followHIM - How do you forgive hard things? : follow HIM Favorites

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Hank Smith and John Bytheway answer a question from Genesis 42-50.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/episodesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers/SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Transcripts/Language Team/French TranscriptsAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Hello, my friends. Welcome to Follow Him Favorites. This year for Come Follow Me, John and I are taking on an individual question for each week's lesson. The lesson this week is the last few chapters of Genesis, John, where Joseph of Egypt does something I think is absolutely incredible. And I'm going to take him that he's genuine and sincere here. He forgives his brothers for selling him so long ago. And take, you know, it's almost as if he's like, hey, come on. It's all right. Who hasn't sold a sibling, right? We all make mistakes.

And I have had students and friends and even my own, you know, my own family, my own self say through the years, how do you forgive? How do you forgive these? I'm not talking about little things. My roommate drank my milk, right? You've got to be able to get past things like that. But sometimes people do things that have lasting impact, like Joseph and his brothers, right? This is serious impact on the rest of your life. And he says, I forgive you. So, John, I'm going to throw this right in your lap. How do you counsel others to forgive these major offenses that come in life? Well, Hank, you'll forgive me if I don't answer that. Yes. Okay. You'll have to forgive me for it. I don't know the answer. We can come to a realization, which is a good thing, that I can't do this without God.

I don't have the strength in me to offer this forgiveness. I'm going to have to get outside help. And maybe that's a good thing to realize that. There's so many verses of Scripture that we kind of intellectually understand we have to forgive. I will forgive whom I will forgive of you. It is required to forgive all men in the Lord's prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors or those who sinned against us. But don't you think that's true that there are some where I think I'm going to need God's help to be able to let go of this and to move on? Or to just say, you take the justice and mercy.

That's the way I like to look at it. There's still going to be justice and mercy, but I'm going to put that into the hands of God and let Him do it. And I've got to move forward. I think that's wise, that at some point you have to say, I'm turning this over to you. I'm going to have closure on this. And then you keep returning to that closure, right? Because it's going to come back to your mind. And then you say,

well, I handed this over. I handed this over to the Lord a long time ago. And you can keep coming back to that moment of saying, I made a decision, right? I remember Elder Holland says, sometimes you have to forgive and then forgive again and then forgive again. So I think the Lord knows this is going to be a process for us. I don't think he's expecting everything to happen right now. Yeah, I don't think it's instantaneous. I think a lot of us will struggle with that. And that's part of the growth process.

Perhaps we finally get to that point where we say, you know what? I've got to turn this over to God because I can't do it myself. Or I need his help to be able to forgive because I don't have the strength in me. So that's probably a good thing. In Matthew 18, the Savior talks about a man who was forgiven of a big, big debt, 10,000 talent debt, an incredible amount, right? Billions of dollars. And then the man went out and sought one of his fellow servants who owed him a little bit of money, a couple thousand dollars. It's like a hundred pence or something.

Yeah. And he's really mad and he takes him by the throat and he lays hands on him and he says, give me what you owe. And the guy says, I can't, I do it. Please forgive me. And the guy says, you know, I'm going to put you, he puts him in prison. And then the guy who forgave him of the big debt, he calls him back in and he says, I owe thou wicked servant, right? I forgave thee all that debt because thou desirest me, right? Should you not have had pity on your fellow

servant, even as I had pity on thee? So there is a moment where the Lord says, look, when I forgive you, I expect you to one, to be thankful for that. Two, learn from me, learn how quick I am to forgive. I want you to try to become more like me, right? I want you to practice being like me and that you be quick to forgive. We both know Chris Williams, right? That incredible story of his family, members of his family being killed by a drunk driver and his decision, he said, I had to make to forgive or this was going to eat me alive, right? It was going to destroy my life if I couldn't forgive. That's part of this idea of I've got to be, I've got to try this. And one thing

I've learned from that parable is don't go seek out these people and seek revenge. Don't stalk them on Facebook. Don't stalk them online, right? Don't go seek them out. That's part of forgiveness is I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm not trying to seek you out. Maybe it hasn't happened in my heart yet, but my actions are, I'm kind of staying away. Does that make sense?

I'm not seeking you out to hurt you. It's kind of just an old saying, I guess, but when we refuse to forgive, Does that make sense? I'm mercy, I have to be merciful. If I want forgiveness, I have to be forgiving. And that doesn't make it easy, but intellectually, it helps me understand you're going to go put yourself back in a terrible situation or that you need to reconcile and that you've got to say, hey, come back walking into my life again. If someone were to hurt my family, I can forgive them and not allow them near my family. And that's still forgiveness. The Lord never says forgiveness looks like this, where the two of... I mean, if you can reconcile, that's beautiful, right? We've just discussed Jacob and Esau in our podcast. And that's a beautiful moment where the two come back together again and they can rebuild their relationship. But sometimes that can't happen and that's okay. An example I think of is Nephi got to a point where, you know, second Nephi four, Lehi dies, second Nephi five, I just have to go.

There's no reconciling. I have to separate from my family, which must have broken his heart. I mean, maybe Lehi said, keep the family together. Maybe Nephi tried, but I just have to go. And he could forgive, but he didn't stay because it was too dangerous. Maybe that's a good example of what you were saying a minute ago. Yeah. You don't bring your family into a bad situation. Oh, because I forgive. You can forgive, but you may need to separate. And maybe that's opening more than we want to tackle right now.

But there needs to be boundaries. You're okay to have boundaries that protect yourself. Right. I think there's plenty of scriptural basis for that. I'm reminded of President James E. Faust. Some of our younger listeners won't even remember who that is, but he was one of my favorite speakers when I was a kid. I remember sitting in priesthood meeting in the priesthood session and sit and watch him and he had Parkinson's, he would shake. And his very last talk, we can look this up easy, just use your Google and thumb them and look up James E. Faust forgiveness. It'll be the first thing that comes up. And his last talk was on

forgiveness and it was incredible talk and it's centered on this. Is that the Amish? Yeah, these Amish people, this terrible, terrible tragedy, these shootings that occurred in a school there and the way they reached out to the family of the shooter to comfort them, this idea of they're in a bad place too

and we need to help them. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment, really was. That's a really good resource to point people to because that had an impact on me. I remember that talk, especially because he was talking about people who are not of our faith, but people who had power to forgive. That was a great, great one. Yeah. So just remember, I think, John, this is a process, not an event. You might have to forgive over and over and over, but your heart's in the right place. You want this to happen. And like you said, we might need to outsource this a little bit and bring God in and say,

I need your help. I can't forgive. You've got to give me help and then let the Lord do his work. Well, we hope this has been helpful. We want you to come join us on our full podcast. Come join us this week. We're with Dr. Mike Wilcox talking about Joseph of Egypt and the incredible person that he became and how he was able to forgive his brothers. If you can't do that, though, that's okay.

Come join us next week for another Follow Him Favorites. hymn favorites.