our house that
are praying right now for God's will be to be done in each one
of our lives. Our prayer team, we got
ministers in the house and clergy in the house that can
govern that atmosphere in ways to make sure we stay safe.
OK? So whatever you need to
experience, let it experience it because why?
This could be your time and this could be the very experience
God's trying to register in you to get you through a place of
breakthrough and on your way in a more glorious fashion, OK?
Don't be afraid of the motion. Don't be afraid of the thoughts.
Don't be afraid and don't negotiate with your own soul,
OK? What do I mean?
Don't make something lesser when it's bigger, OK?
Don't make a big hurt, a small hurt because you're trying to
negotiate with your soul. And well, I don't want to make
it seem like it was that or it's ugly, OK?
Don't do that. Let God come and let you be
honest today. Hey, man, so we're talking about
my prayer is this that at the end of our message today, the
God who opens hearts while the word is being spoken is going to
wash over you, much like the waters of baptism are going to
wash over our folks getting baptized today.
And since himself is going to be washed out and washed away
today. So my subject today in our
family, don't put the top slide up yet.
We're talking about family matters.
Everyone says family matters. That's the series we're in.
Pastor set it up perfectly and want to be talking about
different elements of family as we go throughout this series.
And the topic I want to share today, I'm charged with sharing
today is this regarding family. Forgiving the family that hurt
you, forgiving the family that hurt you, that's family matters.
And sometimes you got to start there, you know, you got to
start. You got to dig the hole first
before you put the post in. You got to dig the hole to put
the foundation of the building in before you build on top of
it. You know, you don't want a house
go, you can clan go won't help them.
Clan clap. It's all right, go ahead.
It's like doing a rental when the walls are messed up and
rather than fix the walls, people just put new drywall over
it. You walk in and it looks fine,
but just wait 2-3 years and let the mess underneath begin to
come out. And now you're upset that folks
covered it versus really dealt with it.
Sometimes this is the stuff you got to deal with first before
you do all this. Shout out to my Northern Soul
Ministry team. They told me a lot about
renovation and building. Amen.
So forgiving the family that hurt you.
The first thing we want to talk about is this.
Our goal today is to expose, equip and excite, OK?
We're going to expose some things about this topic, then
we're going to equip you to deal with it and then we're going to
release an excitement. Excitement is not an emotional
state of agitation. It is a more of a, a desire and
a willingness to move to action. We're going to excite you, going
to encourage you to move to action as it relates to this
topic in the subject matter, and we're going to have you do it
with great joy. OK, Now, excitement in this
topic doesn't mean you're just always cheering, but it means
you are fully engaging as you move to action Amen.
So as we look at family, there's a lot that goes into this family
is one of the biggest things that we, we have understanding
about, but we don't talk about we, we just like, well, you, you
supposed to get it. You're just supposed to
understand it, right? A lot of families problems, a
lot of the hurts that come that you have to be forgiven for,
forgiven of come from your expectations.
So the question is this, who told you that?
Whatever your idea about what you expected from family, who
told you that? Where do family expectations
come from? Why did you expect that?
Forgiveness suggests that there's been a brokenness that
happened, but brokenness suggests that there was a
wholeness at one time. There was an expectation at one
time, but it got broken. What made you, who told you that
was the proper expectation to have about family?
You have to examine that. Where did it come from?
Because sometimes that's really the problem.
It's not what you're experiencing, but you've gotten
a picture from romantic comedies and what you see on television
from watching other people's families from outside the house
rather than inside the house. Sometimes that's where you get
your expectations from. And the issue with your hurt is
not even maybe what you experienced, but it did not line
up with the expectation that you formulated.
And if you and if you and if you formed your expectation
improperly, you've already set yourself up for failure or to be
hurt in a tremendous way. Where do family expectations
come from? They come from movies,
television. They come from what you've
experienced. They come from social media.
They come from what you watch. They come from why you are
waiting for your friend to come down to go out and play and you
hear their parents in the house arguing.
They come from all of that. OK, So we have to deal with
expectations. The question next question is
this, what should family do? Hurt involves broken order.
First off, there's a broken order that's happened.
Now the kind of family hurt I'm talking about, it's not just the
relational hurt, but the structural hurt.
What's relational hurt? Relational hurt is when some
people acting together relationship.
I do something to you and you see able to hear it and see it
and you're in a position to respond or protect yourself.
But I do something that hurts you.
Relational hurt, structural hurt is I'm a father or a father
abuses, a child sexually abuses or physically abuses.
That's also what we're talking about.
That's a structural break. The child doesn't know.
The child is not incapable of defending themselves.
There's a broken order. There's the expectation that
families should do things. Fathers should not molest
children. Mothers should not molest
children. Fathers should not do this.
Mothers should not do this because of the nature of
children as they find them ready.
Fathers should not abuse their elderly parents either.
Forgiving the family to hurt you.
OK, so there's a sense of what should family do?
Where does that expectation come from?
Hurt involves broken order. There's a sense of something
should have been done a certain way and the order was broken.
Next question, What do you expect of family?
What do you expect? It kind of Harkins back to the
first one. What do you expect?
What do you expect of them? Why am I saying that?
Because sometimes your hurt comes not from what family did,
but again, from what you put on them.
And particularly when you didn't tell them, you just posed a no.
Because if you love me, you would just know.
And it's really interesting that we feel that way about people.
But when? But when people do that to us
and say, John, you just posed to know, My response is how was I
supposed to know? Right.
When it's on the other side, we can tell people.
I can tell my wife, you just posed to know.
But then she tells me what, John, you supposed to know.
My response is, how am I supposed to know?
Why is it that, oh, that's OK for me, but not OK for her?
What do you expect? The family That becomes really
important as well. OK, I got some technology issues
here. So next slide, what do you
expect? Why do you expect things of
family? So first one is what, the other
one's why. What is the objective aspect?
Why is the motivation? And this is important because
this speaks to whether you love me or not.
The why It speaks to what? The motivation for those things.
The why. OK, yeah.
See if you're see if you can download that for me.
The why do you expect things of family hurt involves misplaced
expectations. Next, why do you feel justified
in your anger at family hurt? This is what keeps you in a
broken position. I'm stuck.
This is why people feel justified.
I'm stuck. I didn't ask for this.
Pastor did a message on that a while ago.
It was really powerful. I didn't ask for this and I
can't do anything about it, so they owe me.
I didn't ask to be in this family.
I was just born into it. I didn't ask for this.
It's just happened to me. I feel justified in my anger.
Why? Because I didn't ask for it.
Therefore, if I'm angry or if I'm hurt or I'm upset, I have a
right to be. This is why people get stuck in
family hurt and family is in a unique way.
Why? Because you were never asked to
be born into your family. You could choose the job, you
can choose the spouse. Even I know spouse is part of
family, but but in terms of the, the the the parent child
relationship, you didn't ask for that.
And that justification of that hurt can sometimes cause you to
feel that you are justified and right and cause you to dig in
and to stay in and not be released from it.
I'm not going to move out. I'm not going to forgive unless
I'm paid in full. Somebody owes me and somebody's
going to pay for any forgiveness is given.
I'm justified and I was wronged. Now it's time to really begin to
expose the most important part, Amen.
The most important part. You got to recognize that it's
bigger than you. It's bigger than you.
With all of what I just said being true, we got to expose the
fact that it's bigger than you. It's not just about you.
Even though it may have happened personally to you or you may
have been the one who caused hurt personally, it's bigger
than you. It's a spiritual war between
kingdoms. Pastor said this on Wednesday.
It says this, that you were born into a war.
Genesis 315 says, and I will put enmity between you and the woman
and between your offspring and her offspring.
It's a family fight. It's a war you've been born
into. It's bigger than you.
Why some of the hurt has happened to in your family
because it was never about you. The enemy that's out to hurt God
was use your family to get back at him.
You ever seen the movie where you stop John?
Too many movies flooding my hair right now.
The movie where the, the, the hero is over there and the, and
the, and the evil person has the family member and they're
holding him hostage and they're threatening like this.
Knowing what if I threaten them, you won't do anything to me, or
even if you do something to me, I will hurt them in the process
and therefore hurt you. Families are in the midst of the
war between God and the enemies of God.
It's bigger than you. It's not just about you.
So you have to have a bigger perspective about it if you want
to rise above it. If you think it's all about you,
you want to stay in that cycle. But if you understand it's
bigger than you, that means you got bigger help to help you
breakthrough. The proximity of the war comes
between your family. That's why we talking about the
family series, Matthew 1036 says.
And the man's enemies will be members of his own household.
That's the proximity of the war. The enemy's trying to show that
love doesn't work because God is love.
And if I can bust up your household, then I can bust up
your bloodline. I can bust up your generations.
I can bust up everything. I'm trying to show that the
enemy's trying to show that love doesn't work, the proximity of
the wars and family relationships.
The only way you're going to win the war is doing it God's way,
Psalm 127 says Except the Lord builds the house.
They that labor in the city, they labor in vain who build it,
except the Lord keeps the city. The watchman wakes put in vain.
Now I highlighted 2 things here. Pastor, put these up or on
Wednesday, you ought to come out on Wednesday.
Do your soul a favor, do your soul in your bloodline a favor.
Come out. The Lord builds the house.
But after you build, you got to keep, it's not enough to follow
God in building. You got to follow God in
keeping. You got to follow God in the
maintenance because inevitably there will be disrepair.
That happens if you're using something, if you are vigorously
engaging in your family, you will have scratches, you will
have arguments, you will have beef, you will have brokenness.
You have to learn how God maintains order in the midst of
those things that naturally occur in living life with
family. Amen.
So I want to equip you with this mindset now.
Matthew 1037 says this. He who loves and takes pleasure
in father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who
loves and takes more pleasure in son or daughter more than me is
not worthy of me. You got to have a wholeness
shift and change your expectations.
The way you're able to forgive family that hurts you is to
understand you got to love God more first.
You gotta have your focus on Him first and foremost.
That has to be the supreme thing because as long as you love in
your family or dealing with your family or putting more weight in
your family than your love for God, you will always miss God's
ability to be able to repair and rescue and restore.
The brokenness has come through your family.
So you got to change your expectations.
Are you going to love God more? I told you He's bigger than you.
They did me wrong. I'm justified.
But are you going to love God more?
They've been doing it for a long time.
But are you going to love God more?
Let's flip it. I've been the cause of hurt and
I can't forgive myself. Are you going to love God more?
It's bigger than you. You got to shift expectation of
loving God first. Matthew 1030.
I believe it says this. And you should love the Lord
your God out of the whole of your heart.
Why is that important? Because it begins with loving
God, not forgiving others. OK, I've I've said this before,
this is God. This is the hurt.
I can go away from the hurt, but get no closer to God.
Sometimes how I go away from the hurt can actually put me farther
from God, but it is impossible that when I'm faced with
overwhelming hurt, if even I just take one small step towards
God, I've automatically put the hurt behind.
I don't want to get dramatic, but it's part of my gift set.
Even if that step is like it's a crawl on your knees, it don't
feel like a step. It feels like I'm more broken
than I'm whole. Even if you make that towards
God, if you fall towards God, if you cry towards God, if you just
put your momentum and your weight towards God, that is a
step towards wholeness and away from this automatically.
So you have to begin to decide I'm a love God first.
And the thing that keeps people from that is that they want to
have a clean house before the the cleaning service comes.
I want to clean my house before the person who's equipped and
capable and able into my favorite cleaner, we'll bring
fresh sourdough with her, comes to your house and does the work
for you. They got tools you don't know.
They got equipment you don't know.
They got skills you don't know, but too often we want to click
the house clean first before we love God.
God, how can I love you when I'm filled with so full of rage and
anger at my family, what they've done?
Let me deal with this first before I say I love you, I don't
want to be hypocritical. God is saying you got to love me
first. You can't deal with that unless
you love me. There's no way you won't even
handle it unless you deceive my love first.
Scripture says this. We love God because He first
loved us. Love was God's idea, not yours.
There's nothing we do in this life at all that was not first
God's idea. What you talking about then?
Sin is God's idea. No, not sin.
Sin is the corruption of what God's idea was.
The idea began with God and the enemies counterfeited it.
Now this is really, really important.
It's the equipment part, right? Love God first, bigger than you.
Look, I'm giving you the tools. Now.
How many of y'all know I can go down to Home Depot and get a bag
of tools that don't make me a builder?
It's a lot harder to apply the tools properly than to go buy
them, right? So the real work is not even
knowing the tools. The real work is applying the
tools. And you can do all the YouTube
that you want and YouTube is good, but there's nothing like
having some a master with you who knows the work and the tools
teach you how to apply the tools.
Let me tell you, don't you come up here.
This is my, this is my, this is my son here.
There's nothing like we're doing work right here as a car Angel.
Act like you're fixing the car Angel.
He's an actor too. He can do this.
Act like you're fixing the car, Agent.
There's one thing to YouTube it. It's something else to have a
math to come over here and go like, no, you turn it this way
to be there with you. That's the presence of God
working with you through it. That's what loving God will
allow you to do. You cutting steak, you man, you
ain't fixing the car. Go ahead and sit down there.
But we can cut steak too, though we like we do steak together.
The idea is this and I messed up the I messed up the musician.
So it's like I can't play behind steak man.
I'm gonna let you finish that part.
But the idea is this, getting the tools is not enough.
Saying I have the tools is not enough.
You using the tools based on your own knowledge isn't enough.
Now, you may get there eventually, but when you take
the tools you have and you go to the master and you say master, I
need you to teach me to use these tools.
I need you to walk with me in using these tools.
I need you to move within me as I use these tools.
And when I fumble, I need you to show me how to correct the
things that I'm doing with these tools and with master.
And I'm giving you permission. If you see me beginning to use a
tool improperly, I'm giving you permission to come in and
correct me before I misuse the tool, whether that's through you
or the people you send in my life quipping.
Here's the biggest part of your quipping.
Luke 2334 and Jesus prayed. Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do. You got to shift your heart
understanding, You got to lift blame, cleanse the venom out.
That's not forgetting responsibility.
It's just getting rid of the poison that's going to kill you.
Jesus pray, Father, forgive them, for they're not what they
do. Jesus prayed this prayer when
he's being nailed to a cross between two thieves.
The Romans who had a history of crucifixion and cruelty in many
ways. For all the great things they
gave, that empire gave roads and water and and aquaculture, I'm
not going to get into anything deeper than that.
For all of that that they gave, they also were expert in cruelty
in many ways. They knew how to crucify people.
They were doing three of them in a row and the and Jesus knew
that the people that put them on the Romans were crucifying them,
but they were doing it at the direction of his friends and his
family and his coworkers and people he went to temple with or
church with or he did life with. They were the ones that were
exhorting the cruelty, though the Romans were executing the
cruelty in the midst of that, he says, Father forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing.
Hold on, Player. It seems like they're very
intentional about what they're doing.
He's saying, Father, forgive them.
They really don't know what they're doing.
Now here's the challenge. Is that what God's asking of you
to look at your family? What Jesus tells me from that
picture is this. Maybe your family doesn't really
know what they were doing. I can look for my own family.
He says, well my family, my dad, the ex wives heir to me, he knew
what he was doing. But when I took a step back, saw
it was bigger than me and I looked at it through the lens of
God, I began to say God, who is the man versus what did he do to
me? And you know what I began to
learn? I learned this about my father
and it's led me to my freedom. I learned that he was born out
of an affair. His mother had an affair with a
married man. His mother got pregnant.
The married man had a family, lived on the other side of town
and didn't care for them in a small town, so everybody knew.
I learned that my father went to high school with his half
brother, who has never acknowledged his family.
He had no shoes. His brother had shoes, he had to
hustle pool. His brother had everything paid
for. I learned that his mother was a
a numbers runner. That's the illegal lottery.
That's where the people got the ID for the lottery from the
numbers people. No, true.
They legalized it. And then his stepfather was a
drug dealer. And I learned my father really
never knew his father to any degree.
And he did know the Lord, and all he knew was brokenness and
pain and hurting his family. And then he married my mother,
went to college, He was a senior, my mother was a
freshman. They started dating.
He went home to visit her. And my mother's father said this
to him. She's yours now, your
responsibility. They weren't married.
My mother's stepfather said she's your responsibility to a
man that don't know anything about family.
And he paid for a college and they moved to Chicago where
there was no family around. They moved for opportunities.
He's discriminated against as an African American in his in his
business, in his career. Had an opportunity to work for
the one of the largest drug store chains in the Midwest at
the time. That gave him the worst stores
all the time because he was black and he knew it.
But my father had a way of turning bad things around for
good. And the stores they gave him
became the best stores in the whole company.
And that record continued until just very recently when the
company was sold. But yet he had no relationships,
had no nobody to question, nobody to call on, didn't know
the Lord. And when everything in him now
he's not. He said this.
I don't think he'd mind sharing me sharing this.
He wasn't faithful to my mom. But is it any wonder because he
was born out of unfaithfulness. That's what he knew.
Maybe he had to come to that conclusion.
Otherwise he couldn't stand the the the pain of knowing that
there was a different way. My folks in the headline was he
married 55 years. So my father was working on
business and working on providing a better life for us
for a lot of reasons. So maybe he didn't have the
nurture and the care that I needed to have.
My father was grew up this way. When they told him you can't, he
said I'll show you. When he said you blankety,
blank, blank, blank, blank. I'm gonna let you fill in the
exhibitives, you can't. He says, I'll show you.
So you motivated me and he raised me with I can't, not
knowing when my father told me I can't, I said OK versus I'll
show you. He did for me.
Would it work for him? And in that context, now I
haven't learned the story. And then being married 55 years
until my mom passed, I said, Oh my goodness, yes, I was hurt.
Yes, he did things that were wrong, but when I understood he
was not equipped to be a man, he was not equipped to be a father,
he was not equipped to be married.
He was not equipped to have peace.
He was what he fought against in his career.
He was on his own all alone trying to find his way in the
world from a child and to the time he died at 80 plus.
When I understood that, but he said I'm not going to divorce
your mom and your mom not going to divorce me.
I'm not saying you have marriages that are not good, but
because he wouldn't quit even though he wasn't capable.
I don't know divorce in my family.
So when it get so when it gets hard with my wife quitting any
option and because of relationship, I know the
problems in his background where he came from, I can stand
against those traps that would try to get me into the same
problems with my wife. He passed on to me grit.
He passed on to me an ability to find a way to make a way to not
let anybody limit what you can do.
And it was that entrepreneurial spirit that allowed me to come
to Canada knowing I couldn't work.
God will figure it out. God, there's a way, and my
father has taught me tools. He's giving me the courage to
say whatever happens, we can get something done and do it
legally. Just to be very clear, Jesus
prayed, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. When I saw my father's life and
perspective, then I was able to understand He didn't know what
he was doing. He really didn't know what he
was doing. And I even put it in the context
of this here. He didn't know he was in the
middle of a war between God and his enemy.
He didn't know he was a pawn being used in order to throw
accusations against the holy, loving God.
He didn't know that he was being manipulated in certain actions.
He had responsibility for what he did, but he wasn't just
fighting on his own. There was forces that was trying
to motivate him and move him into destructivity.
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
The next slide here. Next slide.
So now I want to excite you. Keep going.
Now here's the motivating part. We've exposed that how you got
there is because of expectations, false, unmet,
unmaimed, those kind of things. You got to examine that.
We've equipped you to let you know it's bigger than you, and
you have to love God first, even with your pain in your mess.
But in order to deal with the pain in the mess, you got to be
willing to say, God, I'm gonna love you first, even above my
justified hurt. But here's the part that ought
to motivate you. You got to know.
I also want to say you got to understand that they didn't
really maybe know what they did. If Jesus can say it about them
and he was perfect in love and honor and insight, then surely I
can say about my situation. They really didn't know.
And here's the exciting part. When you're able to use these
equipping tools in the way God's ordained them, then you can
release the hurt and the pain and you can release them.
Releasing them can release you. Giving forgiveness can help you
receive forgiveness. Some of the reasons you can't
receive your forgiveness is because you're holding on to
unforgiveness for others and you this is what you just to
bargain. If I choose to receive, that
means I'm going to have to give it.
No, I want to hold on to what I have, so I'm not going to
receive forgiveness from myself. Releasing them can release you
next one. Releasing them can release them.
You're forgiving them releases you from the bondage and the
pain and from the venom and the toxin of whatever's happened,
whether you committed it or been on the receiving end.
But releasing them can also release them.
See the part about Jesus on the cross?
Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. You got to keep reading that
story because down a little further a thief hears that and
one thief says, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom.
Jesus releasing them. Help this other thief find
release and forgiveness in God for his own stuff.
Releasing them can release them to forgive themselves.
My wife, her grandfather, early Chinese man, grew up in a
traditional Chinese family and didn't say I love you too much.
It was at a Christmas Bible study and it just opened up in
her. She start crying and those kind
of things she says, you know, I'll go into my grandfather's
store in Vancouver. She was black.
He's Chinese. And she'd say grandpa and he'd
look away because you know, she she wasn't full of Chinese.
He said you never said I love you.
And after this Bible study, she decided I was going to say I
love you to my grandfather. She forgave.
She released. She did.
She replied the tools in the presence of God she gave, she
released and we got home that night.
It was late, what was early here, and she called and she
says Grandpa, grandpa, so want to tell you Merry Christmas.
And I said want to tell you I love you.
And I heard it on the phone. He said I love you too.
Her releasing him helped him to release himself.
It's bigger than you. Your forgiveness can help other
people forgive themselves. Your forgiveness can help other
people be released next one. Your forgiving your family can
help you reclaim the inheritance for you and your bloodline.
The truth be told what the enemy's plan is, is to use pain
for you to forget what God has given you.
I never want to be what you've hurt me so bad.
So you leave behind the gifts and the calling gods put on your
family and for your bloodline. You leave behind the things that
God has deposited for you for your future as you move forward.
You leave behind the talents and abilities that God has given for
it to pass through you to your to your children, to your
future. You get so so you get so
offended. I don't want none of it at all.
Then you find yourself wondering, like an orphan, who
am I? Because you let a fence rob you
of part of your identity. That was the blessing in that
family. I told you when I was able to
forgive and look back, I saw my dad gave me some things.
He gave me grit not to quit. He gave me entrepreneurship to
go anywhere in the world and do whatever God needs me to do and
not feel like if someone doesn't give me a job, there's no way
it's going to work. Nothing wrong with working the
job, I'm please understand, but the idea is I'm not depending on
that to say my yes to God. He gave me humility in his last
days by asking, son, forgive me before he passed.
It's never too late to ask and seek for the forgiveness that
you need to seek. He gave me a lot that I could
have left if I'll just let the pain of experience dictate and
lead. So part of this is reclaiming
the inheritance of your bloodline.
We talk about that in baptism. When you go down in that water,
you coming up to this new life, there's a there's a bloodline
inheritance you're reclaiming. The Scripture we talk about is
when Moses, when Moses went through the water and they
brought the riches of Egypt with them and then the waters closed
over and 400 years of family bondage was drowned in the
water. Their bloodline was reclaimed
through those waters. That's what we're talking about.
And forgiving family love has grown folk business and it is
the hardest thing you will ever have to do in your life.
That's why you need a big God and a grown God to do it.
You can't do it on your own. It's really important you really
understand that. So there's no time like now,
there's no time like now, there's no time like now.
Or what if my family's passed on?
You can still forgive. What if the people I've hurt who
have passed on you can still ask for forgiveness because it
begins first and foremost with God, even more so than them.
So we're going to take some moments right now and put this
to work. I'm going to encourage you.
You can sit where where you are and just spend some time
thinking about the family hurts that you've experienced, the
family hurts that you've caused. My dad told me this.
He said, son, when you point at someone point at my wife, I
don't want anybody to think I'm being rude or anything.
When you .1 finger at them, son, you got 3 pointing back at you.
What hurt did I 'cause how did I contribute to the pain?
How did I let the pain go on and not forgive when God was calling
me to forgive? How did I contribute to the
pain? By not getting to know their
story and who they were so I can release that thing.
So I'm going to take some moments right now.
The Holy Spirit is here. Our Father is hosting us in this
room, and He set you up for this time.
The day is your day. You can let it go.
You always could. But God has set up a special
place in time to give you the extra help you may have needed
collectively in this room. See, because we do it together
in this room, you got the testimony of my faith and what
forgiveness of my family's done for me backing you and your hard
decision you got to make. You got my testimony telling you
forgive and let it go. It's going to be all right.
You're not being irresponsible. You still can set boundaries so
people don't take advantage of you.
They were wrong to have hurt you, whether they've said it or
not. But look what comes out on the
other side. You got the faith in this room
to lift your hands and to stand with you.
There's no place like now. There's no place like here.
So I'm gonna ask you this. Think about this and let the
Holy Spirit bring to your remembrance.
Now what is it you need to forgive your family for?
What is it you need forgiveness from your family for?
What hurt have you caused that you need to What hurt in your
own family have you caused, whether that's your bloodline
family or whether that's your church family or it heard have
you caused? I just want to just share this
in this time. You know what hurt it would
cause me if one day my son left the house and just didn't come
back and he left because of something that I said that hurt
him, that maybe I wasn't even aware of it or have the depth to
which it hurt him and he just left and never said anything.
As a Father, Can you imagine how much that would hurt me?
Can you? If you can't raise your hand?
You know, it's the same way when people come to church and they
just leave and never say anything.
What hurt have you caused? And you're leaving?
So just take time. I'm gonna ask you to close your
eyes. Why?
Because it helps you to focus on what God's doing in your heart.
It's going to take a couple minutes as the Holy Spirit
eliminates, illuminates to you any forgiveness of your family
that you need to forgive. Thank you Holy Spirit for
bringing up people's hearts, souls, and minds.
What needs to be forgiven even right now?
Prayer team, if you can just be praying unless you need to be
forgiven. If you need to do the forgiving
part, do the forgiving part and pray later.
Let it come up, let the images come up or let the issue come up
because I believe the day God is saying we're going to deal with
this and you won't have to see it anymore.
God has the ability and power to do that.
Holy Spirit of God, we thank you for right now that you're
revealing the hearts. You're going deep into the
hearts of everyone here and under the sound of my voice,
deep into the hearts to unpack the pain, unpack the
forgiveness, unpack the bondage, unpack the the hurt people have
for what they disappointment in themselves they have for what
they did and didn't do. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that
you're reaching deep right now in the places that maybe never
even been touched before. We Father, we pray that there's
an anointing in this room and floods every heart that they are
allowing you to go into places they've kept off limits before.
Pockets of pain, hidden dark rooms of hurt that they've never
discussed with anybody. Sometimes you can be hurt by
someone who did nothing wrong because your expectation was
misplaced. That still qualifies.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for going places that no man can go.
Thank you, Father, for your love entertaining the hearts and
souls of everyone here in ways that we can't reach within
ourselves. Thank you for bringing
restoration and healing and wholeness in those places.
God, Thank you God. The right now forgiveness is
being given, pains being released, and identity connected
with that pain is being disconnected and eradicated.
Father, we thank you that the blood of Jesus washing it all
the way, even right now and even as people are forgiving and
releasing the people they're forgiving and also being
released to forgive. Father, we thank you that
forgiveness, divine Kingdom forgiveness, is flooding this
room and flooding the hearts and souls of the people.
For those, Father, who don't know how, we thank you for your
grace to help them in this moment.
Yield. Thank you for Your grace to help
them in this moment. Yield the Lord.
You're not too far gone to forgive.
It's not too late. Don't be deceived by said by
thinking to yourself, well, that you know, that's been a long
time doesn't need going back. Remember, it's bigger than you.
There's things God wants to release through you, maybe to
the next generation that are blocked up by the stuff you
don't want to address and don't want to deal with.
And don't make excuses. Well, that's what everybody did
back then. Don't make excuses and don't
make excuses for yourself. Father, we're going to pray now.
I'm going to activate a prayer. God's already doing the work.
But I want to extend our faith with you and to let you know
this entire house and this entire heaven that God has is on
your side tonight and on your side right now.
Father, we thank you right now, God, that you are releasing pain
and hurt. We thank you, Father, that
family hurt from ejection, from abandonment, from sexual abuse,
from verbal abuse, from emotional abuse, from relational
abuse is being broken even right now, Lord, and being cast out
and removed. We thank you that wholeness is
coming in behind that abuse and bringing wholeness.
God, We thank you, Father, that people that have the grace to be
able to say, God, I see now they don't know what they were doing.
Father, we thank you that you're going very, very deep into the
hearts and lives of all of the all of the people here and
families that seem to be irretrievably broken because of
pain or unforgiveness now can be healed and can be mended.
God to your glory. Father, we thank you God that as
forgiveness is flowing in these areas of life, God people not
only forgiving themselves, what they didn't do for how they
didn't take advantage of opportunity, of how they didn't
serve God sooner, how they didn't yield to God earlier.
We thank you God, as people are forgiving themselves tells us
well God, that riches and inheritance and goodness and
glory has been pent up, now is being released down the
bloodline. We thank you, Lord, that people
are experiencing your love, your love, your love, your love.
They're experiencing your love, your great loving kindness.
You're loving in ways that only you can do, Lord, and we thank
you for that. And Father, we thank you for
testimonies not to prove to us, but give them a testimony of
what you've done. Give them a testimony to tell
their family members and their friends and their kids about.
I couldn't forgive, but God entered my heart and I was able
to. I had a heart time, but I chose
to love God more and now I'm transformed and my family is
just, I don't know, turned around God give them testimonies
to tell to their own families and to their own souls and to
their Diaries. God where they kept Diaries of
pain, give them testimonies of transformation to book in those
God and then change the chapter. We thank you for that Father.
As our worship team continues, continue to let God do the work.
Thank you so much for tuning into this week's sermon.
We pray you were challenged, equipped and encouraged.
Make sure to follow us on all platforms.
That's love Quest Intl church. We out here for real.
We're really doing it. That's Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube and TikTok.