Framing Unforgiveness // You Need A New Frame – F.U. – Forgiveness University (Part 6) – Michael Todd – Transformation Church

Mike Todd’s Introduction

• In this day and age, there are so many reasons to be offended
• Elections are on Tuesday, and there are many reasons to be offended
• How can you minister to someone you’re pissed at?
• How can you touch and heal a group of people you’re so offended by?
• If your heart is open, your hand will be open. We’re the hands and feet of the word of God
• We have to forgive if we want Earth to be as it is on heaven
• People want crazy faith for things, not for change
• People would rather a car than actually be able to care for the people in their life that have offended them
  • Would rather a house than healing
  • Some people have more faith for 150k of tuition to be paid but wouldn’t consider forgiving your mother
  • Forgiveness is what crazy faith is for
• It takes crazy faith to forgive

Message Title: Framing Unforgiveness

1. It Takes Crazy Faith to Forgive 

It takes faith to forgive the person who shouted out a racial slur to you on your own property.

Do you trust God or yourself?

Faith is the evidence of things not seen. You won’t see this one. God is going to handle this. This may be the most spiritual series you’ve ever been in.

Do you believe God will handle it?

 To change from the inside out takes faith, not facts.

When Charles spoke about finishing strong, Mike heard God say, change the word “strong”, because it takes strength to forgive.

It takes strength to forgive. The strongest thing you may have to do this year is to forgive someone who won’t even acknowledge your forgiveness.

You have to be so strong to forgive someone.

When you walk in that level of strength to forgive, you are strong like a beast empowered by the Holy Spirit. This doesn’t come from making a to-do list.

The strongest thing you can do this year is not go to Christmas “in fake”. The strongest thing you can do is not make up your thanksgiving speech around the table and act like it’s all good.

The year has already been hell, you might as well blow the whole thing up. Hit the detonator. Forgive.

You don’t need to just finish strong, you need to finish forgiving. It’s the same thing because to finish “forgiving”, takes strength.

2. It Takes Strength to Forgive

Anecdote: Mike hated chemistry class. All of those elements help you to discover other things. When it comes to our unforgiveness, we don’t know the elements influencing our feelings and actions.  

God wants us to start framing our unforgiveness. We have our frame on the wrong things.

A frame shows you what you need to focus on.

Luke 23:34 New International Version (NIV)

34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Jesus was accused for doing nothing and the people were pressuring the leaders to crucify Jesus for a crime He didn’t even commit. When hanging between two thieves, after doing nothing wrong, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Forgive them, because they have no idea what they’re doing. They have no idea of the outcome of their actions. If we knew what our offenses would cause, we would have moved with more caution.

If you knew dating Ricky would cause you low self-esteem and cost you six years of your life, you wouldn’t have. If you knew that going to that movie would cost you a purified image of marriage and cost you an addition to pornography, you wouldn’t have. If you knew letting your child stay overnight somewhere would have led to molestation and your relationship, you wouldn’t have.

The reason people don’t know what their words cause and their actions will cause is because they’re not framing it right.

Frames bring focus.

When the frame is telling you where you should focus. You have to follow what’s in the middle of the frame.

The frame is showing you what you’re supposed to look at, i.e., something beautiful, and red, and white.

When the frame is put out of view, you don’t know what you’re supposed to be looking at. When it comes to forgiveness, God wants to give you the right frame.

It will be to see, not just the things you want to see, but what will really change you.

What the enemy tries to do, is give you a smaller frame. He brings you closer in.

The enemy gives us a smaller frame so that the picture gets distorted. You’re arguing and working through something that isn’t even the whole picture.

 We don’t get the whole view of what God is trying to do in a situation.

We don’t have the right frame for our unforgiveness. We have been so narrow and didn’t understand the feelings around what happened to us.

Today, because Jesus said they don’t know what they’re doing, and we don’t know what we’re doing, Mike is going to try to give us a picture of a periodic table of sorts to understand how to frame the unforgiveness in your life.

If we can identify where we’re at, then we can determine the solutions and where we’re supposed to go, and what’s supposed to change in us.

3. Your Frame Affects Your Focus. You Can Never Forgive What You Won’t Focus On.

Whatever you’re looking at affects your focus. You can never forgive what you won’t focus on. Everyone is trying to forget, but what if to forgive, you need to remember?

If you’re trying to not think about the bad things you did or have had done to you, then start to quote Philippians about the past being behind you, is it actually behind you if it affects the way you treat, trust, or love people?

Maybe this is where we bring the painful things to the altar of our God.

The problem with most of us is that we need to forgive others, but we need to frame the unforgiveness properly, or we’ll cause more hurt and more damage.

We need to remember the things we need to focus on and put the frame around it. Put the frame around your college years.

Put the frame around your broken childhood. Maybe it explains why you work so hard. Maybe it shows that you’re working hard to “run from” things, and you’re working from an empty place instead of stopping to frame the area in your life and heal it.

What area in your life needs the frame around it – and to be there long enough for there to be focus on it?

The pictures framed in our homes are there long enough for us to recognize them as the home owners intended.

Colossians 3:13 New Living Translation (NLT)

13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Make allowances for each other’s faults – everyone.

Forgive – anyone who offends you – even though it might be a lot of people.

Remember – the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others

Faults can be broken down into 3 categories:

• Frustration
• Fail
• Flagrant Foul

When you experience craziness on the road – that’s just frustration – i.e. the lowest level of forgiving we have to do.

Anytime there’s a fault, there are subsequent things that occur:

FAULT:

• The Offense
• The Felling
• The Result
• The Antidote
• The Answer
• The Reaction

These elements differ dependent upon the type of fault experienced, i.e., Frustration, Fail, or Flagrant Foul

OFFENSE:

• For frustration: The offense happens at the moment of exchange
• For failure: The offense happens at the moment of expectation
• For flagrant fouls: The offense happens at the moment of exploitation
  • You used someone for your gain
  • It made them look better to the people they really wanted to look good to – they exploited you

After the offense, then we get a feeling. That one act of frustration could have ruined your whole day.

FEELING:

• For frustration: Your feeling is one of no value
• For failure: The feeling is victimization
  • “I didn’t ask to be in this situation”
  • The enemy tries to keep you in the situation
• For flagrant fouls: The feeling is one of being violated

There’s always a result after the feelings:

RESULT:

• For frustration: Your result is usually just petty
  • We get frustrated over small things and get petty – we spread division, we get on social media, we leave the church and don’t tell anyone
• For failure: The result is always pain
• For flagrant fouls: The result is programming
  • It doesn’t just hurt, it starts programming your mind
  • You may have been molested and felt like “maybe that’s just how I am”
  • For Mike, he still fights with the programming of a person whose name he doesn’t even remember in terms of his weight. Mike has realized that he has to forgive that person.

Even if the person doesn’t know what they were doing to you, you still have to deal with it. It’s not fair, but it’s real. Do you want to keep blaming them or do you want keys to be able to walk in forgiveness?

What’s the antidote?

ANTIDOTE:

• For frustration: The antidote is maturity

1 Corinthians 14:20 English Standard Version (ESV)

20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

There are some things you need to just let it go. Immaturity is being equated as evil. Be mature. Why are you responding to your drunk brother in law like it’s someone who controls your destiny? Don’t take your stressed boss’ response personally.

1 Corinthians 13:11 English Standard Version (ESV)

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

When you were a child, you were petty. When you become a man, you voluntary give up your childish ways. In other words, maturity is a choice.

The body of Christ needs to mature. As we go into election week, mature. People who don’t even read the Bible are going to quote it. There are certain things that don’t need your energy if you want to represent God. You need to be mature. Ask God to help you to mature. That could be the most faith filled thing you say all week.

• For failure: The antidote is ministry

James 5:16 English Standard Version (ESV)

16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

The ER isn’t filled with people who feel fine.

You need healing. Just because you’re older, you think it’s a part of you, but it’s a growth attached to you and everyone else sees that. You thought maturity would heal you when someone failed you, but only ministry would heal you.

James 5:14 English Standard Version (ESV)

14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

There’s healing in ministry.

Ministry will always happen in the house of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, ministry will always happen in your house because you’re the minister!

You can call your friend and say that you’re hurting.

• For flagrant fouls: The antidote is a miracle
  • Flagrant fouls won’t be resolved by just ministry when only God can work it out
  • When you’ve been exploited and violated, you need a miracle
  • You need God to take the images placed in your life and come in with His divine hand and touch the area you don’t even know how to identify

The woman at the well was a victim and Jesus offered her a drink. He offered her a miracle. God is saying to you, “I have a miracle in store for you if you would bring every flagrant foul to Me.”

When Mike acknowledged that he had been flagrantly fouled, and that he had flagrantly fouled Natalie, he violated her. It started programming Natalie to think that she could only be with Mike if they were in a perverted relationship outside the will of God. When Mike realized this, he needed a miracle. When Mike came to God with all of it, He didn’t just give an antidote, but the answer – the answer that will change everything.

THE ANSWER:

• For frustration: The answer is patience
  • The fruit of the spirit is patience
  • The world needs fruit

Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

If you’re stuck in petty, you can’t get to patience.

• For failure: The answer is always process
  • If you want to be healed, the prayer initiates the transformation in your life, the process solidifies the transformation in your life
  • When you pray for someone and give them no process, they end up back in the same place they were
  • The process many of you need is counseling
    • Proverbs 3:6 New Living Translation (NLT) 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
    • There’s no path that doesn’t involve steps

Get the help you need. Get the accountability. Walk in the process. Go to counseling. Stop acting like it didn’t hurt. They failed you, time isn’t going to heal it. It’s going to be a process.

• For flagrant fouls: The answer is His presence
  • When you need a miracle, no amount of counseling will do it
  • When you need a miracle, you need His presence

Psalm 16:11 New King James Version (NKJV)

11 You will show me the path of life;

In Your presence is fullness of joy;

At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Get in His presence. Fast. Get in silence. It doesn’t take anyone else to fast with you. Don’t get validation from the outside. Get in His presence. Get a miracle. Allow God to change your programming. Allow Him to give you the opportunity to minister. Allow Him to give you that miracle.

What’s the reaction now?

Stop letting the littlest stuff take your joy.

THE REACTION:

• For frustration: Your reaction is to bounce back
  • It’s time to bounce back
  • Stop using effort and energy on things that don’t even matter
  • When you’re patience, show maturity, not be petty, recognize that your value is in who He says you are, then you’ll bounce back

• For failure: The reaction is boundaries
  • When people fail you, you can forgive them, but set new boundaries
  • You don’t get to know me anymore, you don’t get know these things about me
  • There will be boundaries set – you don’t have to be stupid in forgiveness – you can love from a distance
  • Your family members will keep failing you until you set boundaries
  • It’s imperative that you set boundaries
    • Side-note: Mike’s friend Dr. Dharius Daniels wrote a book called “Relational Intelligence” that really teaches Christian boundary setting. It will walk you through how to assess your relationships, define them, discern them, align them, and finally activate your relationships to unlock your greatest potential. See below:

• For flagrant fouls: The reaction is either a break-up, breakthrough, or a breakdown
  • Some of you need to break it up altogether – if you’re in an abusive relationship, the reaction will either be a break up, a breakthrough, or a breakdown
  • In His presence, He’ll give you a miracle, but there comes a result
  • God told Mike that, people need to stop looking at the frame they’ve been born with and the frame the enemy tries to show them – God wants to give you a frame that’s bigger

When you find where you’re at, you’ll need to see yourself through the frame of God: You’re loved, chosen, and there’s grace for you

On the cross, there was one guy who was guilty, hanging on the cross with Jesus, and believed He was the son of God. He believed Jesus could create a miracle, give him a bigger frame, and Jesus with His last breath, said today, you’ll be with me in paradise.

God is going to show you where the situations and issues are that were on this periodic table. Now you have a process to figure out what you need right now.

Do you need patience? Do you need a miracle? Do you need boundaries?

When God tells you, you need to listen and obey.

Print out the table:

Prayer: God, we’re asking you to help us forgive every fault, frustration, fail, and flagrant foul. To give us crazy faith to forgive.

Altar Call and Prayer: If your frame has almost been nonexistent, God wants to give you a new frame. With all your flaws, if you give them to Him, He will turn all these tragedies to a testimony. Today, you have to receive and accept Him. You can go toward progression, not perfection. This is where it starts – with accepting Jesus. If that’s you, 1. You’re making the greatest decision you’ve ever made. 2. You are the one that God has been coming after and we’re proud of you. 3. Raise your hand all over this world. You don’t have to confess to everyone around you. You are going from someone who was far from God, to someone who is close to God. God, thank you for sending Jesus, just for me. For every flagrant foul, fail, and frustration, today father God, I give you my life. I believe you lived and you died just for me. Today I’m asking you to change me, renew me, transform me, I’m yours. In Jesus name, Amen.

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SUMMARY NOTES

1. It Takes Crazy Faith to Forgive
2. It Takes Strength to Forgive
3. Your Frame Affects Your Focus. You Can Never Forgive What You Won’t Focus On

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