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pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller Episode Number 30 How to experience complete and total forgiveness Part One Hi

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this is Pamela Wilson from big brand system dot com and I help people answer the question What's

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your big so they

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can build a business around that

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you're listening to Dr. Brad Miller on the pathway to promise podcast

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which will

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help you find your promised

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life

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what tool blue forgiveness is not it's not about justifying what the other party did hurt you. It doesn't make it right. If you forgive them,

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you're on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller Bradley's every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose. And that you must have a plan and a guide to get there the pathway to promise podcast the user guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here's Brad

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Hello, my good friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the pathway

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to promise podcast how honorable it is for you to join me today here on this episode of kind of a special milestone number 30 at the pathway to promise podcast. We've had a lot of great guests

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on our prior episodes

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of pathway to promise. We have also one of our ongoing experts appearing with us in this episode, Scott Miller, who is a financial planning expert with Christian stewardship counseling, and he will be talking to us today about how to take a financial breather and we're experiencing this here today, I did want you to know that today we're gonna be talking about forgiveness. Today's episode one two part episode about how to experience complete total forgiveness. Today's

episode of the pathway to promise podcast is brought to you by the book The promise given life the 40 day way to overcome adversity and claim your promise life of peace, prosperity and purpose. hope that you'll come and look for this book which we released released later on this year, you can get on the waitlist and prepare for the book and get a download which is an excerpt of the book by going to pathway promise comm slash 40 day way, I hope that you'll do just that you're on the pathway to promise podcast, we are all about being helpful to you. And understanding that you have a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose. And that you have the opportunity to implement that in your life. When you follow a plan, a pathway, if you will, that can, using people who've been there before your guides to help you overcome adversities things like death, and depression in debt, and disease, and even divorce help you overcome bad things in your life. In order to achieve a life that you always wanted to break through those things and have a sense of peace. That is that that emotional, and, and powerful sense of well being that you can have prosperity, which means that you have generosity in your life, it may be financial prosperity, but most of all, this means grateful. Having some freedom in your life. And purpose means you got direction, you're going to place to go, you got a place to go with your family, with your career, with your health, with everything, your life, you're heading in a direction, you're headed in a positive way, because so many of us are stuck in a, in a malaise of mediocrity. That's what we're here to do. Dr. Brad Miller, I've got 35 years and Creek Christian ministry. And I've read many, many books and other resources have been the seminars about life transformation. And have you even written a doctoral dissertation about this and have a doctor degree in transformational leadership. And I know that I can, you know, have had transformation in my life, overcoming some difficulties in my life to come to a good place always a process of course, always a process for me and for all of us, but I can be helpful to you and what's more, we got lots of great guests here on the pathway to promise podcast who can be helpful to you as well so invite you to go the pathway promise calm, that's our website. And there you can look at all of our prior episodes of the pathway from pathway promise, podcast, lots of great folks there who can, you can learn from and apply their lessons of overcoming adversity and achieving peace, prosperity and purpose to your life and invite you to do that the first five episodes of the podcast are there. And that's where we outline the 40 day way process which is with the basis of the book The the

the promise given life, a 40 day way process to help you move through adversity to peace, prosperity and purpose. You get the foundational teaching there in the first five episodes pathway to promise so you can check us out there, we would love it. If you would help us out by giving us a rating of subscribing to our podcast on iTunes. given us a rating There are five stars if you will, we would certainly appreciate that. And then given us a review a couple lines helps other folks to to find us, we have a gift there for you to that you think if we mentioned to you earlier, which is an excerpt from the book promise given life you can go to

path or promise comm slash 40 day away and you can pick that up there as well on the website. Glad you're here with us today. Today, we're talking a little bit later on the day will have Scott Mater talking about finding taking a financial breather in your financial planning help you get out of debt. But I want to share with you a little bit about the topic of for forgiveness here today. And specifically, it's an understanding that forgiveness is something that we all think about. Because we've all been wronged, we've all been hurt, or we've hurt somebody, you don't get through this human experience without pain or without being done dirty without somebody just messing you over in life. It's a theme that's throughout the Bible. Of course, there's all kinds of situations where people who were hurt and discouraged a course the teachings of Jesus and other great spiritual leaders minute much if it's about forgiveness. And that means when forgiveness takes place, with total forgiveness takes place, you know it because it has to do with it forgive, this has to take place in order for any kind of healing or restoration of relationships to to happen. And what we're about here now is helping to give you tools in order to get through things. So we're going to do a two part teaching on forgiveness. And today we're going to talk about five things that total and complete forgiveness is not.

And then our next episode, Episode 31, we're going to talk about five elements of what total and complete forgiveness is. So I just want to share with you that

forgiveness means that if we are truly want to have healthy relationships, we've got to be forgiving others. And yet, we know there are some things that the world would want us to react with, not with forgiveness, but with retribution. And as a huge temptation is there you know, some of these things are biblical concepts. You know, the, the, you know, we here in the Bible, for instance, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth teachings like that, which make us think of retribution, getting back at somebody who's hurt us. We also know there's also teach, he's like from effusions. Fourth Chapter where it says, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ God forgave you. So we have teachings both ways in the Bible in both ways, and other teaching about how we do that. But the practicality in our families in our lives and everything we're about is this is just hard stuff to forgive others. So let's understand a little bit sometimes we think about forgiveness, we get so wrapped up in the pay of the hurt involved somebody who hurt us and hurt us deeply. It may be someone who's even dead now.

And we dwell on that we focus on that we let that consume us your get consumed by the hurt, it will eat your lunch, you will take you out it will impact every part of your life. If you do not have that sense of sense of forgiveness recorded is the time when senator john mccain just passed away a great leader in our country. And I've read some things about his life as a prisoner of war. And during during the Vietnam War for several years, five plus years, he was

in the place to call the Hanoi Hilton and where he was beaten up and left for dead in, you know, starved and and just brutally hurts in such a way that torture in such a way that he's had injuries, all you know, that lasting injuries elastic throughout his life. And we're so thankful for her service. But one of the great things I learned about him was how years later, as a senator, he was responsible for both

missions and legislation, which had to do with normalizing relationships with Vietnam, with North Vietnam and the country of Vietnam, where he was imprisoned and where he had so much brutality done to him. And he said, some of those comments, it was time to forgive, to forgive those who captured and hurt him so much. And that's amazing stuff isn't that that would happen. So there's time to learn lessons from a great warrior like Senator McCain about how to forgive and not dwell on those things about getting back to another, the winner takes it all we have some people who teach setting lead us on our culture right now who just think it's, it's worthwhile to crush everybody all the time. Forgiveness is not about that. It's about taking control of our life for our sake, and how forgiveness is a part of that. So here's five thoughts here, friends, on what total and complete forgiveness and the freedom that it brings are not to understand what it is not with someone hurts us, number one, total. And complete forgiveness is not approving of what they did. Let's just take this inner McCain, for example, for giving you the others. It's not approving of torture. Senator McCain, of course, spoke out against torture that our country sometimes has participated in, it's not approval from what they did. You know, it's not about

it's not about approval of the sin, sin is still sin. And in this case, it is understanding that there is painful things that happened, but you don't

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approve of it.

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That's not what it's about. It's also never to what total complete forgiveness is not it's not about justifying what the other party did, who hurt you, it doesn't make it right, if you forgive them. Just you know, if someone committed a war crime by torturing you in a prisoner of war camp, it's it doesn't justify their action, it doesn't make their actions right. Just because you have forgiven them it is doesn't justify them at all. Let's understand that tier two friends, that's two things that will total complete forgiveness is not total number three, total. And complete forgiveness is not reconciliation. Now, let's understand a little bit the difference between reconciliation and forgiveness. Forgiveness is something we can do on our own reconciliation means both parties that who have both parties who have been involved have chosen to change their behavior and such a way that their relationship is restored. reconciliation, for instance, takes place when a prisoner of war and it their captors and they come to some sort of agreement where they are now friends again, and made whole again. Well, that may not always be the case, you don't have to have a close relationship with the person who's wronged you and still get give them forgiveness. This is what would might be called a matter of grace, you can still forgive someone and not be reconciled with him. In other words, you can forgive somebody and choose to live apart. This has to be the difference. For instance, between when a divorce happens, divorce often happens when one party or both the husband wife, one party, or both have hurt each other deeply hurt each other deeply to the point where it ends their marriage. Now, the hurt can be forgiven, but sometimes the hurt cannot be reconciled. In other words for reconciled divorce might be people getting back together, but a forgiven divorce situations where people have learned to live with them and live with the fact that their divorce is to live apart, but have released the pain that has come into their life. One more thing about what another four thing about what total complete forgiveness is not, it's not forgiving. It's not forgetting this read, you know, you've heard the thing, forgive and forget. That's just ridiculous. Really, it just, it just does. We don't forget stuff. Everything is deposited in our brain, it is there. Now we do choose what we do with the things that we remember we choose and how we react to it. We don't have to wipe the memory clean for what's happened to us. Because that wouldn't be realistic. For one thing, we just don't forget meaningful events in our lives. And oftentimes, those things which cause the greatest pain, which we need to forgive somebody for are the things that are going to be outstanding, how, stating memories in our life, what it means is, we put them into the proper perspective and understand that we can love and not like someone, for instance, it is a it is this is a matter of grace for grace means that we can get on with our life and release the pain, release it Okay, and to a better place that is not forgetting. It is releasing, it goes right along with the fifth thing I want to share with you. That which

total and complete forgiveness is not. And that is not pretending that we're not hurt. Okay,

this is the people try to put on a stoic face is that people try to say, you know, they didn't matter to me that my wife, monster divorce, we it doesn't matter to me that I've been putting a prisoner of war camp and Hanoi, it doesn't matter to me, I can handle this, that again, that's just ridiculous. We can't keep a stiff upper lip all the time. We, you know, we, when we're injured, were injured. And when you're injured, you need time and opportunity to heal. It's a part of a grieving process here, friends, that's what I'm talking about. Here, you do not automatically go, it's just almost impossible to go automatically from the hurt the pain, the open wound to forgiveness, okay, you have to go through the process of the grief and there and a dealing with the pain and then understand that we are hurt people. And we need to understand that that hurt, you know, to heal. It is a process. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. Five things of what total and complete forgiveness is not in next time into our teaching on our next episode, Episode 31 pathway to promise we're going to talk about five things of which total complete forgiveness is if you want some more information or this some of what I've shared with you today comes from the book total forgiveness by our T Kendall. So some great teaching there about total and complete forgiveness and invite you to do just that. One of the things that we can do that is a painful part for a lot of us is our finances, right. And so in our financial life, we need some direction and some leadership because that can be a point of some pain for us, either personally, or sometimes in our marriages. And we have had some great teaching from from Scott major, who is a great Christian, spiritual finance, Angel and stewardship counselor. And he has some great teaching for us today on the topic of how to take of financial breathing.

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Let's

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listen to what Scott has to share.

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Let's take a moment and catch her breath.

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you've identified that you're having a problem with money, you face that problem, you've admitted it, you've done a triage and looked at how you've been spending your money and what kind of income you have, you've identified, if you're having an income problem or an outgo problem, you come up with a plan, you begin to execute that plan, you've begun to set a budget in place. Maybe for the first time ever, maybe you've sold some things that you never thought you'd sell, or figured out a way to work an extra job and commit to bringing more money in,

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maybe you've identified your values, your priorities, your why, and you've plugged into those things. Take a moment,

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catch your breath,

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visualize success,

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and realize that there is a God who wants to bless you beyond belief

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who wants you to succeed with money.

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And part of that is beginning to take on an attitude of stewardship. beginning to realize that you aren't the owner, you aren't the most important person in the relationship that you have with money. God is

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God owns it all. All of the hills, all of the mountains, and all of the cattle on those hills belong to God.

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God also wants you to succeed.

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He wants happiness, he wants joy, he wants success in your life.

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But to do that, you've got to give up the attitude that you own it, that you control it. And yet, at the same time, you have to work you have to strive, you have to drive forward. So weird, contradictory mindset, it's being both content with where you are, while being driven to make it a little better tomorrow than it is today.

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It's a chance to become empowered by a higher power,

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find ways to visualize success, find ways to put in front of you, those things that are important to you, and that are important to God. Find ways to turn those successes into something tangible. If...