You're right there, I'm just having technical difficulty.
Okay, just one moment.
Okay, I think we're okay. My husband's headphones got connected there for a minute and I was like wait a minute I can't hear anything.
Happy Monday everyone, we're so glad that you're here.
So great, ask me to join that one.
Oh, so Sue that just happened because you just are still on the email list from the free challenge when you were in the free challenge before.
Okay, so if anyone's getting emails if you want to be removed, not from our email list but from the free challenge email list you can email admin and just let them know it's okay to remove you from that mailing list.
That will help them kind of remember to do that.
But welcome. My name is Bethany Cooper. I'm so glad that you're here with us tonight.
We are going to be diving into some really great stuff. I believe God has some awesome things in store for each one of you.
For those that are joining us for the first time, this is your first live session with us.
I would love for you to put that in the chat so we can welcome you.
For all of my ladies that are back for another session, maybe a couple sessions, welcome back.
It is always a blessing and an honor to get to be here with all of you and to get to see a little glimpse of what God's doing in your life in this season and to even just do the hard work with you.
It's one of my passions as you all probably can tell.
I love helping people step a little bit further into freedom.
Let's say we have several live tonight for the first time.
Awesome. So we have Aaron B. Sandy. Is it Valencia? Valencia something maybe?
Let's see. Loved by Dad. Maybe if you can put your first name in there for us, that will help us.
Ladies, just so you know, if you hover over your screen, there's three dots.
When you click on that, there's a thing that says rename.
If you put your name in there, that will be helpful for when we do breakout sessions as well.
But welcome. Amy Berrigan. Let's see. We have another Sarah. Megan. Awesome.
Placencia. Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Welcome to all of you. We're so glad that you're here.
I have a couple housekeeping items for us tonight, and then we will go into the content.
So first thing is making room for what is important, Supernatural Saturday.
If y'all haven't heard it yet, the replay is in your replays tab.
If you don't know where that's at, I'm going to show you here in just a moment what your screen in the last year single app looks like.
But I want to encourage you all to take a listen to that.
It is about pruning. It's about making room.
It's about releasing things and letting them go that are taking up space where, you know, we need new things in the future to come into.
And then also just want to encourage you all. Why do we post in the group?
Why do we post in the community? Well, a couple things.
A, it's for you. Number one, most important. Posting in the community and the group is for you.
It's so that you can get additional coaching, but also so that you can connect in community, that you can be healed in community,
that you can see the ability of coming out of hiding and allowing yourself to be seen, known, heard and loved.
Some of you, for years, your voice and your presence got pressed down by other people.
So guess what? Coming into this group and allowing yourself to experience the fullness of everything that's here and available to you is a huge way to come out of hiding.
So I want to encourage you to do that. I'm going to share my screen real quick here.
I'm not going to take a lot of time, ladies, but I am just going to show you very quickly the app.
For those of you that are brand new, even some of you that have been here a few weeks, I have had some people kind of asking where do I post?
What are the things? So I'm just going to go through this really, really quickly.
So when you're in the app, first and foremost, it is an app.
You can access it on your phone, but you can also type in last year single dot app on a browser using your computer,
which is the view that you all are seeing right now on my computer.
The first tab is community. That's where we post. That's where we talk.
That's where we give you all the updates and all the things that you're going to need to know.
Also, any post like this one right here that you'll see that I did yesterday to get you to interact with the weekly roll call, that is a pinned post.
Well, you can scroll under that community tab to see those, or you can also click on announcements.
Announcements are going to be posts that we want you to see, updates, you know, when we have last trip singles or retreats, all of those things.
things are gonna be announced on that Announcements tab.
I would encourage you all to check that frequently, okay?
And the weekly roll call posts,
for those of you that don't know,
we post those every Sunday.
We tailor let them to the Supernatural Saturday,
but it's also just so that we can find out
where are you at in the heart work?
What's happening with you?
Are you having breakthroughs?
Are you feeling overwhelmed?
You know, where you're just saying to us,
this is where I'm at in the course,
and this is how I'm processing
the Supernatural Saturday word that was released.
Your courses, that's where you're gonna find
the heart work course content.
You click on that to go into your course.
Replays, these are gonna be Supernatural Saturday replays,
and all of our live session replays
are gonna be under your Replays tab for you.
Events, excuse me, is your event calendar.
When you click on an event, for example, Women's Prayer,
your link is right there for you.
If you scroll down a little bit,
the meeting ID and passcode for Zoom are also there.
Here's some pro tips for you.
If you don't already have a Zoom account,
I would encourage you to create
a free Zoom profile and account.
Log into that before you click on the link, okay?
A lot of people have issues if they're not logged into Zoom,
and we have come to find out that, I'm not sure why,
so I'm sorry, I don't have the answers,
but people that have Android phones
tend to have some issues with those links
more than other phone users.
Again, y'all, I'm not knocking any kind of phone,
but that's just what we've come to find out is happening.
And so if you have any trouble with the link,
y'all, if you go right to zoom.com or zoom.us,
click Join a Meeting, type in the meeting ID and passcode,
you're gonna get right into this, okay?
It'll take a few seconds longer, but it'll get you in.
So don't panic if the link doesn't work.
And then sometimes, unfortunately, ladies,
we have people that go on links that are the wrong links.
We don't know how it's still happening
because we have everything in the calendar,
but if you ever try to log in and it sinks,
you can't get in, you can't get in.
We had that happen last Friday.
Somebody was sitting in on a different link
where they weren't supposed to be, unfortunately.
So sometimes it's very rare,
but it does happen on occasion.
Resources tab, this is gonna be things that,
any links that we need to give you
to take you to another site
or another page of information or anything like that,
we're gonna put all of those under the Resources tab.
And we'll always announce like, and let you all know,
like when we have a new last trip single,
like the cruise information's under here for you all,
and that links to the website.
But we will announce it on the Community page,
and then we'll tell you to go to the Resources tab
and where to find it.
Does that make sense, everyone?
Okay, so the other thing I wanna tell you really quick,
when you're on the Community tab,
when you wanna make a post,
you can just do a post what's on your mind.
When I click on that, I have the ability,
you all have the ability to add one photo, okay?
So as of right now, we can't add multiple photos.
I know we're used to that with Facebook,
but in our app, we just have the ability
to add one at this time.
You can type whatever text you wanna share.
If you're gonna write a little bit longer post,
I would recommend typing it on your phone
or on your computer and copying and pasting.
Just another pro tip,
because I've been working on a post before
and then accidentally bump something
and the whole thing's gone.
So just FYI.
Okay, so let's say you just wanna do an update.
Maybe you're new to the group,
you wanna introduce yourself.
We typically have you all put that under the All tab.
Can you see down here how there's these other little tabs?
Anything else that you wanna do,
the activations, anything.
Here's the key too.
If y'all post it under a tab
that is different than what I'm saying right now,
either way, it's fine, cause you're posting.
So you're not gonna get in trouble or anything.
Nobody's ever gonna be in trouble in this group.
So just post it wherever you can,
but I'm just helping you all
as you're kind of seeing this tonight.
Wins, we wanna like really encourage you all
to celebrate your wins.
Like what's happening?
What are the breakthroughs that you're getting?
You know, maybe you're just feeling,
you know, something lifting off of you.
Come in and share.
It's really, really important for you to share the wins,
even as you're processing a lot of stuff.
Now, one of the things I wanna point out here
is I clicked on the wins, but all stayed on.
Now, it's okay, again, if this happens, it's no big deal.
But if that is the case and you leave that on,
it's gonna post under both feeds.
Does that make sense?
And so I just wanna unselect all.
Same thing, if you have a question for a coach,
that would be me, that would be Annette and Andrea.
You would click ask a coach, relationship milestones,
even though like you're in here,
we're asking you not to date,
more what this is for you all while you're in phase one.
I wanna hear from you all,
if you're having breakthroughs
where relationships have been kind of hindered
or hurt in the past and God is restoring those,
you're seeing some shifts happening there,
that kind of stuff, okay?
And that is really, you all won't see the notify group
cause I'm an admin, so that's different for me.
So just disregard that.
But hopefully that was super helpful.
But as soon as you finished getting your post ready,
you just click post.
And right now it's grayed out
because I don't have anything in there.
But once I had that filled in,
it would highlight I think to blue
and then you would be able to post to the group.
So I hope that was helpful for you all.
Again, there's a couple things on that page
that because I'm an admin,
I see like settings and all that,
that you all won't have any of that backend stuff.
Okay, Courtney, you don't have announcements.
We'll work on that.
If you're in phase one, you would have,
well, we call phase one heartwork.
You would have access to that.
So I just need to make sure
that maybe something's not a little funky with your app.
Does other people,
are a bunch of people missing announcements?
Ask a coach is not private.
It is gonna be where the group can see it.
But just want y'all to know this is a safe zone, okay?
I was telling the group this afternoon,
genuinely, I've been doing this for four years
and I can't tell you all how pleased I've been
that people have been very kind to each other.
There's not been judgment in this group.
And if I did ever see that, y'all,
I would remove that stuff
and we would have a conversation with that person,
loving conversation with someone that we feel
would be judgmental or critical
of someone else in our community, okay?
So we have boundaries and things that we put in place
even for our members.
So I want you all to know that, but okay, cool.
So some people have it and some people don't.
I need to check into that.
Let me work on that this week, ladies.
Hopefully I'll get that fixed by next week.
All right, let me pray for us.
I wanna get us started
because we have a lot to unpack tonight.
Father, thank you so much for your goodness.
God, thank you for your grace.
Thank you for every one of these ladies
for where they've come,
God, to this point that you've drawn them here.
We believe that you've brought them here
for a divine encounter with you, first and foremost.
God, that you would just, yeah, Lord,
that you would awaken aspects within them
that have been crushed down by other people
that have been sleeping, slumbering,
that haven't been awake,
where maybe over the time of trauma and wounds,
God, that even subconsciously,
they've turned off parts of themselves and silenced it
for fear of not being accepted or loved
or whatever the struggle was.
So Lord, we just thank you for breathing life
into every area and aspect of who we are.
We thank you for revealings, for healing, accelerating.
We thank you for divine supernatural breakthrough
and release.
We thank you, Lord, that you would, yeah, Lord,
just continue to shift our mindsets
to help us to see a more heavenly perspective,
help us to see you, Father, as a good father,
not a taskmaster,
not someone who's just always looking to find fault in us,
but God, we would see you as a kind
and faithful and good father.
And we just thank you, Lord,
for everything that you're gonna do tonight.
We thank you for the forgiveness that you have sent to us
through your son, Jesus.
Jesus, we thank you for dying on the cross
so that we could be in relationship with you
as you are in relationship and one with the Father
so that we could step into forgiveness and victory
and freedom and healing.
And we just praise you for all that you're doing.
Holy Spirit, we thank you for being here.
Come and have your way.
Help us to humble ourselves,
to hear that we would have ears
to hear what your spirit is saying.
Yes, Lord, we thank you in advance for it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I'm so glad that God is a forgiving God, aren't you?
I'm so glad because he forgave me for so many things
and I'm so grateful.
Tonight, we're gonna talk about forgiveness.
Y'all, I teed it up.
You didn't know, but even as I was praying,
we're praying into the things
that we're gonna be talking about.
And I wanna start with tethers.
I want y'all to be thinking about
different kinds of tethers and ropes,
things that are bound together, kind of intertwined.
Even this afternoon, I saw this kind of image in my mind
of like a bunch of strings that are all woven together
and the fabric of those was coming apart.
And in this sense,
a tether is something where it's holding it to it.
So I liken it to a tetherball game.
When I was in elementary school, we had tetherball.
It's a pole with a rope and a ball on it.
Some of my ladies that have been here for a while,
you've heard this story before.
But for those of you that have maybe not thought
about this concept, it is a game that kids play.
But the way I liken it to unforgiveness is this.
At the end of the day,
when you're done playing the tetherball game,
most schools will take the rope and the ball down
and there'll just be a pole there.
But let's say with unforgiveness,
the ball and the rope are never taken apart from the pole.
Okay, they're continuously tethered to the pole.
And that's how it is with unforgiveness.
We are literally being tethered to the people.
in the situations that we are choosing to not forgive.
That means we're bound to them.
We're connected to them.
The ropes are intertwined
and we are caught in the mix of all of that.
So I wanna encourage you all tonight
just to be praying right now about things in your journey,
people, places, situations,
where the enemy has tried to bring breakdown and trauma
and he has been successful at times
and the areas where the enemy has really tried
to get you into a place of bitterness,
resentment, unforgiveness, maybe anger, maybe wrath,
maybe feelings of rage, you know, these things in us.
And maybe for some of you,
it's this like dull frustration
where you're just constantly, you know,
you're in this place of just criticalness.
You're just critical of other people
and it's happening on a regular basis
and then something happens and you go from zero to 180
and you're just mad and there's no real in-between.
I want you to be thinking about
where does that stuff come from in you
because God doesn't want it to remain.
And a lot of times from my experience,
it is bitterness, it is unforgiveness,
it is resentment that is underneath the surface
where sadness and brokenness occurred
and it went undealt with.
Unresolved sadness and pain and hurt
turns into a lot of these other things
that we're talking about tonight.
I want you to think about,
I forgot my sunglasses again
for those that were on the afternoon session.
Sarah Shell put a pair of sunglasses on for us
to give you all an example,
but I think y'all can picture it.
If I was putting sunglasses on right now,
I was telling the story, this literally happened.
We moved to Florida
and I've had these sunglasses for years, y'all,
so it's even funnier that I'm even telling it again tonight,
but we had just moved recently to Florida.
This was about a year, we've almost been here a year
and my husband and I were at the beach
and I was looking over to the left
and I was saying to him, look at those peach clouds.
Those are like so awesome.
They're like this light pink peach color clouds.
And he's like, what are you talking about?
And I was like, don't, why can't you see them?
I'm like pointing at these clouds
and I was adamant that I was seeing these pink peach clouds
and he's like, Bethany, they're white.
And I was like, what?
And then it dawned on me, oh,
because they're kind of light.
Sometimes forget I even have my sunglasses on.
I had my sunglasses, y'all, on, y'all.
And so what was happening is I have all this extra,
the UV sunglasses that are out now
and they protect our eyes and all this stuff,
but they have extra color in them, right?
So I'm looking and I'm seeing one thing,
but that's not what's really there.
And I want to liken that to filters, blind spots,
brokenness.
When we have brokenness and unforgiveness in our hearts,
in our lives, in our souls,
it taints and changes how we see everything.
It changes the way we show up with ourselves,
with other people, at work, at church, with family.
It changes the way we see ourselves
when we look in the mirror.
Remember we talked last week about hatred
actually begins with self-hatred.
Or maybe two weeks ago, whenever I said it,
but if y'all don't know that,
when we have hatred towards other people,
it often begins with hating something about ourselves.
So we want to come out of alignment and agreement
with these filters and these blind spots
and the brokenness and the unforgiveness
that is causing us to also see God differently.
It causes us to sometimes become disconnected from God
because we actually believe God has moved away from us.
When God has not moved, we've moved, we've shifted.
We believe that he doesn't love us.
We believe that his love is conditional when it's not.
His love is unconditional.
It says not height, nor depth, nor principality,
nor power, nor things in the present, nor things to come
would ever separate us from the love of God.
So why do we believe the lie that God doesn't love us?
It's interesting, right?
If you really just kind of break it down
and simplify it to that and just think on it.
And then not only that, but then,
well, what about when someone does something that hurts us?
Well, does God love them?
Yep, he does.
He does.
And sometimes that's hard for us to swallow
because we are angry with them for what they've done to us.
And rightfully so sometimes.
Can I just say, sometimes it's okay.
Well, it's always okay for what we feel,
but man, sometimes it's just like, wow,
can't believe what this person did.
But here's the key.
How we feel.
and what we choose to do with our feelings are two different things.
So my question for you tonight is where have you allowed your feelings to lead
you down a road that's unhealthy for you? One of the things I wrote down this
this afternoon is the phrases I can't and I won't and what what I'm gonna talk
about right now is I had a little session with a young lady she's 18 years
old she's here in Fort Myers last week and was chatting with her and she said I
cannot forgive my family I cannot and the more we talked about it she's like I
won't I won't forgive them for what they did they deserve punishment I want to
see them pay and she literally said that you know a lot of us feel this way
whether we admit it or not at some point one way or another some of us more
subtly than other people but we have this in our flesh this need for
vengeance and what I want to say to you tonight is God is not a God of vengeance
in the sense of like you know eye for an eye that's not the God we serve okay he
was on the cross dying for us each one of you so I want you to personalize
that tonight I want you to really think about what Jesus did for you a lot of
people will say this also came up this afternoon I loved this a lot of people
will be just like oh I'm a sinner saved by grace well okay yeah you were but
once you give your life to Jesus Christ you are separated that is not your
identity but here's the reality we all struggle with sin we all do and even
people that are really strong in their faith like you know there's things that
we get tripped up with and we need to be willing to not get into the place
there's a scripture that actually like talks about like woe to him who thinks
he has no sin I'm paraphrasing it we have to be really careful here as we are
walking in our Christian walk and we go through hurt and we hold on to things or
we believe that there's nothing we're doing wrong therefore we feel justified
in not forgiving someone because what they did is way worse than what I do
this is how we do it right anyone else ever done it cuz I've done it come on
confession time yeah so we want to step out of that stuff we want to step into
healing and we want to step out of unforgiveness bitterness and resentment
again just kind of reiterating so that it continues to resonate in your spirit
tonight I want to read a little something to you from the heart work
book for those that don't know anytime I say if I ever forget to say the heart
work book I'm always talking about the heart work book okay this is what it
says she's talking about blind spots and filters here and I might have read this
last week I don't remember but we're gonna get it again when you walk into
any situation it doesn't matter what it is bad or good you don't see that thing
that place those people the way that they are you see them the way that you
are on the inside so how are you doing on the inside and how is that impacting
the way that you're showing up again and seeing those people then she goes on to
say let me say that again so you can really get a hold of it we don't see
things the way they truly are again this is when we're living into those
counterfeit identities and those blind spots and filters we see them the way
that we are for instance say you were severely hurt by a group of people they
mistreated you lied about you and then discarded you the heart wounds and
lies that were created as a result of that trauma will give you a skewed
perception of groups in the future you may avoid groups or communities of
people like the plague convincing yourself they are all bad y'all let's
also put in here if you've experienced betrayal on any level in a relationship
whether it was a romantic relationship or a family member or whatever you're
going most people often will will kind of project that on to all family members
all men always my mom you know there's always these we kind of lump things if
you ever go through counseling one of the things they tell you not to do is
use the words always and never they really want to encourage you to not use
those kind of terms because it's not true even if it's something you've
experienced several times like maybe some of you I don't know if you're like
me but I went through several scenarios where men were abusive in my life and so
the enemy wanted me to partner with men are abusive men are bad men are
dangerous men are liars men are cheaters
And for a long time, those were things I did partner with.
But when I chose to forgive and I'm on the path of healing, guess what?
The Lord's starting to call me. He's calling me out of that stuff.
More and more and more, you all. And that is the path that you are on as well.
Okay, we're going to keep going.
You may try again to search for community,
but if you do decide to join a similar group in the future,
your most significant obstacle to belonging will be the filter that was created by your prior experience.
Some of you all, you're trying to be in romantic relationships,
but the problem is you haven't healed fully from the past situations.
And so you keep getting tripped up and you're wondering why nothing is changing there.
For some of you, you haven't entered ever into a relationship.
I know I have ladies in this community and this group that have never been married.
And some of them we've and I don't know if anybody right now,
but we've definitely had women in our community that when they came in here, they had never dated.
I have a lady right now in phase two. She's never dated.
Okay. So no matter what category you're in,
let's look at what's keeping you from moving into those places.
And the Lord knows what those things are.
All right. So I want to go further into the forgiveness thing.
We got to keep moving. Matthew 22 39 says this, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
So if you're struggling to forgive someone, I'm going to,
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there's somewhere deep down that you're also not choosing to forgive yourself.
You're choosing to not love yourself because when we love ourselves out of the overflow of our heart,
our mouth speaks and we also make choices out of the overflow of our heart.
And we will choose typically when we are rooted and grounded in love and we're flowing in the spirit,
not after the flesh, we're going to choose to walk in the fruits of the spirit,
which are love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Y'all hear unforgiveness in there anywhere? It's not there. Right.
So are you fulfilling your flesh? Are you filling,
fulfilling the fruits of the spirit and where the spirit is wanting you to walk?
Forgiveness is not a feeling, but it's a choice.
A lot of times you're not going to feel like forgiving, okay?
But choosing to forgive out of obedience is, is a blessing.
It's an honor to be able to get to do those things because again,
Christ came and did it for us. He forgave us. So how can we withhold it from another?
And again, for some of you, it feels just like gut-wrenching to forgive someone.
And I want to encourage you that if that's you,
to ask the Lord to give you the grace and the courage to choose to forgive, okay?
To step into that and resist where the enemy is trying to lead you.
And that bitter root, man, when, once it gets in there,
I was telling our church this past weekend, where a bitter root comes in,
it can stop the flow of the Holy spirit.
Y'all can stop it up, right? Like there's a dam in there. Okay.
Ephesians 4.23 says this, forgive one another,
just as God forgave you because of what Christ has done.
Colossians 3.13 in the NLT version says this, remember the Lord forgave you.
So you must also forgive others.
You want to forgive all the characters in the story.
And I mentioned this a few moments ago, including yourself, if it is needed.
I just heard the Lord say, come out, come out wherever you are, hide and seek.
And so for some of you,
I believe the Holy spirit is saying like you're hiding and it's time to come out
of hiding. And, and in that,
I was thinking about something I expressed to the group this afternoon about,
you know, the prison gates are open.
The door's unlocked and the door is open,
but yet some of you are staying inside the prison cell or the cage or
however you want to look at it. But the Holy spirit is saying, come out,
come out wherever you are, come out of hiding, come into the light,
let the light shine on the parts of your heart where man, it does hurt.
It is hard. But when we surrender that to the Lord, guess what?
He takes heart and he makes it possible.
He takes heart and he makes it possible. And so forgiveness,
I want you to know also tends to happen in layers. Some of you,
you've worked on situations before, but when you're here in the heartwork,
it's, it might come back up again. And if that happens for you,
I want to encourage you just to be willing like Lord. Okay.
I know.
I've worked on this situation before, but it's coming back up in my spirit.
Is there something else you want me to know about it?
Is there another aspect of healing or forgiveness that you need me to walk
in something I don't see and just be open?
Some people tend to get really nervous when that happens, when the same
thing comes up multiple times.
Um, it doesn't mean you're going to have to go all the way back through
everything that you did before.
Some of you might, because maybe there's a whole layer of healing
that just a whole thing.
But for the most part, from my experience, the Lord will take people
into aspects, new layers, new, new revealings for healing.
He kind of builds on things and helps you, you know, when you're
ready, he reveals that thing.
Uh, Ruth, that was Colossians 3.13 and the NLT version.
Yeah.
Um, and so I'm getting ready to, um, put y'all in breakouts.
Your question tonight is who do you need to forgive and why, who do
you need to forgive tonight and why, before I put you in there, I want
you to hear another thing that I want to share on here real quick.
It's called victims, survivors, and thriving.
Okay.
Three categories, victims, survivors, and thriving.
And before I go through this and explain this a little bit more, what I want you
to understand is that when we are hurt by someone else, yes, in a sense we are
a victim, okay, but the difference is that we don't have to stay there.
Okay.
You don't have to be a victim forever.
That isn't your identity.
It's something you've gone through.
But sometimes what happens is people partner with victim and they don't
heal and they stay there in victim mode, victim mindsets.
And I'm going to go through these a little bit here in just a moment.
Victims tend to feel blameless or excuse me, feel helpless.
Victims tend to feel helpless, blame other people and focus on the past.
Victims tend to feel helpless, blame others and focus on the past.
A survivor, again, this is amazing.
If you've survived something, you've overcome it.
It's a blessing.
But it's not the end.
The thriving is where we want to live, ladies.
Okay.
But I want you to hear what a survivor tends to live like.
Again, this is still progress.
It's still a good thing, but I want to encourage you all to go all the way
through to thriving in every area of your lives.
Survivors reclaim their power.
They take responsibility for choices.
They choose to heal.
So you all are coming here.
You're survivors.
You're choosing to invest in your healing.
Some of you are going to receive like really incredible healing.
They start saying no.
So they start setting healthy boundaries.
They continue to live and or exist.
So they're, they're in that surviving.
I'm here.
I'm alive.
I can, I can establish healthy, you know, habits again, that
kind of, that kind of place.
Those that are in the thriving mode.
This is how they tend to live.
They focus on the future.
They have power regarding their future.
Again, God is always in control, but there's definitely an authority that
I live in now that I didn't use to live in, in the past regarding even
relationships, romantic, family, my, my calling, everything, my whole life
has changed in the last four years.
You all sincerely last five.
Last five.
I guess I started the program.
Yeah, about last four, four years, a little over that now.
Um, okay.
I'm going to keep going.
Uh, those that are thriving also surround themselves
with other people who thrive.
So I want some like for you all to be thinking about, you know,
who are you hanging out with?
Who are the influencers in your life?
Who are the people that are speaking into your life?
Are they thriving or are they victim?
Birds of a feather tend to flock together.
You all.
Okay.
And sometimes some of you, uh, there's a book out there called the dream
giver and the journey that this guy goes through, he's leaving the land
of familiar to go into where God is calling him into, and that's
where some of you have been.
You've been trying to leave the land of familiar, but every time you
try to move forward, there's things, the enemy is just trying to use
people in situations to keep pulling you backwards, but God is like, no,
I want you to go forward.
You've got this.
You can do this.
You can thrive.
You can be different than those people, but you have to choose to
believe it first and foremost, people that are thriving, grow,
develop, prosper, and flourish.
So I want to note here too.
Um,
Stressors are things that cause people to react versus respond. Okay, so when y'all get triggered,
it's because there's still things that need healed underneath the surface.
So let's pay attention to when you get triggered or if you get triggered, what's causing that?
What are the lies you're hearing when that's happening? I want you to also hear about the
land of thrive. The land of thrive make choices about what you want to do. How do you want to
experience the world? How will you act? What are your attitudes going to like? What attitudes do
you want to have and live with? Where to focus on your responses? So they tend to create
opportunities for themselves. So they don't tend to see the glass half half empty, they tend to see
it pretty full. All right, and then there's a couple other little things I wanted to just bring
to your attention as well. Let me just find it here. Sorry, y'all thought I had this marked.
I think I lost my place this afternoon in this. I might just do this after y'all come back if I
can't find it real quick. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Okay, here are a couple victim identities.
Okay, so these are in addition to the things I've already mentioned. And there can be so much more,
so many more of these, but these are just a couple to get you thinking. They ruined my life.
Okay, that statement right there, you're giving everybody else power,
especially that person that hurt you. Okay, I will never recover.
I can't get over this. This can never be fixed. It's not fair. And they made me like this.
They made me like this. Okay, I want you to be thinking about any ways, maybe those statements
in one way or another, maybe not that exact statement have tried to show up in your heart,
mind and spirit over the years. Okay. All right. Again, who do you need to forgive tonight and why
I'm going to get these breakout rooms set up. If you've never done a breakout room,
as soon as I say, okay, click to join, you're going to see something pop up on your screen.
And I want to encourage you to click to join those breakout rooms as quick as you can. If you're not
able to join a breakout session, please put that in the chat for me. Like if you're at work
and you're unable to talk or something like that. Okay.
And we're going to do nine minutes for this first time, because I want you all to have
a good amount of time. Remember y'all aren't trying to fix each other. You're not trying
to give advice or counsel. You're letting each other talk about who you need to forgive tonight
and why you're creating a safe space for each other. Be short, brief and powerful. So everyone
has a chance to go. Okay. Go ahead and click to join those. I'm going to be praying for you all
going to click to join. As soon as I see that everybody's kind of situated in their groups,
I'll start to pray.
All right. Jodi, are you having trouble?
I, for some reason, I clicked out of it right away and I don't know how I did that.
It's okay. Let me see if I can. I was in group two.
I might have to put you in a different one just because it makes it. It's okay.
Shoot. Let me see where there's two people. Okay. Number seven.
All right. Thanks. Oh, you're welcome.
Hi, Jodi. I think that maybe you just joined after I got those rooms together. So let's
get you situated here into a room. They're talking about who are you going to forgive
tonight and why. And I'm going to put you in that breakout room right now. That should be there for
you. All right. Lord, we just thank you so much for this night. We thank you, God, for everything
that you're already doing. God, the revealings for healing that are happening. God, we just
completely choose to surrender to you tonight. We ask you to help us, Lord, to, yeah, Lord,
just to let go of any pride, any ego that might get in the way of us choosing to forgive. We
thank you, God, also for grace, for supernatural empowerment of your Holy Spirit to enable us to
choose to forgive tonight. We thank you for helping us to hear what your spirit is saying to us.
Laura, I'm not sure what you mean to sign in. Did I say that during the live session tonight?
Do you put that in the chat for me?
But you don't have to sign in for anything.
I just meant for when the breakout sessions, there's a thing that pops up and it takes
everybody into the breakout room, but you can stay here since you're at work with us
in this room right here.
Oh, that's okay.
Yeah, that's fine.
So you can stay here.
So glad that you're here with us this evening.
So we just thank you also just for the reminder that in Psalm 147, three through four in the
passion translation, it says he heals the wounds of every shattered heart.
He sets his stars in place, calling them all by their names.
God, we just thank you that you lovingly, even as I prayed last night on the prophetic
ministry night, when I saw you just massaging the hearts of the people, God, that you lovingly
bring the shattered pieces back together and you mold them into something that is beautiful.
And I thank you, God, that you would just allow your healing oil to flow from the top
of the heads of those that are in this community and this group to the bottom of their feet,
that they would receive a revelation of your healing oil that's flowing down.
And there's even a song that comes to mind, Kim Walker Smith, she sings, it's about the
healing oil.
I don't know if that's what it's called, but that's what comes to mind.
So just maybe for you all to check that out at some point.
Hi, Lisa.
How are you?
Are you able to join breakout groups tonight?
If so, I'm going to put you in a breakout there talking about who do you need to forgive
tonight and why.
I don't know if you can hear me, Lisa, or not.
Lisa Grapes?
All right.
Well, I'm going to keep praying, and you can put it in the chat there for me if you're
not able to speak or share.
Okay.
Father, thank you so much as well just for, yeah, it makes me think of the scripture too.
I can't remember where it's at right now, but it talks about God preparing a table for
us in the presence of our enemies.
So Lord, we thank you that you redeem all situations, Lord, and we don't always know
how you're going to create that table in the presence of our enemies, but God, we thank
you that, oh, you were in a group and you got kicked out.
Oh, I see you.
I see you right there.
Hold on one second.
Let me put you in there.
All right.
That just should have popped up for you, that God, you would supernaturally help us to understand
that you work all things together for good to save many people alive, and just like the
story of Joseph, like, Lord, all the things that he went through, and he just surrendered
that always to you.
And God, the increase in the blessing that was upon his life as a result.
And Lord, we know that you didn't try to harm Joseph and you didn't try to harm us.
It was the enemy using people to try to kill, steal, and destroy as John 10, 10 declares,
but Jesus came to give us life and give it to us more abundantly.
So I thank you, Lord, that you help us to step into that abundance and the fullness
of all your plans and your purposes for us.
John 3, 16 says, for this is how much God loved the world.
He gave us one and only son, unique son as a gift.
So now everyone who believes in him will never perish, but experience everlasting life.
Lord, we thank you for the gift of your son and Jesus.
Again, we thank you for coming.
We thank you for allowing us to just be in union with you, to receive the blessings that
you have prepared for us.
We thank you for 2 Corinthians 1, 3-4 and the message translation that says this,
all praise to the God and father of our master, Jesus, the Messiah, father of all mercy,
God of all healing counsel.
He comes alongside of us when we go through hard times.
And before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who's going through hard times
so that we can be there for that person, just as God was there for us.
God, we thank you that there's always a purpose that can be created out of
and through the pain that we've been through.
God, even myself, that I'm able to, and I get to do what I'm doing right now.
God, I don't believe you caused the pain in my life, but God, I thank you for the opportunity
that I get to use that pain to help set other people free for a purpose.
God, ultimately to declare your kingdom here on this earth.
We thank you, God, that you would help us to shift out of victim mindsets and modes
and heart postures and that we would, yeah, just continue to heal a little bit more,
that we would come a little bit closer to you, Lord, and that we would receive
the fullness of your plans and promises for our lives, including our love stories
for all those that haven't stepped into their love stories yet.
God, we thank you for continuing to, yeah, restore and rebuild all the broken.
fallen places in our lives.
We thank you.
Then in Isaiah 43, four through six, it says,
yet it was our weaknesses he carried.
It was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins,
but he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so that we could be healed.
Matthew 7, 24 through 25 in the message translation says
these words I speak to you are not incidental.
And this is Jesus speaking, additions to your life,
homeowner improvements to your standard of living.
They are foundational words, words to build a life on.
If you work these words into your life,
you're like a smart carpenter
who built his house on a solid rock.
Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit,
but nothing moved that house.
It was fixed to the rock.
God, I thank you that you would help us
to fix ourselves upon the rock,
which is you, God, that we would draw a little bit closer.
Yes, Lord, I thank you that you would help us
to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God,
that we would hear, God, what your spirit is saying.
Your word declares that we are your sheep.
When we live for you, Jesus,
when we've accepted you into our hearts and our lives,
and that your sheep hear your voice.
God, I also declare that we will always obey
whatever you call us to do and ask us to do.
God, I thank you that you would help us
to receive the fullness of your love and your blessings.
God, where the enemies try to cause us
to have doubt or unbelief, God, we thank you
that you would just impart a fresh gift of faith,
a fresh wind of hope into our hearts, our minds,
our spirits, our bodies, and our souls.
We thank you, God, for healing.
We thank you for redemption.
We thank you for reconciliation.
Yes, Lord, Ephesians 3, 17 through 19 says this,
then Christ will make his home in your hearts
as you trust in him.
Your roots will grow down into God's love
and keep you strong.
And may you have the power to understand
as all God's people should, how wide, how long,
how high, and how deep his love is.
May you experience the love of Christ,
though it is too great to understand fully.
Then you will be made complete with all the fullness
of life and power that comes from God.
Ephesians 3, 20 through 21 says,
never doubt God's mighty power to work in you
and accomplish all of this.
He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request,
your most unbelievable dream,
and exceed your wildest imagination.
He will outdo them all,
for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.
God, we thank you that you are rewriting our stories, God.
We thank you that you're helping us to step into the new.
God, that we don't have to be afraid of the past
or defined by the mistakes we've made
or the things that other people have done to us.
God, that we can receive everything, the fullness.
I already prayed that once, but I hear that again,
that we would receive the fullness of everything
that God has for us in Jesus' name.
Welcome back.
Okay, I'm gonna ask all of you to help yourselves
as you come back.
I'll try to do it and help you as well,
but if I can't catch you quick,
go ahead and plan to do that.
I'm so glad that y'all are here again.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to share.
So I'm gonna open up this time for our group coaching time
and for anyone that is willing to share with the whole group
what you shared in your private breakout session.
Is there anyone that's willing to share tonight?
Yeah, and I should say, if you raise your digital hand,
it does make it a little easier
in these kind of coaching, group coaching sessions.
If you don't know how to do that,
if you hover over the bottom of your screen,
there's a raise hand there, or it might say more,
or it might say reactions,
and that, yeah, that'll be a little helpful.
All right, Ruth.
Ruth A., go ahead.
Hi.
Hi, everyone.
See, I shared in my group
that the person that I needed to forgive,
at first, I thought it was myself,
and I think that's definitely a part of it,
especially when you share that
if you're ever having unresolved feelings,
that a lot of times it's because there's some,
like whether it's hatred or things towards yourself,
maybe you're just not aware of it.
But mine is a friend I've known since 2006,
so since we were in college,
and I was in Austin for a conference about three weeks ago,
and yeah, two, three weeks ago,
and she lives in Austin, Texas,
and I was in Idaho,
and I thought that I would get a chance to see her
just because our relationship
had gone through a period of some downturn.
She had messaged me,
or tried to message me a couple of months ago
wanting to kind of talk about the state of our friendship
and just kind of what the,
I guess what the future was,
or what our goals were from it,
and that kind of started this.
process of, um, we both have quirky personalities, I guess, you know, and, um, like she would only
communicate by text and, you know, when you call her, she doesn't answer the phone. I have my own
quirks as well, but basically we just, you know, we were supposed to kind of explain things to each
other and just didn't work out well and I called, you know, hoping I would get to see her in person
and we could address issues three weeks ago and, you know, called her and she didn't call me back
and I kind of got upset and, and just, you know, just stomped off since then and I've had in the
past couple of weeks or past week my mom and then my sister who are both like, you know, you've had,
this is probably the longest friendship that you have, um, that, you know, someone you've
known for a while that it's not something just because of a misunderstanding or, um, you know,
that you just allow it to just go away, that you don't try to reach out again and so, but I just
felt like I didn't know what to say or how to go about it and so just didn't really, one, try not
to beat myself up and forgive myself because I had a couple of instances in the past week or so
where I could have at least called, left a message or something and I chose not to and so I was trying
to, you know, peel back the layers of, okay, well, what's really behind? Is it really that I don't
know what to say? Is it that I'm afraid of owning up to my own faults? Is it that I, um, because
I, in my, my, in my personality and relationships, but I tend to be the subservient one, so whatever
people say, I would just eventually bow to the general consensus of someone and so I, she has a
more, so my personality is more phlegmatic and hers is more like choleric, like very forceful
and so I, sometimes I end up, sometimes apologizing for things that are not my fault just to keep the
peace, which is also not healthy and so I just didn't know, I guess I just wasn't really sure
about what to say or how to go about it, but really wanted to forgive her for what I misunderstood
about what she said, but also forgive myself for not making an effort, more of an effort,
if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it does make sense. I think my question for you is this,
is God asking you to keep this friendship?
That's a big one because that's what I've been, I've been asking myself
and I don't know that either way. Yeah, and that's okay and you may not for a little while,
you might have to keep walking this out. When you say that this is the longest friendship you've
ever had, have you struggled to make friends over the years? Yes. Okay, so when did the,
the struggle with making friends and connections start for you?
Since it's childhood. Okay, yeah, is there a certain thing that you can remember? Like,
did you try to go to kids and ask them to play and they didn't want to play or did you just,
did you struggle to go over to the other kids to play with them? Like,
did you tend to sit by yourself often? Well, so I'm, I'm an American, but my dad's
from Ghana, which is a country in West Africa. My mom's from Nigeria and I've lived in both
countries. I grew up in both countries. And so before I turned 12, like a couple of months before
I turned 12, we moved from Nigeria to Ghana. And, and when I, we made that move, there's a lot of,
even though they're both English speaking countries, there was a lot of cultural differences
and I got bullied. I was really bullied a lot. And so I really struggled with, because, you know,
yeah, it's a whole love story, but I really struggled with that in junior high and in high
school. And so, and even before that, I mean, I kind of was a bit quirky, I guess,
neurodivergent kids growing up, but that really made it hard with that move and trying to, you
know, learn like the local dialect, like the tribal local languages that were different from
languages that were different from English and struggling.
Did you happen to be on last night when we were doing the prophetic ministry night? It's okay.
If not, I'm just curious. Okay. I definitely, I'm saying this for everybody. If y'all get a chance
to listen to it, please, even when you're driving, well, I don't know. Y'all might cry. There might
be things that get stirred up. You might not want to drive with that one. We did a whole healing
session last night, but in particular, I feel led to just mention it to you, Ruth, because we did
this part where God gave me this song and y'all it's funny. Like, I don't even listen to a lot of
pop music, but I've heard it somewhere clearly. Cause I knew the song and it came up and the
song is, it's not my name by Ting Tings. It's, you know, so anyways, you'll hear what I talk
about in there. What God, like what God said to me about that, like through that song and the
journey that he took me on to release that word last night. And we spoke healing over people
that things were said to them or spoken over them, phrases, names that God never intended
to be spoken over them, but they live under those things. And so I'm saying all this to you to, to
this, with that struggle and the bullying and the things that were taking place, I know
that you're talking about forgiving your friend, but I feel like first, what needs to happen
is we need to uncover the root connection, like the root starting point of why you initially
struggled to connect and make friends, you know, and what the enemy was trying to bring
break down because you were saying, okay, I felt like this about this friendship. It
was really hard to connect with her. And every time I try to, she's only wanting to text,
she's not picking up the phone. Like I hear you trying a lot. Okay. And then, you know,
you're kind of settled with where this ended. And then your mom and your sister said, well,
you know, she's been your friend, which I'm not saying that's, that's not good advice,
but I just want you to make sure you're not shifting into people pleasing.
I've always struggled with that. And I would imagine. So if you were bullied a lot, people
that are bullied a lot, or they feel like unsure of themselves, like you move from one
place to another, there was a lot happening there. You know, if you feel like you struggle
to connect and make friends, one of the things you said right in the beginning is you said,
we're both, I think if I heard you, right, we're both very quirky people. Okay. I want
to encourage you now. I'm not saying like, I have quirky mannerisms too. Y'all. I think
things are really funny and silly that other people may never think is funny. Okay. So
I could say I'm a quirky person. And I'm not saying that's bad, but I feel like the enemy
is trying to get you to speak that over yourself, which I actually think you are a really amazing
person Ruth. Every time I've ever heard you share on here, like you just really are self-aware
and very willing to look at yourself and reflect on where do I need to change? Where do I need
to heal? Where do I need to grow? But I think it's also okay for you to give yourself permission
to be loved by people. Yeah. And not, not always get into, well, what did I, and I'm
not saying y'all, if we did something wrong, absolutely. We should own it. But there are
times where people are in these kinds of dynamics. And again, I would have to know more and more
about your story to really know for sure. But one of the first things when you first
started talking, I heard the Holy spirit say, ask her if she actually likes herself. And
as you started talking, I was like, well, how does that going to fit into here? But
right now it's coming up in my spirit again. So maybe way back when you started learning
how to put yourself into a certain mold, I'm quirky. I'm, you know, I have a friend of
mine. I've done a lot of heartwork with, she used to say over herself, I'm weird. I know
I'm weird. And I'm like, why are you saying that? Well, we uncovered that she got bullied
when she was younger. She got bullied because she liked to read totally different reason,
but there were other things going on where she was hurt and wounded before the bullying
ever began. And so then when the bullying happened, it fractured that other stuff even
more, y'all see how this happens. And so then she, they called her weird. And so then
she agreed, not knowing, not knowing any better little kids, we don't know. And so we agree
with this stuff and then we partner with it. And then we partner with that into adulthood
and it's impacting our relationships in the ways we're showing up. I actually have a feeling
that you're probably a pretty amazing friend, Ruth, but you've been believing the lie that
you're a quirky person and you struggle to make friends.
Yeah. But what you just said about your friends, like loving to read, being bullied because of
loving to read. That was me. Yeah. It probably didn't help too that I attended six or seven
schools between K through 12 because my dad was in the military. So yeah, so that's, that probably
didn't help, but I was bullied a lot for that sort of wanting to read or being smart in school.
And yeah, cause I was a person I could tell that the other students didn't understand what was
going on. And I understood the material and I would raise my hand and ask the questions. So
I'm like, I could just see that they did not understand. So that was trying to help them
because I was like, somebody else eventually would ask, let's just save the time. Now we just
ask, and then I don't be bullied for that. And for asking those questions.
Something I want to draw out here too, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to make sure
y'all hear something that's unfolding here. I want everyone to hear this. She was in how many
schools from K through 12? Six or seven schools. The longest I was ever at the same school was
from first grade through fifth grade. But I went to, I was, I, I went from fifth grade. I skipped
sixth grade, went to seventh grade, went to a different seventh grade, a different eighth grade,
a different ninth grade. And then I went to the same school for 10th through 12th grade,
which was a boarding school. Do y'all want to know why I'm having her talk about this?
This is really, really important.
y'all. I hope you get this. She's been believing the lie that she struggles to make friends.
Here's what I hear. She moved around so much that she didn't feel safe to be able to really connect
and then when she tried to connect people bullied her. That's what I'm hearing. Do y'all see the
difference here? Ruth, this might set you free, girl. If you grab onto this, you tried. I really
believe that you are probably trying to make friends but because you had to keep moving.
I mean, y'all, I'm an adult and I had to move four times in the last... well, I didn't have to. I
chose to because I was getting married and all the things and then we did move to pursue the pastoral
role down here, my husband, but here's the reality. Even as an adult, do y'all know how hard it's been
for me to move multiple times and leave people behind? It's heartbreaking.
So, I want to encourage you to pray and ask the Lord where you... He wants to help you converge,
okay? The adult Ruth with little girl Ruth and really ask the Lord to show you
and help you remember what it felt like when you had to move. Are there any feelings that you
even subconsciously turned off to protect yourself where you became quirky? You know
what I'm saying? Like where that version of you started to emerge or whatever out of what people
said or what you believed or whatever that looks like and let's just see what else God wants to do
here because I think He really wants to help you understand that you were never intended
to be a person that would struggle to make friends. I think you're friendly.
And I speak that over you. That Ruth A., I don't know what your full last name is, but you are a
friendly person and I want you to partner with that in the next several weeks to months ahead.
That you are a friendly person who makes friends easily. Okay? Okay. Thank you. You're so welcome.
Y'all, this is powerful stuff. Yes. Sweet and likable. I agree. Someone just said that about
you. Sweet and likable. And y'all, we don't have to be in person to know that about someone. Like
you can just pick up on vibes with people, right? Yeah. Thank you. You're so welcome. Yeah. God is
so good. I'm so, I just like, man, this kind of stuff, I just like linger for a minute to not
pass this by. If there's other people here, you don't have to necessarily go and unmute yourself,
but I want you to put it in the chat. Maybe you have struggled making friends and there's things
you've gone through. And this, this just right now is helping you see areas. Maybe you need to
lean into some healing for yourself. If you have felt like there was this label on you that you
couldn't make friends or that people didn't like you or whatever, just as you feel led, put that
stuff in the chat. Okay. Helen G would love to hear from you. Yeah. This is powerful. Everything
we just shared as a fellow immigrant, I completely resonate with everything that was shared. The
person that I, earlier you talked about layers of forgiveness. So I think that's where I am. I
think I've forgiven this person, but I, maybe there's another layer of it is a ministry leader
at my church, former church that I used to go to that was cruel to me, harsh to me in how he
treated me multiple times. And I even went to him one time, like the Bible says, go to the person,
tell them your, you know, beef, whatever. And so I did that. And I went to him and he was very
dismissive, like very, like talking to other people, walking by just completely didn't
acknowledge what I said, like, Hey, it hurt when you said this and did that. And that wasn't the
first time that he had done those things. And it happened multiple times and it happened,
even in front of people and those people never stood up for me. So I think that probably affects,
I'm in a new city now. I moved last year from, from San Diego to Temecula and still struggling
to, I'm making friends. I am. I am, but I think trusting church authority is still a little tough
for me. That's just one part of my experiences with the church authority. But yeah, so I don't
know. I feel like, okay, I forgave because you're supposed to, but like, there's memories that'll
come of how he was. And I'm like, gosh, I, that was just so cruel treatment towards me. I bumped
into him last year, right before I moved to St. High, gave a kind of a half hug. That was hard,
but yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Okay. My question for you is this,
have other men in your life before him
been dismissive towards you?
Yeah.
Okay.
So I believe that is why the enemy led this to happen.
You know, it's kind of like I was saying,
even to Ruth or when I was talking earlier,
what can happen is when we have these younger situations
where we were dismissed by someone at some point
or whatever the dynamic is,
and those wounds occur,
when another situation happens that's similar,
then the enemy's kind of trying to just reinforce
those lies we're believing,
and that's how strongholds begin to form, right?
Those strongholds and the brokenness in us
causes when we get around other people
that carry the same kind of things,
it causes those same types of spirits
to flare up around us.
Okay, it's not our fault,
but I'm just saying spiritually, dynamically,
that is what is happening, okay?
And so for me, I struggle,
like women that are older
and wanna just be an authority over me,
I also men, same thing,
old men that are really just power hungry,
those are people that when I've gone into churches,
even with Brian as the pastor
where that has been something
I've been up against quite a bit.
And what I've learned is that the more I heal,
the more those things lose power, okay?
Because it is the enemy working through those people.
The other thing is this,
it sounds like you're pretty,
not in a bad way,
but you're a strong woman.
And sometimes men, not all men,
make sure y'all hear this, not all men,
but some men struggle with that, okay?
And so wanna encourage you in all of this
that you would pray and forgive any of the men
who have dismissed you.
And do a separate forgiveness prayer sheet for each one.
That is gonna be your all's activation this week,
just so I don't forget to say that.
The forgiveness prayer sheets,
you can find those in your worksheets in the welcome area.
You can also find it in the week
that it correlates with in the course.
But y'all wanna do this and be specific, okay?
So don't do a general, I forgive,
I'm just gonna make up the name.
I forgive Mike for dismissing me.
You wanna be specific.
I forgive Mike for the pain that I felt
when he said this to me,
where you're being specific and you're forgiving them
for those things that they did and said,
or whatnot that harmed you.
But I would encourage you to also do it
for the other people that were also dismissive.
Because I think in the spirit,
those things are still linking together.
Yeah, I mean, it happened on,
it was a mission, not this particular person,
but I went on a mission trip.
This guy seemed interested.
We talked and talked.
Ever asked me about my life.
Asked me, it was like he was interested.
I thought he was based on all the questions
he was asking me about my family, myself, what I do.
And then when I got back and I got in touch with him
and we were on a group text,
the people on the mission trip were on this group text.
I texted him and the first thing he said was,
where'd you get my number?
How'd you get this number?
We were on a trip in a group text.
Everybody had a number.
You actually called me when we were in Thailand
on a mission related thing.
Yeah, and so again,
that is just something I would forgive that man.
People that are deceived do things
because they're deceived and they hurt people hurt people.
And so for whatever reason,
maybe it was when he's there, walls are down,
y'all are serving together.
Maybe he's following his feelings and emotions, who knows?
We could sit and try to figure it out,
but you know what's best is just to forgive him,
bless him in the Lord.
And now you're moving forward, but yeah, definitely.
And even I would encourage you
if there's anything even younger,
like anything when you're younger,
where there might've been,
even if the person didn't intend to dismiss you,
but you felt dismissed,
that's kind of what I'm talking about there as well.
But yeah, lean into that and feel free.
Ladies, I wanna always remind you,
as I give you all these things in coaching like this,
as you're processing, feel free to come into the group
and say, okay, as I'm processing this,
this is some other stuff that's coming up,
I'm not sure where to go with this,
or you can just share and I'll respond to you there, okay?
So good, Karen, Roa, go ahead.
Hey, so the question was, who do we need to forgive?
And Bethany, you were so great to respond to one of my posts
to point out and suggest going back to forgive my parents
for not allowing me to forgive them.
And I hadn't pulled that thread before.
And so I just wanna say thank you
for pointing that out as a possibility.
And it really has helped me pull the thread.
thread on the high school, not also.
And tonight when you described victim,
I realized that part of me has allowed,
oh, I wasn't taught to date,
I wasn't allowed to date to hold me back
from feeling that I could be successful at it now.
So like that little part is still a bit of a victim.
That's really powerful connection, Karen.
I wanna just help you just shift tonight as well.
God can redeem any time you feel was lost
because of those things.
Thank you.
And I know ladies, it can be really tough
when we feel like we've lost time,
whether it's because of someone else
or something that we didn't understand
because of dynamics that we were taught
and things that were said,
but literally I believe that God can help you
not only find your spirit mate
and accelerate the process for you,
but that he can help you step into something
that it feels like you never lost time.
You're just gonna feel like the blessing
of that coming together.
I really believe that for you.
And the time that you've been spending here in heart work,
like you've really been leaning into this process
and God is gonna honor that for you.
And I just want you to hear that.
Mark this night, I think just come back
and remember this night when you meet your spirit mate,
because I think it's gonna be a really incredible adventure.
Am I saying you're not gonna have to learn along the way?
No, I'm not saying that.
But we have some people,
y'all some people meet their spirit mate right away.
Other people need like have practice.
I don't wanna say need practice, but they have practice.
Some of us need to grow in certain areas
and learn how to set boundaries
and learn how to value ourselves
and all these different dynamics.
So remember, we don't get into comparison.
She's about to before long step into the next phase.
So I wanna make sure she hears this.
But yeah, so just keep leaning into that.
Let's see where else God wants to heal
regarding the school and the parents
and that feeling of, I even wanna dare I say,
the lack of freedom.
And let's see how God wants to come in
and redeem your timeline through these situations
in the days ahead.
And forgiving those people is gonna be key.
It is.
Yeah, I just never thought about forgiving my parents
because I have a really great relationship with my parents
and they're wonderful.
And that is something that they have expressed regretting
that they didn't allow us to date all of my siblings.
But I just never thought about like,
even though they regret it, I still need to release it.
Yeah, and here's a really, I love that you point that out.
Ladies, I want you to understand
you don't have to have bad parents
to have situations that cause you to struggle
where you need to forgive them, okay?
So, even myself as a parent,
like there's things regarding my spiritual daughters
that I just like was trying to protect them from.
We didn't want them on social media
and it actually like, it hurt them.
And we were trying to protect them, okay?
And so sometimes in this day and world,
like people are making decisions
and doing their best as parents.
That doesn't mean that we won't experience
something negative because of it.
Now, my girls are fine, but here's the reality.
They never learned to have healthy boundaries.
Their friends all had it.
There was a lot of rejection they felt and stuff.
Now they can work through that.
They know somebody who does healing work,
who helps, it's the Lord doing the healing,
but you know what I'm saying.
But we all can work through those things.
So I wanna encourage you, keep doing that.
I'm excited to see where you're gonna go
from here with this.
Thank you so much for sharing with us.
Thanks, Bethany.
You're welcome.
All right, our other Karen, hi.
Hi, how are you?
Good, how are you?
I'm doing well.
We were in a wonderful group.
I did, and this is my week of forgiveness.
So I actually got to really dig down deeply
and get entrenched in this this week.
But it seems like the one person that came up
was the person who sexually abused me
when I was four years old.
And he is no longer on this earth.
And so, you know, there were points throughout my life
where I might have to see him.
He was actually a coworker of my dad's.
And so there would be points where I'd have to see him
and there would always be little trigger points.
But, you know, that was a forgiveness.
But I really feel like the Holy Spirit showed me
that that was actually the beginning
of some of the different variations of who I became.
So when I started struggling.
dealing with eating disorders later on as a dancer
and just very, very a perfectionist,
you know, a desire to be perfect
and everything that all I think stemmed from that
as well as perhaps not seeing my own value
in relationships, you know,
where that has been really a big thing.
What's really kind of weird is I was actually talking
to somebody today and I got a really weird breakthrough.
My mom put me in ballet when I was three years old
and she put me in ballet because I'm like 5'9", I'm 5'10",
and she wanted me to have excellent posture.
And, but when I was talking, I said, you know,
my mom saw value and worth in me and wanting me to do that.
That was not a, it was something that was that way.
And somehow then this thing happened maybe a year later
and just totally crushed all of that.
And so anyway, that was the big thing.
And then, you know, obviously forgiving myself
for, you know, certain things as well.
Yeah, thank you for your courage.
Ladies, thank you all of you for your courage
and sharing and your vulnerability.
Karen, I wanna encourage you, you know,
sometimes people struggle because that person
is no longer alive in the forgiveness aspect
because it's like, well, they can never say they're sorry.
You know, and people really, even myself,
I, you know, that's something I still to this day,
my brothers have never officially said,
I'm so sorry for what we did.
That's tough.
But the reality is, is true forgiveness
isn't looking for something in return, okay?
So we can forgive without expecting
that I'm sorry in return.
I'm doing it because God asked me to do it
and because he gave it to me.
Jesus died and forgave me
and didn't expect anything in return.
So I can do the same.
And so we partner with him in that.
But as this has come up for you,
just wanna encourage you,
when you were talking about the, you know,
struggling with eating disorders and perfectionist,
I just wrote the word control.
And the reason I wrote that
is because people tend to do that kind of stuff
and resort to, you know, eating disorders
or that perfectionism, OCD stuff
when their life feels out of control.
And so they, that is kind of a form of them having control.
Even my oldest spiritual daughter,
she actually is thankfully getting a little better,
but we'll go through seasons
where she will just literally not eat
and struggles to eat.
And that was formed at a very,
probably one of the hardest moments of fragmentation
because of her parents.
And we saw this beginning to kind of morph and grow.
And so I know how real it is, you know,
from watching her firsthand really struggle
with even just putting the food to her mouth
and how hard that is.
I don't know what your struggle was like exactly,
but that inner like need for safety and control
to be in charge, you know, of your body, of yourself,
you know, when someone else has taken control
over your body in some form.
And so I just believe there might be additional healing
for you there regarding,
just what's coming up in my spirit is surrendering control
that you, you know, really that God wants to come in
and continue to show you how he wants to protect you.
And that even then,
and I know this can be a hard thing
for people to kind of absorb,
but like even then asking Jesus to show you
how he was protecting you, okay?
And that can be really hard
because we know those acts still happened to us.
But from my own experience, y'all, I did that.
I prayed and I asked Jesus to show me where he was
and what he wanted me to know while I was getting abused.
And it was a powerful, it was hard,
but it was powerful what I heard him say
and what I experienced and the freedom it brought to me.
And so I wanna encourage you,
if you feel willing to do that this week
and really just see what the Lord wants to show you
about that time and that season
and the healing that, and the comfort.
I heard him say comfort earlier too, I almost forgot.
The comfort that he wants to bring to four-year-old Karen.
Okay?
Thank you again for sharing.
So grateful to be here with all of you tonight.
It feels like a divine moment for all of you,
but for myself as well.
I appreciate you.
Erin, you're welcome.
Erin, go ahead.
Okay, hi. So I feel like I need to forgive my ex-fiance as well as myself and also I liked how
you said forgive all the characters in the story because it included, there was a lot of layers to
that situation and that's kind of what led me to do the heart work. So just touching on like when
we had to do our permission worksheet, like giving God permission, the response I got was
I've like never really like, I truly felt like God's presence and we had just talked about like
the gardens and everything and God, like I was looking at my garden and it was just like a bunch
of like burrows, essentially, like all these little mole hills and everything and it just
looked chaotic and then I literally felt God put his hand on my shoulder and be like, I see you've
had a lot of practice, like you know, like are you ready, like I think you're ready for the real
thing and like we just start walking and I feel like I have been in hiding for so, so, so long
and I'm realizing now that I was even in hiding in that relationship, it was just so painful.
I like attributed so many things to that relationship that when it fell apart, it just
felt like I, like I fell apart truly, but that is actually what brought me to God as well. So I
didn't actually start following Jesus till 2021 and so like everything came unraveled and
so many things changed, but I kind of had that like imposter syndrome too, where I'm like struggling
with all these new things, I'm struggling with new faith, I'm struggling with this new identity
and so yeah, it's just a lot, but I think that I really do need to forgive that person because
that was really messy and he moved on so quickly, like within a couple weeks he was already dating
and then within a couple months they were like moved in together, they got married, they've had
a baby and I'm like still just picking up the pieces and I feel a little bit like I had the
courage to call it off and I feel like I'm kind of broken. Yeah, I'm so sorry that that happened
and you know, I think it's important to point out while he moved on quickly and he may have all
those things, we really have no idea the condition of his soul and his heart, okay? And people,
remember people show their highlight reels on social media, okay? Most of the time, okay? And
not that that makes it any easier in the moment and as you're processing, but I do believe it
sounds like God was defending you and protecting you and preserving you for something greater and
again, I don't know all the ins and outs of that relationship, but something I did feel led to ask
you as you were sharing, you said that you actually have been in hiding a long time and you believe
that you were in hiding even when you went into that relationship and so this is my question,
when is the first time you felt like you went into hiding? Do you anything come to mind for you
about that? Probably, so probably like at a very young age, like five or six. My brother
took his life and I feel like that kind of just like changed our family dynamic a little bit and
yeah, I'm really sorry. Man, Erin, I'm so glad that you shared tonight. I think this is the
part of like, okay, so Lord help Erin know how to come out of hiding and so the tough thing is
the tough thing is and something else too and when I say this, I don't want you to feel funny
or weird, but I want you to understand even what your body's experiencing as you're sharing.
Can you tell that, you know, when that starts to well up in you when you started talking about
the hiding and even just now with your brother, how they're like almost sounded like it felt like
stopped up in your throat a little bit. Do you know what I'm talking about? I want you to know
that's really normal. Okay, so I don't know if you've ever had anybody ever tell you that
it's normal for your body to feel things when you're talking about deep trauma that you experienced
and everybody's body is different. So one of the things that used to happen to me is I used to
shake a lot when I would talk about really hard things until I healed.
more and more and more. And sometimes I can still feel it a
little bit on occasion depends on what I'm talking about. But
it does get better. But in like healing and talking about it is
probably going to be a key part for you because you have to
allow that stuff that's been stored up down in there out. You
have to let it out. And this is a safe place to let it out. And
even in phase two, y'all healing continues all throughout our
community and our program, but making sure you're in a safe
place to share at any time. And I do think there's probably some
more healing regarding your brother taking his life or that
whatever happened there. And those dynamics because you're
saying that's the first time you can recall kind of going into
hiding in different ways. And so in order for little Aaron to
come out of hiding, well, in order for adult Aaron to come
out of hiding, we have to help little Aaron come out of
hiding. And that comes through healing as well. Does that make
sense?
Yeah. And I guess like, I mean, that's when I think it started.
But I truly feel like I lost my brother twice, because when I
was young, I didn't understand the finality of it. And I
didn't really hit me until high school because I had some really
hard times in high school. And I trusted the wrong people. I and
so I just really wish I have like a sibling that I was
having a hard time with my parents, I just felt really
alone. And I wish I had like a sibling that I could have
confided in. So I felt like I lost him again.
So with that this week, I really want to encourage you to and I
know, I've just kind of said something similar, but I really
feel like it's important for you to, to ask, you know, Jesus,
even in the high school moments, like when you felt really alone,
like you had no one, I want you to ask Jesus where he was at,
like, I want you to ask him, like, help me to know where you
were at when I felt this way. And what do you want to tell me
about it? Ladies, get really comfortable with having
conversations with Jesus like this. I'm serious, it'll change
your life. It takes courage to ask it because sometimes we're
like, Oh, what's he gonna say? What's he gonna show me? But
y'all, it's, it's typically very good. Jesus says good things to
us, and he wants to help you heal. And so the layers of
healing that are needed, you're on a good path. And this is
moving you forward. And the things that are happening in the
revealings for healing that are coming up, these are all going
to kind of culminate and come together. And it's going to help
you step into the fullness of everything God has for you,
including the truth that God is going to place you in family.
Now you already have a family. But what I want you to understand
is the times where you felt really alone. Psalm 68, six says
this, God places the solitary and family. He promises to do
it. And you know that he also he like sticks up for the orphans
and the widows. And not that you were an orphan, but I want y'all
to grab on to this a little bit. I was adopted. Actually, what's
that I was adopted. I was in the foster system for a while. Okay,
so maybe there's a reason I just said all that to you, then
I had no clue about that aspect of your story, Aaron. And so in
that, I'm going to imagine that losing him also probably went
into other losses in your life. Y'all see again, how this links
together these things, the more we start to hear stories and
things people have been through. This is why it's so important
y'all are here. Everyone breathe, okay, because this
stuff can can be a lot, but I want you to feel the freedom in
what's happening here. Aaron, thank you for sharing and coming
out of hiding. You did an amazing job doing that tonight. I want
you to recognize that that's what you're doing right now.
You're coming out of hiding. You're allowing yourself to be
heard and seen and known. Even the hard things that you've been
through. It's not too much. I want you to hear that from me.
You're not too much. It's not too much. And we love you. And
we're really glad that you're here. Okay, you're welcome.
Y'all we're family here. If you didn't even know you wanted
family or needed family, guess what? We're choosing you anyway,
your family as soon as you come in the door. And it's just an
awesome opportunity to be here with all of you. I just keep
saying that tonight because I really mean it. Thank you, Aaron.
Michelle, go ahead.
Oh, you're muted if you're talking.
Sorry, I couldn't find the button. That's all right. Oh, my
goodness. Okay.
Wow. Okay, so the person, who do you need to forgive? One of my sisters. I want to say
back in the summer, I guess August, September-ish, we had a family meeting, there were three
of us, and the conversation was called RAW, R-A-W, and Uncut. And we had an opportunity
to share some things that were bothering us with one another. Not a bad thing, however,
was a good thing, was the first time I think we ever did that, and it was one of my younger
sisters. With that being said, when it got to be my turn, I heard things from my family
members, there were four of us all together, but I heard things from them that I had never
heard before, and it cut, it cut to the very core, to my core. And I do believe I took
offense after all of it was done and said. However, the conversation went, it was true,
there was a lot of truth about it, and I think it was the first time I ever saw myself the
way others see me. Some things were a little blurry, but for the most part, it was really
what has caused me to really begin to heal and come out of hiding. It took a while, it
took a while, but I could see the blind spot in that. I could see how I was able to see,
not then, but now, what they said about me, because at the moment that they said it, I
was so broken. I was broke. I was worse than broken, but I was really broke, because the
image, the way that I saw myself, was not the way they saw me as they spoke about me.
And so it was very hurtful. I still find myself a little, almost offended, or angry, I'm not
sure which word to use, when I have a conversation with my sister now, because of what was said
then. I'm in a different place, but there's still a little something, I don't know what
you call it. I think it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because it
led me, as I said, to come out of hiding, and the process of being healed. And so I'm
thankful for the raw Nankata, and as raw as it was, I'm growing, and I'm being set free
in a lot of other areas. I really am. So I praise God for that.
This is awesome. And so, y'all, I was very touched by that, but I want you all to know
I'm okay. I'm having this stuff still happening with my eyes. So if I have any tears that
come to my eyes, they do not stay in there remotely at all. So I want y'all to know I'm
okay. I don't want you to worry, because when I'm coaching, that's really important to me,
that y'all know I'm really good. And so, as you were talking, Michelle, one of the things
you said is, I think I took offense to that. And so if you're feeling some kind of emotion
when you're still thinking about that day where you feel pain, and or anger or any kind
of emotion that would be connected with offense, that's definitely a signal that there needs
to be forgiveness, and that really, that you need healing, like you need comfort. And I
appreciate what you're saying that that raw and uncut led you to healing and really seeing
yourself. But y'all that those kind of things can be very, very damaging if someone wasn't
willing to then go into healing and things like that. Right. And so in that, and you
might have already worked through this already, because of where you're at in the heart work,
but I just want to make sure if you haven't, that you do acknowledge the feelings that
you felt. And I did. Okay. Okay. I want to make sure because that's really, really important
in this process. And so praise God, you're going to forgive your sister, you're going
to release the offense. I've been reading the bait of Satan. And it's been really good.
It helps you let go of offense. If you're in the heart work, I'm not necessarily saying
read another book right now. But if y'all want to make a note, when you're done with
the heart work, that would be a great book to check out if you struggle with offense,
and unforgiveness and bitterness and all that kind of stuff. All right. And even when Helen
was sharing, it deals a lot with even people in leadership over us that have heard us okay.
And so it deals with all kinds of stuff. But that might be something for you to look into
again, after the heart work. Why? Because we need you to focus on the heart work right
now. Okay? The only book we want you to read during heart work is heart work. We want you
to do the videos.
in your Bible. Okay. That really is. We don't, and again, some of y'all do devotions and
that's awesome, but we just don't want you to overextend yourself. Okay. Because we want
you to be able to hear and focus on the, on the curriculum. Um, man, tonight has been
so good. Yes, Michelle. Thank you. It's been so, so good. I hope that y'all hear and see
the beauty of what God is doing. One of the things that's really important that I'm going
to pray and close this out, but this is, this is, uh, important, especially for the
level of vulnerability. Several of you have had tonight. Um, if after you share things
like that, if you struggle with shame, like, Oh my God, I should have never said that.
Okay. I want you to know that that is a normal thing that the enemy will try to bring to
your door, but you don't need to feel any shame or any condemnation or any guilt. After
I shared my testimony years ago, this used to happen a lot. I would have a really hard
time looking people in the eye. I'd feel really timid and whatnot. And I never understood
why that was happening until a certain minister, um, actually helped me to recognize that that
was shame showing up. I was feeling shame for what I had been through and embarrassment.
Um, and even when I knew like I was healed, sharing my testimony, especially the first
time I shared my testimony with men in the room about the sexual abuse, like literally
I like the rest of the night. I didn't like look at anybody. So again, I hope this is
helpful for y'all understand that you don't have to be ashamed about anything that you
share in here. It's a really brave and courageous, and I hope that you'll celebrate yourselves
tonight. And for those of you that are really still feeling this, I know I can tell Aaron,
you're still feeling this quite a bit. Anyone else? I encourage you just to maybe put on
some good soaking worship music tonight. If you don't know what that is, if you go
on YouTube and you type in, um, soaking worship music or something, it'll, it'll just bring
all kinds of stuff up. But Laura, Laura Woodley Osmond is like one of my favorites. And, uh,
she has this song, comfort song that I have listened to so many times. Um, and it's really,
really beautiful, but I think that will really minister to a lot of you and I hope that you
all have an amazing rest of your night. Um, let me pray for us and, um, Carolyn, I'm just
now seeing your message. I'm sorry. Okay. Let me make sure I read this. Okay. I'm really
sorry that you went through that. And definitely, definitely in that situation that you messaged
me about, you want to forgive your grandma, your ex, and anyone else that's connected
to those situations that you described to me. Okay. Uh, comfort song, Alina comfort
song by Laura Woodley Osmond, O S M A M. Father, thank you so much for your goodness, for your
grace. God, thank you for the revealings for healing that have happened. God, thank
you for the supernatural breakthroughs for discovery for, um, enlightenment. God, I thank
you that yes, Lord chains are breaking off of minds, off of hearts, off of spirits. God,
we thank you for helping the ladies, all of them to feel a little bit lighter tonight
in the days ahead. God, we ask you to come in and comfort. Your word says that you comfort
the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit. We thank you that you would help
them to step into forgiveness, to step into, um, the grace and the healing virtue that
you're releasing from heaven over them, um, and working through them in the days ahead.
And we just thank you God for continued acceleration and healing and their process in their heart
healing journeys and Jesus name. Amen. God bless you. I'll be seeing you all in the group.
Have a great night, everyone. Love y'all.