How to Truly Forgive | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching

How can we forgive others the way God forgives us? Hear what it takes from Joyce Meyer, Ginger, Jai and Erin…the ladies of our Talk It Out podcast, on this special episode of Enjoying Everyday Life!

Joyce Meyer, one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers and New York Times best-selling author, shares encouragement and advice to help us enjoy our daily lives.

With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.

I do what I do because I’ve seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
The key to everything is found in god’s work.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that god can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to enjoying everyday life.
I’m Ginger Stockey, and we are so happy you have joined us.
Today, I’m gonna challenge you just a little bit.
Joyce has some things for you that will help you through these challenges so don’t get nervous. Alright?
Stay with me. First, we want to invite you to study god’s word for 30 minutes a day for 30 days.
Is called the 30:30 challenge, and it’s a challenge because you will be amazed with what can happen in 30 days when you give god just 30 minutes of your time.
Now don’t worry. We have all the tools online to help you.
We have steady guides, downloads, Tits from Joyce and so much more when you sign up at joycemeyer.org/3030 challenge.
So grab that challenge today and see what happens in your life when you do this.
The second challenge we have for you is to think of someone you know that god is telling you to forgive.
Yeah. I know you did not wanna hear that word. But maybe you’ve been deeply hurt by this person.
And you’re holding on to that pain.
Well, today, we’re challenging you to finally forgive them and we’re doing it because we know how it will help you so much.
Today and tomorrow, right here on the program, we’re sharing it discussion from Joyce’s talk it out podcast.
Joyce will be part of it.
She’s coming right along, where we talk about how to truly forgive So let’s jump right into that conversation.
Welcome. Thanks for hanging out with us today.
You’re welcome.
We appreciate it.
Just kind of felt that you needed me today.
She she always wanted to be here.
Actually, I really am glad she’s here today.
Are you?
Yeah. I made a list of questions.
Oh, well, good.
I did. I really did.
Well, we’re talking about forgiveness today. We’ll just throw it out there because it’s so important.
We don’t need to sugarcoat it. We don’t need to warm up to it.
Everybody in our lives at different times needs to forgive someone needs to forgive ourselves, whatever it may be.
And so What we’re gonna do first is we’re going to hear from Joyce explaining about forgiveness and exactly what it is and why it’s so important and then we’ll come back, and we’ll all talk it out together.
Matthew, 612 through 15. Maybe a familiar scripture, but I want you to see the words.
So let’s put it up. And forgive us our debts as we have forgiven left and remitted and let go of the debts and have given up the resentment against our debtors.
Now pay attention to that because we probably really don’t want god to do that, but that’s the way he does it.
We really would not want god to forgive us the way we forgive others.
And how many years have we prayed that large prayer?
And we think it sounds so spiritual and so holy. Listen to what you’re saying.
God, the same way I forgive other people. That’s the way I want you to forgive me.
Sometimes we kinda sorta do the official, I forgive you thing.
But that’s different from total forgiveness.
Now if somebody’s been abusing you, total forgiveness doesn’t even always mean restoration of the relationship.
But it is about how you talk about them, how you feel about them how you pray for them, what you would like to see happen to them, how you respond when you hear they’ve been blessed, Oh, come on.
We gotta dive in today. I have to help you get over this.
I have fought this battle myself, and I’m just telling you you’re gonna have no quality of life until you get over these things.
And you have to get good at it because this is not one of those one time in a life trials.
You’re gonna have this many, many, many times in your life. Many times.
And don’t think just because you go to church, you won’t get offended there because you will.
And lead is not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for yours as the kingdom, the power,
and the glory forever.
Amen. For if you forgive people their trespasses, they’re reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go and giving up the resentment.
Your heavenly father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others, Now come on.
Let’s act like we believe this today. Let’s don’t just read it.
Let’s don’t just Pray the lord’s prayer as some wrote repetition because we think it sounds spiritual.
But if you do not forgive others their trust by as their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go on giving up the resentment, neither will your father forgive you your trespasses.
That’s a big statement.
It is
she made such a great point that we really don’t want god to forgive us the way we forgive other people.
Just sitting here listening to it. I’m going, Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Really?
I think you wanna take it back.
I mean,
I’ve been teaching that for years, but it’s just like, wow.
I mean, if that’s really true, and we know it is because it’s the Bible. Mhmm.
We better change the way we do things a little bit. Yeah.
It kinda makes her rethink how I’ve handled so many different situations because I thought I have forgiven, but do my actions afterwards.
Is that is that how god is forgiving me? Probably not. So,
like, I forgive a little bit. Yeah. Then I get mad again and I take it back.
And then maybe I’ll take another step forward, a little bit of forgiveness, then I’ll get hurt a little bit more.
And I’ll stay mad for a while and not talk to you.
I don’t want god doing that with me.
You know,
some guilt in there every few days. Exactly.
Right? Any little jab I can get in or something I can say to somebody else that maybe makes them mad at them too.
Yeah. You know? I don’t want god treating me that way. Ouch.
If we just sat and thought about what we just heard. For about an hour, it’s like
it puts a little bit
of the reverential fear of god in you. It’s like, this is really really something that’s important.
And like you said earlier, everybody’s faced with this, I was thinking about a girl who told me one time that she counted how many times in 1 week, she had an opportunity to be offended.
And had to decide rather to forgive Mhmm.
Or take the offense and said it was forty times Wow. In one week.
And that is probably just an average week.
I mean, it may not have been anything out of the ordinary. It’s just the way it is there.
I don’t think we realize how often. Yeah.
We do have to just decide to let it go or to believe the best are 2. Yeah.
So if you’d if if you soak that stuff up all the time, You’re gonna have a problem.
I love what you said too that you have to decide to do it because you almost do have to just, like, decide in the morning whatever happens today.
I will like, pre deciding that you’re gonna forgive, regardless of what happens. Yeah.
I wake up in the morning now, and I say, like, god, give me an unaffordable heart. Like, please.
Because I I can easily walk in a face.
I’m like, well, you know, like, I’m all, like, but I’ve really especially these past few years have been intentionally trying to wake up and say, god, please.
Grab my heart so that I can be unoffendable.
Like, like, help me to let things kinda not where I walk and, like, and be, like, aloof of things, but but that I let things kinda roll off.
And I have gotten a lot better.
And I’m not I’m not where I wanna be yet, but I have gotten a lot better with, like, forgiving and letting things go a little quicker.
Honestly, because I know, especially I have a lot of and everybody has a lot of reasons to be angry at people or be frustrated with people, but just with what I’ve walked through these past few years, I just, like, I I just don’t I don’t want the weight of being mad.
It’s it’s it’s heavy.
Yeah. That’s the thing.
It’s heavy.
It’s not worth it.
It’s it’s it’s not it, like, it’s heavy. It’s heavy to be angry all the time. Right.
And it it, like, it robs you of of of the present.
It it
and and I in in, like, I feel sometimes I was feeling justified in being angry Sure.
And being upset and being
Oh, yeah.
You know, wanting to get back.
Lot of reasons for people to be offended to be justifiably angry.
Yeah.
But like you said, we can’t we can’t live in that.
No. I I didn’t wanna I don’t wanna live in it.
I was and I’ve literally, seriously, this past year, especially, I try to wake up because I, like, other than even the fear, I wake up now with so much more gratitude because Satan really don’t like, he was really warm with me with feeling like I was alone in a lot of things because I was so angry at people and so disappointed to people.
I really was like, god, where were you when all this stuff was happening? Like, did you abandon me?
So, was a season. This past season has been difficult. Me and god have been really wrestling.
Like, where were you? Like, how did this happen and you let it happen?
And how do you let it happen for so long?
Like, then you let me find out, and then it just all went it just went worse, you know, once I found out.
And so I was mad at god. You know, I was really mad at god.
And so honestly, like, I have that fear of god, but now I have so much more gratitude towards him too because because I feel his love now.
I feel like I’m grateful for him, even allowing me to go through that angry season with him. You know?
I think if we think about our offenses toward god. Mhmm.
I mean, there’s nothing that anybody has done to me or to you or to any of us.
That’s greater than our sins and offenses Yeah.
Against god and how merciful he is to us And how many things we do that we don’t even realize we do?
Mhmm. You know, David prayed that god would forgive him for his unconscious faults for even things that he didn’t know about.
And I pray that real often because there’s no telling how many times a day Yeah.
I mean, if god wanted to get mad and stay mad every time we did something wrong, he’d have to be mad at us all the time.
Yeah. So that helps too if we think about, well, you know, what you did was wrong, but, you know, I’ve done a lot worse.
I I think it’s really good to talk about some of the very practical things that that we’ve all dealt with because it really helps other people.
I mean, Jay was just doing that and talking about what what you’ve been through with your divorce in this last season.
And I think it gives hope to other people to think, yeah, I I feel that way or I have felt that way.
But she’s able to forgive. She’s able to forgive. God forgives me. You know, how can I move forward?
So Aaron, are there particular areas for you that you’ve had to really deal with this forgiveness thing?
Sure. One of them, I’m gonna save. I wanna talk because it’s my question for Joyce.
So Oh, okay. No. No. No.
We’re not
seeing until it’s answered. But I was thinking about this a few years ago, had it was my first leadership position here.
And so somebody left and I had to go through all their emails.
And so I found emails about me and how I was young and didn’t deserve this and all this stuff.
And I thought, oh my goodness. I I was already insecure.
And then I had to read all the stuff that people were saying about me.
I found something else on the internet about me as well as a person, as a leader, and So I I remember.
That’s terrible. It was awful.
Wow. But and this is where it’s
easy to get offended for other people too.
You know?
Your life and you love me. I know.
I know.
But I I had to fight really hard because I knew god was putting me in that position for a reason, and I could only do the best that I could do.
And maybe there was truth to what they’re saying. Maybe I was naive or don’t remember.
I don’t even remember what they said, but I had to choose to not dwell on what they said and forgive them.
I never got to talk to them about it because they were gone.
But I had to choose to forgive for my own, like, freedom
and
to not be held back from what god was calling me to do.
So that was hard because there was no closure. I didn’t get to have a conversation about it.
I just had to decide in my own mind. This is not who you are.
This is not you have, like, learned from this. But do your best. And
Yeah. I like what you said, though, that if you didn’t do that, that god wouldn’t be able to work in your life and in this new role for you the way that you wanted him to, the way that you wanted to be used by him.
Cause I could see how it would have held me back would have held myself back because of my own insecurities about what I heard or read, but I also there was enough stubbornness in me that I wasn’t gonna let that person stop what god was doing.
You know?
Yeah. So A lot of times, we have insecurities that they have to be taken care of on this level Mhmm.
In order for us to go to this level.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
And I experienced that every I could look back at my ministry and each time that god has promoted me to another level.
I’ve experienced rejection. Interesting. On the level that I was on.
Mhmm.
And I’ve really learned from that that rejection is the biggest tool that Satan uses.
To try to keep us Yeah. From going forward.
And I mean, the last time I was leaving my position at the church and going out into this ministry that I’m, you know, that we now have, but that didn’t exist then.
Well, you didn’t know what it was going on.
It was like, oh, I heard god say go north, south, east, and west, and nobody knew me.
I didn’t
I mean, it was a huge step of faith.
I mean, I was getting judgment and criticism and accusation, everything from fully yourself, and you’re just, you know, on and on and on.
And it was so hurtful to me.
And it took me a good 3 years to get over it, but I realized many years later that if that wouldn’t have happened, those people that did that to me, they would have been the ones that I would have wanted to have taken with me.
And been on the staff of this ministry. Mhmm.
And it would have been even more dangerous to me then. Yeah. Than now. And so It look
how much better it
turned out.
Yeah. And so, yeah, uh, now I know what
you got.
Just saying.
Even even when things are hard like that, you know, it’s not it’s not god doing it.
It’s not even god letting something happen Yeah. People are people make their own choices.
They make wrong choices. Yeah. But god is good enough to use even the bad things that people do to our it.
Sure.
Yeah. And I think something something with that is, like you were saying, it forced me to go to him because I couldn’t rely on their validation of Right.
Erin, you’re doing a great job. Keep it up.
That that taught me early on in leadership that I have to continually point my my head to him to get my validation, not in the people I’m working with.
Yeah. Yeah. And something you said about, um, when you were talking about like, even though you didn’t get closure.
Mhmm. And I
think a lot of people struggle with that.
Like, you wanna have, like, that’s how you know that you’ve forgiven because you’ve had a conversation. You closure.
Well, I know I didn’t get closure at all.
You know, and that’s a hard place to for to say I forgive you even though I don’t I don’t get a well, I got it.
I’m sorry, but it was like, I’m sorry, but then kept doing all the jump.
But it you know, so that doesn’t feel like a sorry. You know, but I’m I’m learning more that forgiveness.
People say this all the time, you know, like forgiveness is not about the other person. For you. Mhmm.
And I’m learning that more and more now. So I don’t have to get the closure.
I don’t have to get the I’m sorry. It’s not It’s not about hearing anything from the other person.
It’s relieving this is something I’ve just been thinking about, like relieving this person people period, um, of of dictating how my emotions are.
Like That’s
good.
If I’m happy or sad, like, Like, I I wanna let go of that.
I don’t want people’s actions to determine my mood or my, like, so I’ve just been it’s like, um, I don’t care if I get it.
I’m sorry for you. I’m letting you go because I don’t wanna give anyone but god that authority in my life because I was realizing I was like, people would do stuff, I’d get mad or people I’d be happy.
And it’s like, people are I’m people’s puppets at times, you know, and I don’t wanna live like that. So
yeah. I had a really good friend ask me the question, and she was very upset about something.
And she said, but I don’t have to forgive them yet because they haven’t asked me to.
If they asked me to, I’ll have to forgive them.
But and and I’m thinking it’s just such a natural thing for so many of us to wait for that.
You know, I don’t have to deal with this yet.
And if they ask me to forgive them, uh, I will.
But you’re right that that forgiveness issue is so much more about our hearts.
Yeah.
That we if we wait for somebody else, it may never come. And that’s not the key anyway.
It’s it’s about what god wants to do in our lives.
And even when somebody comes and says they’re sorry.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t help at all, but, like, my mother didn’t tell me she was sorry for what she let my dad do to me for 30 years.
And I can’t necessarily say that once she said it, it made me feel. Right. Sure.
It doesn’t
change anything. Yeah.
You know, I I guess I just thought it was sad that she waited that long.
To say anything. And so what is closure, really?
Anyway, you know, once you’ve had your heart ripped open by somebody, Do you ever really Yeah.
Get it closed?
Yeah. I guess I think part of it is wanting just that, honestly, that validation that, like, you wronged me.
So Right. It is.
I wanna hear it. Yeah.
Somebody just say I was wrong.
Yeah. And I it’s it’s hard also to say to tell you I forgive you when I don’t think you deserve and, like, like, I’m giving you the power back.
Mhmm.
Because until I forgive you, I’m holding the power. Mhmm.
And once I say I forgive you, I’m moving past this, it’s saying, okay. Well, it’s now it’s equal again.
Well, before we continue, can we because I wanna make sure people understand this is the biggest detriment to forgiveness is that people don’t understand that forgiving somebody doesn’t necessarily change how you feel about them.
This has nothing to do with feelings. And that that is the biggest problem.
People think, well, I haven’t forgiven you because I still feel a certain way about you.
And it was so helpful to me when god taught me that forgiveness is not a feeling.
It’s a decision about how you’re going to treat people.
Yeah.
So in the opening statement, it’s it’s a decision to not talk bad about them, to pray for them.
To even help them if they were in a position where they needed help, and you could help them to not spread rumors if you hear they’ve been blessed.
You know, if somebody has hurt you, you hear they’ve been blessed, like, how are you?
But a few things,
you just don’t know. It’s like
you just don’t want it. And so it’s really it’s so important for people to realize you’ll you’ll never thank you for giving anybody if you wait to feel better about the money.
And I’ve shared that all the years that I took care of my mom and dad in the nursing home, there was never one time that I went to visit them that I really wanted to go.
I did it because I felt like it was the right thing to do, and it was what god wanted me to do.
And I think you know, love is as much about doing the right thing as it is feeling the right way about somebody.
So how do you know if you’ve truly forgiven.
I think it’s by how you treat people
by
how you treat them. You know?
I mean, I know that I forgave my mom and dad because I took care of them until they died.
I did what god asked me to do. I was not I didn’t mistreat them in any way.
I wasn’t mean to them. I provided for them. And I took care of him good.
And I did that because of my love for god.
And, But I couldn’t, you know, God didn’t expect me to have gooey, gooey feelings
Mhmm.
About them because of what they had done to me. Yeah.
And I remember my mother asking me one time, how do you see it about me?
And I thought, well, here we go. You know?
And I’m I thought I’m not gonna lie to her.
And I just told her, I said, you know, I don’t feel about you the way that a girl should feel about her mother because of what you let happen to me, but I said, I do love you as a child of god.
And I will always make sure that you’re taken care of.
And so that’s you to me, that’s what god wants us to do.
He wants us to choose to do the right thing no matter what somebody else does, we choose to do the right thing.
Yeah. That’s so good. And, like, also with that, like, forgiveness.
I’ve just realized it’s not forgetting or excusing the miss, the, you know, the bad behavior and when you say that, like, I know for a fact that this particular season that I’ve just walked through, I would not have been able to do it without everybody watching this, you and your testimony, you guys, because I did some last week.
I don’t think I don’t know if I told y’all. I, my ex, is getting married.
Okay? Y’all have been on this little journey with me, right?
My ex is getting married and he’s getting married very quickly and soon.
And I knew that my daughter was about Well, I found out that they, you know, that my daughter’s in the wedding and they’re about to move in together.
They’re about to move in together and all that good stuff And that was hard. Yeah.
But I knew the right thing to do was to bless them, forgive them, and have a conversation because we’re now in this thing together, even though my daughter’s 18, we’re still we’re still, like, I guess you call it a blended family.
I don’t know. Like, we’re now in this and I’m not trying to be anybody’s best friend, but I’m saying if my daughter’s living there, like, they’re we’re about to be connected.
You know, so I was just like, it’s the right thing to do to speak to, you know, her and him.
And so we gotta go on a I requested a call. We had a call.
I was like, hey, I just wanted to introduce myself to you guys and or to you and blessings to you all and your marriage.
And I really was genuinely
good for you.
I I don’t I I know it was god, but I know because of your testimony.
I mean, look at how far gauge brought you in the last year. Yeah.
To be able to do that.
And that’s exactly the kind of behavior that god is looking for, and it takes spiritual maturity and you did yourself such a favor in doing that.
Yeah. Because you could have lost your relationship with your daughter.
Yeah.
If you would have handled it a different way.
Yeah.
And just been full of bitterness and angry all over again.
And it’s really god does not tell us to forgive people for them. It’s not because they deserve it.
It’s because we deserve it.
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The mind actually is the battlefield.
That’s where we win or lose the war with Satan.
He said all he gets to say Thank
you, sir. He uses a lot
of it. Today’s mine.
You start asking god to heal you, and he will restore.
Is the god of all comfort and I am so grateful that I know how to call on god.