What’s Holding You Back — Part 2

SPEAKER 03 : 0:02

Hello and welcome to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. We are so glad that you’re here. You know, in this world, we all go through trials and we experience losses. But the good news is that God is always with you and you can never lose his love. Stay tuned today as Rick continues his series called The Key to Hope. And now we’re going to jump right in with Rick. And here is the final part of a message called What’s Holding You Back?

SPEAKER 04 : 0:31

Now how do you let go of your wounds? Well, if the only way to let go of your worries is prayer, the only way to let go of your wounds is forgiveness. Forgiveness. There is no other antidote to your hurt and pain. There’s no other way you’re going to get past your past except through forgiveness. I don’t care what kind of therapy you go through. I don’t care what kind of book you read, what kind of mumbo-jumbo seance you go to or whatever. It’s not going to work because there’s only one antidote to the pain of the past and it is always forgiveness. You say, well, they don’t deserve to be forgiven. Well, neither did you. And God’s forgiven you. You don’t forgive people because they deserve it. You forgive people for two or three reasons. Number one, God says to do it. Number two, God has forgiven you. Number three, it’s the only way you let go of your pain. You don’t forgive people for their benefit, you do it for your benefit. Resentment doesn’t hurt them, it hurts you. You let it go only one way, through forgiveness. And you forgive so you’ll feel better, not so they’ll feel better. It’s so you’ll feel better. And you let it go. Look at what the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 4. Well, first look at this verse in Job 18.4. Read it with me. You are only hurting yourself with your anger. You’ve got to release it. For your own good, you’ve got to let it go. Now, what does the Bible say, Ephesians 4? It says, get rid of all, circle that word, all bitterness. Don’t hang on to it. Well, I’m going to hold back this grudge for leverage. And then when I get in my next fight, I’ll say, yeah, but you did that. And you’re holding back grudges for ammunition. Don’t do that. Get rid of all bitterness. No more hateful feelings of any sort. Instead, forgive one another as God has forgiven you through Christ. You pass it on. You forgive others. Why? So you can let it go. I want you to hear Tim’s story of how a man dealt with all of the wounds he had received in life and learned the miracle of forgiveness. Would you give him a warm welcome?

SPEAKER 01 : 3:01

My name is Tim, and I’d like to share with you how Jesus Christ has helped me to let go of pain, anger, and bitterness that I had developed as a result of some major wounds in my life. I was born an only child in Elyria, Ohio. and my dad had a passion for racing stock cars. And when I was four years old, I had the opportunity to see him race for the very first time. It was the only race I ever saw and ended up being his last because he died that day. During that short race, his throttle stuck and he crashed into the end of the wall on the oval track and the car exploded. My mom screamed hysterically, but at four years old, I didn’t understand what had happened. During the next six years, I found my solace in food and became quite overweight. Being a fat kid was miserable because other kids were brutal. I can still hear their comments, and I remember the emotional wounds that I received. And so I learned to be an angry kid and express my anger often. My friend Stevie lived a few doors down from me, and one day we were out playing in the woods where his brother Jim was waiting for me, and he sexually abused me on that day. And when he told me he would kill me and my mother if I ever told anyone, naturally, I believed him. And I carried that guilt and shame for years, never even realizing that it wasn’t my fault. I never brought it up again for probably 25 years. And through it, I received another wound. After my dad died, my mom found her soulless in alcohol. And within six years, she managed to drink herself to death. At 10 years old, I was completely alone, and all I had left was my dog, Molly. I went to live with my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side, and during that time, they went in and cleaned out my house and either gave away or sold everything, including selling my dog, Molly, which I think hurt the most. And that summer, they left on vacation, leaving me with another aunt and uncle, and I thought when they came back that I would go to live with them. But after they came back, they never answered their phone. They never answered their door. And that was their way of saying, we don’t want Tim here anymore. That summer, I bounced from one house to the next. And during a brief stay with one of my uncles, my own cousin threatened me with a knife, and he sexually abused me. And that day, I decided I could no longer trust anyone. Everyone I’d ever cared about either left me, didn’t want me, or abused me. And at age 11, I concluded that to survive, I’d have to take care of myself. When I was 19, I began a lifestyle of drinking, drugs, and sexual encounters, anything I could find to cover up my anger and my bitterness. I got married, but it lasted less than two years because I was running from all my pain. I asked for a divorce after having two secret affairs. And afterward, I bounced from one relationship to another, trying to fulfill my own loneliness. But no one ever knew that I was hurting because I never let anyone get that close. I built an emotional fortress around me because of my hurt and rejection, and it gave me a false sense of security. But I was miserable and lonely. Then I moved to California, and within two years I was married again. And three months after the wedding, I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I’d love to say that my inability to trust finally disappeared, but it didn’t. In fact, because I had not dealt with my wounds, I found it hard to even trust God because I couldn’t let go of control of my life. So instead of really getting to know and to love and trust Jesus, I simply became a Bible expert. I amassed a lot of Bible knowledge and felt as though I had the answers for everything and everyone except myself. I became rigid, self-righteous, trying to please God in all the wrong ways. I was harsh, I was opinionated, and felt that everyone else was wrong except those in my own little group. Of course, my own little group was me. During the next 21 years, I had three kids, I went back to school, I got two more degrees, I got involved in ministry, even became an ordained pastor and started a church. But with all the unresolved wounds, it was still all motivated by fear and and distrust and the craving to be recognized and accepted by somebody. Fifteen years into our marriage, my wife confessed to having had an affair. It was just another wound, reinforcing my own feelings of rejection. I said I forgave her, but I never really processed the pain. I only stuffed it. I kept reading my Bible, but I was living in complete denial. Five years later, my wife asked for a separation, and six months after that, she filed for divorce. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t put the marriage back together again. Then one day I was in Diedrich’s coffee, reading my Bible, struggling with my anger, and Joe from Saddleback Church walks in, and he’s wearing a Celebrate Recovery cap. I shared with him what I was struggling with, and he invited me to Celebrate Recovery. And that Friday night I went for the very first time. I wish I could tell you all the details of what happened next, but the bottom line is that Saddleback’s Celebrate Recovery program And God’s grace saved my sanity and my life. It was there that I learned to forgive others. I learned to forgive myself and let go of my wounds. Pastor Rick’s always talking about the value of being in a small group. Well, in my small group, for the first time in my life, I was able to open up to others and be honest about my hurts, my hang-ups, my fears. My small group didn’t judge me. They didn’t give me advice. They didn’t try to fix me. They didn’t try to control me. They simply loved and accepted me. And for the first time in over 40 years, I felt unconditionally loved. One major breakthrough happened for me when I finally faced the pain of being sexually abused as a child. In my heart, I had always hated these two individuals who had done this to me. I held on to that pain and hurt. Yet during the recovery step of forgiveness, God moved me to forgive and to let it go. I wrote letters to both these guys, letters that I knew that I couldn’t send, not knowing where they lived. But as I wrote to Jim, I began to detail all the years of wreckage and pain that he had caused from what he had done to me. But I explained that I was extending forgiveness to him, whether or not he was ever able to acknowledge his sin or not. It wasn’t about him now. It was about me and God. And at that instant, I realized that I no longer wanted Jim to suffer for what he had done to me, and I began to weep. My anger melted away, and I only felt compassion for him. And I began to pray for this guy who abused me, asking God to forgive him and not count his sin against him. In that amazing moment, God changed my heart towards someone that I had hated for over 35 years. And now in a coffee shop, I found myself weeping for his salvation. Only God can change a heart like that. Through God’s strength, I found that in forgiving and letting go, there’s true freedom. My life has undergone a transformation, and God has given me miraculous hope through the power of forgiveness. I’d like to encourage all of you who are carrying hidden wounds to stop hiding them. Get involved in a small group where you can honestly face your unresolved hurts and your wounds in your life so you can be free from them. Don’t let your past hold you back anymore. Let Jesus Christ help you to experience the freedom that comes through forgiveness and letting it go. Thank you.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:19

Who do you need to forgive? Who do you hate? And you need to forgive them. What wounds from your past do you need to let go of? As Tim said, the bitterness isn’t hurting them, it’s only hurting you. Now, if you’re a normal human being, you’re thinking, I don’t know that I have the strength to do that. Well, welcome to the human race. None of us do. That’s why you need Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ can give you the strength to do what you cannot do on your own. God is willing to give you that strength. He’s not only willing, He is waiting to give you that strength. Look at this verse in your outline. In fact, would you read with me Psalm 147, verse 3. God heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. That’s what God is willing to do for you. Let’s pray together. As we pray to let go of our wounds, Who do you need to forgive? Who do you hate? What name comes to mind? Would you pray, God, I’m willing, but I need your help. Would you help me to find the strength to forgive? And then with God’s strength, say to him, God, I forgive. And say their name in your heart. I forgive them. Rather than rehearsing this pain, I choose to release it to you. I don’t want to live in bitterness and in anger anymore. And so God, I pray that you would give to me the peace and the freedom that comes from forgiveness. And as I forgive others, help me to remember how much you have forgiven me. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

SPEAKER 04 : 13:11

You let go of your worries. You let go of your wounds and then you need to let go of your wrongs. Your wrongs. The things you’ve done wrong. Your sins. Your mistakes. Your regrets. Your failures. The things that you wish hadn’t happened and you feel guilty about. Don’t drag that old pile of guilt into the new year. Some of you are carrying a load of guilt that is so heavy and you’ve never let it go. You just keep carrying it on, all that garbage. You need to deal with it today and you need to clean house. There’s not a better time to do it than the first weekend in a brand new year. Now, why is it important to come clean? Well, there are three reasons. Look at what the Bible says. Look at these verses. First, guilt disconnects you from God. You ever feel distant and detached from God? You ever feel like your prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling? That you’re just making up mumbo jumbo words and God’s a million miles away and he’s disconnected and distracted and you’re not in any sense in touch with him. And you just feel like God is so far, far away. Well, guess who moved? God didn’t move, you did. The Bible says this in Isaiah 59, your wrongs have separated you from your God and your sins have made him hide his face that he doesn’t hear you. Because between you and God, you’ve got a bunch of guilty garbage piled up and he can’t see over it and you can’t see over it to see him. It’s separated you from your God. Now, I don’t know. Let me ask you a question. How often do you take out the garbage in your house? Once a year? I don’t think so. If you do, your house stinks. No, you probably take the garbage out daily. And I am a firm believer in keeping short accounts with God. At the end of the day, go, God, what’s the garbage between me and you? And you get rid of it. You ought to do that. Daily confession is a good habit to have. But you know what? Sometimes it’s good to just set aside a time for a moral inventory, and you make a sin list. Have you ever done this? I do it with quite regularity. I’ll grab a 8 1⁄2 by 11 yellow pad, and I’ll sit down with God alone, and I’ll just say, okay, God, what’s between me and you? What’s wrong in my life? And I just listen. And for the first three or four minutes, I probably just sit there in silence and nothing comes to mind. And then all of a sudden, an idea comes to mind and go, oh yeah, that’s between me and God. And I write that down. And then in a minute, another one comes and I write that down. And then they start flowing pretty regularly and I go, okay, I’m gonna write the book of Rick’s sins now. That’ll be a bestseller, I tell ya. And I make that list of sins and then I look at it and I go, man, that thing’s ugly. It’s no wonder there’s so much garbage in my life. And I need to confess it and cross it off and get rid of it and let go of it. Because guilt disconnects you from God. Not only that, it depresses you. Guilt depresses your mood. The Bible says this, when I refused to confess my sins, I was weak and miserable and I groaned all day long. Now you know from personal experience that nothing makes you feel more miserable than hidden guilt because you’re always worried if somebody’s going to find out and you feel bad about it. It is impossible to be happy and guilty at the same time. You cannot do both. You can’t be happy and guilty at the same time. That’s why we mask it, and we try to push it down, and we try to cover it up, and we go out and we feel guilty, and we don’t know how to get rid of it, so we get involved in sports or golf or reading romance novels or one-night stands or keeping busy so we don’t have to think about what we did wrong. There are a lot of ways to mask guilt. You can do it with drinking. There are lots of different ways. And you feel miserable. I can’t tell you how many people have said to me in private confidence, Rick, this thing is killing me. It’s killing me. Because guilt depresses your mood. Not only that, it dominates your mind. The next verse says, I know about my wrongs and I can’t forget my sins. I can’t forget it. You know, when you feel guilty, it’s hard to think about anything else. You know, it just keeps popping back up. It’s kind of like taking a dozen ping pong balls and trying to keep them submerged in a pool, swimming pool. One of them is going to pop back up, inevitably at the most inappropriate time. And you keep pushing it down and pushing it down. And when you push down the guilt in your life, it’s like taking a bottle of Coke and shaking it up. One day it’s going to blow. So you need to clean house. You need to get it out of your life. How do you do that? How do you let go of your wrongs? Well, there’s only one way. And if prayer is the only way to get rid of your worries, and forgiveness is the only way to get rid of your wounds, then the only way to get rid of your wrongs is confession. Confession, just admitting it to God. God, you’re right. It’s wrong. I sinned. You don’t justify it. You don’t make excuses for it. You don’t give all kinds of rationalizations. You just admit it. The word confess in Greek is the word homo logeo. Homo meaning same, logeo meaning to speak. And to speak the same is to confess. It’s to agree with God and to call it what it is. It’s a sin. What I did was a sin. It was wrong. It wasn’t a little faux pas, a little mistake, a little hesitation, not if I sinned. I did, God. I blew it. And that’s the way you get rid of guilt. You just admit it. And you say, God, you’re right and I was wrong. You do it through confession. Now, God has given us a wonderful promise in the Bible. 1 John 1.9. Let’s read it aloud together. If we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all the wrongs we have done. Wow. He says, I’ll just wipe them all out. I’ll just cleanse you. I’ll cleanse us from all the wrongs. Notice it’s all the wrongs, not just some of them. God doesn’t say, I’m going to hold on a few of these for ammunition. He said, I’m going to forgive them all. Have you been carrying a load of worries and wounds and wrongs in your life? Drop them now. Toss them over the cliff. Deal with it now. Have the courage to let it go. Stop the pain. My dad was a fisherman, and I’d often go fishing with him. And sometimes when you go fishing, your line really gets tangled, mine in particular. And I’d get it in a total jumbled mess. And when you’re fishing, the fish can swim over rocks and around bark and trees under the water, and it gets all messed up. Sometimes your line gets messed up with somebody else’s line. Now, no sane fisherman in his right mind, when he sees a tangled mess of line, is gonna sit there and try to untangle it all. He just cuts it off and pulls some new line. That’s what you need to do with your worries and your wounds and your wrongs. I suggest you don’t spend another single minute trying to fix the blame. Figure out who did what and who did what. What’s my part? What’s your part? Forget it all. Just cut the line. And through confession and forgiveness and prayer, start over. That’s what God says. He says you can just start over. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous poet, wrote this to his daughter who was depressed over a major mistake she had made. He wrote, finish every day and be done with it. You’ve done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. Begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on the yesterdays. Some of you have been carrying an enormous load of guilt. And you’ve been carrying it maybe not even for a year, but for years. Well, you’re in luck. We’re going to let it go today. And Pastor Tom is going to come and lead us in a prayer of cleansing and confession right now. And I hope you’ll follow him in it.

SPEAKER 02 : 22:32

Let’s bow our heads and pray. And would you just admit it to God? Tell Him. And be specific. Don’t say, God, I know I’ve done some wrongs. Tell Him specifically the wrongs. that’s been coming to your mind as Rick’s been talking about it. And pray to God and say something like this. Say, Father, I know that what I did hurt me. I know it hurt others. And I know more than I’ll ever realize it hurt you. I’m tired. I’m worn out by blaming others, by hiding from my sin. And so I admit to you that I was wrong. I ask for your forgiveness. Not because I deserve it or can earn it, but because of your grace. And then would you pray this prayer from Psalm 51? Pray, God, be merciful to me because you are loving. Wipe out all my wrongs. Wash away my guilt. And make me clean again in Jesus’ name. Amen.

SPEAKER 04 : 23:50

Look at that verse on your outline, the verse that Tom just prayed. It’s Psalm 51, it’s actually not 41 if you wanna correct that. Psalm 51, one and two says this. God be merciful to me because you are loving. Wipe out all my wrongs. Wash away all my guilt and make me clean again. Now that’s the prayer you can pray in confession. And if you just followed Pastor Tom in that and meant it, here’s the good news. What does God do with our sins once they are confessed to him? Does he hold on to them to say, you know, I’m going to pull this out later? No. Look at the next verse, Job 14. You, God, will forgive them and put them away, and you will wipe out all the wrongs that I have done. Circle that phrase, wipe out. That’s the Mr. Clean verse of the Bible. It’s the spot remover verse. There is no stain in your life too deep that God can’t wipe it out. Now there’s a word for this. It’s called grace. Grace. This is a letter that Rick Muchow got. Dear Rick, a year ago I made a terrible mistake and I got involved in a wrong relationship that ended in an affair. I knew it was wrong from the start, so just a few weeks later, I confessed it to my wife and I ended the affair. But this last year has been a nightmare. I’ve made myself accountable to a group of mature Christians for the restoration of my marriage and my relationship to God. And they’ve been very supportive, and my wife has been incredibly loving. I know that she and God have forgiven me. Nevertheless, the shame and the guilt and the self-condemnation that I carry has felt unbearable. I haven’t been able to get past it. Then the other night, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to read and pray, and I threw in a Saddleback CD just to have some music playing. When the song Healing Grace came on, I began to listen very intently. I’ve always liked the song, but now it became a message from God directly to me. As I listened, I broke down in tears of joy when I heard the words, O Lord, you took my despair and put joy in its place. When I thought my life was over, you were waiting there for me. Now I can see that there are good things only suffering can bring. I’m looking forward to the future, the work I have to do, knowing I’m forgiven. and acceptable to you. As the truth of those words sank in, my heart exploded with an emotional release and hope filled the room around me. I really can’t explain it. I did such a terrible thing to my wife and family, but I know that with my confession and repentance, God’s healing grace is working in my life. And I don’t have to keep beating myself up anymore. God isn’t finished with me. In fact, I believe that one day God will even use my sin to help other people. But for now, I will bask in his healing grace and learn to let it go. You need to do that. That’s why God brought you here today. You need to let it go. You need to experience his healing grace. His grace is the most amazing thing in the universe. When we accept it, it wipes out our worries, our wounds, and our wrongs like that. Let’s bow our heads. There is no better time than this first week of a new year to accept the grace of God. You can begin a new year with a new life. Just pray this prayer. Say it in your mind and God will hear you. Dear God, as I begin this new year, I need a new relationship to you, a deeper relationship to you. I don’t wanna just give you my worries and my wounds and my wrongs. I wanna give you my life. And I want to use this next year the way you intended for me to use it, fulfilling the purposes of my life that you put me on this planet for. Jesus Christ, I ask you to come into my life as best I know how and save me. And with our heads still bowed, most of you have already prayed this prayer at some point. You’re already a follower of Jesus Christ, and you’ve experienced His grace, and my question to you is, what’s your next step? What did you think about doing last year that you really need to start doing this year? You need to stop procrastinating. Don’t drag last year’s disobedience into this year. You know what you need to do. If you need to be baptized, do it now. If you need to start having a daily quiet time of prayer and reading the Bible, do it now. If you need to start tithing or volunteering to use your gifts and serving other people or getting into a long-term small group or whatever it is, you know, make that commitment today as we begin the new year. Say, Father, I’m not going to put it off anymore. I want to run the race this year. In your name I pray. Amen. Hi, everybody. This is Rick, and I hope you enjoyed today’s broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it? There’s something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, Rick, at PastorRick.com and say, Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ. And I’ll send you some material that will help you on your journey with Jesus, and I’ll also pray for you. God bless you.

SPEAKER 03 : 30:34

Thanks so much for listening to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. You know, your prayers and financial support have a huge impact on millions of people here and around the world. So we really appreciate that. Thank you. And now Rick’s going to share a letter from one of our listeners who says Daily Hope is making a real difference in their life.

SPEAKER 04 : 30:54

Today, I want to share with you a letter from Debbie that really, truly touched my heart. She wrote, Pastor Rick, I’m not sure how many times I’ve thought about emailing you, but I didn’t. I’m not sure why, but today I listened to your Daily Hope message on facing giants in life and work, and I knew that I needed to say thank you. My story started when my husband of almost 24 years died suddenly at our home of a blood clot. He was just 49 years old. My daughter was the one who called 911, and life just seemed to stop. We were in shock after that death. At the funeral, my brother told me about your message series, How to Get Through What You’re Going Through. So I listened and I held on to those words and what Kay had spoken, not knowing how significant they would become. My own son had been struggling with what we now think was undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He’d been struggling for about three years, and 11 weeks after my husband died, he took his life. Life stopped again. I have an incredible family and a group of friends, and they, along with my faith, got me and my daughter through things I never thought I could live through. But the resource that I kept turning to and listening to over and over again was your series, How to Get Through What You’re Going Through When You Lost Your Son. You and Kay truly understood how I felt and how I still feel. We’re part of a club that nobody wants to be a member of. Rick, I’ve learned so many things through this journey of grief, but the most important is that God keeps his promises, and he does bring beauty out of ashes. So I want to thank you and Kay from the bottom of my heart for sharing your story and not wasting your pain. Even though we’ve never met, I feel as though we’re friends. Well, we are. And I ask God daily to help me use my pain to help others. I still struggle some days with guilt and grief, but I know that God is faithful. with me every step of the journey, with a thankful heart, Debbie. Well, Debbie, my dear sister, this touched me, obviously, your message. And as somebody who’s walked in your shoes, having lost a son, I can tell you without a doubt that God is faithful. And I just want to say that I’m so proud of you that God does not want us to waste our hurts. Never waste a hurt. You’re going to go through the pain. so you may as well use it to help other people. And in 2 Corinthians 1, the Bible says God takes us through problems and comforts us so we can then comfort others with the same comfort we’ve been given. And that’s the motivation behind everything we do at Daily Hope. Friends, If you can give a gift to help Daily Hope, you can help people like Debbie, who’s walking through the grief of having lost a husband and a son, but found new hope through this broadcast, which shares the message of Jesus. You who gave… helped Debbie find healing. And you who gave have helped thousands and thousands of other people find hope and healing in Christ because of your gift. So thank you for your gifts today. God bless you.

SPEAKER 03 : 34:28

Hey, if you’ve been encouraged by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and you’d like to support us, please consider giving a financial gift. Just go to PastorRick.com. Again, that’s PastorRick.com. And thanks so much. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God’s Word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.