Sermon Series: Fight Right (Peacemaker) #1: Being Forgiven --- Luke 19:1-9. Dr. Matt Cassidy /22/2015

Transcription

1 Sermon Series: Fight Right (Peacemaker) #1: Being Forgiven --- Luke 19:1-9 Dr. Matt Cassidy /22/2015 Morning, please have a seat. Thank you, Troy. Thank you guys. Wonderful variety today. Let me tell you a story -- it's a true story. Names are changed to protect the actually guilty. I use the name Biff -- I usually do. Anybody named Biff comes here, you head them off the door. Tell them to change their name quick, ever since Back to the Future had a problem with that bully. Anyway, Biff, a number of years ago, a long time ago, Biff was in our church and even though he was married he was still dating around. He felt like he could. The leadership talked to him about that and he was pretty committed to dating around. It ultimately led to a divorce, certainly, but he was so stubborn and committed to his rebellion against the authority here. It takes a lot for us to actually tell someone, "You can't come to this church anymore." It's a little bit like excommunication, but Biff was committed, and so we excommunicated him. Years go by and he wants to meet with me. Now I'm the senior pastor, he wants to meet with me again because he's seen the light, he says. He wants to be reconciled to the church. He doesn't want to be living outside of the protection of the local church anymore. I said, "Great. That'd be wonderful." When he told me he admitted to a number of things and it's like, "Oh, he's getting it." I said, "This is so much fun." I love a story that ends happily ever after. I literally had this jar of rocks in my office that are from the beach where Peter was reconciled with Jesus. It's a very different kind of stone over there, and so I brought some back because I wanted to give people a rock of reconciliation. I said, "Biff, let's go. Let's go." After his tears and apologies, he came back nine months later and I told him that we couldn't reconcile. It wasn't working. He left plenty angry. I said, "You haven't repented. You've just confessed some things with great emotion, but you haven't repented." Two years go by after that, so now we're almost at three years, and he had sent someone to meet with me to tell me that I must reconcile Biff with the church because he should be reconciled. I said, "I can't help you here because he hasn't repented yet. He only regrets the consequences that now he's feeling the full weight of now that the children are older and he just wants everything to go back to the way it was, but he doesn't want to do anything to take ownership of what it takes to get back there. He hasn't repented." FightRight.1.cassidy 1

2 His mentor, a Bible teacher himself, said, "Well, what does repentance mean around here, then?" I said, "Whoa, it's not just around here. You read your Bible. You tell me, what does repentance look like in the Bible?" He says, "Do you have a list?" I said, "No, I'm not going to give a list because if we give Biff a list, he'll do the list but it still doesn't mean he's repented." It's so different for each person and the situations. I said, "This essentially, principally, repentance is this: deep, soulish understanding of the crimes you've committed against God and your fellow human being such that you hurt that relationship, your relationship with God and that other person. That brings you sorrow and you want to do whatever is necessary to make things right if it's possible. That's what it looks like and we're not seeing any of that from him except that he can admit to certain things and then he can cry, but that's not repentance." I told him this, I said, "Look. Three years ago, when he came in here the first time I told him the answer key. I went to the back of the math book and said just do these things." I said, "Just pay early and extra. You know what would be nice? If you would be nice to your ex-wife. Just pay a dollar extra a day early, and if you could be nice it'd be nice." He wouldn't. He wouldn't do this for more than ten years, but he wants to be reconciled. He wants to make everything right. Again, his ambassador said, "Well, he's having some financial difficulties. He's kind of poor right now." I said, "Wait a minute because I just saw him and he had a brand new iphone, which is the single most expensive personal communication device in the history of mankind. If that's financial difficulty, that's different than my definition because his definition of financial difficulty is only being able to afford a hundred and fifty cable stations. My definition of financial difficulty is not having a TV. My definition of poor is not having a house. "Here's the thing. Please know this and take this back to Biff that we're not asking him to pay alimony so that his ex-wife can go to Nova Scotia and watch the Northern Lights annually. This is child support. This is tennis shoes and doctor's appointments. Reconciliation, repentance. He doesn't even know what that means." I left him with this, I said, "Look, if you're mentoring him and you're doing Bible study, you should not be confident that he's even a Christian because he has no concept of what real repentance is. He just wants forgiveness without the repentance and you can't have reconciliation without repentance." You cannot have reconciliation without repentance. The Bible teaches, throughout the Bible, what real repentance is, what reconciliation looks like. It ought to. God is the ultimate reconciler. For God so loved the world that he reconciled by sending his son. It's not as though the Bible doesn't have verses and stories and passages that declare this is how two people are supposed to work things out. We're going to look at those principles in the next two weeks. This week we're going to look at how you might make it easy to be forgiven and next week we're going to look at how to give forgiveness. The Bible is replete with passages that sometimes illustrate this very FightRight.1.cassidy 2

3 efficiently; we'll look at one that says this is faking it and this is the truth. This is a lie and this is authentic. This is the way it was meant to be. Here's a good example of that in II Corinthians chapter seven. Godly sorrow brings repentance [repentance] that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow [simple regret] brings death. -- II Corinthians 7:10 He's comparing and contrasting the real thing from the fake thing and he says, "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret." Worldly sorrow, that's just simple regret. That's just, "I'm tired of the consequences that brings forth death." Look at it again. Look at godly sorrow brings for repentance, repentance brings back salvation, salvation is without regret. That's the real thing. That's what it looks like. To help illustrate that sentence, what I'd like to do is let's read through a real story that happened in real time with Jesus and we can see someone have godly sorrow that led to repentance that led to salvation that led to a life without regret. Then what we'll do is we'll see what we can do in our own lives to glean from that information. Luke 19:1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig-tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. Luke 19: 5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said, to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately, I must stay at your house today. 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. In Luke chapter nineteen is a story that some of you might know; it's a story where Jesus is going into Jericho. I'll put sentences up on the slides here. Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through and a man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. Look at his title. He was chief tax collector and was wealthy. That's an understatement. He wanted to see who Jesus was and being a short man he could not because of the crowd. He ran ahead and he climbed up on a sycamore-fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way. There's FightRight.1.cassidy 3

4 basically a parade coming because of Jesus and he climbs this tree. Then in verse five it says, "When Jesus reached the spot where the sycamore tree was, he looked up and he said to Zacchaeus, 'Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay in your house today.' He came down at once and he welcomed Jesus gladly." Before we move on in the story to understand the fullness of what's happening we need some context. The first bit of context is the city of Jericho. Jericho is a cosmopolitan, rather affluent city. It's the center of Roman imperial power. The reason I tell you all that is because his title is... this is a Roman that's affluent. He's a city worker in charge as chief tax gatherer. His occupation is to make sure all the taxes are being collected. I want you to know this is the absolute worst job that you could have as a Jew. You are most hated among all the employed. There's actually a list of bad jobs that have no honor back then and fourth from the bottom is gamblers because they aren't willing to work for a living and they're just trying to find an easy dollar. Second or I guess it'd be third from the bottom would be loan sharks because they're taking advantage of their fellow man, charging too much in a time when someone needs money. Second from the bottom, pigeon trainers. No one ever liked pigeon trainers. I don't like them either. Actually, culturally they were involved in the gambling. They were kind of fixing some of the gambling issues, so that's part of the gambling. The point is the bottom -- the worst thing you could do for your soul that is shameful and without honor -- would be a tax collector. The reason why is because first and foremost you are working for Rome. You would be considered a traitor because the Jews are in Israel but they're occupied by the Romans that had no respect for their culture or their religion. They would hire locals within that culture and they would say, "You are working for us now and you can use our military, our police to do this." They were considered a traitor, but the way they made their money was Rome said, "You owe us this amount of money, but anything you get in addition to that, that's yours." They were gouging their fellow man. Instead of collecting maybe a hundred dollars from you, if I knew I could get a hundred and fifty or three hundred from you, I would do that. If you had trouble with that, I had the Roman guards make sure that you were cooperative. He wasn't a tax collector, he was the chief tax collector. He wasn't the chief tax collector anywhere, he was the chief tax collector of Jericho. Here is a man with untold wealth but no honor. Only shame for he and his family. He is despised by all the citizens. FightRight.1.cassidy 4

5 Luke 19:7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. Maybe he has friends among thieves, but you can see, you can relate in the next sentence why the people are wondering what Jesus is doing hanging around a person like this. All the people saw this and began to mutter, "Jesus has gone to be a guest of this sinner." They just can't put this together that the person that... He will never make eye contact with anyone else and Jesus connects with him and says, "I want to spend the day with you." Jesus goes to his house. Again, a person -- look at the contrast -- the person with untold wealth, but no honor, and over to his house has a person with almost no wealth to speak of, really, but untold honor. When he comes to town, there's a parade breaking out. Luke 19:8-10 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possiessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. 9 Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because of this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. During this meal that's taking place, I think probably right in the middle, the influence of what Jesus has done with him and to him explodes and causes this godly sorrow to break out. In verse eight it says, "But Zacchaeus stood up in the middle of this and said, 'Lord, Lord, look. Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay it back four times the amount. Anybody anytime, four times the amount.'" Look what we had here, it was godly sorrow that led to repentance, salvation, and freedom. No regret. Look how Jesus says that, verse nine, Jesus said to them, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man, too, which is son of Abraham and the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." What in the world did Jesus do to this man? In some respects, it was what we were singing about. Jesus shows him honor and respect. He does that by calling him by name, first of all. First he calls him by name and says Zacchaeus. Then one of the most, maybe the ultimate expression of giving honor to someone is to go to their house and spend time with them. Here's Zacchaeus who has maybe as an adult FightRight.1.cassidy 5

6 nothing but stories of shame and dishonor, and now he has this other story of Jesus the Nazarene coming and dining with him and staying with him. That washes over all of this disrespect. He's a changed man because of it, because Jesus brings honor to this household full of shame. There's a lot of lessons that we could learn from this story, but because the theme of our two weeks together is reconciliation, restoration, forgiveness, I want us to spend our time on just this sentence that is proof that something real happened and is not Biff-like. Verse eight, "But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord, look. Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor and if I cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount.'" Godly sorrow bringing repentance, salvation without regret. He's an absolute changed man. He's free. Think of him. Think deeply into what motivates him. He is a man who gave up everything for money. Now, he doesn't care about money. He did whatever he was told to get more and now he's giving it away. To be categorized as a generous person back in these days, if you gave twenty percent of your income, wow, you're killing it. He says fifty percent. He has found out it is true, it is better to give than receive. He is free from the idolatry that he was in servitude towards. Second, he's also into justice and restitution. He wants to make things right. If you look in the older Testament, you can see that when someone stole something from someone, you'd have to pay back twice the amount. If I just stole or swindled a hundred dollars from you, I'd have to pay you two hundred dollars to make it worth it to you and to teach me a lesson and to restore honor. He's putting himself in this rare category that you can only find in Numbers or Exodus chapter twenty-two --- he considers himself a cattle rustler or a sheep rustler, the worst kind of stealing. In Texas, I think you can still hang people for that. He says, "I'm that kind of person." If you steal someone's sheep, you had to pay back four sheep. "If I took money from anyone, I'll do an inventory and I'll pay them back as though I were the worst of all thieves, four times the amount." Please understand this logic because it makes a difference between life and death. He didn't do this so that he would have godly sorrow and repentance and salvation. He did this because he already experienced godly sorrow, which brought about real repentance that brought about freedom and this life without regret, this salvation that came to him because of this. What we want to do is look at that sentence and the power of what's happening in his life and say, "Okay. How do we bring that into our relationships?" FightRight.1.cassidy 6

7 If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. -- Romans 12:18 At Grace, one of our key values is that we are connected through relationships. I'll tell you that the deeper the connection in your relationships, the deeper the injury that you have potentially to hurt one another. You will, it's inevitable. You will, and so now let's look at how in our own lives... We'll be talking this week about how I can ask for forgiveness and how I can make it... You can't make someone forgive you, but it says in Romans twelve, I think verse eighteen. It says, "Listen, as much as possible, as it's up to you, be at peace with all men." You can't make someone forgive you, but you can make it a lot easier for them to forgive you. We're going to look at this passage and we're going to say, "Okay, how do we make this easier for a person to hear? When we've sinned, how do we make it easier for them to say you're forgiven, let's restore?" It'll probably be better after than even before the injury. Key: Restoration / Justice Let's look at what we see here. What I think is the most common mistake that people make in relationships, the reason they're ended, the reason they remain for extended periods of time, is because of this inevitability of injury. Again, the deeper you know someone and are connected the more likely you are to hurt them deeper. What happens is when the injury takes place, the offender over here says, "Wow. I'm really sorry." Like a fifty dollar sorry for a thousand dollar event. Now it's super awkward because there's nine hundred and fifty tokens or dollars worth of "we didn't deal with this completely." The person that apologized said, "Hey, I apologized and I asked you to forgive me." This person's over here saying, "Yeah, but I don't think you understood." Oftentimes the person giving the apology is a little bit self-righteous because they said the words, like Biff, but they didn't grasp what was really taking place. That's why that type of apology and that type of reconciliation is very difficult. It's sometimes almost impossible because it is nine hundred and fifty dollars of unfinished business. There's this nine hundred and fifty dollar elephant in the room, in the relationship. Today, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get that right. Here's the point: to fight right, the goal of fight right is restoration and justice. The goal in fight right is restoration and justice. To love mercy, to act justly, and to walk humbly with the Lord. We're just applying that verse in our FightRight.1.cassidy 7

8 relationships. This is how to give a thousand dollar apology for a thousand dollar event. You can't do much about guaranteeing being forgiven, but you can put it out there. You can put it out there and say, "Could you do this? Could you make this work?" This is what it means to love mercy and to act justly and to walk humbly. Five keys so that it makes it easier for a person to give you forgiveness. 1. Admit Specifically The first one is to admit specifically what you've done. By leaning into the details of the injury that you caused a person, the person receiving that in their head they're going, "Okay. This person is getting a good grasp of what they did and maybe what I experienced." That's Zacchaeus' case. He's an accountant so he has ledgers and he says, "If I cheated anybody of anything, I will pay them back four times." He's being very detailed about that." If you're working you say, "Hey, boss. I see that you're mad at me and I'm really sorry. The last two weeks I've been a really bad employee." The boss is thinking, "Do you even know what you've done around here... the cost?" If you were to say something like, "Boss, I'm very sorry and I'm apologizing because my negative attitude that I've been carrying with me for the last two weeks has infiltrated the team. The things I've said about the other team members and even you as the team leader is causing all kinds of disunity and disrepair. That's all on me. I want to make this right." By filling in those details, you're helping the person understand, "Right, I think you grasp that..." The shotgun apologies, they don't have the power to change. 2. Empathize with the Injured The second thing that is absolutely the most important is you have to empathize with the injured. Empathy, in science fiction, the empathizer is a person that would touch another human being and they would absorb their injury physically. Your cut became my cut. Empathy means that you go inside of the person that you've hurt and you try to get in touch with their values and maybe even their story and their circumstances and you feel the hurt. Is it Thomas? No, not Thomas. Seek first to understand then to be understood. You're trying to get inside of them. Here's the thing, if you have not empathized with the person's injury that you caused, you can't have godly sorrow. You're not there because you have... Here's why we don't do this by the way. This is the most difficult part of apologies because all of our psyche, all of the weird stuff that is bent is turned in in self-protection FightRight.1.cassidy 8

9 and I'm not going to face the damages I've caused. If you open yourself up like you're supposed to, empathy says, "I'm going to open myself and get inside of this other person's values and circumstances." I'm going to get in there and go, "Good night! Who turned this place upside down? Oh, that was me." You have to do that so that you can apologize at a thousand-dollar level. If you can't do that --- and many people today just can't, won't, some people can't --- you need to go and get help. When you get help --- by the way, I've done this multiple times --- when you get help, please don't go to another person, a husband, wife, roommates, best friends, whatever. This is what usually happens, "Hey, could you tell them the way I feel?" That's good. You're going to need to know that, but what you're going for is you want to sit down with someone and say, "Hey, can you tell me how this injured person that I hurt feels because she or he keeps saying the same words. They're not working anymore maybe because we keep saying the same sentences. Maybe you, since you know her well and you're like her, maybe you could tell me what she feels because of what I've done." Sometimes you need a professional on this sort of thing. Sometimes you're asking for help because you have to empathize with the injured or you can't move on. Sometimes you need to ask the person because, honestly, we have different values. Some things matter to us, and so you could just say, "When I did such and such, did that humiliate you or embarrass you?" They might say, "No." Me, it'd embarrass me, but, "No, it didn't embarrass me. I'm not easily embarrassed. You betrayed me." "Oh, okay. Let me get inside the trail. Wow, okay. Let me feel what I did to you in the context of betrayal." See? I'm trying to feel that. Here's the point. When the injured person understands that you are grasping the injury you caused, that's when all the energy, the hatred, the fear empties out of the difficulties. When you explain, "I know what it's like to be you when I'm being me," quite often most of the work is done here. If the apology is, "I'm sorry I lost my temper," which is a statement of factual historical fact, good luck. If you say, "I'm sorry I lost my temper and then humiliated you in front of your friends and then I stole that whole moment from you. I don't know what we can do to get this back, but I want to make sure I can because I could see it in your eyes. You were retreating back and thinking, 'I'm embarrassed to know this person.'" See? Now they understand. 3. Make It Right Again, you can't make somebody forgive you, but you can make it easier. After you've gone into details and empathized with them, the third thing, you want to make it right. Make it right means take FightRight.1.cassidy 9

10 responsibility. It means pay the bill. This is the thing people do now. Politicians and celebrities, they'll say this --- it drives me crazy. I want to throw stuff at the TV, but I'm too tight with my money --- "I took responsibility for that," that's what they'll say. They'll say, "I took responsibility for that." They think that sentence is taking responsibility. Then they'll go plead the fifth or whatever. Taking responsibility means telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, letting all the evidence out there, and I'll go to jail or pay my fines. It's not saying, "I'm taking responsibility." It means doing whatever you can to get things right. Zacchaeus, if there is anyone, everybody... If I cheated anybody in anyway, I will pay them back out of my money four times. They're going to be glad I talked to them. If you ding someone's car in the parking lot, you're going to want to fix that. If you ding somebody's reputation in a gossip chain, you have to fix that. After your apology; and I know that must've been humiliating for people to talk about you that way, and I'm getting on the phone tonight and I'm going to keep calling people that I talk to and I'm going to talk and I'm going to talk to the people they talk to so I can restore the reputation that I ruined. I'm sorry. You see? Here's what happens when you take responsibility. First, justice. This is about justice and now justice prevails. That's a good thing, to walk justly. The second thing that happens is restoration. The restoration odds go up because you're putting things back the way they were. You're paying them back. You're putting them anew. Third, this is just behavioral modification, but you know what happens when you start taking responsibility for your bad actions? You stop doing bad actions. The next time you think about gossiping and it's coming out of your mouth, you're going, "I don't want to spend three nights making phone calls again. I don't want to do that." You'll stop. Here we are. You admit specifically what's happened and then you're empathizing with the person that's injured. That's the key. You do what it takes to get there. You make it right. 4. Change Your Behavior The fourth thing is you change your behavior. Well, duh, stop doing what you did. You want to communicate that to the person that's been injured because they want to know that they can drop their guard. You say, "Look, I'm going to go see a friend regularly. I will pay for a professional counselor. I will quit this job because this person's there and I don't want to be around that person anymore." Whatever it takes, I will pay or do whatever is necessary to make this right and to stop doing it in the future. Zacchaeus, look. Look what he says to Jesus. He says to the Lord, "Look, Lord, look. Look what I'm going to do. Watch. Here's the thing, I'm not cheating anyone anymore." He's telling him. FightRight.1.cassidy 10

11 5. Ask for Forgiveness (Allow Time) Let's go again. Okay, you admitted specifically, you empathized with it, you make it right, you change your behavior, and then finally you ask for forgiveness and you allow time. You allow time. If you go through the first four steps and then say these words because they need to be said because this is a spiritual event. You can say things like, "Are we good?" "Mm-hmm (affirmative)." "Okay." That's slang. This is a spiritual... Will you, could you consider forgiving me? What's happened here is you're putting all the power of reconciliation to them where it belongs. You can say, "Listen, because of what's happened and because of the carnage that I've left on you, I want to stop and think I don't want an easy answer. I want you to think about it. Maybe we could meet again. Maybe we have another conversation to fill in some more of the details and maybe some more motives. Would you consider forgiving me sometime? Would you do that?" See what happens. Often, when you do the five steps, when you work through these things... Again, I think so many of them are a natural outflow of godly remorse is you'll end up becoming closer, deeper, more webbed together with battle scars, with injury stories that were healed. Listen, when you look at the list and you think of your history as a person in a relationship, admit specifically the goal is restoration and justice. You look at those things, how do you expect that you'll do? What do you think your scorecard's going to look like? I would say because of our culture and the way we're experiencing relationships and they're becoming more and more superficial, you're not going to do well with this. My point is not to suggest that this isn't hard and not try it. It is to affirm that it is very difficult and you need to continue to try it. Can I just remind you that you're not good at anything when you start? No one ever is. Whether it's basketball, tennis, or accounting or whatever it might be, you start off and you're the newb. You're the freshman, you're the pledge, you're the whatever. If you add, you actually get penalty points depending upon sometimes your family of origin. You either fight or take flight. We didn't talk about this. We didn't know how to apologize. We just moved on. That was my background, I didn't know how to do any of this, but I knew this: I knew I was broken and I had to get fixed. I went to a personal coach and I was fortunate enough Ray Anderson's on our staff and he was going through the peacemaker training. It's a national ministry and we needed to apply this at our church in spectacular ways. I said, "Hey, Ray, while you're doing all this training, I was just wondering if I might have some private lessons on the side." Whenever I would be in a difficult relationship, I would go to him and say, "Okay, do I say it this way or that way? Do I hold on to this or do I let it go?" Even FightRight.1.cassidy 11

12 recently, someone was going to apologize to me and I said, "I don't think he understands how deep he hurt me." He said, "Matt, you got to tell him. He's coming to empathize with you. Let him know how deep it hurt and he will respond. I know him." Here's my point, it's been ten years of just practicing and failing and getting up and learning a little bit better. I don't know, I'm on the JV team, I don't think I'm starting but I'm still in the game. Occasionally I get to practice with the team. You want deep relationships, you do. You're designed for this. Lean into the certainty of not doing this well but it's worth trying again and again. In five years from now, you'll be a different person that knows how to do this more effectively. In ten years from now, who knows, you'll be coaching someone else. Godly sorrow, it is magic. It produces repentance and repentance brings back born-again, spiritual revival, a life without regret. Do this. Can you imagine what it would be like? Wouldn't this be fun? Another part of the story: five years later in Jericho with the Zacchaeus story. It's five years later and you come back to town, you moved out, the taxes were too high, the cops were bullies. You're in town for a business trip and you run into an old friend and he says, "Hey, hey, hey. You need to go by and see Zacchaeus." "No, I'm not seeing him. What's he going to do? Break my fingers?" "No, no. Listen. He's looking for you and he's going to want to have you over to his house." "For what?" He goes, "Well, for the talk because everybody gets the talk. He'll have you over and he'll have this big banquet and he'll put you at the head of the table like you're the belle of the ball and then he'll give you... The talk goes like this, What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if it cost him his soul? He's the guy he's talking about? Then he'll say things about, Boy, you can't really live until you die first, and he'll tell you how he died and how he got better from that. It gets really strange, but he'll start talking about Zacchaeus in the third person when he talks about the old Zacchaeus. Remember all the stories and names we used to call him? He calls himself those names and much worse and then laughs about it because that's not him anymore. Then right about the time dessert's coming around and you think it's all over and you're still waiting for the penny to drop, the penny drops because he gets up and leaves. He comes back and he'll have this big sheet of paper. It'll have your name on it. He's been waiting for you. He has tallied up anything and everything that he's ever stolen from you and he will drop a bag of coins in your lap and say, This is four times what I stole. Could you, would you consider forgiving me? If not, maybe we could talk. He's coming to get you. It is so strange living in Jericho now that in the town square, there's a statue with him. He's little, but underneath on the base, it says this, He has shown you, oh mortal, what is good. What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. FightRight.1.cassidy 12

13 That's restoration. That's a real thing. That s the truth, the whole truth. Let's pray that we might practice this. Maybe this weekend, Thanksgiving. Lord Jesus, we lift up our lives to you and we lift up this to you. Lord, could you bring to our mind maybe an issue, a face, a memory of someone that we could take a first practice with about what it really means to repent? Could you bring us, could your spirit cause us to have godly sorrow so that it would produce the real repentance that would leave a new kind of salvation and we would live without regret? Would you do that in our lives? Give us those moments. I also pray, Lord, in the future maybe over table or maybe in a kitchen in a corner where we could have a conversation maybe with a sister or a brother or a family member that's been a long time coming and then you would help us make things right. As much as is up to us that we be at peace with all men. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. FightRight.1.cassidy 13