Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Hello Life Group leaders. Welcome to the Life Group Leader podcast and we are continuing week two of our series, Stories Jesus Told.
And we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 18 verse 20 and 35. And this is Scott by the way and I'm here with... Hi everybody, this is Cam. Nice to be with you this week.
Well, let's get started Cam. Kind of like a starter question. I love these kinds of icebreaker questions. It kind of gives everyone some breathing space to just get to know one another.
But when have you experienced generosity from someone else? Why does receiving generosity feel so good? Yeah, this is a good question, right? Because forgiveness is a heavy topic.
So whether you use this question or a different one, make sure you sit in that space and break the ice, bring it down to something where everybody can participate. So this could be fun because people could win, you know, like I would say for my own life, I experienced generosity was a really good friend's gave us two weeks in Hawaii. That was amazing. Yeah.
You know, I mean, there's lots of lots of places in my life. I just feel like I have been so blessed by generosity. So I hope those come alive for you as you talk about, even within your family, the people that have lavished you. Yeah, yeah.
Now this is good. I think in our group, we try to get as many people involved with these like starter questions. And I think for me, guys, I think about this question. I received from a friend like a vacation to you.
But I think a gift that we felt was like God's grace to us was when our son was born and we didn't really have money for childcare. And there was a friend that told us, Hey, he can come to our place and we'll be taking care of him with our babysitter. And that was such a gift to us because both of us worked in full time and we're like, man, can't believe that they would open up their home, open up, you know, their resources and for the babysitter to watch our son. So it's so much to you.
That was huge. I'm excited so much to you. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that was like a huge generous gift for us. So as we look down into like the scriptures, the story about forgiveness and forgiving, I guess really looking at like, what do we learn from the challenges of forgiveness from this passage? What do you think this kind of conversation, this question could lead us to? I think my first encouragement would be make sure you read the passage.
Always look down and actually read the words from the Bible together, whether you share that and go first by verse, sharing that around the room or does somebody read aloud for you? But this is just leaning from the word nobody's opinion. It's just what are you seeing on the word of God? And the phrase be patient with me, get popping out to me, be patient with me, which in turn we see later in the passage that it needs to be reciprocal for it to be patient with the person that that person comes in contact with, having the same grace for others that he was given.
Yeah, that's good. I think for me when our group goes to reading the scripture and just trying to find what resonated, what are the things that resonated from that passage, a lot of like follow questions come up and I don't think we need to absolutely stick to you just one question, but things just come up as we read through. And for me, as I look at this passage, I see like, to be honest, it's harder to give forgiveness than to receive forgiveness. I think sometimes I expect like when I make a mistake with my wife or something like, just forgive me, just let me go kind of extend grace.
But when I see something that someone has done wrongly to me, it's harder for me to extend that grace. And when I read this passage, it's like, we have to forgive, we must forgive because we've been forgiven much by God's grace and what Christ has done. So I think it's really just as group leaders, I know we've shared this before, but mowing the way, paving the way for vulnerability and transparency really helps others to share honestly and vulnerable as well. So kind of moving on, like, as we look out like that question of like, why do you think people often choose the pain of unforgiveness over the pain of forgiveness?
Oh, these are some drilling into some real heavy questions. Which is going to be real, right? And it's this objective question. It's not a right or wrong.
Why you think people choose the pain of unforgiveness? That question is worded very interestingly and it carries a lot of weight with it. But things that come to my mind, you feel like you lose control or you're admitting you're either wrong or you're saying I approve of that behavior because I forgive it. That's going to open the door to the same things to happen again.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that that's all good. It's still safe to forgive.
Yeah. It's okay. Don't worry. We're best friends again.
Yeah. It's hard, especially when you feel like you've been wronged. You feel that sense of justice and I'm right. And it's hard to let go sometimes of hurt and wounds and trauma.
And it's not necessarily excusing it or just justifying it, but it's being able to understand like the depths of God's grace and his forgiveness that can lead us to be able to extend grace and forgiveness to others. You know, I'm going to age myself, but I remember doing with the LA riots. What year was that? Was that 90?
I'm thinking 92 or 95. I was thinking that when I was looking at this question where like there was this, I remember watching as a little kid, this truck driver that was pulled out. This is a downtown LA. His name was Reginald Denny and these guys, writers were beating him into a pulp, like throwing bricks at his head and he was all bloodied up.
And I remember in his court case, the defendants, those guys who had smashed his head, I mean, like he was so injured and beaten up and almost killed him. And Reginald Denny was telling these defendants and their family members, I forgive you. I remember watching that and thinking, no, that's not right. How could you forgive these people?
They need to be punished. They need to be imprisoned. They need to have the consequences. And I just remember, I could never do something like that.
But that's really the power of forgiveness. I realized like without forgiveness, you're gripped and you're in prison to unforgiveness or anger or frustration, all those things, the pain of that. Anyways, those are some things that were coming to mind as I thought about the pain of unforgiveness and the pain of forgiveness. And really it's only by the grace of God with hands.
Knowing what grace has been bestowed on us, it's for our own heart, our own spiritual growth, our own development, our own emotional health to forgive. And that can look like a lot of different things. It doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is restored. It doesn't mean that.
But it means you don't harbor that and carry that. And what comes with it, the bitterness, the weight on your shoulders, the concept thought in your mind about it, that that carries. That's true. Yeah.
That's good. And then the last part, I think this is the part when you look in and you can get really personal and vulnerable and people can share. Is there someone you know that you need to forgive? Or how have you seen God work for you, the receiving or extending forgiveness in your life?
How do you think that forgiveness can help engage people in this conversation? I would encourage you to make time to sit in this part. Yeah. Because forgiveness or the lack of has an impact on our society, on our community, on our families, on us.
And this may have some heaviness that people in your group are being challenged in. They might be carrying a weight when they come into life group and to give them the space to think through this process. They may not be able to even say a name. And when you start talking about, is there something you need to forgive?
They may not be in a place where they can even say that name, but they might be able to share about how it's felt to them or the situation. And maybe it will just start with praying that person's name. Maybe the challenge is, can you pray that person's name every day for the next 30 days and see what God does? There's a dear friend, David Stupi used to speak about forgiveness a lot.
He's passed away now. But some of his quotes that I used to hear him speak, they have stayed with me for a long, long time. And someone's released the past, so the past will release you. And there's so much weight in that.
But it's not, I don't know that it's something we can just gain our strength and do ourselves. I'm going to do this. I'm going to forgive somebody because it's supernatural. It's not our normal fleshly behavior.
To be able to forgive is asking for healing in your heart. It's looking in instead of looking at the person that wronged us. And sometimes that's scarier. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Like what you said, maybe this could be the start, the callous for us to pray and think of what that looks like. And forgiveness could be a process as well too.
And as I look at my life, there's some hurts that I've had from my relationships with my father. And when you were sharing about healing, like forgiveness, when there's forgiveness, there's healing, not just in our relationship, like my relationship with my dad, but within my heart, within my soul. I'm no longer chained, no longer bound to, to that grip of anger and hurt and resentment. But God brings healing as we forgive that person that has hurt us.
So yeah. He does. He longs for that for us. Yeah.
Because he knows the way that carries on our hearts for sure. Yeah. I think family hurts are probably the worst. Yeah.
hardest to be able to get through to talk through to hand over to the Lord and that it had any weight on us. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah.
It's hard. Yeah. Now we're really, we're excited about just the conversations that you'll be having in your group and just know that we as the Cyclistopasters are praying for you and we believe that the Spirit will move through your time of discussion as you talk through this topic of forgiveness. So Kim and I have a wonderful group session together.