Overcome Unforgiveness to Unlock God’s Plan for You

Copy Video URL

The On-Target Institute presents a teaching from the Men On-Target Small Group Curriculum. Now with today's session, On-Target Founder, Vince Dacchioli. How you doing, guys? And welcome to On-Target Institute, session 11. Last session, we dealt with anger.

In this session, we're going to be dealing with the area of unforgiveness. If you remember, we go back just a little bit. We talked about how important it is to overcome our past in order to see God's wonderful future for our life. So we're dealing with fear, anger, unforgiveness, and guilt. So as we begin now and deal with this area of unforgiveness, which is huge, it is a very, very important session.

Now, we dealt with fear, anger, unforgiveness, and guilt. The idea of release or letting go of the past, you may remember all of that. And you remember our verse is Philippians 3, 13, and 14. We keep coming back to this because it's so important here what the Apostle Paul is saying. I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind, forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead.

He says, I press on. I love those words. I press on toward the goal, the mark, the target. That for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. It occurs to me that Paul has such a powerful vision for his life that he could literally let everything else go by the wayside, and he had this ability to shed everything that would get in the way and just press on toward that for which God was calling him.

Now, as we talk about unforgiveness, I believe the number one cause of undelt with anger is in this area of unforgiveness. And what do we mean by unforgiveness? Well, it could be a wrong done by a parent or loved one as you were growing up. Maybe a boss or coworker has mistreated you, or you've been passed up for that promotion or bruised by some verbal assault. And it's very hard for you to be able to forgive the people who have perpetrated these things upon you.

Gordon MacDonald has a great book called Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. And in that book, he says this, spiritual passion cannot coexist with resentments. Harboring resentment hinders spiritual growth and effectiveness. I remember as I go back to this man that I've already told you about that I was dealing with at my workplace, how much I did not forgive him. I was harboring some real unforgiveness toward this man.

And when I go back and I study that period of time in my spiritual development, I can look back and see that that was like there was no growth happening in me. It was hard for me to read the Bible. It was hard for me to pray. I was really struggling. And then one day as I was in prayer, the Lord just prompted me that, you know what, Vince, you need to go to that man and you really need to ask him to forgive you.

And I thought, wow, that's interesting. And so I talked to a few people about it and I was very encouraged that I should go do that. So I did, I went and I had lunch with him and I asked him to forgive me. And to this day, that man, I remember the look in his eye. I was like, how did you have the ability to do that?

I'll be honest with you guys. If it weren't for God in my life, I couldn't have done that. But the interesting thing is once I did that, once I got rid of the resentment, I noticed a real bump in my ability to grow spiritually. So I want to encourage you in this area, it's very important to understand the linkage between harboring resentment and our ability to grow. And Matthew 5.23, it says, therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.

And what does it say? First, go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. God is saying, look, if you've got unforgiveness in your heart, you and I are not going to get together. You need to deal with that. You need to leave your gift, leave your sacrifice of praise and all the things you're doing with me, set it aside for a second, get that cleaned up, then come to me and then you're going to see growth.

In Luke 6.37, a powerful verse, it says this, it's a very simple verse, forgive, the word there is apoluo. It literally means, listen, to loose away, forgive and then what's the promise and you will be forgiven. Powerful, powerful promise. Now, how do I become a forgiving person? This is difficult.

The first thing I suggest that you do is ask God to show you where you may have been unforgiving. I remember I was driving with Cindy in the car one day and I said something to her that seemed perfectly innocent to me, everything I share with my wife seems perfectly innocent to me. But when I shared this or I said these words to her, she really reacted to those in a very, very strong way, much stronger than I've ever seen her react to anything. And I thought to myself, wow, what I said wasn't that big a deal. Where is this reaction coming from?

Well, what it was coming from was, it was like the straw that broke the camel's back. There had been things building up inside of her about stuff that I'd been doing or saying over a period of time. And what I said simply just was the straw that broke the camel's back. So sometimes we don't know that there's stuff inside of us that needs to be dealt with. So the first thing you need to do is ask God to show you where you may be unforgiving.

The second thing you need to do is understand what forgiveness is and what it is not. First of all, it is not natural. And if you wait until you feel like forgiving someone, guess what? The likelihood of you doing that is not very, very high. It is not natural.

In fact, in Matthew 18, 21 to 22 is the famous verse where Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother when he sins against me up to seven times? And of course, you know, Jesus' response. He said, no, I tell you not seven times, but 77 times. And depending upon your translation, those numbers could change. But listen, that's not Jesus saying, Peter, go get a leather belt and make notches in it until you hit the number.

What Jesus is trying to communicate here is that it must flow through us. Listen, always. We need to learn to be forgiving people. If you can't do this and you harbor unforgiveness in your heart, it will really do more harm oftentimes to you than it will do for the people that you're unforgiving toward. So forgiveness is not natural, but the second thing is forgiveness is not an option.

It is not an option. Look at 2 Corinthians 518. You remember the command in Matthew 523. It says, be reconciled. 2 Corinthians 518 says, all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us what?

The ministry of reconciliation. It is our ministry to be reconciled. And Ephesians 432. It says, be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.

One of my favorite quotes is by George Herbert. He says, he who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass. And guys, we've got to remember the importance of unforgiveness. Now look at this verse in John. I read this verse over and over again and I've failed to really recognize how profound it really is.

Here's what it says in 1 John 211. Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness. Get this guys. The hatred, the unforgiveness in our hearts can cause us to literally be in the darkness. And it says, and he walks around in the darkness.

He does not know where he is going. Why? Because the darkness has blinded him. Now listen guys, if there was ever a verse in the Bible that draws a linkage between harboring unforgiveness and literally being in a fog and not being able to see God's unique plan or vision for our life, there it is. It's right there.

So I ask you, could it be that the reason why you're not catching God's vision for your life is that you're being blinded with your unforgiveness. There was a book written a number of years ago called The Transparent Leader. I am privileged to have a chapter in Volume 1 of The Transparent Leader. It's 19 men who have different stories that they're telling through this book. But one of the most incredible stories in the book was by Adolf Korz, the fourth, who tells the story about his dad way back in the 50s, I think, he was brutally murdered and his body was dismembered and spread over the mountains here in Colorado.

And they finally caught the guy who did it and they put him in prison. And in the story, Adolf Korz talks about how God got a hold of him. He'd been harboring so much unforgiveness toward this man. God got a hold of him and really encouraged him to go to the prison and ask this man to forgive him. An incredible story.

He tried to go visit this man for, I guess, a long period of time and the man didn't want him to come and I can understand why. But finally, he said, no, it's okay, he can come. And he went and he had a meeting with this man and asked this man to forgive him because he'd been harboring so much unforgiveness in his heart toward him. Powerful, powerful story. And the freedom that came from him doing that, he will tell you, was unbelievable.

Now, in keeping with our promise, life implication and life application as we come to the end of these sessions is very, very important for us to understand. First of all, the life implication. Here it is, harboring unforgiveness in your heart will underscore the word will hinder your spiritual growth and closeness to God. That one statement alone ought to be enough to really get us thinking seriously about the importance of letting go of unforgiveness. Now, life, that's life implication.

Let's talk about life application. Now let's get into our discussion questions. Life application discussion. Is there someone or more people that you need to forgive? Talk about that.

Maybe you've got a guy or a gal or someone in your life that would represent the same thing to you that this man that I work with represented to me. And you may need to go talk to that person and ask them for forgiveness or you may need to forgive them. And so talk about that. Number two, do you need to ask someone to forgive you? That's the other part of it.

Maybe you need to go to someone and ask them to forgive you for your thoughts or actions or things that you may have done. And then number three, what will you do next? And guys, that's a simple question, but it's very important. The reason why we're meeting around tables with other men is so that we can hold ourselves lovingly accountable. And when you share these things and you come back a week or two later, you can be able to say, here's what I did.

Here's how it worked. Or the men around your table can talk to you and say, hey, how did that go? And encourage you beyond that. Now, I'm really praying that you have a powerful discussion time around this topic and I pray God richly blesses you. And until next time, don't forget about it.

Thank you.