One Shift That Makes Forgiving Others Easier

Today's episode is called The One Shift That Makes Forgiving People Easier.

This month, our focus is on all about the law of forgiveness. As we forgive others, we free ourselves. Holding on to resentment keeps us stuck in the energy of lack and debt towards ourselves and towards others.

Forgiveness isn't about excusing a wrong. It's about releasing the weight that blocks peace, abundance, and healing. Let's talk about the reasons to forgive.

I want to give you five really important reasons why we need to forgive. The first is obvious because God commands it. He said in D&C 6410, of you, it is required to forgive all men.

And number two, we forgive so that we can be forgiven ourselves. In Luke 637, it says forgive and you shall be forgiven. Number three, non-forgiving can actually make you sick.

There's been a lot of studies done, and it's really interesting. In fact, unforgiveness is actually classified in medical books as a disease. According to Dr.

Stephen Stanford, the chief of surgery at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, refusing to forgive makes people sick and keeps them that way.

He said of all the cancer patients, 61 percent of them have forgiveness issues, and of those more than half are severe. That's also according to the research by Dr. Michael Berry, a pastor and the author of the book, The Forgiveness Project.

He said, harboring negative emotions, anger and hatred creates a state of chronic anxiety, and chronic anxiety very predictably produces excess adrenaline and cortisol, which depletes the production of natural killer cells, which is your body's foot

soldier in the fight against cancer. You can read more about that in an article published in 2015 called The Deadly Consequences of Unforgiveness. Number four, not forgiving creates and keeps debt in your life.

That's probably a surprising one, but a really important one.

When you look at, have you ever noticed for some people that as soon as they release a debt, they incur another debt, something else goes wrong, and they just have financial debt after financial debt or they can't seem to get ahead of it.

It's important in those situations to look and see where am I not forgiving. Let me read you a quote. There is a profound connection between a lack of forgiveness and the creation of lack and stagnate conditions.

When you don't forgive yourself, you're saying I owe myself. And when you don't forgive another person, you're saying you owe me. Both states are states of emotional, mental, and energetic debt that creates lack and stagnation.

You're basically you're saying out to the universe, you owe me. And so that creates that energy of debt that is perpetual. And so forgiving not only releases us emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually, it also releases us financially.

That's important information to have. Number five, the fifth reason why we want to forgive is because it restores peace and divine connection.

One of the things that's really hard, and I think this is one of the biggest reasons why the Lord wants us to forgive everybody, is for ourselves. When we're not forgiving, we have a tremendous amount of pain. It blocks us spiritually.

It makes it difficult to fill the spirit and get answers to our prayers. It just life is just so much more difficult when we have that disconnect because we are holding on to that pain of those past circumstances.

So let's go to the scriptures and look at a story. One of the things that I absolutely love about the scriptures is we get to see real families.

So many times we show up to church and we see all these families lined up on the bench and they just look perfect and everything seems perfect.

We make this assumption that other people's families don't have the same challenges that our families have. When in reality, every family has challenges and difficulties and pain and sorrow and all of the things.

The scriptures illustrate that so well. We are going to drop into the scriptures and we are going to read about a really dysfunctional family. This is in Genesis, and this is the story of Jacob and Esau.

As a quick review, Jacob and Esau were twins. In fact, they fought in the womb. If you go back and read in Genesis 25, you can see that they were actually fighting in the womb.

Their mother is like, what the heck is going on here? So they're born and Esau is the older twin. Jacob is the younger twin.

And because Esau is the older twin, he gets the birthright. However, in a moment of weakness, he sells his birthright for a mess of potage. And then the story gets even more complex and dramatic.

Isaac is their dad. Rebekah is their mom. And Rebekah grabs Jacob and together, they decide they are going to deceive Isaac into giving Jacob the birthright blessing.

Esau is very hairy. In fact, his name means hairy. He's like this really hairy guy.

Isaac is old, blind and sort of deaf. Rebekah tells Jacob to get some goat skin and lay it on his arms so he's super hairy. So that when Isaac fills him, he's like, oh yeah, this is Esau, you have hairy arms.

So that's exactly what they do. And Isaac gives Jacob the blessing. We're going to catch up with the story with Esau's response.

In Genesis chapter 27, starting in verse 34, I want you to listen for how Esau might be feeling.

It says, And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, and said unto his father, bless me, even me also, oh, my father. And he said, is it not right? Is not he rightly named Jacob?

For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he has taken away my blessing. And he said, Hath thou not reserved a blessing for me?

And Esau said to his father, Hath thou but one blessing my father, bless me, even me also. Oh, my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.

There's a lot of pain in those verses. Sometimes there's a lot of pain in families. Esau is devastated and heartbroken.

Difficult. The challenge, though, is that what Esau decides to do with that pain, he decides that as soon as Isaac is dead, he is going to kill Jacob.

That's how he's going to handle the pain that he feels on the inside, which again, we're seeing all of this dysfunctional family drama. Well, Rebecca recognizes what's about to happen, and she decides she's going to put a stop to it.

So what she does is she sends Jacob to her brother Laban in another land to find a wife, and she sends them away, and she's hoping two things are going to happen.

She's hoping that with time and with space, Esau is going to be able to maybe see things a little bit more clearly and see his own role in some of the pain that he's feeling and the things that he did wrong that have contributed to his experiences

and the consequences that he's feeling. He's also hoping that time is going to help mend some of the pain between these two boys. So Jacob takes off and he's gone for 20 years. And we're going to read a quote.

This is from Michael Wilcox in his book Twice Blessed. This is one of the most profound books I've ever read about forgiveness.

And he says this, he said, When we continually focus on the wrongs of other members of the family have inflicted on us, the unfairness, the pain, the humiliation of it all can make it so difficult to move forward into compassion.

Forgiveness is regularly about others. We forgive for our own spiritual welfare. And he's really speaking to the story that that's one of the reasons to separate these boys so that they stop focusing on all the things that went wrong.

He said, there are times in our life when we want to forgive. Time helps because it pushes back the memory and replaces it with other things to fill the vision so that the hurt is not so dominant in our view. We push the pain back with good memories.

This force, however, will not work if we continually dwell on the injury instead of the positive things that separate where we are now and what happened in the past. We can make the past a perpetual present if we are not careful.

Again, that's Michael Wilcox. So the issue is our focus.

If we're constantly rehashing and telling everybody about what happened to us and what went wrong and how somebody hurt us and we relive the pain over and over and over and over again, that makes it more difficult to let it go.

It also turns us into victims where we lose our power to make changes and heal. So it's important that we shift our focus. In fact, I want to share a quote, one of my favorite quotes from a man named Elder Massimo de Feo.

He gave a talk in April 2018 and he said this. He said, If you are struggling to find strength to forgive, don't think of what others have done to you, but think of what the Savior has done for you.

You will find peace in the redemptive blessings of the Atonement. We need to change our focus. Let's go back to the story of Jacob and Esau.

Twenty years pass. Jacob decides he wants to come home. He wants to come home to his family.

He wants to come home to the place that he loves. And so he prays and he asked the Lord to protect him from Esau and to soften Esau's heart. Now remember, he hasn't talked to Esau for 20 years.

So he has no idea what Esau's feelings are or how Esau is doing or any of that. He assumes that Esau still wants to kill him. He sends his servants in advance of him to let Esau know that he is coming.

He goes to talk to Esau in verse four of chapter 32. It says, go talk to Esau and you shall speak to my Lord Esau and let him know that I'm coming home.

In verse five, it says, and I have ox and ass and flocks and men's servants and women's servants, and I have sent to tell my Lord that I may find grace in his sight. He's like, I am bringing you gifts. I am coming home.

The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, we came to thy brother Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee with 400 men. I want you to picture the scene. So Jacob's coming back.

He sent advanced warning that he's coming in hopes that Esau's heart is softening. Esau's coming, and he's bringing 400 people with him, and they're about to meet in the middle.

In verse seven, Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, and he divided the people that were with him and the flocks and the herds and the camels and the two bands. I hope you're picturing this scene.

They start to come closer and closer. As they get closer to each other, Jacob bows seven times for his brother. He batted himself to the ground seven times until he came here to his brother.

And Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him. And they wept. What a beautiful story of forgiveness and redemption.

Jacob, of course, says, Look, I brought you all these presents. I brought you manservants and maidservants and all these animals. And in verse 9, this is what Esau says to Jacob.

He says, I have enough my brother. Keep what thou hast done to thyself. He calls him his brother.

One of the things I love most about the Savior is his ability to heal and mend family relationships. It requires effort on our part.

A shift that's going to make this all easier is when we shift our focus away from the things that were done wrong  and instead to our Savior Jesus Christ and his ability and his power to heal, his ability to save, his

ability to fix the impossible. My invitation to you today is to consider your focus. Where are you focused? What are you focused on?

Then also to consider a change in that focus. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If you have loved this podcast, will you please start with somebody else who might enjoy it?

Again, thank you for being here.