Gateway Church's Podcast
Unforgiveness: A Luxury You Cannot Afford
A Gateway Sermon
It's great to be here with you in the second greatest church in America. We really appreciate your pastor and his wife, just good friends, and we just have such a high honor and respect for him and really are very, very honored to be here with you today. I'd like you to open your Bibles to the Book of Mark chapter 11. I'm going to bring you a message today that I've entitled, "Unforgiveness, a Luxury, You Cannot Afford." It's actually a little portion out of a book that we just wrote called "Get the Junk Out of Your Trunk." Now, in Mark 11, Jesus is teaching on the subject of faith. Really, he curses the fig tree, his disciples ask him about it. He begins to explain to them how faith works. And then in the 25th verse, it's almost like Jesus gets on a different subject, and he begins to talk about unforgiveness. But he still is really teaching on faith because unforgiveness is the number one hindrance to faith. And so Jesus said in the 25th verse, "And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you, your trespasses." Now, Jesus begins by saying whenever you pray, "How often did Jesus think you'd pray?" How many would they say at least once a day? That sound good? So Jesus is saying here every day, every time that you pray, he said, "You check your heart and see if there's any unforgiveness in your heart." Because unforgiveness, Hebrews 12 says, "It's a root, and it gets inside, and it keeps on growing, and the longer you let it stay, the harder it is to pull it out." And so he says, "Do this every day." Now, rather the reason he said to do it every day is because if nobody has given you an opportunity to be offended yet today, don't worry about it, it's coming. Jesus said it is impossible that no offense has come. You're going to have an opportunity to get offended. Somebody isn't going to say the wrong thing, they're going to do the wrong thing, they're going to not say what they should, they're going to say something they shouldn't. It's going to happen. Offenses are going to come. So Jesus said, "Every day, check your heart." Every time you pray, you check your heart, and you make sure there's no unforgiveness in your heart. And then he says, "If you have anything against anyone," now notice Jesus uses two all-inclusive words, anything. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who thought what had happened to them was excluded. But it doesn't matter if somebody lies, cheats, steals, it doesn't matter if they verbally abuse you, physically abuse you, even sexually abuse you. Jesus said it doesn't matter what they did. He said, "Anything, anything." Now, here's the reason, you're forgiving them does not mean what they did was all right. But when you forgive them, it affects you. You get set free. See, getting bitter and thinking you're going to hurt somebody is like drinking poison and thinking somebody else is going to die. The other person doesn't die, you do. And that unforgiveness is like poison. So he said anything and then he said anyone. And usually it's the people that are the closest to us that can hurt us the most. We're the most open to them. It's your father, your mother. It's your spouse, your children, your siblings, your best friends. They're the ones that usually are the ones that hurt us the deepest. But Jesus said anyone, anything. Now notice, he said whenever you pray. Now Jesus said you forgive them when you pray. It does not take six months to forgive somebody. Literally, you can forgive anyone of anything in five minutes. Jesus said you can do it when you pray, while you pray. But we've all probably heard people who said things like this, well, I'm trying to forgive them. I'm trying. But they just hurt me so much and it's been months and sometimes years and decades that they're holding that on the inside and not realizing the tremendous effect that it has on their own life. Now the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter three said this, he said, brethren, I don't count myself to have apprehended. Now you realize that if you think that you have arrived spiritually, you are in trouble, don't you? Here's Paul. He wrote half the New Testament, went to heaven, came back and he said, I haven't made it yet. If he hadn't made it, you haven't made it. I haven't made it. He said, but this one thing I do, and I seriously believe that if we had Paul here today and we said, Paul, we want you to give us just one piece of advice that is going to help our spiritual life more than any other single thing that you could tell us. Just right now, just tell us one thing. This one thing I do, Paul says, forgetting those things that are behind. And then he says, reaching for those things that are ahead. You see, you cannot reach for what God has for you in your future if your hands are full of yesterday. If your hands are full of the things that people have done to hurt you, to abuse you, if your hands are fully yesterday, you cannot grab hold of what God has for you today. About three and a half or four years ago, after a service, I was standing in the front. I was shaking hands, praying with people. And a man comes down the center aisle. And this man is literally dragging his wife, bringing her up. And he's standing here, and his hands out like that, her hands out. And I mean, she's as far away from him and me as she can get. And he comes on over and he says, pastor, he says, I want you to fix my wife. You know, that's a tall order, don't you? So I said to him, I said, well, what's wrong? He says, she is divorcing me. And I said, what did you do? And he said, well, that I know of nothing. And I thought to myself, this is probably a very stupid man. He doesn't know what he has done. But I said to her, I said to her, you're divorcing your husband, she says, yes. I said, well, why are you divorcing him? And she said, well, I hate him. I said, why do you hate him? He says, he's a man. And she says, I hate you. Now, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. She hates her husband because he's a man. She hates me because I'm-- she hates you because you're a man. Some man, someplace, did something to hurt her. So I said to her, I said, well, what man has done something that hurts you? Nobody. And I said, you mean you just hate all men? Just because they're men and nobody ever did anything to eat. That's right. I said, somebody had to do something. Finally, it comes out. She's 12 years old, a member of her extended family rapes her and kept on raping her and told her he would harm her physically if she ever told. And it went on from when she was 12 to when she was 18 and left the house. Now, this is what she says. She says, and if I could, I would kill him. I would kill him. Now, here's what she has. She has a husband who loves her, almost worships the ground this woman walks on. She has three children that love her. But her hands are absolutely full of yesterday. The pain, the reproach, the hurt, everything. And she is so full of bitterness and unforgiveness and hatred that because her hands are fully yesterday, she cannot grab hold of what God has for her today. So I said to her, I said, you need to forgive. She said, I can't. I gave her this verse. I said, Jesus said, you can't. She says, I can't. I said, now, either I got to believe you or Jesus. One is lying. I said, I'm going to believe Jesus. You can't. I said, now, forgiveness is not a feeling. Forgiveness is a decision. I said, you decide to forgive. You forgive by faith. I was playing that tour and she's, well, I don't know. Now, you forgive by faith, but faith without works is dead. You see, a lot of people will do that first step and they'll forgive by faith, but that's not enough. You need to put something with that. And what you need to do is you need to begin to pray for that person every single day. Don't pray they have a car wreck. You pray that God bless them with every blessing you would want on your own life. And you do that every day, every day, every day, every day. Now, here's what happens. Something supernatural happens when you pray. When you pray to God, first of all, your heart turns to the one you pray to and that's God. Your heart turns towards the ones you pray with, but your heart also turns towards the one you pray for. And as you pray for that person just day after day, after day, after day, God is going to turn your heart and he will, what the Apostle Paul called in large, your heart. And you will have a supernatural compassion and understanding for that person. God will change your heart. So I said to her, I said, you need to forgive. She finally says, all right, I will. So I said, I'll lead you in this prayer and I'll let her in this prayer. I've been in ministry for 30 years. If there was ever a time that I thought it didn't work, it didn't work, that was the time. I mean, when we said amen, her eyes were still just as full of bitterness and hatred as when she walked up. They turned around and they left a couple of months later. I'm preaching over in this section of pews over here, about five rows back, there they sit. She's got her arm around him. I look again, you know. Next time I look, she's whispering in his ear. Then I catch her. She giving him a kiss on the cheek in church. And I'm thinking, get a room. (congregation laughing) Today, they have a very good, solid marriage. You know what she had to do? She had to let go of yesterday so she could grab hold of what God had for her today. Paul said, this one thing I do, I forget those things that are behind and then I reach forward to those things that are ahead. Now in Ephesians four and verse 32, it says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted. Now Jesus, in Matthew, when the Pharisees asked him about divorce, he said, you can't divorce your wife for every reason, but they said, well, Moses permitted us to. And Jesus said, because of the hardness of your heart, he said, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. Jesus said, whenever there's a divorce, every single time, there's at least one hard heart, all right? But now this verse is talking about the opposite of a hard heart, it's talking about a tender heart. It says, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. You forgive, tenderhearted people, they forgive, but they forgive even as God in Christ forgave you. You probably heard about a pastor. He was talking with one of his parishioners, well actually with a couple, and they had been having some marriage problems and the man said, well, every time that we begin to discuss anything, my wife just gets, she gets historical on me. And the pastor says, you mean she gets hysterical? He said, no, she gets historical. She remembers everything I've done wrong since her honeymoon. Now how many know when you forgive somebody if you're gonna do it like God does you never bring it up again? He says, your sins and your iniquities, I will remember no more. You know, it is impossible to live with somebody. You know, there are no perfect spouses. In fact, there's just no perfect people, period. There is no such thing as a perfect person. You heard about the fellow who was looking for the perfect church. He thought he found it, but once he got there, it wasn't perfect anymore because he was there. There's no perfect people. Your spouse is gonna say or do something wrong, it's gonna happen. But you know, if you can forgive your spouse, you can fall in love with the same person a thousand times, a thousand times. If you won't forgive, you've only got two options. You're either gonna end up in a divorce court or have a bad marriage. Forgive one another even as God in Christ forgave you. You know, there are so many people that are literally full of unforgiveness, resentment, hatred. The Bible says this in Ecclesiastes 7 and 9. It says, "Don't hasten your spirit to be angry "for anger rests in the bosom of the fool." Anger rests in the bosom of the fool. So there's people, you can see them, they're walking down the sidewalk, you see them in the mall, they got a smile on their face, but right underneath the surface, there's anger. And it's just waiting to explode. You see, they've got unresolved conflict. They've got unforgiveness in their heart. And because they haven't forgiven that anger, it's just there. Now what they think is they think I can focus it against somebody. But you can never do that, never. Because the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 15 that bitterness, it's a root, it springs up, that King James says in causes trouble, the translators New Testament says, "And spoils everybody's life." It spoils everybody's life. You see, you'll see somebody someday and you'll just say or do the littlest thing and they'll just explode. What's wrong with you? Can't you know that I didn't deserve that? You are such an idiot. Can't you do anything right? You think, what did I do? What did I do to make them mad? Nothing, they woke up mad. They went to bed mad. They've been mad for 10 years. Someone been mad for 20 years. The Bible says that anger rests in the bosom of the fool. And that person thinks I can somehow focus my anger against that person or that group of people that hurt me. But the truth is, your anger is not like a laser beam, it's like a hydrogen bomb. And there's all sorts of collateral damage. You know who it hurts? It hurts your spouse. It hurts your children. It hurts your extended family and your friends and your coworkers. Everybody who gets around you, the Bible says it spoils everybody's life. That's why it's a luxury that you cannot afford. It doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts you. The Bible says that that unforgiveness ends up as anger that rests in your bosom. There's people, it seems like they're mad at the world. I'm even mad at somebody like that. But the truth is, there's something that happened in their life they have refused to forgive. And because of that, that anger that's on the inside, it's just going out in all directions. Now the Bible says in Ephesians chapter four, in verse 26, it says, be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Verse 27, neither give place to the devil. NIV, don't give Satan a foothold. And literally, when you and I do not forgive, what we do is we open a door for Satan to come in and attack our lives. As Pastor George mentioned, my wife and I were missionaries in Mexico for several years. The first two years, we started a church and then we left it with a national pastor that we had raised up. We went and lived with the Odomy Indians for a couple of years in a village. And then we moved back to the same city and began to teach in a Bible college and starting a church on the opposite side of town. But we heard what happened in our first church. One of our parishioners got mad at the new pastor. And he had actually come up after a service and started arguing with the pastor, then yelling at the pastor, actually ended cussing the pastor out. Now listen, I'm just reporting what happened. I'm not recommending anything, you understand that. And stomped out of the church, eight months had come and gone. He had an darkened door of a church. But every place he goes, he talks about that pastor and it keeps coming back to us. He's telling me that pastor, he's a false prophet. That pastor, he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. That pastor, he's a liar. That pastor, he's no good. That pastor, you can't trust him. That pastor, just every place he's going and we're hearing about it. So my wife says, honey, she says, you know, we should go over there and talk to them. You know, if you talk to him, he'd probably listen to you. You should go talk to him. And I said, honey, I said, we are the ex pastors. We've got enough trouble of our own. I'm not looking for any more. I says, I have no desire whatsoever to get involved and I will not get involved. She said, well, I just really think, you know, that God wants us to. I said, I think we need to just keep our nose clean and stay in our own business. So she doesn't say anything else. But how many of you guys know, sometimes your wife says something, it just gets under your skin. I mean, it's like every time I pray, this thing just keeps on coming back. So after a couple of weeks, I said to Jeannie, I said, all right, it's one evening, it's about seven, 30 or so. I said, you know, let's go over there. He said, well, I just put the kids down to bed. She says, I'm not getting them up to go. She said, you go. I said, this is your idea. She just get over there, go over there. So eight o'clock, I'm knocking on their door. Wife answers invites me in. I said, I come to see you and your husband. She says that he's upstairs in bed. Now, when she said that, I knew something wasn't right. Because Latin people don't go to bed at eight o'clock. At eight o'clock, you're getting ready for some cow tongue tacos. But you are not even thinking about going to bed. So I looked at her kind of funny and she says, you don't know. I said, no, what? She said, well, he's upstairs in bed. He has a tumor. She said, he's going into the hospital tomorrow and they're going to prep him. The next day he's having major, major surgery. And she says, this is life threatening. I said, I didn't have a clue. She says, well, go on up. So I go up, I get to his, their bedroom. He's laying in this king size bed. But there's 20 people in the room. Now, here in the United States, particularly around Louisiana, when somebody dies, they'll have a wake. They bring the body into the home and everybody just comes over and spends oodles a time and they have fellowship. And well, they do something that's a little bit similar in the Latin culture, but they don't wait until you die. I mean, it's really good. You should give people flowers while they're alive, right? So when you get really sick, your friends, your relatives, they come over to show their love and their support. Well, you're still alive. So there's 20 people in the room. I mean, there's some of his relatives, co-workers, a couple of people from the church. And I come to confront him and I hate confrontation. And how do you confront somebody in front of 20 people? Well, you know, I'm just loud. This isn't gonna work. So I stayed about 20 minutes and I thought, I'm gonna take off. Now again, in the Latin culture, when you leave a small room, you're supposed to shake everybody's hand. So I start shaking hands. I got to the third person. This is nephew and he said to me, "Well, aren't you at least gonna pray for him?" And I thought to myself, "No." (congregation laughing) What spiritual person would pray for him? None. I mean, he has been opening the door, giving Satan a foothold for eight months with unforgiveness, hatred, spewing it out of his mouth. And if I pray for him, I may just as well say, and I literally thought this very thought, I thought I may just as well say, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." Oh, I wonder what you are. (congregation laughing) But the guy, he said, "Twinkle, he's gonna pray for him." So I went over there. I put my hand on his head. And Pastor Dave, I prayed the nicest, past old prayer you have ever heard. Said, "Amen, I knew nothing happened." I think he knew nothing. I think everybody knew nothing happened. I went to shake a few more hands, nephew runs downstairs. I've got three, four more people and I'm done. He comes back, he comes in, he has got like a four liter container of cooking oil. And he takes it, he literally shoves it into my chest and says, "Unknowing him with oil, "like in the Bible in James chapter five." I'm like, "Great, shapers." I mean, I didn't want it to quit. I'm like, "Oh, great." Now, you know this, the oil doesn't heal anybody. Somebody said, "Well, what kind was it?" I think it was mobile, no, I'm just kidding. The oil, what kind of oil it doesn't matter because it's not the oil that heals. The Bible says in James chapter five, "It's any among you sick, let him call for the elders "of the church, let them pray over him, "annoying him with oil in the name of the Lord, "the prayer of faith will save the sick." And if the Lord has raised him up, he'll commit any sense. But really that anointing with oil, it's a type of what happened to the priest or the Levite when he became 30 years old. They would bring him to the temple and he was gonna go into the ministry and they would dedicate him to God and anoint him with oil. And he was supposed to say in his heart, "Everything I'm doing, I shouldn't do, I quit. "Everything that I'm doing, I shouldn't do, I'm gonna start." How many of you call that repentance? It's not the oil. So I get over there and I said, "Could it be that possibly you have something against somebody?" And he looks at me and he says, "You know I do." And I said, "Well, you know I've been hearing some things." I said, "Do you wanna get healed or do you wanna get cut?" I said, "Because as long as you hold that unforgiveness "in your heart and you've opened the door for the devil, "you're not gonna get healed." And he said, "Well, I wanna get healed." I said, "Well, then you need to forgive." He said, "I'll do it." I said, "Well, right where you are, just do it right now." He closes his eyes. I would say it took him between 60 and 90 seconds. It seemed a lot longer when everybody's looking and you're standing there with this big thing of oil. (audience laughs) He opens his eyes, he said, "I did it." He said, "And as soon as I can, "I'm gonna go and see him. "I'm gonna apologize because I've been wrong." I thought, "That's good." Now they teach you how to do this in Bible college seminary. You use this right hand pointing finger. You put one drop on the end. You put it exactly two inches above where their eyebrows meet right there in Jesus' name. You got that? That's where it goes. But I was just, I was in a mood. Did you ever been in a mood? (audience laughs) This was not God. This was just the mood. I just, I'm just reporting, you know. I'd take that top off that thing. And I just went boop, boop, boop, boop. (audience laughs) I just let him have it. I just figured, you turkey, you deserve this. Then I prayed in love, in faith, in Jesus' name. I shook a few more hands so I could get the oil off and I went home. (audience laughs) Three days later, they got a hold up. We didn't have a telephone. Took them three days to get a hold of us. And they said, "Did you hear what happened?" And I said, "Well, how'd the surgery go?" They said, "No surgery." They said, "You had not left 45 minutes "and that tumor came out of his body." Now listen, somebody says, "What a coincidence." (audience laughs) I don't think so. I believe this. I believe that the unforgiveness and the hatred that he held in his heart opened a door for the devil. As soon as he closed it, God's mercy and God's grace flowed to him and healed him. Unforgiveness in your life is a luxury you can't afford. It opens the door for the devil. It destroys everybody's life. It destroys your life. It'll destroy your marriage. It'll destroy your relationship with your children. It'll destroy everything about you. God wants you free. And the greatest thing is this, that once you've received forgiveness from God, you can forgive anybody of anything. Now let's bow our heads. You may be here. And if I said to you today, I said, "Are you a Christian?" You'd say, "Yes, I am." But what you're doing is you're looking back to something that happened, perhaps in a Sunday school class or at a camp or 20 years ago, you prayed a prayer. But the truth is that you are not living for God today. The truth is that today your heart is far from God. Somebody, something came into your life. You've drifted away from God. If that's you, today is your day. To turn around and to reconnect with God. When the children of Israel literally had backslidden away from God, Hosea the prophet came, and he said to him, "Come, let's take words and let us return to the Lord." And that may be you today. You need to return to God. You know you're not where you should be. God, you're not living for God. In a minute, I'm gonna ask you to lift your hand. We're gonna pray together. And you're gonna come back and reconnect with God today. Or you may be here, like millions and millions of people. You believe in God, you pray. You try to live a good life, but if your heart stopped, and in 30 seconds you were standing in front of God, you're not sure if you'd be saved or if you'd be lost. You wanna be saved. But you believe when I die, I'm gonna find out if I made it to heaven. The Bible says this. It says, "No that you have everlasting life." You're not supposed to die and find out if you made it. The Bible says you need to know today. Know today that you have everlasting life. Know you're forgiven. Know that you're right with God. Know that you're on your way to heaven. If you do not know, if you're one of those millions of people who think, "I'm gonna find out when I die." Listen, you are not ready to meet God. You are not obeying the scriptural admonition to know that you have everlasting life. In just one minute, I'm gonna ask you to lift your hand. We're gonna pray together. God's gonna meet you in this place. And when you leave, you're gonna know that you're forgiven. That you're right with God, that you're on your way to heaven. When you put your head on your pillow tonight, you're gonna have peace with God. Would everyone please stand? Every head bout, every eye closed, every Christian praying. Now, if you're that person we talked about, you're away from God. You're not living for God today. Or you're that person who says, "I believe in God, "but I do not know for sure if I'm saved or lost. "I want you to get ready to lift your hand in 20 seconds." Lifting that hand, some of you are saying this. You're saying, "God, I wanna come back to you today." Others are saying, "God, I wanna know "that I am forgiven, not condemned. "I wanna know that I'm saved, not lost. "I wanna serve you with my life, not this world. "I wanna know I'm on my way to heaven." If that's you, I want you to lift your hand right now. Just lift it up high. Just say, "Pray with me, I am not where I should be with God, "but I wanna get right. "There are hands all over. "All over, hands are going up." If you say, "Include me in that prayer. "Include me, just lift your hand right now. "Lifted high, thank you, God bless you. "God bless you, God bless you. "Pupless you, if your hand is up, just keep it up. "Keep it up." Now, everybody who lifted your hand, would you look right at me, please? Would you move to the aisle that's nearest you wherever that is and make your way right down here? We're gonna pray together and God's gonna meet you right here in this place. And when we say amen, you're gonna know you're forgiven. Know you're right with God. Know that you are on your way to heaven. Give them a hand as they're coming down right now. Would you please? Awesome, God bless you, God bless. Over here, just make your way down. This is your day. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Come on down, awesome. Now, the Bible says, "Who's so ever?" That means you. This is gonna work for you. We'll call on the name of the Lord. We're gonna call on His name the way the Bible shows us to, right? And this is God's promise. God's promise is, will be saved. All that you need to do is pray this prayer from your heart. So would you bow your heads? And would you bow your heads with us? And let's all pray this prayer out loud from our hearts. Oh God, I come in Jesus' name. I believe Jesus died on the cross. Shed His precious blood and paid for my sins. I believe He rose again. So right now, I receive Jesus as the Lord of my life. I'm not gonna live for myself any longer. I'm gonna live for Jesus every day. Heavenly Father, I thank You. You've heard my prayer. And I thank You that according to Your Word, I'm forgiven. My past is gone. I am Your child and I'm on my way to heaven in Jesus' name.