Dealing Effectively With Our Failures | Dr. Gary Chapman

well thank you you may be seated uh i was just sitting here thinking man if you've got problems this is the place to be right man you know sometimes you have the idea you go to church and everybody looks like they're fine and nobody talks about problems and you feel like you're an oddball but the reality is all of us have problems from time to time that we struggle with so well i'm glad that you're here tonight it's so great to see you again i said this morning that i believe that there's two essentials to a long-term healthy relationships one is that we keep love alive and we dealt with that this morning and tonight the second essential is that we deal effectively with our failures now i say that this is an essential because none of us are perfect now one husband did raise his hand when the speaker said does anyone know of a perfect husband he shot his end right up he said my wife's first husband my observation is if there are any perfect husbands they are deceased and most of them got perfect after they died the reality there are no perfect husbands there are no perfect wives there are no perfect parents we don't have to be perfect to have good relationships but we do have to deal with our failures because our failures put a block between us an emotional block between us and it does not go away with the passing of time we have to deal with it and that involves apologizing and forgiving and that's what we're going to talk about tonight now the bible is very big on this topic listen to these verses this is proverbs 28 verse 13. he who conceals his sins does not prosper but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy now that's talking about our relationship with god but that principle is still true on human relationships if we act like what we did or what we said or what we fail to do there's nothing wrong with it then the relationship doesn't prosper but if we're willing to acknowledge it that it was wrong and turn from it then likely not only we find mercy from god but likely we'll find mercy from the other person then listen to this this is what isaiah said to the people of israel your iniquities have separated you from your god and your sins have hidden his face from you so so that he does not hear you see sin separates us from god as well it puts a barrier between us and god and god's always willing to forgive but the barrier doesn't go away until we're willing to deal with it and confess it to god and then he removes the barrier and we have fellowship with him here's how strongly jesus felt about this this is matthew chapter 3 5 chapter 3 pardon me now it's chapter 5. i can't read my own writing here it is jesus said if you are offering your gift at the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you you've hurt your brother leave your gift there in front of the altar first you'll be reconciled to your brother then come back and offer your gift now put that into our modern context jesus said if you're sitting in church and you remember that you've hurt somebody leave the church and go make it right with the person then come back and worship me i've often wondered how many people would leave the church on sunday morning if we practiced that i had a pastor say to me once he said gary he said i can give you an illustration in my own life he said one morning on the way to church my wife and i kind of got into it and i spoke harshly to her and then we went silent and then we got to the church and he said i let her out and she went in and i drove the car and parked and then i went in my office and later i came out and i was sitting there getting ready going to be preaching and she was singing up in the group and he said i just said to myself and god said to me man how can you preach after what you just did to your wife and he said i just caught her attention and i just pointed like that and she knew what i meant and she left the stage and went out in the hallway and i left and walked down the hallway and i apologized to her and she said well honey you know i forgive you said honey i'm so glad and so i came back in and i could preach and see that's what that's how strong jesus feels about this that we deal with our failures so we're going to talk about apologizing and then forgiving where do we learn to apologize typically from our parents little johnny pushes his sister and his mother says johnny you don't do that to sister now go tell her you're sorry so little johnny says i'm sorry even if he's not i'm sorry he's 25 now he's married if he offends his wife what's he going to say i'm sorry yeah typically we learn from our parents but what we realize is that when someone's apologizing to us what we're asking is are they sincere because if we believe they're sincere it's much easier to forgive them but if we think they're just trying to make light of it and think it's not very much to it just for it i'm sorry just forgive me it's harder to forgive them so what we did i say we because i wrote this book with a co-author what we did is we we did research for two years all over the country all kinds of people trying to figure out what a sincere apology looked like and after two years of research here's what we discovered look at the screen if you can figure this out if you can pull this off they're going to believe that you're sincere well let me tell you what we really discovered we asked thousands of people two questions when you apologize what do you typically say or do question number two when someone's apologizing to you what do you want to hear them say and do and their answers fell into five categories i promise you we were not looking for five i like five but we weren't looking for five but we call them the five languages of apology so i want to share these with you again you might want to just kind of jot these down because here's the thing we have different ideas on what a sincere apology looks like typically because of what our parents taught us now we also discovered that about 10 of the population almost never apologizes for anything and most of them are men and they learned that from their father their father said real men don't apologize now we know where their fathers got that john wayne that great theologian real men don't apologize and then there were others like me my father never told me that but i never heard my father apologize i remember when i was about seven years old i was in the back seat of the car my mom and dad were in the front and they got into it verbally and my dad was raising his voice at her and my mother just clammed up i guess she had learned looking back on it i'm guessing she had learned that if she kept coming back it would just get louder and longer so she just stopped talking and dad ran out of steam in a little bit and then it was real quiet and then we got to where we were and got out of the car i'm not saying my father did not apologize to my mother maybe he did privately but i never heard him apologize so i came into marriage with no model of an apology and that may be true of some of you but the reality is we were influenced by our parents in one way or another either not to apologize or we they gave us some idea of what an apology is but because we have different ideas we judge sincerity by what we think a sincere apology should look like so let me let me give you these five apologies all of them are found in the bible which leads me to say that anything you discover in social research if it's true it'll always be in the bible truth will never contradict truth number one expressing regret expressing regret often with the words i'm sorry but please don't ever say those two words alone tell them what you're sorry for i'm sorry that i lost my temper and yelled at you i'm sorry that i came home an hour and a half late and now we've missed the program and i know you wanted to go if you simply say to them i'm sorry they may well be thinking you certainly are is there anything else you'd like to say you think you're apologizing they think you're giving a character report tell them what you're sorry for and don't ever add the word but i'm sorry that i lost my temper and yelled at you but if you had not then i would not and now you're no longer apologizing you're blaming them for your poor behavior and some of you have a habit of doing that so let me tell you how to break that habit the next time you hear yourself say i'm sorry that i but you stop right there and say excuse me erase the butt and you will not erase it but three times and you'll break that habit so it's expressing regret what you're communicating is that you feel badly about what you have done that's what the word sorry typically communicates i'm feeling badly about what i did here's a biblical example the prodigal son after he had wasted his inheritance he came home with nothing and here's what he said to his father i'm no longer worthy to be called your son dad if you could just give me a job on the farm do you feel the regret in that statement i'm not worthy to be your son dad you don't deserve me anything anything i don't deserve anything more and then here's here's one psalm 51 verse 17. this is david a broken and contrite heart o god you will not despise david knew that david had come to god with a broken heart david deeply regretted what he had done wrong and you come to god with a broken heart i don't care what you've done god will forgive you and on the human plane that principle is there too if we come to our spouse or anyone else with a broken heart and acknowledging that we feel badly about what we've done we that is one way of apologizing a second way of apologizing is accepting responsibility i was wrong should not have done that no excuse for that i take full responsibility this is illustrated again by the prodigal son listen to these words after he said uh i'm no longer to be called your son here's what he said i have sinned against heaven and against you he's accepting full responsibility for what he did incidentally when you sin against your spouse or someone else you also sin against god when the bible says be kind to one another and we're not kind to the other person we need to first of all confess to god that we've broken his command and then we confess to the person we're acknowledging to them that what we did was wrong first john 1 9 if we confess our sins god is faithful and just to forgive us our sins the word confess means to agree with if we agree with god that what we've done is wrong god is willing to forgive us always willing to forgive us so incidentally this is the first step in teaching a child how to apologize a four-year-old breaks a cookie and says it broke it broke and the parent says honey let's say that a different way i broke the cookie it's not a sin to break a cookie just trying to help the child accept responsibility for what they did i broke a cookie my son and i were in the kitchen he was probably seven years old maybe six and uh we the two of us were in the kitchen together and he was at the table i was over here near the sink and he accidentally knocked the glass off the table it hit the floor and broke and i turned when i heard the noise i turned and looked at him and he said it did it by itself and i said derek let's say that a different way i accidentally knocked the glass off the table and he said i accidentally knocked the glass off the table it's not a sin to accidentally knock a glass off the table i'm just helping him accept responsibility for what he did now now some of us have trouble with this i remember years ago when our kids were little i woke up one morning and i said to carolyn that somewhere in the morning routine i said carolyn where's my briefcase and she said i haven't seen it i said well it was in there by the dresser i mean you must have moved it and she said gary i haven't seen your briefcase i said carolyn think i got to get the kids to school think i know i know you moved it she said gary i have not seen your briefcase i was every round of that got higher and i was yelling at her i got the kids in the car and i was nice to the kids you know have a nice day but when i drop the kids off at the school i drove from the school to my office at the church thinking to myself how could i marry such a scatter brain woman i mean this time she's lost my briefcase everything i owned in my briefcase this was before computers i didn't even know what my schedule was for today and what i was going to do i mean everything was in my briefcase when i got to church i did not walk in by all of the administrative assistants i went in the back door to my office folks when you sinned you don't want to see people you want to do what adam and eve did in the garden get you a bush and hide behind it and hope god won't see you i went in the back door to my office and i walked in and there was my briefcase now i have an option i can say to myself i'm not going to let her know it was out here or i could practice what i'm teaching and if i had done the former i would not be using this for an illustration so i called her hi babe uh i found a briefcase she didn't say anything she knew there ought to be more to it than that and so i said to her i uh i'm sorry i yelled at you honey i i i was i i wa i i i was wrong i didn't say it was easy in fact let's just see if y'all can say those words i was wrong let's just try it out loud here we go i was oh see some of you had trouble even on a dry run acknowling that managing now i've had guys say to me dr how can you say i was wrong if i don't think i was wrong listen guys don't get hung up on whether it was morally wrong or not if what you did or didn't do hurt the relationship then in that sense it's wrong so admit it you know i remember one time i'd been gone for a couple days on a speaking thing and and uh they had delivered a chair that my wife had had up re-upholstered and uh so i was sitting in that chair the next morning and she walked in and said honey how do you like the chair the new covering and without thinking i said to her well honey i like it but to be honest i like the old cover better and she broke into tears i can't believe you don't like it i spent two months going all over town trying to find the right material and now you don't like it now folks what i said was not sin it was just stupid okay i spoke without thinking and i apologized to her i didn't i hadn't studied the love languages apology languages at that time but i just i i said everything i could think of to tell her how bad i was at what i'd just done and thank god she forgave me you know i don't i i wouldn't be here i wouldn't be here if my wife hadn't forgiven me along the way i don't know about you but if i had to face all the ways that i've heard her along the way i wouldn't be here thank god she's forgiven me but uh accepting responsibility is another way to express your sincerity the third one is offering to make restitution offering to make restitution what can i do to make this right what can i do to make this right you see for some people if you don't offer to make it right then in their mind you're not sincere very interesting before we publish this book when sorry isn't enough i i sent the manuscript to a counselor friend of mine actually in california and i said would you just read this and give us feedback on it he wrote back later he said gary this thing's helping me and my marriage he said my wife and i decided we're going to read it together and he said when we read that number one express and regret i knew that's what i thought it was a sincere apology so what have i done he said for the 15 years of our marriage if i've offended my wife i've told her i'm sorry honey i'm sorry and he said is this always seemed like she couldn't let it go he said we got to this one and she said this is what i've been waiting for for 15 years you have never ever offered to make things right he said gary never crossed my mind he said but now i do i still tell her i'm sorry but i also say okay honey now what can i do to make it right and he said she always has an idea and whenever she does and i do it he said she can let it go you see in all these years in her mind he was not sincere i'm sorry just didn't hack it for her but now that he knew that this is what she considered to be a sincere apology now he's speaking her language and now she gets it and it makes it much easier for her to forgive now i know guys that you you guys would never do this you married guys would never do this but let's say that you forget your anniversary no flowers no candy no dinner nothing and so you're sitting there that night and you look over on the couch and she starts crying and you say honey what's wrong and she says i can't believe you don't know what's wrong and it dawns on you i doubt that i'm sorry is going to hack it i doubt that even i'm sorry i was wrong is gonna hack it but you say oh honey oh honey oh honey i i blew it big this time a honey i thought on monday that i was gonna make reservations for dinner and i just totally forgot honey i am so wrong i have but look honey look i know i know we can't celebrate tonight but we can still celebrate honey i mean you know what would you like to do we can sell we can still celebrate i want us to celebrate what can we do honey she'll have an idea a little trip to hawaii or something like that you know she'll still have an idea yeah yeah this is exactly what zacchaeus did listen to this verse this is luke chapter 19. zacchaeus after he encountered jesus here's what he said lord if i've cheated anyone i'm going to pay them back four times what i took wow that is restitution incidentally if you have a business this is huge in the business world just think about this for a minute let's say that you you go out to a restaurant and the waiter or the waitress accidentally spills something on your clothing and they say oh i am so sorry and maybe they even get you a paper towel to wipe it off and you're sitting there thinking you're sorry i've got a meeting after this dinner and look at this and you're not saying it you're just thinking it okay if that's all that happens and they just said i'm sorry you probably won't ever go back to that restaurant but if the manager comes out and says i understand we had a little accident and my my waiter or my waitress is back there really upset because they realize what they did but listen i want two things i want you to know we value our customers this meal is on us that's the least we can do and if you'll tell me how much you think it'll cost to get that clean i want to give you cash tonight because we value our customers you'll go back to that restaurant because they they sought to make restitution for you okay number four is genuinely repenting genuinely repenting or expressing the desire to change your behavior i'll give you an illustration because that's what repenting means you know repentance means you're walking your own life doing what you want to do and you are into all kind of things and you hear about christ and you hear about what he did on the cross repentance means you turn away from that lifestyle that you were living and you run to the cross and confess your sins and god forgives you you you have turned away and you're moving in another direction that's what repentance means so i'll give you an example of this uh the lady said to me in my office when i was explaining this to her one day she said dr kevin i'll give you a perfect example of that she said when our when our little when our baby was little probably about 16 months old my husband said he would keep the baby for a little while while i was doing something else in the house and the baby started crying and he did everything he could to get the baby to stop crying pacifier and all kinds of stuff and the baby just kept screaming just kept screaming and he lost his temper with our baby and he picked up our baby and started shaking our baby and when he did she said i grabbed the baby and said don't do that to our baby and i ran to the bedroom just sobbing and she said 10 or 15 minutes later he knocked on the door and asked me if he could come in and he walked in and he started crying and he said honey i can't believe i did that you know i love her baby i don't ever want to do that again i feel so badly about what i did can you help me can we get a plan so i won't do that again she said gary i was i felt so strongly that he was sincere and she said i forgave him even though what he did was horrible and she said we sat there and we talked and we came up with a simple plan that if he ever felt himself about to lose his temper with one of our children he would just say to me out loud honey i'm hot i've got to take a walk and i wouldn't know what that meant and he could take his walk and i'd take over and then he would cool off he'd come back he wouldn't walk all night he'd come back and he said okay honey i think i'm under control what can i do to help you he plugged back into the evening she said gary that was eight years ago he's never lost his temper with one of our children since so he's taken quite a few walks but he's never lost his temper you see he that's a perfect example of what we're talking about here is that you not only are saying you're sorry and you were wrong or whatever but you're saying i don't want to do that again you see here's what happens a lot of times we say i'm sorry or whatever way we apologize and our spouse forgives us and then the next month we do the same thing again and we're sorry again and they forgive us and about the fifth time we do this they're thinking how could you be sorry and you don't make any effort to change it makes it very difficult for them to think that you're sincere so when you express the desire to change your behavior and you talk with your spouse or a close friend or whatever and get a plan so you won't do that again now they're believing that you're sincere and number five is actually requesting forgiveness will you forgive me i hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me now i have to be honest this one was not on my radar i mean i thought if i'm apologizing in any manner wouldn't you know that i want to be forgiven otherwise why would i be apologizing but there are some people if you don't ask for forgiveness in their mind you haven't sincerely apologized now very interesting my coworker was talking with her mother and her mother said i can give you a perfect example of that at work she said i have a friend we've been friends for 15 years it worked close friends at work and she said i noticed the last couple of days that she had been rather quiet and so i said to her at a break is everything all right between you and me incidentally that's the way friends talk if you think something's wrong you ask and she said my friend said you know one of the things that bothers me about you you don't ever apologize her mother said i was shocked and i said well what do you mean she said you remember two weeks ago when you did and she said yes i do remember that but i told you i was sorry and the lady said i know but you didn't ask me to forgive you and the mother said i was shocked again and i said well then let me ask you to forgive me i value our relationship so will you please forgive me and the lady said sure it wasn't that she didn't want to forgive it was in her mind her mother hadn't apologized so for some people this is very important now here's what i'm suggesting that each of us has a primary apology language very similar to a love language our love language however with the with the apology it's more likely to be a couple of these rather than just one of these but there's a difference in what you perceive to be an apology and what your spouse perceives to be a sincere apology so one of my suggestions is after this is over tonight in your home why don't you discuss honey what will you talk growing up to on how to apologize and how do you typically apologize and what do you think what what do you want to hear when i need to apologize to you just discuss it and find out so that now you've got information to know how you can express your sincerity if we just do what comes natural and that is what we were taught as children it may not be connecting with them so i remember i was giving this lecture to a group of single adults before we wrote the book and after it was over a couple came up i found out later they were engaged to each other and he said to me and with her standing there beside him he said dr chapman i'm not glad i came to this thing tonight i said really he said yeah he said you gave all those apology languages and said we sat back there and talked about it and he said she told me that she she thought a sincere apology was for me to say i'm sorry he said i've never said those words he said to me it sounds kind of girly and he said i don't know if i can say that so he said what's that going to mean to our marriage and i said his name was carl i said carl let me ask you a question have you ever done anything in your whole life that you you regretted doing he said well yes i said well can you just give me an example he said well when i came home from my mother's funeral he said the night before the funeral he said i went out to the bar i was just going to get a beer and he ended up getting drunk and he said the next morning i had such a hangover that i don't remember anything that happened at my mother's funeral and i've always felt badly and felt like i let her down because she was on my case about drinking too much and i just felt like i blew it big time with mama and just let her down totally i've always felt bad about that and i said well well carl if you could talk to your mother right now what would you say to her and he stood there a minute and started crying and he said i tell her i'm sorry i went to the bar that night i said mama i didn't mean to get drunk but i'm just i know i let you down mama i'm so sorry for what i did and i hope you can forgive me mama i said carl you know what you just said he said you know i told my mom with him i'm sorry and then he said do you think she heard me now i don't know what your pastor would say to him but i won't tell you what i told him i said carl i think your mama heard you buddy and i think your mama forgave you you know the bible does say there's rejoicing in the presence of the angels when a sinner repents didn't say the angels were rejoicing said rejoicing in the presence of the angels maybe there's maybe god does call mama's overs i look at you boy down there yeah a year later that couple came a marriage conference i was leading and they came up on saturday morning early and carl said uh dr i don't know if you remember us or not i said carl i'll never forget you man and uh he said well we're married now and he said we we just want to get off to a good start in our marriage and we came to the conference now i'm so glad you came i looked at her and said does he know how to say i'm sorry she said dr chapman he does he's a good apologizer i said does he speak your love language he said oh yeah she said my my tank is full then i switch it the other way around because i do believe these two things if you keep the love tank full and you deal with your failures you're on the road to having a long-term marriage now apology alone does not restore a relationship apology opens the door to the possibility but there has to be a response to the apology and the biblical response is to forgive the person now god is our model when it comes to forgiving let's talk about forgiveness now a lot of fuzzy thinking about forgiveness god is our model this is ephesians 4 verse 12. be kind to one another now listen forgiving each other just as in christ god forgave you in other words we're to forgive in the same way that god has forgiven us well how does god forgive us well first john 1 9 the verse we gave you earlier if we confess our sins god is faithful and just to forgive us god doesn't forgive everybody god forgives people who confess their sins and acknowledge they need to be forgiven they want to be forgiven and they realize that christ paid the penalty and they're asking god to forgive them based on what christ did for them that's the model now what is forgiveness well there's three hebrew words and four greek words that in the bible are translated forgive or forgiveness but there's two central ideas one is to pardon the individual to pardon to lift the penalty i'm not going to make you pay for this for the next 15 years i'm going to lift the penalty i'm going to pardon you and the other is to take away to remove the barrier between us you see whenever we hurt the other person we put an emotional barrier between the two of us and it sits there and it won't go away with the passing of time unless we deal with it and when they apologize to us and we choose to forgive them we remove the barrier so that now our relationship can go forward you see when people don't do that what happens is they build a wall between them there was an altercation nobody apologized nobody forgave it set there then there was another one and then another one and another one and now couples have long high walls between the two of them and they can't talk to each other it's hard to talk over a wall hard to talk through a wall and that's when people begin to think we're just too different it's not going to work too many things have happened been hurt too much it's never going to work out the reality if one of them chooses to confess their failures in the past and this one chooses to forgive and this one it confesses their failures and this one forgives the wall can be torn down and we can go forward i don't care what's happened but forgiveness is those two things now forgiveness then is a godly response to an apology we're simply doing what god did for us we're doing for the other person what god did for us he forgave us and we're choosing to forgive them now let me say a couple things about what forgiveness does not do because sometimes we we you know there's some circles in which people get the idea it's not it's not too bad to sin i mean all you got to do is just confess to god and god forgives you and everything's fine well not exactly listen listen to these statements first of all i want to say forgiveness does not destroy our memory you may have heard people say if you haven't forgotten you haven't forgiven folks that's not true everything that's ever happened to us our whole life is stored in the human brain and when you're hurt by somebody that event that event is stored in the human brain and even when the person comes and apologizes and even when you choose to forgive them and remove the barrier from time to time that memory will jump back into your mind you will remember what they did secondly forgiveness does not remove all painful emotions when the memory comes back the emotions come back it may be the emotional anger it may be the emotion of hurt or any other number of emotions but the memory brings back the emotions you feel the same thing you felt when you first found out about when you when you were first hurt now what do you do with that if they've already apologized and you made the choice to forgive what do you do with the memory and the emotions i believe you take them to god and you say lord you know what i'm remembering tonight and you know what i'm feeling again but i thank you that i forgave that now help me to do something good today and you move out to do something good you move out to express love to them in their love language and what happens is over a period of time the memory will come back less often and the emotions will come back less painful over a period of time but they're still there and the possibility is always if they can jump back in your mind number three forgiveness does not remove all the consequences of sin folks we are never better for having sinned there's always consequences when we sin can can i illustrate you know the bible says very clearly don't get drunk let's say i violate that and i get drunk and i'm driving my car down the street under the influence of alcohol and i have an accident and my car is wrecked and i break my leg right there in that car i can confess my sin to god and god will forgive me but my car is still messed up and my leg is still broken are you with me you know let's say that one a married couple and one of them has an affair and and eventually they repent of that they turn away from that they come back and apologize and this person eventually forgives them and now they're trying to work on their marriage and but in that affair this person picked up a sexually transmitted disease god will forgive them their spouse will forgive them but they still got the disease are you with me so listen we're never better for having sinned when the bible when the bible says don't do that you're better off if you don't do it if the bible says do that you're better off to do it if you want the best possible life you just don't do what the bible says don't do and do what the bible says do every guideline god gave us in the bible grew out of his love for us he wants us to have the best possible life and he told us how so we're never better for having sin so the consequences may we'll will abide and those consequences will be different depending on what the sin was of course and then number four forgiveness does not rebuild trust i find this most often where there has been an affair and there has been an apology there has been a forgiveness and now they're in my office trying to rebuild their marriage and maybe it was a husband was the the guilty party it could have been her just as easily but she says dr chapman i have forgiven him but to be honest with you i don't trust him and my response is welcome to the human race folks forgiveness does not restore trust trust is broken when we are untrustworthy trust is reborn when we are trustworthy so what i say in that situation to that husband if you want her to trust you again here's what i suggest you say honey my computer is yours anytime you want to look at it my phone is yours anytime you want to look at it if i tell you that i'm going over to george's house to help him work on his car it's fine with me if you want to come by and make sure i'm there i'm through with deceit i've hurt you enough i don't want to hurt you anymore you take that approach in a few months your wife will come to trust you trust is rebuilt forgiveness opens the door to the possibility that trust can be rebuilt okay and then the last one is that forgiveness does not always result in reconciliation this is true uh when for example a husband leaves his wife and goes off with somebody that he got the tingles for and he gets remarried and he moves to somewhere else and 10 years later he encounters god and his whole life is turned around and into that five more years into that growth with god he says to himself you know i i should apologize to my former wife and my kids whom i haven't seen in 15 years and so he makes the trip and he apologizes to his former wife and apologizes to his now grown children and they they may forgive him in fact they should forgive him but it won't they won't be reconciled the husband and wife won't be reconciled i mean he's he's already remarried maybe she is you know so in those kind of situations it won't mean reconciliation but it does mean that you've you've dealt with it and now there's a different difference in the relationship with your children and maybe those adult children maybe even even be able to have a relationship with them okay so here's a question i want to ask now that you understand this concept what if the person does not speak your apology language what if they apologize but it's just in the way their parents taught them and it doesn't really communicate to you that they were sincere well then by nature we will question their sincerity it's just natural we will question their sincerity because in our mind that's not a sincere apology but by faith we choose to forgive them now that you know that there are at least five ways to apologize and they're using at least one of those you can say to yourself well i guess that's what his mother taught him or her mother taught her so now that i know that that is a way of apologizing i'm going to choose to forgive them okay now it's better of course it's better of course if you talk about this and you discover what their apology language is which one or two of these is really meaningful to them and you learn to do that that's the healthiest thing in a marriage we should always do that because we want to apologize in a way that's meaningful to the other person now i want to say just a word about what do you do if the person does not apologize because often this is the case in a marriage or in other relationships the person does something that's wrong that hurts you but they don't come to apologize the biblical pattern is we lovingly confront them we lovingly confront them in luke chapter 17 verse 3 this is not on the screen but jesus said if your brother sins against you rebuke him and if he repents forgive him the word rebuke means to put a weight upon i say you lovingly confront because the bible says in galatians that if we see a brother who has sinned those of us who are spiritual should seek to renew them with a gentle spirit because we may be the one who sins next so we lovingly confront them and say in a marriage we might say something like this you know honey i don't know if i'm reading this the wrong way but something's really bothering me is this a good time to share it with you and then you share what they did or what they didn't do what they said or didn't say and you say in my mind honey it just it just it just went right to my heart i mean it cut me deeply to the heart so your your approaching them with it now maybe maybe they misunder maybe you did misunderstand and they can explain it to you and you say oh okay i saw that totally different i i heard i didn't hear it that way but they have a chance now to apologize in matthew 18 the verse that's on the screen there jesus said this you go to the person and you confront them if they don't apologize then you take somebody with you and two of you go typically somebody that they trust and the two of you go and approach them with it and if they still don't apologize he said tell it to the church and the idea is the church will send a representative and then if they don't apologize he didn't say forgive them anyway he said then if they don't apologize you treat them as a pagan what do you do for pagans you pray for pagans you're kind to pagans if you have a chance didn't say forgive them you see there's there is a train of thought in the christian church that you're supposed to forgive people whether they apologize or whether they don't apologize folks god doesn't do that i'll tell you where this became real to me how many times when there's been when there's been a an unfaithfulness sexually in the marriage relationship and the the wife let's say the wife comes to the pastor and she's broken she's angry and she's sharing how awful this is and and the pastor sees her anger and the pastor says to her you got to forgive him or it's going to kill you and now she walks away feeling guilty because she can't forgive him here's my question has god forgiven him if he's still living in sin has god forgiven him so the pastor is asking her to do something even god hasn't done when that dawned on my heart and i changed the way i was responding to that in my counseling that's not it's not it's not her responsibility forgive him it's her responsibility to pray for him yeah and and to be and to be kind with him if she has a chance to be kind to it and then number two then we release the person to god that's what she's doing she's releasing him to god she's saying essentially lord i've done everything i know to do if there's anything else i can do i'm willing to do it but i've done everything i know to do and he continues in that in his sin so i'm going to turn him over to you turn him over to you and that's that's precisely uh what jesus did here here's first peter chapter 2 and verse 23 peter says this about jesus when they reviled against him he did not revile in return but he committed himself to the one who judges righteously he's talking about the people that killed him he turned them over to god his father yeah so we release them to god and then we pray for them and we stand ready to forgive them we pray that god will work in their hearts we pray that god will bring them to repentance and we stand ready to forgive them and then here's the one that we will never be able to do without god's help we return good for evil we return good for evil listen to this this romans chapter 12 do not take revenge but on the contrary if your enemy is hungry feed him if he's thirsty give him something to drink in so doing you will keep burning coals on his head do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good now people have read that that's what i want to do put burning coals on their head and they missed the point they didn't have matches back in those days every household had a little bed of coals and if your little bed of coals went dead you had to go to the neighbor's house and take your jar and they'd put some hot coals in there and you'd wrap it up and put on your head and take it back it was a good thing not a bad thing i'll give you one example of this lady said to me dr chapman she said my husband left me and he moved in with with the lady that he was seeing and she said i was so mad and so hurt and she said i made every effort and he wouldn't respond and she said one morning in my time with god i read this i read these verses in romans 12 that i was to return good for evil and she said god just said to me i want you to bake his favorite pie and take it over there and give it to him and she said i said to god if i made his pie and went over there i'd throw it in his face she said the next morning god brought me back to the same passage she said it took god four days to get me to the place that i was willing to bake the pie and she said i baked it and i took it over there and rang the bell he came to the door he was behind the screen and i said to him i was having my time with god the other morning and god just impressed on me that i should bake you a pie and bring it to you so i want to give it to you and he said well that's mighty kind of you and he opened the door and took the pie and then closed the door in her face she said dr chapman that was the first step in our two-year process of reconciliation i hate to think what would have happened if i would not bake the cake the pie you understand folks you can't go wrong following the bible and returning good for evil but remember i said you're not likely to do that unless you have the help of god unless the holy spirit that we've been singing about tonight is sitting on the throne of our hearts we won't do that we will have revenge we'll take we want to do everything we can a man told me he's dr chapman i went over there she left me i went over there he said i just took a knife and chopped all four of her tires and i said you can go to jail for that well i didn't think about that he was doing what comes natural when you've been hurt you want to hurt somebody it's supernatural when you return good for evil but you're cooperating with god and trying to touch their hearts so well i really do believe that what we talked about tonight is an essential is learning to apologize to each other and learning to forgive the other person remember this forgiveness is not a feeling forgiveness is a choice [Music] a choice to relift the penalty to remove the barrier so that our relationship can go forward and when there's apology and when there's forgiveness you're on the road to growing wherever you are would you bow your heads with me let me pray with you let me just ask you a question while we're sitting here in silence is there somebody that you need to forgive they've already apologized but you haven't forgiven [Music] is there somebody you need to lovingly confront they've hurt you deeply [Music] but you haven't confronted them yet or is it somebody that you have confronted them and they persist in their sin and you need to release them to god tonight and just say lord i'm putting them in your hands when you put them in god's hands you're putting them in good hands because god is loving but also just [Music] and then is there somebody i need to apologize to have you done or said something even today to someone in your family that you need to apologize to father thank you that you will always forgive us when we come to you with our failures but all we have to do is admit that we've done wrong and cry out to you for forgiveness and you'll always forgive us thank you for what christ did on the cross thank you for forgiveness now lord teach us to deal with our own failures to confess our failures in the marriage and sometimes even to our children when we lose our tempers and yell and scream at them lord help us to apologize to our children so that they have a model of apology and then father give us a spirit to forgive when someone apologizes to us and to treat them the way you treat us when we come to you i pray that our lives will be different our relationship will be different because we came to church today and because we looked into your word and talked about these two essentials father may our lives be different our relationships be different for our good and for your glory in the name of christ amen [Music] bye foreign [Music] you

Channel: Free Chapel OC

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Id: vZIgdb42Elw

Length: 50min 20sec (3020 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021