Forgiving Sets Us Free

I would like to invite Dr. Rene Quispe who is coming, who is an Argentine who lives in California. And brothers God makes everything perfect. What did the pastor talk about last week? Family, home, marriage. God sent Dr. René, whom we have known for many years, I am sending him here this weekend almost as if the Lord were saying, 'I know it is difficult, I am going to help you find out how you can build a more blessed and Christian family. God brought him so it suits us, it's up to us to open our hearts and receive what he brings, may the Lord bless the Doctor.

Thank you very much pastor, what a joy to be with you and to be able to praise the Lord as a family, the unity of the spirit. I look at you and although I do not know you personally more than a few, it is as if we have always known each other through the spirit of Christ, in him we are one.

Our God, I know you are here Lord, your spirit is here, Oh Lord, teach us, teach us, teach us how to come to you humiliated, asking for forgiveness, but Lord you lift us up with your grace, you heal us, heals us, fills us with your spirit, we are yours Lord, thank you Lord, in the name of Jesus, amen.

The topic that we are going to see together is titled as soon as this starts working, I was having trouble getting it to start but I hope you can do it a little bit up there, here it goes, thanks.

And sometimes the computer sits still for a long time, like it falls asleep and then it's hard to start again. Learning to forgive, I know that we have all forgiven, right? Being Christians the Bible teaches it, but it is not always easy, and I believe that one of the problems that we have as homes is that we have not really, in many cases, learned to forgive. Or yes, we know what the word forgive means, but that experience of forgiveness is something rather intellectual that is in our mind, and many times it has not healed the heart.

And we are going to look for a moment at those situations that occur in our homes. In the life of this world it is not an easy life, there are many struggles, many controversies, many difficult situations, and this world is not easy.

This world is a world with many conflicts, many difficult situations, there are many injustices. Think a little about how many children suffer today, at this very moment, the screams of their parents, not just the screams, the physical abuse. How many children are going through moments that they don't even know how to describe because they are confused in their minds, because those who do these abuses are adults, and I have no doubt that some of those children were you when you were little. And one does not suffer but does not know what to do.

And if we really look at the world even within the Christian world, families, Christian homes, there are many people who are full of problems of struggle, difficulties, frustrations, resentments and but we do not want to live with that inside, so we want to get clean but many times we don't know what to do, because the pain is great, because it's there and we don't know how to change it. And the basic problem is that we don't know or can't forgive. We want to, but it's like even though we say I forgive you, the pain comes back and the frustration is inside or maybe we don't even want to remember it and we push it out of our consciousness and even though it's out of consciousness it is affecting us. And it is tremendous how Satan has tried to destroy in the human being the ability to really allow the holy spirit to flow through us.

Although we know the Lord Jesus, He forgives us, He has saved us, it's like there are a lot of obstacles and the holy spirit wants to flow but it's like there are little things inside that can't, can't pass that spirit and help us to love everyone and live in that love and in that peace, and in that joy and in that full life that Christ wants us to have.

And the reality is that forgiveness is a central part of the gospel, if you look at the word of God you will see that forgiveness is at the heart of what Jesus teaches, it is in the very heart of the father our. The Lord taught us to pray, "forgive us our faults, our sins, just as we forgive our debtors." But if I do not forgive my debtors... Jesus said it, I am not saying it, Jesus said it in the next verse a little later he explains and says "because if we do not forgive our debtors, God will not forgive us our sins either." us".

In other words, forgiveness is connected in the gospel as part of that healing process that Christ wants to give us all and it is beautiful to receive God's forgiveness but since it is difficult for us to forgive those who do us wrong, Or is it easy for you?

When someone crosses you on the freeway and treats you ugly there and makes some gestures at you there and you forgive him right away? What comes to your mind? As one immediately becomes like ahh, and that is evidence that our hearts do not live in forgiveness. And you will see that through this topic the goal that God has is that we all learn to live in forgiveness, all the time, the goal that God has for us, that we can have that peace that no matter what the problem, our heart is singing.

Do you think that is not possible? If you read history you will see that many of the martyrs died singing when they were burned. See the story of John Hoss, they put up a stake, lit the fire and the flames finally silenced their singing.

Put your finger on a candle and try to sing. That presence brings about a miracle and if I can be the miracle when John Hoss was being burned, I couldn't be with us when the children scream or the neighbor gets ugly with us or the husband treats us badly. Can we not have that same peace, that same love that God wants us to have?

Not only in the gospel is forgiveness important. If we look at science, what we see is that scientific research today confirms that forgiveness is essential and I'm not saying it, you can find it yourself if you go to the Internet and put the word "forgiveness" in google, you're going to find that there are more than two million responses. Why? Because there are many centers that are studying this concept.

Stanford University itself has been studying this concept for a long time and has shown that forgiveness is essential for a person to have success, happiness, joy in life. Stanford University shows that... they have a very particular study, Stanford University has a class called "training in forgiveness" (training in forgivennes), and in that class they teach, from a point of view unbiblical scientific and spiritual view, how to forgive.

They have brought students who had very big traumas, and they teach them the class, they test them before the class, after the class, a year later, two years later, and they evaluate the consequences in various aspects of their their life of learning to forgive and they compare it with people who have not taken the class, who receive the same tests. And they have realized that forgiveness is essential. Look what they say, they say that knowing how to forgive is more important for health and success in life than nutrition and exercise.

What do you think? If scientists say that this is very important, think we Christians who deeply believe in forgiveness would not have to learn, exactly how does God want us to forgive?

Because it's one thing to say “oh yeah God wants me to forgive so I forgive you”, but then I don't forget. And that is in there and I am not teaching that you have to forget the problem, the mind will always remember it, but the healing of the spirit has to cure all the negative effects of past experiences.

And that is what God wants to teach us how to live like this. There is another quote that we are going to look at now that goes like this, it is from a psychiatrist who says “the research on forgiveness done by Robert N. Wright and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin is so important for the treatment of mental and emotional illnesses. as was the discovery of penicillin for the treatment of infectious diseases”.

Now if you know a little bit about medicine you know that the discovery of penicillin last century was one of the greatest discoveries of the century. I personally am with you today thanks to penicillin, I was 3 years old when I got a very ugly infection and it was penicillin that saved me. And I know millions of other people.

Now this writer compares the research that has been done on forgiveness by this scientist, with that discovery. In other words, science is giving incalculable value to knowing how to forgive. And we Christians believe in forgiveness, but we have never started to see exactly how we have to learn to forgive so that it has spiritual effectiveness in our lives, it gives us victory so that we can continue moving from victory, to victory, to victory, to that holiness process that the pastor was talking about last week.

Christ wants to heal us, He is there to heal us but how? Sometimes we don't know exactly what to do, there are problems. Why? Because forgiving is not easy. There are people who say that it is impossible in some cases. I personally believe that forgiveness is impossible without the holy spirit. We can say that I forgive you but the heart continues with pain, continues with bitterness, continues with things, the ugly memories inside. And the Lord wants to teach us...

Now, it's not easy for many reasons, and we can see that there are many people who definitely have a hard time forgiving because of childhood traumas. And when we talk about trauma, we have to realize that trauma has affected us, I would say everyone, maybe some young children who grow up in healthy homes have not had trauma yet, but I would say the vast majority of us who are here, if not the total, we have gone through traumas.

Do you know what traumas are? I'm sure if. There are many kinds of traumas, we could classify them into three groups:

Basically, according to the dictionary, traumas are an emotional shock that causes substantial and permanent damage to the individual's psychological development. That means it is something that hits you very hard and leaves you without the ability to continue acting normally in the future. That is a trauma.

There is another quote that says that it is a marked deviation from what is considered normal in life. That is a trauma, you deviate from what is normal. And within that there are many aspects, we have traumas that are generally divided into three groups: physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse, and many times these three are combined.

If I asked you to give me examples of trauma, I am sure that all of you could tell me some examples of trauma. There are very ugly things, very sad.

I remember one of the people who came to our office to be treated, a very capable woman, very educated, working for the government, but in one aspect of her life she had suffered so many traumas when she was little, she lived with an alcoholic father who physically and emotionally abused her. A small example of what she wrote about her experiences: Dad, when she was 8 years old, she came into the room yelling at her. She was sleeping. He wakes her up and tells her 'I told you to clean the kitchen, you don't learn to clean the kitchen', and he pushes and hits her to the kitchen. When they get to the kitchen, he says: 'look what's on the floor', and on the floor there were some green peas, on the floor with a little bit of hot sauce that the father liked. 'I told you that you have to sweep the kitchen every time you have to clean it.' He turns over the bin where the rest of the food they had thrown was, turns it over on the kitchen floor and then tells him: 'now you have to lift each of those peas with your mouth and put them in the bin' , and he pushed her little head against the peas and made her put the peas in it.”

For the world that woman was normal, but that in there had caused her traumas that now made her unable to control certain habits in her life and although she trusted God, God had saved and forgiven her, her life continued to be affected by those traumas she experienced as a child.

And Christ wants to cure those things. And I would say that almost all of us have some traumas that we have a hard time discerning. It is difficult for us to see the traumas we had because nobody likes to be in contact with the traumas of the past, because the traumas we have had were painful and why think about what is painful. So we want to disconnect it from our life and our mind and we trust in the Lord and this is part of the Lord's holiness process. He wants to heal us. He died not only to save us but to heal us and He is in a process of holiness, of healing, which will not end today or tomorrow. You are going to have to continue processing these things and you have to be open to what the Lord wants you to show because when you are open he can bring to your awareness things that he wants you to deal with in your life for healing.

And how nice it is when the Lord can do that. The long-term effect of these traumas is an effect that we cannot always discern because how do I know that what I am living here today is affected by the trauma that I don't even remember from the past. And especially the effect on interpersonal relationships is very difficult to discern. And almost, I would say that all of us have been affected by past traumas in our personal relationships, especially in our ability to develop emotional intimacy.

In other words, because of the traumas we had in the past, it is now difficult for us to connect emotionally from heart to heart. And for a relationship to be successful, be it with your husband, with your wife, be it with your children, be it with brothers in the church or even with God, we have to be able to connect them at the level of the heart.

What makes many marriages fail? The inability to relate at the level of the heart, one or both in the marriage. What makes many children do not know how to learn discipline? It is because their little hearts and their fathers do not connect, their mothers do not connect. It connects only at the level of behavior, of the exterior, dad says "do this" and they do it. But there is no emotional connection, there is no heart connection. And without that emotional connection it is very difficult to grow in grace.

So the Lord wants to cure that but it is difficult for us and especially in the case of children. When there are children, adolescents who suffer trauma, it is very difficult for them to face this storm of emotions, of painful feelings and they try to escape the pain, therefore most of the children, since they do not know what to do, automatically develop defense mechanisms to protect themselves. from pain. It's like: "I don't like it", "I don't want this".

So subconsciously, according to our different personalities, we develop ways to or protect ourselves from pain. And those defense mechanisms help us as children to survive the pain. But when we grow up, those defense mechanisms prevent us from having a healthy and mature relationship with other people. And even though we come to church and believe in God, that continues to be an obstacle to our spiritual growth.

And Christ wants to cure us of that..., we have to identify that, those situations that are in there and that we sometimes cannot even grasp. And how beautiful when the Lord does it. And He wants to cure all those problems.

And these defense mechanisms are many, I am still growing in this area, I have to continue discerning the defense mechanisms that I developed as a child to protect myself from pain. And there are so many mechanisms, when we talk about defense mechanisms I have a small list here, there are many more, look at this list, the list we have here says that the defense mechanisms are:

Denial, for example
Suppression
Projection
Rationalization
Affective disconnection
Compensation
Suppression
Regression
Sublimation
Passive aggression < /P>

These are psychological concepts, each of these words has a specific meaning, and sometimes we don't even know what they mean but we are having these defense mechanisms in our way of being. I personally have several of these. Those that were more difficult for me, that I did not discern, for a long time I lived in my world suffering the impact of these defense mechanisms without even identifying it.

Why? Because I was born with a personality, a dynamic, positive temperament. I was born into this world with the purpose of succeeding and having joy and being happy. That's what moved me since I was little, I remember. And when I had problems and traumas in my childhood I basically developed number one on this list –denial- and affective disconnection. Others too, but those are number one on my list of defense mechanisms. When there were problems, I disconnected or ignored or denied them. No, I have a normal life, I have a happy life. And for me there was no pain, why? because I disconnected it from my mind, from my conscience, and my pain was mostly emotional.

I never saw my mom and dad treat each other with love and tenderness. They accidentally got married because my grandmother told my mom to marry my dad. And she obediently married. But let me tell you that once I was about 7, 8 years old and I saw some relatives that I didn't know who came from another far away place, and I was walking at sunset and I saw them, a man and a woman, A relative of ours, maybe 40 years old, around there, and I saw them hugging, kissing, looking into each other's eyes, caressing each other. I said what is that, what are these two doing?

I did not understand what a healthy relationship of love and tenderness was, I had never seen it and you have to understand that when I grew up there was no television, no Internet, no movies, that is, I had total ignorance of what is a relationship between a man and a woman who are healthy, well nowadays I don't see much of the healthy ones either.

But my dad finally left my mom and us, when I was about 9,10 years old, he went off with another woman. My mom went into such a big depression. I wanted to commit suicide, and of course I didn't understand all these problems. And I was disconnected. I missed my dad terribly because even though my dad didn't connect with us very much, I wanted to have a dad. I wanted to have a dad. But my dad left. I remember once he came to visit us, only once that I remember he came to visit us, and I was about 12 years old more or less. And he was with us one day, at night when they were in bed, the 4 children were there playing with him because we were happy because dad had come to visit us, he told us: "I'm leaving again tomorrow", and he gave me like a…, I remember a stab in the heart. And I told my brother 'he said it honestly' I tell him, 'let's find a rope and tie him to dad in bed so he doesn't leave'.

Those desires that one has as a child, those pains that one does not even want to experience, how horrible they are. My mom came in with hysteria. I remember that she had hysterical attacks, she would throw herself to the ground, kick, scream, cry and when I saw that it was like an emotional storm in my mind and in my heart. I was leaving, I was leaving, I was escaping, I was going to play, I was going to play basketball, I was going to play with my cousins. And if you ask me if my childhood was happy, yeahhh, it was very happy, because I didn't even want to see those things, I concentrated on what was beautiful. I was concentrating on fishing. I grew up in the north of Argentina, where there are estuaries, where there are lagoons, where there are snakes and crocodiles, and for me that was the most normal thing to play with my cousins who hunted more snakes in a day. I enjoyed my childhood, but there was a lot of pain in there that I didn't even want to touch.

Years passed, and I was 14 years old, 15 years old, maybe not 14, and my mother couldn't buy us clothes, we were extremely poor, so she told me one day: "why don't you go and ask to your dad who buys you clothes” and I was 14 years old so I said: “Ok”, my first trip away from home. With that enthusiasm, I go to see dad, I'm going to hug him, he's going to buy me clothes. We didn't write to each other, there were no phones, so I didn't even know where I was. They gave me an address, I traveled a whole day by train, by bus, I crossed a river with a boat, another bus from the other side, at night I arrived where my father supposedly is and when I ask I look for the address, he didn't live there anymore, he had moved

I have that oppression, what do I do now? I'm alone. I asked, I asked, finally someone told me: “Oh your dad yes, he is now the director of a country school, big there” and he told me where, but I couldn't go that night. You had to take another bus. The first bus to that place left at 4 in the morning. I got up early, took that bus and got to the place where I now had to get off. They had given me the instructions. I got off, I had to walk 5 kilometers on a dirt road. That night it had rained, there was mud, that road was muddy, and I got my shoes dirty, I immediately took them off, tied the laces, threw them over my shoulder, rolled up my pants right up here, and started walking. It was still dark, early in the morning, and I remember that... I'm going to make a confession to you now, I wasn't afraid of snakes, but I was of dogs. And I don't know why but it seemed like all the dogs in Argentina were on that street that night and it was hard for me to go to the... Thank God no dog bit me, but it was hard for me to go down that road, wow.

And I remember that in the morning the sun was rising, I walked, I got muddy, I got all dirty and, but it was so beautiful the sun was rising, my heart was singing, I looked at the trees washed by the rain, the green leaves, the precious orange trees, the droplets of water hanging from the leaves. I was going to see my dad, I see the school, I see the flag waving there in front. My heart races, and I run and see my dad come out in front of the school, and what joy I was. I still remember how excited I was, and when I got close I yelled at him, Dad, and I waved my hand and he looked at me, the children were entering the school, he was at the door, and when he looked at me he didn't recognize me. Of course, I came here muddy like this, my pants rolled up and when I get close I say “dad!!” and I come running to hug him and when he recognizes me he says: “What are you doing here? And I stop confused. And I don't even know what I stammered, maybe I told him: “I came to buy me clothes” and I remember that he got angry, and started yelling ugly things at me. I don't know what he was yelling at me, because my mind blocked everything, but I felt so confused, and in my confusion I took my shoes off my shoulder and went to a place where there was water, he kept yelling at me and I started to wash my shoes... And I only remember that his head was very close to mine and that I looked and it seemed to me that his teeth were going to eat me.

And I felt like a little ant in the world, I felt such a great emptiness, such an intense loneliness and as if hatred was exploding from within my soul and I felt a desire to punch my father in the face , and at the same time I wanted to hug him. And my dad sent me home without giving me breakfast that day. And when I got home I didn't tell mom, I didn't tell her exactly what happened, I just told her that dad didn't have money to buy me anymore and she sent me back.

Years passed, I got married, in 1979 we came to the United States. In my studies I obtained a second master's degree, I obtained a doctorate in psychology and in 1987 we organized a marriage meeting with my wife in the city of Boston - Texas. There was a large group of couples, we were part of those who participated, and those who were presenting the topic did an extraordinary job. They sent us to our room on Saturday night with a notebook, my wife and I, each with their own notebook, and they asked us to go to our room and write childhood stories in the notebook. And I went to the room happy, my wife is going to write some stories. I was ready to tell him about how we hunted, fished, played with my cousins, because if you ask me I had a fantastic childhood. I have so many beautiful memories from my childhood.

And there I was sitting to write those stories, I started to write and I don't know what happened but suddenly the memory of the experience with my dad came to my mind, and I began to cry, but a cry, a crying so agony, so intense, so deep that I had no sound in my crying. It was like my heart was exploding and there was a cataract inside that had to come out. My wife hugged me and I realized that I had a very big trauma with my dad, with my mom.

And God wanted that trauma to be healed, and for that trauma to be healed I now knew what I had to do. It is a painful process, but at the end of the pain is healing, thanks to the Lord He healed my pain, He healed my trauma.

I visited my dad, I spent almost 3 days with him, and by the grace of the Lord, he gave me his spirit to forgive him and love my father with all my heart, to bless him.

Of course, I didn't understand at that time that those traumas that I had had were manifesting in my life through symptoms, all kinds of negative symptoms. What are symptoms? When we talk about symptoms, there is a quote that I really like, the doctor who wrote like this and she said: "the symptomatic characteristics of adults who have been abused as children include post-traumatic and dissociative disorders combined with depression, anxiety syndromes and addictions and these symptoms include….” and now comes a list.

And I recommend now that you, in your mind, ask God for an open mind to discern if some of these symptoms apply to your life, because the symptoms will tell you if they really are. there may be some traumas in there that you don't even discern, but that are affecting the way you are today. Because if you discover the symptom, many of us want to correct the symptoms but you can try to correct the symptoms and if the trauma continues there without being cured and healed, the symptoms will come out in another way in another place.

And what God wants is to heal all our past and for that we have to discern the traumas of the past but we have to start with the symptoms and the symptoms will lead you to the trauma by the grace of the holy spirit . And look how beautiful this list helps us to see what might be in there and the list includes:

Persistent depression, there are people who have a hard time feeling the joy of the Lord. Here we believe it, here we sing it, here we say it but we go home and when the husband yells at you or the wife scolds you, it's like it's hard for you to have the joy of the Lord. And you are there, oh how I have to get out of this shadow that covers me, this cloud that overwhelms my feelings.

Or it could be that you have anxiety, I don't know how you are. There are people who find it difficult to sleep unless the radio is working, the television is running. There are people who have a hard time going to sleep early, it's like they go to bed and are with ants. There is no peace, there is anxiety, an anxiety that comes from you don't know where, but it is affecting you today.

Or it could be that there are panics or phobias or anger. Do you know people who are angry all the time and don't even know why? Maybe some of you feel a little like that.

And low self-esteem, pathological shame, psychosomatic pain, self-destructive thoughts and behavior, drug abuse, not just illegal drugs, I'm talking about legal drugs. There are people who have to take pills to get up, and walk the day, and pills to go to sleep, pills for this, pills for that, and always some pain.

Furthermore, the list includes eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia, binge eating. All these are symptoms, but the problem is in there, the symptoms are what we see, the problem is no longer seen.

Difficulties establishing relationships and developing intimacy. This is a problem that almost the vast majority of people have. When there are problems in marriage or with children, most of the cases have to do with the inability to establish a heart relationship. I no longer feel anything for you, I don't know how to love you, you don't know how to treat me, and we always accuse the other person and when we don't realize that the problem is really inside here and that I don't know how to bless the other person person.

Sexual dysfunctions, oh this problem is sweeping the world and the people of God. Today Satan has sexualized our society, little children suffering under these conditions, adult believers who don't know how to get rid of their addiction to pornography, who constantly assault you through the Internet, there are two clicks and you are, and Christ wants to heal us

These are symptoms of an internal need, which sometimes we don't even know how to discover. In addition to that we have loss of memory, mental lapses, feelings of not living in reality, including even the "flashbacks" or the invasion of thoughts of the trauma we had. Sometimes they attack you or anxieties that one has because of what happened in the past almost without remembering it, hypervigilance, people who have a hard time are always closing all the doors and windows due to unconscious fears. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't be closed, but there is extreme anxiety, that of seeing that the doors are closed three or four times knowing that they are already closed, or things like that. hypervigilance

A man I know who had a Vietnam veteran, slept in a chair, on a sofa, he didn't lie on the bed and he had an X 47, a machine gun in his hands every night he slept. ... It's extreme, I know it's extreme, okay? But this is hypervigilance. I had to always be attentive, something can happen to me, something can happen to me.

Disturbed sleep, nightmares, insomnia, sleepwalking, multiple personalities... Look brothers, I would not doubt that all of us here have some of these symptoms, and sometimes we do not know how to do it because in Actually these symptoms are preventing us from a full life in the Lord. I can tell you about the same, I have had many of these things, the Lord by his grace is healing me, he continues to heal me, I am in the process brothers. There are things that he is constantly showing me that I have to continue growing in his grace, but we have to be open to these realities. And how nice when the Lord shows us this. And you know, I would like to give you an illustration that will help us now to understand what I am going to explain to you in a moment.

This is an illustration that is going to look kind of stupid to you but please do it for me. Do you have a good imagination? Imagination is using the mind to create ideas, okay, can you use it, okay? I want all of you to imagine you are dollar billionaires. If there is someone who does not have to imagine it, that is, it already is, I want to meet him, I would like to be your friend. But imagine you are a billionaire, okay? You have a palace, a beautiful house by the sea and there you have a decorated park and you have a private dock, and at the end of the dock your yacht. Make it the size you want. We're good, right? And now I want you to imagine that one day we woke up and when we went outside we found a dead dog, big there, dead, what do I do with this dog? I have to go, I don't have time to dig a hole to bury him, oh lady, what do I do? Ah a good idea, I'm going to look for a plastic bag, ok? And I bring it, I put the dog inside and I put a few bricks inside too, and I close it and I close it hermetically and they help me, I put it on my shoulder, ah!, And I take the park behind the house, I take it to the dock , I walk along the pier to the end of the pier, problem solved, I drop the bag into the sea and there it goes to the bottom.

Now I want you to imagine what happens with that dead dog inside the bag. Goes 4 weeks, 6 weeks. How is that dead body in there? You tell me, rotten, right? It begins to stink, maybe it even has worms there! And that body is ugly in there, and the bag fills up with gases and becomes big. But it is closed, until a little hole is made, a hole and through the little hole bubbles of that air that is contaminated begin to come out, and the bubbles come out, some small, others larger, they come to the surface, and there in the dock you are eating a sandwich.

Ok, now I want to make you a graph of, (pass that one too), a graph of our life, ok? This is the line of our life, and now you are about to be born, here you come, and now you were born, there you were born. Your life begins, and in our life we are going to have traumas, there is always some trauma. Your parents yell at each other, there is violence, there is affective disconnection on your part and from your parents and some traumas are bigger, some are smaller, but one tries to survive in life and continues to focus as best he can on life. life and those traumas follow one after the other, and we finally don't know what to do with all this because the pain is so great.

What do we do with these pains? I don't want to be living with this in my mind, I don't want to be living with these experiences, so an idea occurs to me. What if we put those memories in a bag, and throw it into the sea, let's do that, what do you think? So there goes the bag and the bag begins to grow with so much trouble and fills up with smelly, ugly bones, and those are all the traumas we've had. But we have been taught that if we are believers we have to have a joyful life always, right? So I don't have problems, no, and if I have a problem, I'm just as happy, it doesn't matter. And when we go to church, we may feel these weights inside, but I get to church, how are you, brother? - very good- .

And in church we have these wonderful smiles, but when we go home sometimes we have some problems that one doesn't even know what to do. And one feels tired and this internal tension of wanting to live the Christian life as Christ teaches and not knowing what to do with these internal tensions, creates a discharge, an emotional spiritual exhaustion that makes you not know exactly what to do. You pretend that you are fine, you act like you are very pleased and very happy, but you start to feel these bubbles coming out and these bubbles bring all kinds of symptoms into your life.

And as the years go by, he begins to see more and more situations that are not easy to change. And you don't even know what to do with all this now, because you believe in God, you want to be faithful to God, you want to be a joyful person, but you have these anxieties, these confusions, these feelings of frustration, anger, separation , you disconnect from what you don't like, and you want to stay happy but actually inside, you feel like we're falling, we can't anymore!! We are there that we do not give more!

The weight of all those controversies between what we feel when we are not connected there with Christ all the time, and we don't know what to do to heal, to stabilize our life. Do you know why I can tell you these things? I was a pastor for a number of years, and I felt that way inside. Do you understand what I'm saying?

I didn't know what to do. I believed in everything God said, but I believed with my mind, my heart was still tormented by a number of things that I didn't even understand. To do? Because if you are honest with yourself, something inside of God that still wants to heal, aren't we all in a process of healing and holiness? Maybe you don't see it now. I understand, but possibly if you take a little time and look inside yourself you will see things that happened, that were painful, and perhaps you don't even know what to do with it.

Christ wants to heal us brothers, and you know this is the place where he wants to heal his people, the church. This is when we unite interceding before the Lord for the healing that he wants to bring to our hearts, but only the holy spirit knows what to bring to your conscience so that you can surrender it to the Lord humbly saying, "Lord forgive me, here it is, I give you this memory, this pain, this sorrow”.

And there is a process that the Lord wants us to follow. But for that process to be fulfilled we have to learn to do certain things. First of all, we have to stop acting like we always do, pretending that everything is fine when in reality we are loaded inside. Accept reality and that we have certain struggles, internal conflicts, that Christ wants to heal, and for that we have to stop. In English we say “Stop”, ok? Any of the two languages, stop!! What to do now?

We have to experience a process, which is a heart healing process. Christ wants to heal the heart, not only that we understand the truth of Him, but He wants us to bring healing here inside the heart. And for that we have to be willing to go through a process that is going to be difficult. And that process will lead you to fall, not to fall but to go down, to enter that process where you will review or relive or re-acknowledge that pain from the past. And this process is not going to be easy, it is a process that is going to have pain, it is going to possibly have anger, frustration, resentment in your heart. But there is a key point, and listen well because this is key now, there is a key point that you have to experience in order to go out and be healed. And what is that keyword? I'm going to tell you, our time is running out and I want to cover this, there are 4 steps left, 5 steps left for forgiveness, okay?

There in the point below is the word accept, because if you don't you accept the reality that you lived, that stole your blessings, if you do not accept it, you will not be able to heal, you will always be claiming, you will always be feeling that something was missing. To heal you have to accept what you lost, the consequences of the trauma you experienced, accept. And when you accept now if we can begin to move into the experience that is the culmination of the healing process in that area of your life. And that experience is the experience of forgiveness, which is what comes when you get back on track, coming out of that experience of trauma and pain.

This is the graphic concept, practically we have to understand what forgiveness is. And I know that you know what the word forgiveness means, but we have to understand that forgiveness, there are certain things that forgiveness is not, and many times we get confused. Forgiveness is not forgetting, forgiveness is not excusing, forgiveness is not denying or ignoring, nor does it have anything to do with magic, it is not even reconciliation. There can be forgiveness without there being reconciliation. Reconciliation requires two people forgiving each other, but forgiveness is a person who is willing to say, "Lord, by your grace, I forgive everything this person did to me."

And for that we have to recognize that forgiveness is two things, and forgiveness includes two things, very clear, first of all we have to accept the fact that forgiveness is not something that I can create, I can't create, you can't create forgiveness, ever. Forgiveness is the holy spirit of God. It is the spirit that enters when we receive it, when we ask for it, we claim it, the holy spirit enters with the capacity, the ability, the gift of forgiving in our hearts, he enters. But he enters into a conscience that must respond, therefore, forgiveness will create in us a mental and spiritual attitude that will change our behavior. If you don't have those two parts there is really no forgiveness. The problem is that many people stay with the beginning, they say: "I forgive", they are only words or they accept forgiveness as a gift from God but they do not practice it in their practical life, daily.

And there are certain steps that we have to take, which are very clear. I am going to show you now, there are 5 steps that if they are clear in your mind, it will help you a lot to continue growing in the Lord, in the holiness of the Lord, in the healing of the Lord, okay?, and now come the 5 steps, 5 steps to forgiveness:

The first of the steps is the following: first, you have to identify that pain, that trauma, that painful experience. Now, it is difficult for us many times, because nobody wants to go where there is pain, and this requires us to go back to the past, therefore we have to ask God for courage to identify what He wants to cure or heal in our life. Courage to look at the reality of our life honestly, and then through his presence the holy spirit will lead us to see what he wants to heal. And we have to make a list, a list, I'm going to explain clearly how to make that list later, okay? But that list is key, a list of all the painful experiences we've been through. Reflect on the past, meditate on the past, that is step number one, honest to look at the past

Step number two: we have to recognize that I do not know how to forgive, I cannot forgive, I alone, my heart is recent, my way of relating makes me reject everyone who treats me badly or ignore them. That is what I am, my nature is like that, it is the nature that we have that is sinful. So what I have to do in step number 2 is to open my heart to the influence of the holy spirit humbly acknowledging Lord I cannot forgive even the smallest thing, I can say "I forgive you" but in reality forgiveness is your spirit Lord . It is You, Your Lord, all glory is for You. And then after we have this step 2, which is to recognize our condition, now yes, we open ourselves to the holy spirit and say: “Lord, come with your spirit into my heart, come in Lord, come into my heart, put your compassion in my heart, Help me to look at people, situations through your eyes, that I can see what happened from your angle, Lord, from your angle, that I can see my dad through your eyes, Lord."

And I remember very well how the Lord began to work on my heart. Oh, my brothers, when I went to see my dad, I knew some things but the Lord put them so clearly in my mind. My dad suffered so much, his dad passed away when my dad was a baby. My grandmother married a man who was the closest thing to the devil there is on this earth, and my dad suffered horribly. This man beat him with wires, he wanted to kill him. My dad had to escape when he was about 12, 13 years old because he went looking for a gun to kill my dad. And he grew up doing his best.

And besides that, the Holy Spirit gave me spiritual discernment, I realized now, now I realized, when my dad yelled at me that day that I went to see him, it turned out that my dad had turned to get married, he had 2 children, the teachers at that school didn't even know that he had another wife before and I was surprised, a 14-year-old son, when the man was apparently with a new family there. And he didn't know what to do when he saw me he started shaking and he started yelling at me and he sent me back home. He didn't know how to explain this boy who came to him. How can I not forgive my dad.

And the Lord put that forgiveness, that love in my heart for him, the Lord does the work, but we have to give him time for Him to do it, for Him to change our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes , and for that process to happen, you have to do certain things, and do you know what you have to do? I'm going to show you in step number four.

Step number 4 is very practical, brothers, ohh tremendously practical. Now you have to practice forgiveness, but how do you practice it? This is what you have to do. First of all, you have to make a list of all those problems that are in the past of your life. Remember that you have to look at the past honestly, saying Lord show me, show me, show me what is painful, what I don't know what to do, show me Lord. Make a list, maybe in a practical way I would say buy yourself a notebook, okay? Do you have personal devotion with Christ every day? I hope so, otherwise you better start. Okay? I choose early in the morning, okay? Give the Lord at least half an hour, if possible give him more time, okay? Half an hour at least in the morning. Pray, there you are with the Lord, connect with Him. What are you going to do with that notebook? I know that women possibly buy a notebook that has flowers and some pretty things, okay? It doesn't matter how it is, a notebook that is for you, for your life, that will be your encounter with the Holy Spirit in the process of holiness that God wants to bring into your life, okay?

So what you do on the first page, put a verse that you like, something that reflects your faith in the Lord, a nice verse from the Bible that you like, perhaps your favorite, first page .

Second page, make a list, that list we mentioned, write it down, maybe every time you go there at the beginning you add a new experience. You have to put the names of the people who hurt you, if it was your father, if it was your mother, if it was your stepfather, your stepmother, your neighbor, your uncle, your grandfather, I don't know who it was. Put the name, put the person's name in there. And remember the incident, and so now comes page three.

Page three is where you are going to work, page three, you have to divide it into three sections, and what you are going to do there, has to do with meditating, praying, you are going to have to ask God what you have to do and you will have to obey. And now I'm going to show you page three, okay? Page three is divided into three columns, make two lines, and now you have three columns. The first column you are going to put the name of the person who hurt you, in my case, I had to put what thing there? My dad, my dad.

In the second column you have to put what happened. Do not make a long story, it is not a novel that you are writing, the basic words to describe what you experienced. “I went to see my dad to buy me clothes, he rejected me, yelled at me and sent me back home without giving me breakfast”, enough. Is that clear?

And in the third column, what do we do? We put words that describe what we feel at that moment, what words am I going to put? I felt like a little ant, I felt alone, I felt abandoned, I felt rejected, I felt frustrated, confused, I felt resentful, bitter, hurt, hateful, I wanted to punch my father in the face. That's what I put there.

We must recognize what we live, what we feel, what we go through. And that brings pain because we go back to the experience of the past, it is not easy. You are going to have to ask God to help you go to those places. And then once you recognize all that, now you have to pray. Do you remember that we said: meditate on this and pray.

How are we going to pray? This prayer, brother, is so important, the prayer that I am going to explain to you now has three parts, you do it with your words, with your feelings, but there must be three aspects that you have to face in that prayer, that you have to develop in that prayer. And here appears the first part of the sentence, this is number one. In the first part of the sentence you are going to say something like this more or less. You talk to Christ with God as you feel it in your heart, but you have to tell him this, “Lord, through the grace of your holy spirit that you give me today, on this date today, I choose to forgive my dad, for that time he yelled at me, he sent me back without giving me breakfast. Lord, I felt abandoned, I felt that I had no father, Lord, I felt that I was nothing, that I was rubbish, that they could throw me away.

Tell the Lord, tell him what you feel, He understands, now you are not alone when you go to that experience, you are going with the presence of Jesus by your side. He is with you, He says: I will not leave you, I will not abandon you, I will be with you in the moment of pain and anguish.

And then the second part of the sentence comes in, okay? The second part of the prayer we are going to say: “Lord, I am willing to accept the consequences of what I experienced, I am willing to accept that I did not have a father, on this earth who loves me and protects me, I did not have. I accept that reality Lord, I accept the consequences of that reality Lord, I accept that it hurt me, it left me traumatized for years, but I accept it Lord. Thank you Lord because You allow me to accept this ".

And now we move on to the third part. They notice that there are three, first, second, third. And in the third part of the prayer we are going to say more or less this, “Lord, I ask you through your holy spirit that that part of my mind that Satan had affected through these pains, through this experience, all those neurons that are affected by those memories, Lord there I want You to enter, not to erase the fact of what happened, but to heal the influence of Satan, those negative feelings, that abandonment, that loneliness, all that Satan tried to create in my life, I ask you to heal him Lord, that you heal him. Come in Lord, fill me with your spirit, and that part of my brain where those memories were still being activated by Satan to create traumas, to create ways of being that are not healthy, that now You heal it, heal it Lord. Thank you Lord, your words are sure, your promises are eternal, Lord I accept the healing that you give me, I accept the holy spirit that you give me, Lord I praise your name because your work is wonderful in my life.

How many times are you going to pray this prayer? How often? Until Christ heals you, if it's a week, a week, if it's a month, a month, repeat, repeat: there are things that cost a lot to cure but the Lord is going to help you cure..... it's because then we can move to the fifth step, now you understand.

The first 4 steps have to do with our past, the fifth step has to do with the future. And how beautiful is this because now in the fifth step we choose forgiveness as a lifestyle. Now yes, I am going to live in forgiveness. I'm going to be patient in the process because it doesn't happen all at once, but I'm going to live more and more in accordance with how Christ lived. Christ lived in forgiveness, Christ was forgiveness walking, He didn't even have to forgive people because He already forgave us before the foundation of the world. He was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He forgave each one of us, all our sins, centuries ago.

And the Lord wants you to live like this, that forgiveness is already filling your heart so fully that when someone yells at you, someone disrespects you, someone betrays you, someone is violent with you, that your Your heart is filled with that love, that peace, so that you look at the problem with the calm of the Lord, the love of the Lord, a center that is not moved, that does not change, that does not lose the peace of Christ.

And brothers, how nice it is to live in that way, with the Lord. He is here to heal us, and there is a verse that the apostle Paul puts us where he says "rather be kind to one another, merciful, forgiving one another just as God forgave you in Christ Jesus."

You know my brother, I know it's late, can you give me a moment, because now the Holy Spirit wants to do some healing here, in the church, brothers, here.

I don't know how your past life was, but the holy spirit knows, and he is bringing to mind things that happened in your life, and now he wants to give you an extra blessing in that area, in that painful experience. And I would like you to think for a moment now, did the holy spirit speak to you showing some past experience where you suffered? Because if that happened to you, I would like to invite you to bring that pain to Christ Jesus here, to wake up calm, serene, knowing that in Christ you are healthy, and that He restores you.

If the Lord showed you that there were difficult experiences in your past, that he now brought them to your mind because He wants to heal you, I invite you to get up from where you are, that we all stand up to Thank and honor the Lord. But if he calls you, come to the front, stand here so that the Lord heals your memory, heals your pain, that difficult experience you went through. And I don't know what it was but the Lord knows and He is here to heal his people.

Thank you Lord, thank you Lord. No matter what it is, bring it to the Lord and let's have a healing prayer together. I will guide you in prayer. Just as we saw it here, I am going to guide you so that you pray to the Lord, that experience that you are bringing him. Thank you Lord, thank you Lord, thank you Lord.

Keep the music very soft brother, I want my brothers now to repeat with me, and I suggest that we all have a prayer, tell the Lord what is in your heart, ok? But especially those who have come forward, let's pray together, I repeat a sentence, you say it later, okay?

Lord Jesus, by your grace and your holy spirit, today I choose to forgive and in your mind put the name of that person, you say it in your mind, I choose to forgive such a person, for that painful experience What did I have. Say it: for that painful experience I had, and you know what it is. The Lord knows what it is, what it made me feel and tell the Lord what it made you feel in your mind in your heart, tell him. You don't have to say it out loud, in your mind tell the Lord, what made you feel, you felt abandoned, rejected, raped or raped, you were sexually abused, your parents abandoned you, maybe you don't even know who your parents are. parents and you always looked for them.

What was in your life? Tell the Lord, oh thank you Lord, tell him thank you Lord. And now we are going to pray the second part together.

Lord, through your holy spirit I am willing to accept the consequences of that experience, tell the Lord.

All that I lost Lord, I accept, I accept that I will not be able to go back to the past and change that, I accept, I accept Lord.

And now we're going to pray together again. Lord, enter my mind, my neurons, where those memories are and heal me Lord, heal me, cleanse me of those feelings, difficult painful, Lord. Clean me, let your holy spirit enter and dwell in my neurons, in my brain, and in my heart.

Thank you Lord, thank you Lord, thank you Lord. Heal me Lord, heal me and I praise you for the work you are doing Lord, Thank you, thank you Lord, how good you are, wonderful you are Lord, king of kings, Lord of lords, praise the Lord, thank you Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you Lord. Heal your people Lord, day after day, hour after hour heal us, thank you Lord, we give you all the praise, honor and glory, Lord, thank you, thank you Lord, how good you are, Amen Lord, amen.