Giraffes on Ice, Part 6: The Need for Forgiveness

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sage Hill is a social impact organization that helps people see who they are made to be so they can do what they're made to do. Guys, healthy people seek forgiveness. Unhealthy people seek justification. If you don't have a heart to confess limitation, if you don't have a heart to confess repentance, if you don't have a mirror where you can see yourself or other people in your life telling you about you and the impact of you with them, And if you can't respond to that with forgive me, then something's way off. And it's the parent's main job to be a person like that. That's the main job of a parent. Other two things are the capacity to celebrate. In other words, you can come out of your skin and show your jubilation. And I don't mean just at church, and I don't mean a football game. I'm talking about just living. Or you can also show the heart of loss that they're not surprised by the fact that daddy or mama cried. That that that that they know because all of those things are patterns of permission to be human in the great span of being human. So how do we how do we do this life? Well, I say we need to do it like the Hebrews instead of the Greeks. But the Hebrew people, knew the truth and the truth was God is who he says he is. God is faithful. He's always here, always attending, and he'll do what he says he'll do. He's like to be trusted. And then the Hebrew people looked at reality. So they had the truth, God is faithful. And they looked at reality, and they said disease, pestilence, attack, overwhelm, conquering, death, savagery, reality. So life is tragic reality and God is faithful. We got a problem. Which one am I gonna trust? Because reality is a fact and God is faithful, is invisible and I have to believe the truth, but I'm living in reality. So what I do, you got a conflict. And that conflict creates a division between God and us where we live. So how do we reconcile the conflict and live in this life believing in God while we live in reality? And the answer to that is one word, struggle. Which means you bring your heart to God, God brings the heart of who he is to you. Upon the mercy seat, God's present when the blood is poured out on the mercy seat in Exodus, God's presence is there. In Luke seven thirty six through 50, the woman poured her heart out on Jesus's feet and Jesus's presence was there. The bleeding woman teaches touches Jesus's garment when everyone was touching him, and his power went out from him to her. It was her vulnerability, her struggle of heart, her presentation of herself. So so the way to reconcile the conflict in life is our ability to struggle. And guess what your children are gonna see? My daddy, my mama don't quit. They're gonna stay in it no matter what. One of the things I said to Stephen related to him with, Rebecca wrote it to him, was that the one thing I knew that Elijah would have, no matter what happened, is that they wouldn't leave. They would stay in the struggle. They wouldn't run away from the pain he was in. And don't you know they wanted to go somewhere where he wasn't? And there was nowhere to go, so they stayed. And the one thing I knew that that Elijah would be blessed by was these two limping people. They both walk with lips, and they also have name changes. They stay in the struggle. They don't try to use their faces to hide their hearts. They don't try to pretend that there's someone they're not. They're human beings like the rest of us. They can't get away from it. So their children know their loved because their parents will stay in the struggle of grief or celebration and live everything else in between. They'll do it imperfectly, and they'll do it perfectly imperfect by saying, will you forgive me? Now failure is not an option, and that's sort of a statement that comes from, hey, only success is your option. Failure is not an option. Perfection is your goal. Now stay on it every day, which is Greek. See the truth in in the the word of the Greeks was the truth is behind the next veil. It's something we search for but never find, but we're always gonna figure it out instead of having to feel it through. In the Greek world, we're gonna figure it out instead of feeling it through. We're gonna use our thinking. If I can figure it out, I'll conquer it. But the truth is, nobody conquers life. Failure is not an option, it's a guarantee. And so what's so amazing is no matter what we do, because I promise you, I promise you before God, that when Tennyson was born, Sonya almost died. And I remember standing at the the nursery window when they brought him in and and and and I looked through the window and tears went down my face. And I made promises, I will never let harm come to you. I will always be with your heart no matter what it takes. You will not have to suffer in ways because I will make sure it doesn't happen. No matter what occurred, blah blah blah. And by the time I had him home, I wasn't sure if this was a good idea. Do do you get what I'm saying? And then it's a series of wanting to do the very things we wish we could and don't, and then doing the things we don't wanna do. It's we don't escape Roman 7. And anybody thinks they can't the one place we think we can escape Roman 7 is with our children. With them it'll be different. No, it won't. With them it'll be the same as us. So therefore, the more we know ourselves, where we come from, what it's like, and how to live, the more blessed they're going to be. Because we're gonna show them how to struggle. And we gotta be people they can come to with their struggle. And that is the blessing.

This is Stephen James, the executive director of Sage Hill Counseling. Thanks for listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sometimes in life, we get stuck or blocked or reach an impasse. At times like these, an intensive short term therapy can help you overcome what's keeping you from the growth and changes you desire. At Sage Hill Counseling, we offer therapeutic incentives to help couples gain new momentum in their recovery process. If you wanna find out more, please visit sagehillcounseling.com.