Is Forgiveness Always Required? (Parts 1-3)

In this episode, Brody shares real stories from his time in ministry about conflict, forgiveness, and finding peace with God. He reflects on Psalm 133:1 — “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity” — and what it really means when unity feels out of reach.

Even when others don’t forgive or agree, Brody reminds us that we can still be right with the Lord. Through personal experience and biblical truth, he offers encouragement for handling conflict with grace and walking in redemption.

Psalm 133:1

Redemption, Betrayal, and Responsibility in Ministry | No Sanity Stories

In this part two episode on forgiveness, Brody shares a personal story of receiving a threatening call about his daughter and how he chose to forgive the young man behind it—while still maintaining firm boundaries to protect his family.

Using powerful examples from Scripture like Moses, David, and Paul, Brody explores the tension between grace and lasting consequences. Forgiveness may come in a moment, but healing takes time—and it doesn’t always erase the impact of what’s been done.

If you’re struggling with forgiveness, bitterness, or boundaries, this episode offers hope and wisdom. 

Is Forgiveness Always Required? Pt. 1

Demas, Drifting, and How to Stay Faithful

How do you forgive someone while still protecting the people you love?

In this bonus episode, Brody clarifies the story behind a 3 a.m. call, a threatening voicemail, and the difficult choice to forgive a teen—while still protecting his daughters and community.

He digs deeper into why grace doesn’t erase consequences and what Scripture teaches about trust, safety, and redemption. If the last episode left you with questions, this one brings clarity and hope.

VIEW transcript | Is forgiveness always required?

It’s Saturday morning. It is 5:30 and I’m on the road driving through the Nantahala Gorge. And I thought, man, this will be a good time to record an NSR podcast. We’ve got several episodes that we’re working on right now that are not ready to be posted. So I told JB I’d get something up on this drive today. I’ve got to drive to Blacksburg, Virginia from Andrews, North Carolina. And so I’ve got a few hours here in the truck. Got on the road early and I thought, man, you know what? I’m gonna talk to the NSR crowd. And this morning while I’m driving and whatever time of day this is that you’re listening to this, I’m hoping it’s gonna be exactly what the Lord needed.

For you to hear. And so I’m gonna share a couple.

Stories and give some thoughts on what I think are important biblical application of the doctrinal idea the complexity of extending grace to others, and particularly the fact that sometimes when we go through conflict, we’re called upon by God to extend grace to someone else, whether that’s forgiveness or to seek reconciliation. But that when we do that, sometimes even once that has been done, the consequences of a particular situation may linger and may keep us from moving forward in that relationship in the same manner that we have in the past. I wanna share a few stories that are a little bit uncomfortable. I’m gonna be very cryptic and not give names and specific things that would give identities of people away just because these are sensitive issues. But I wanna talk about grace and conflict and consequences and the difficulties of relationships that we face sometimes in the Christian life. So with that, as an introduction this morning for me, literally in the darkness driving through the Nantahala Gorge, let me welcome you to this week’s episode of No Sanity Required.

Welcome to no Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

I was recently on the road and stopped and spent the night. It was me and a couple of other guys from Snowbird. We stopped and stayed with some friends.

Really close friends and ministry supporters.

And we’re sitting around the breakfast table before we got on the road to head on home. We had some, what it was, we had some meetings out in Raleigh, which is the state capital here in North Carolina for our list Snowbirders that don’t live in North Carolina. And by the time we got all done, it was pretty late up in the evening. And we stayed with some friends who.

We just wanted to see, wanted to visit.

Very dear, very close friends of ours. In my ministry life, they’ve been lifelong friends. I think we go back to the second year that Snowbird existed is when we met this family. We’re having just a conversation, sitting around drinking coffee, and the conversation turned to a situation that they were asking me about that had to do with an episode here on NSR from a few months back, where we talked about betrayal in ministry and the need for vigilance.

And.

Fortitude when it comes to dealing with certain situations. You might remember that episode. We’ll link it in the show notes. In the episode notes. But it goes back to that story, and that was back in March of this year, 2025. And it was called something like Redemption, Responsibility, let’s see, Betrayal, Redemption, and Responsibility in Ministry, I believe is what JB titled that. And I thought it was a really fitting title.

I believe it was March 3rd.

And like I said, we’ll link that episode in case you didn’t hear it, but it was a story of a situation that occurred here in ministry, and I got a lot of feedback from that story. It’s a pretty wild story. So we were just sharing some thoughts from that, sitting around drinking coffee, and it got me thinking about a few other difficult situations I’ve faced in ministry. And I wanna share a thought that I think could be a little bit controversial, but I really do believe it’s rooted in biblical truth. And you have to forgive maybe the sound quality because I’m literally, like I said, I’m driving, I’m just recording, and this is coming through the Bluetooth system in the truck. But the difficult situation that I’m describing is, what do you do when there’s conflict? I guess there’s two things I want to talk about. One is, What do you do when there’s conflict between two believers, you and another person that professes to be a Christ follower, and specifically a person who really does follow Jesus, and then you really do follow Jesus, and so you’ve got this commonality, this brotherhood, the Scripture speaks to the purity and the richness of the relationships that we have within the body of Christ.

And you come to these moments in your life where you’re at odds with another brother or sister and you can’t seem to work through that. You can’t seem to reconcile the relationship. There’s hurt or offense or something like that. There’s an offense in the relationship or there’s hurt in the relationship. There’s the sense of you feel betrayed or you feel stabbed in the back or something like that. And you’re trying to deal with that conflict and work through it, and you get to a point where you go, man, I don’t think we can get on the same page here. How do we wrestle with that as Christians? Because the Bible says a lot of things about this. Now, y’all, I don’t have notes in front of me. I don’t have my Bible open, so I’m gonna do everything from memory. And so some of the biblical references I’m gonna make in this conversation, I’m not gonna be able to give you references to, you can go look those up though. But the first thing that comes to my mind When Jesus says, if you’re at the altar, so the implication is you’re worshiping the Lord, you’re at church, you’re in a corporate worship gathering, something like that.

And you remember that there’s an offense that’s unsettled between you, there’s a conflict that needs to be resolved between you and a brother or sister in Christ. And Jesus says, Hey, you need to leave your your gift at the altar. You need to leave your gift at the altar. You need to stop this act of worship in a worship service setting. And you need to go to that brother or that sister. I mean, it’s a pretty intense. What he’s telling us to do is a pretty intense endeavor. I mean, he’s saying, stop what you’re doing, quit raising your hands and singing worship songs at church, you know? Or quit, get up from the altar, or put your money back in your pocket, instead of tithing or giving your offering to the church, you need to go deal with this situation. What he’s doing is he’s placing a priority on restoring fellowship between you and a brother or sister in Christ. This is very important to the Lord that we live in harmony. There are several other verses that speak to the unity and the harmony that God wants us to have. Psalm 133, I believe it’s Psalm 133 verse 1, that says, How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.

And then Jesus speaks to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says to the Ephesian church that we have this bond of the Spirit, so we’re bound together by the Spirit, and we have a unity of peace. We’re unified by peace. We live at peace. And the scripture says that as much.

As it’s possible, we’re to live at.

Peace with all people, especially those who are of the household of faith. And so you’ve got this glimpse into the heart of God, not a glimpse, we’ve got, I shouldn’t use that terminology, we’ve got clear teaching That unity within the body of Christ is a big deal to the Lord. When he says, As much as it’s possible, I think there’s, I don’t want to say there’s a provision or a loophole or something like that, but I think what we have is a recognition that, man, this is not always going to be easy. There’s times where, and I hope all of us have experienced this, where I’ve wronged somebody, maybe with my words, maybe with my actions, And I’ve had to go to that person and say to them, Hey, I’m sorry, I’ve wronged you and will you forgive me? And seek to restore that relationship. And sometimes I might have wronged somebody to the point that it’s not as easy as just saying, I’m sorry, will you forgive me? And they say, yeah, no problem, I forgive you. Let’s just put it behind us. There may be betrayal that takes some time, maybe a long time, maybe a little time to put that relationship back in order where I’ve done damage to that relationship.

I remember ruining a relationship one time that to this day, my heart is heavy over it because I don’t know the damage that was done. I just don’t know. And it was my fault. And what had happened is a young couple had come to Snowbird. This is early days of Snowbird. This is about 2003, 2004, somewhere in there.

And so Snowbird was about six or.

Seven years old, and there was a young lady that had come to Snowbird in like 1999 and her life had been deeply impacted by her week at Snowbird. It had really changed her life. And so a few years go by, she ends up in a relationship with a young man. I think they’re engaged to be married and they’re really wanting to serve the Lord and get involved at a small, and they’re at a small rural church. And just the demographic or the dynamic of kids they’re working with, these are poor kids that don’t have money. This church doesn’t have much money. Snowbird doesn’t have much money. But they reach out and they say, Hey, we want to bring these kids to camp, but we just can’t afford to pay the registration cost to bring them. And our policy back then was, and it’s very similar today, I’d say the policy today is something like, hey, we’ll figure it out, we’ll make it happen. Let’s do what we got to do. I don’t know what we got to do, but let’s do what we got to do to get y’all here. That was kind of the policy back then.

And really, it’s the heart of the ministry now as well.

But back then it maybe, I don’t want to say to a fault, but.

Maybe to a point of sometimes causing.

Some problems internally, we would just say yes to everybody. I mean, the early snobber days, there.

Were a lot of people that came.

And participated in camps and events we.

Were putting on and didn’t pay any.

Money and we were just trying to figure out how to cover the cost of food, you know, and everything was done back then in a very grassroots sort of way. And it looked a little different than it looks today. The mindset and heartbeat was the same, but definitely looked different. So anyway, I told this young lady, yeah, you go ahead, you bring these 10 kids and come on. And I said, something like, there’s some things that we might need to do to, to streamline yalls time here. I didn’t communicate this with her real well, but I basically said, y’all come on, and we’ll, we’ll give, give your students a really good week, a good weekend. It was a weekend event, and we’ll cut some costs where we can and make it affordable for us and y’all. And so they didn’t pay anything. I think they end up bringing, like, I think it was 12 students and then these two leaders. So 14 people and they weren’t able to pay anything. So one of the things we did is we didn’t take them down the river. It was a weekend where we were doing rafting trips and we took that off the table for them just because of the cost.

For those 14 kids, Back then, that would have cost us probably $250. And because we have to pay, we run our own trips, but we have to pay a fee to the boat.

Rental company whose equipment we use.

We lease, we use another company’s equipment. We don’t own our own rafting equipment. It’s way easier for us that way. We don’t have to store, you know, 20 big boats and trailers to haul them on and the paddles and gear and all that. Anyway, getting into the weeds there, but we don’t own that stuff. We lease it out. And between the fee that we pay per head for the boat leases and the cost of, like we have to pay to the Forest Service for running trips. It was like, here’s a place we can cut costs. And what we’ll do is we’ll spend.

The afternoon, this group of kids, we’ll.

Have a great time. We’ll just stay at camp. And we’ll, they can ride swings and zip lines and do stuff like that. And so that’s fine. But then what I did was we were in the, we were in the dining facility. We were in the metal building. If you’ve ever been to Snowbird, we were in the metal building. And a group of students were going rafting that a different, a different group of students. It was a church that was here. It was a few churches. So this group that was here that we were comping or given a free weekend to, they were one of maybe half a dozen groups that were here. So we had, we had probably a hundred students here that weekend. Back in the early days, that would have been a very big weekend for us. Maybe it was 80 kids, I don’t remember. But somewhere in the discussion with the person that was leading the rafting trip, They said they had accidentally talked to these 12 kids about the rafting trip and these kids were excited. And what I did that was stupid is I said, Hey, they’re not going rafting.

And my staff person looked at me like, what do you mean? And I sort of moved my mouth but didn’t say anything out loud. I said something like, you know, Hey, I made the hand motion of, Hey, no, just drop it. They’re not going rafting because they’re not paying. And, and we’re not taking them rafting. But the way I said it, I hope this story’s making sense. The way I said it, that, that young lady saw me say that I didn’t know she was standing right there. She, she was just a few feet away.

And the way I articulated that was.

Very insensitive, and it hurt her feelings really bad. It made her feel like a second class person or, you know, a charity case or something like that. So I felt. I was so terrible about it.

And I tried to apologize.

I tried to reconcile the hurt. I just said, I was so insensitive. I’m so sorry. I should not have said that that way. And she was so hurt because she.

Held, this breaks my heart 20 some years later.

She felt so loved by this ministry. It had deeply impacted her life. And one of the things that had had such a profound impact on her was she had, she felt like we cared about her. It didn’t have anything to do with what she brought to us. It was just, she came to us broken and, and we loved on her. And then that day, I think she felt a little bit like, oh, you mean if I don’t have money, I can’t afford your, you know, it just, it, it hurt her feelings. And I trust the Lord eventually, you know, brought some some peace and healing in her heart and mind. But she’s never been back to my knowledge. I’ve never, she never came back after that. And, and I remember talking to her fiance that was here, the male chaperone, and he was just like, man, I.

Hurt her feelings really bad.

And, you know, he said something like, she really loves this place. And now it’s, you know, she feels like, I don’t know, it just, it wasn’t good. And so I’m sure we’ve all had situations where you, you did something, said something, you hurt somebody, and then you couldn’t put that back together. You couldn’t restore that because that other person wouldn’t respond in a, in a way that would allow true and genuine reconciliation. And that’s, man, that’s really difficult. And for me, I, that’s the kind of thing that I, that just. It really does. And so, I wanna, before I move on to the next scenario and the next story, it’s a very heavy story. I wanna tell one or two more stories that are much, to me, I think, much heavier. Let me say this, the Bible gives us three different words or situations that we need to understand the definition of if we’re going to understand how to bring resolve to broken relationships. The first word is reconciliation. The second word is repentance. And the third word is forgiveness. Reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness. Now, that word repentance Another Bible word that I put maybe up under that as a sub of that word would be the word confession.

So repentance and/or confession. So like if we think of repentance as turning away from my sin and turning to the Lord and abandoning my sin, confession is a part of that. So the Bible teaches that I’m to confess my sins to the Lord or that I’m to confess my sin to a brother or sister. We’re to confess our sins to one another. But then the Bible also uses the word confession in other ways too. Like it’ll say that we’re to confess that Jesus is Lord. And so the word confession is sort of a subcategory or a compatible idea with the word repentance. And the word repentance is turning away from something The word confession is confessing or speaking truth about something. And so in this context, let’s start with that word. Let’s say that I’ve wronged a person. So go back to my story and I wronged that young lady. I confessed that wrong to her and I repented to her. What I said was, I wronged you. I’m sorry. And then the The thing that I said was, will you forgive me? Okay, another word that we wanna talk about in this three word set is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is when I extend grace to another person and I don’t hold their sin or their wrongdoing or their offense against them. So forgiveness would have been, if that young lady would have said, Hey, I know your heart. I trust your heart. I forgive you. Or maybe she wouldn’t have said that. Maybe she would have said, that was very hurtful, but I forgive you. And she would have released me from that wrongdoing, that sin I had committed against her. I hope that makes sense. And so forgiveness is when I extend grace to someone who has wronged me. Confessional repentance is when I ask for forgiveness. For you parents, here’s a good principle. If you’re parenting, especially younger children, you want to teach them to say, Will you forgive me? Not just to say, I’m sorry. So a common thing for us is when we When we wrong somebody, we say to them, Hey, I’m sorry. Now, that’s important. And there’s a time where I need to say, I’m sorry, but for a small child, I want to teach them. Saying I’m sorry is not like a magical word. It’s not an anecdote where I can go, well, I said, I’m sorry, so everything’s okay.

But I ask for forgiveness. I’m asking that person to put this, Hey, I want to do my part to put this relationship Right, to put it back in order, to put it back to a place of peaceful fellowship. And so I’m asking for forgiveness where if I say, I’m sorry, that’s part of it. And I do need to say that. So what we tried to teach our kids when they were younger is we would, you know, when we were raising small children, we would say, I want you to say, I’m sorry, will you forgive me? Something to that effect. I’m sorry. I’ve wronged you, will you forgive me? And so forgiveness and repentance go hand in hand. But here’s the caveat. Unless both of those things happen, I cannot get that third word, that other word, which is reconciliation. So I can ask for forgiveness and seek forgiveness. In other words, I can repent. I can practice repentance and confession to the person I’ve wronged. And then I can then, as the person who’s been wronged, I can extend grace and forgiveness. And I can say, Hey man, you know what? I forgive you. I forgive you.

Let’s put it behind us. And if I do that, if those two parties, if one person asks forgiveness and seeks forgiveness, forgiveness and is repentant and the other person extends that forgiveness. Now what we’ve got is reconciliation. We’ve reconciled the relationship. And sometimes both parties have committed wrong, right? I mean, there’s a principle that’s a pretty important principle, which is a lot of times two people have sinned against one another, and when that happens, and they both come to each other and they have a conversation and they put that, they put that relationship back together. I hope I’m not, I hope I’m.

Not just droning on here.

I hope this is helpful. I feel like I’m rambling. You know, I don’t know if it’s driving down the road like this is a little bit harder to stay on task, but hopefully that’s making sense. So, Repentance and forgiveness, repentance slash confession and forgiveness, that’s one part of, that’s two parts of reconciliation that have to come together. But now the third, that first or third word, however, whatever order I said that in to begin with, reconciliation, that other piece, that requires both parties for reconciliation to occur. Reconciliation means we’ve brought the relationship back into alignment. So this would be when a husband and wife have said ugly things to each other. They sit down and have a conversation and they apologize to one another. That apology that I’m sorry, will you forgive me? And then it’s grace extended. Yes, I forgive you. I accept that apology. I love you. It’s okay. We can move forward. And then saying, you know, maybe, and I wronged you as well, so I’m sorry, will you forgive me? And that other partner saying, Yes, I forgive you as well, let’s move forward. So now we’ve got reconciliation. And the Bible says that we are ministers of reconciliation.

So reconciliation should be something that occurs in the life of a believer as just a natural outworking of the Holy Spirit in my life. So reconciliation is when two people that have wronged one another work to restore that fellowship. And reconciliation can occur between a husband and wife. It can occur between two friends. It can occur between two strangers. I mean, it can be two strangers who have wronged each other but want to put things back in order. It’s reconciliation. It’s something that occurs when two people have wronged each other or one person has wronged the other one or both have wronged each other. And they work to restore that relationship, to put it back in place. picture The I always imagine is if you’ve got a joint that’s dislocated, imagine your shoulder popped out, your knee popped out, and you’ve got to put that joint back in place. You’ve got to reduce that dislocation. You’ve got to put it back in order. And sometimes there’s some soreness. I’ve got a knee that if I’m not careful, it’ll pop out. I mean, it’ll literally pop out of the joint. And it is so painful. And I work to put that knee back in place by just straightening my leg out real aggressively.

I just kind of. I just kind of stick my foot forward and pop my leg, just kind of snap my leg straight, and it’ll put it back in place. And it’s excruciating, but the knee being out of joint is more painful than putting the knee back in joint. But after I do that, it’s sore for a day or two. There’s some soreness, you know, there’s a need for some healing. And so reconciliation is putting that thing that’s disjointed back in place so healing can begin. And the main thing when it comes to relationships, the main reconciliation that we’re constantly working towards is reconciliation with the Lord. And so God never has to apologize to me. God never has to repent to me. God never has to confess sin to me, but I have to do those things to the Lord. And what I know is that when I do that, the Bible says he is faithful, 1 John 1:9, he’s faithful and just to forgive me and to put that relationship back in order. So I wanna lay that groundwork for the next part of the conversation, the rest of this conversation, Which the groundwork is we are to strive to achieve and attain and keep reconciliation with other believers as much as it is possible.

Live at peace with all men, especially brothers and sisters in Christ. He says, especially those who are the household of faith. So I hope that that little conversation there makes sense. Reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness. Now, I can extend forgiveness to somebody who doesn’t ask for it, but that doesn’t bring reconciliation about. So let me give you an example of that. You’re a young man or young woman who’s abused or abandoned or hurt by your father, and years go by and your father dies and you go through life, Terry in the pain of the abuse maybe that he did to you when you were young. You can forgive him and by doing that, you’re not okaying or condoning what he did. You’re just releasing him into the hands of God. You’re saying, this is the Lord’s situation to deal with. I’m gonna leave this in the Lord’s hands. I’m gonna choose to live as someone who forgives. And what that does is it releases you from a prison of bitterness and resentment and hatefulness. I hope that makes sense. So another example of this would be when you see someone who, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but a person, they go up on stage, they go up on the, like they’re in court, situation where someone’s in court, so that maybe they don’t go up on the stand, maybe that, but they get to give what’s called a witness impact statement.

And I heard this recently, there was a man, he was a godly man, and his daughter had been murdered. And when the court date came and the trial came, and just before the judge was, I believe it was right before the judge was going to sentence, the man who had murdered this brother’s daughter, the family members of the young lady who was murdered, they got to go up and give what’s called witness impact statements. And the idea is that this would influence or give impact maybe to the sentencing process. And so this father, there was like, I don’t remember what the family member was before the father went up, but it was a brother, sister. I don’t remember a friend. Somebody goes up and they basically say to this murderer, I hate you. You’ve stolen something from us that we can never get back. I hope that you rot in prison. You know, I hope that you get what you deserve. One day, God’s going to judge you for this. And they were saying things that I mean, I could identify with, you know, I can relate to. I understand that as a dad, as a father myself, I felt that as a brother, as a friend, as a husband, you know, I felt it.

But then the father goes up there. Here, this man who’s so broken, his daughter’s been taken from him. You know, this young 20 year old lady, young lady has been murdered senselessly. By a stranger who saw her and was overtaken by dark sociopathic, psychopathic urges, and he assaulted her and killed her. And the father says to this man, you’ve broken our hearts. You’ve ripped our hearts out of our chest. You’ve taken something from us that can never be given back in this life. But I choose to forgive you and I choose to extend grace to you. I’m not going to hold resentment and anger and bitterness. It was a powerful statement the Father was making. And then he said why he was able to do that. He said, God has forgiven me and I pray that one day you might seek forgiveness from the Lord and that that one day you might be brought into a relationship with the Lord. He basically extended grace. It reminded me of Jesus on the cross saying, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. So the principle there is you can extend forgiveness to somebody that’s not asking you for it.

And what that can do is that can reconcile you to God. You can find peace with God, even though that relationship may not be totally restored and reconciled. So then that same thing kind of works the other way where you can ask for forgiveness, you can apologize, you can confess your sin to another person, and they might not extend grace to you. They might not forgive you. That man, that’s hard. That’s very difficult. That’s one that That goes back to that story I told where that young lady, I had wounded and hurt her to the point she wasn’t able to extend forgiveness to me. And I understood it, like I got it, you know, and you can ask for forgiveness to a person that doesn’t extend grace to you. I feel for someone who can’t forgive someone else because your bitterness or your resentment or your lack of forgiveness sort of becomes this prison that you live in. We’ve all, I mean, I’ll be honest, we all hold grudges or hold on to hurt that’s been done to us, and it becomes a prison. I know a person who she was sexually abused as a young lady, and this is an older woman now.

I’ll give you a comparison of two people. One older lady, a dear sister in Christ, who is a faithful listener to this to no sanity required podcast and she probably knows who she is. I go to church with this with this wonderful lady. I love her so much. She’s she’s got the joy of the Lord in her life. She I’ve talked about her on NSR before, but I’m not going to say her name on this episode because it’s very sensitive, but she was a victim of abuse and And she’s given that to the Lord and she didn’t get saved until she was about 70. She didn’t come to faith in Jesus until she’s about 70 years old. But one of the things she’s worked through and continues to work through is forgiving someone for abuse and pain and trauma that they caused her so many decades ago, but she’s choosing not to live in that bitterness. Even though that person is no longer alive, she can’t restore or reconcile that relationship, but she’s released that person. She’s forgiven them. And it’s not that she’s forgiven them in the sense that, and this is what I want to get to, and this has gone long, so I’m gonna have to do a second episode.

We’ll do a part two here.

But forgiving that person doesn’t mean that she says, oh, it’s okay, man, no hard feelings. Now there are hard feelings, there’s hurtful feelings, she lives with pain, but she’s choosing not to live in a prison of bitterness. And the way she’s out from under that is by releasing that person, by forgiving them, even though they’re not here to ask for it. There’s another person about the same age. Matter of fact, they might be the exact same age. Another person in her 70s that the little and I’ve counseled, worked with, And she just lives with bitterness and brokenness. She is one of the most angry, bitter, unhappy, unjoyful people I know. And it all goes back to abuse and pain that was caused to her when she was a little girl and a young lady. From the time she was maybe eight or nine years old, I think up until she was maybe a young teenager, you know, 13, maybe something like that. I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. I don’t know the age window, but for several years, there was some severe abuse that occurred, and she carries the pain. My heart breaks for her because that, that damages a person, that trauma, that sexual trauma, that physical trauma, the emotional, psychological trauma a person goes through when they’re hurt like that.

They carry it with them for life, you know, and, and, and, and so she’s just an angry, hurt, bitter person. And a study of these two women, I see that they both were wronged. They both were hurt. They both were damaged. But one of them lives with the joy of the Lord as her strength. And every time I see her, she’s smiling. She calls me big guy, and she comes over and gives me a hug and. And she loves little and she loves our children and she’s the sweetest sister in Christ. And she’s enjoying the season of her life that she’s in because of the joy she has in Christ. And I’m convinced one of the things that gives her that joy is that she’s free from bitterness. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to deal with it, fight it every day. Contend with it. Her joy is hard-fought joy every day because of it, but she lives with that joy. The other woman that I mentioned, not so. She’s angry. Every time I see her, there’s a scowl on her face. There’s a bitterness in her heart that just comes through. And so I’ve used those two stories to say, and I still haven’t gotten to the one story that I’m going to tell.

I think I’m going to have to push it to the next episode, part two. This is taking way longer than I thought it was gonna take, but that’s okay. I’m just driving and talking. Hopefully you’re still hanging with me. But I think we can all examine our hearts and see, man, I’ve got some bitterness towards somebody. I’ll just be honest with y’all. Hopefully I’m always just honest with y’all. That’s a figure of speech when I say that. I’m not implying that I haven’t been honest with you. But I wanna share something here at the end of this episode that’s that’s real vulnerable for me. And that is that I fight and deal with bitterness. I mean, I have to fight it all the time towards my biological father and towards his father, my, my grandfather, because of just broken relationships in our home. And, and I’m going to get real raw and real here and, and, and share a personal story of a struggle that I have with bitterness. And some of y’all might have heard me reference this before, but my biological grandfather on my dad’s side, I love him, loved him. He’s been dead for 12 years now.

He died in 2013, and I loved him. He was a godly man. I believe he loved the Lord, but I believe he allowed bitterness to creep into our family And there are broken relationships that can never be put right, can never be reconciled because of his patriarchal headship in our family, his leadership. And I would even say because of his failure and shortcomings. Now, hear me out, because I’m gonna have family members that listen to this. I don’t have a lot of family members that listen to NSR, but I do have some. And I have one cousin and maybe some of his kids that listen to this and I want them to hear my heart in this. I am not bitter towards my grandfather. I love him, loved him, loved what he stood for as a minister of the gospel. He preached the gospel. He was well known in Western North Carolina as a faithful preacher of the gospel of Jesus. He pastored churches in the Western in the mountains of North Carolina for his whole life. And there’s a lot of things I admire and respect about him. But there was broken relationships in our family that I believe he caused.

And what happened is my grandmother died when I was a young boy. I was about 11 or 12 years old. I believe I was 12 years old.

And she died.

And when he remarried, there was a lot of pain caused through his second marriage. And I’m not saying who was right and who was wrong, ’cause I was just a kid, but I know that my father and his sisters experienced a lot of pain and broken relationship.

Over this.

And so that hurts me to know. But then here’s where it became very personal for me. When I became a grown man and I began to work in ministry full time and I became a preacher and I started to preach and teach the word of God and we started to lead ministry events and Snowbird started to get footing. He did not agree with the way we did ministry. And we had conversation about this, was very brief. And then he expressed this to some other people that in the family that shared it with me. But he did not agree with the way we do ministry at Snowbird. He disagreed with our style of music. He came from an old school background of mountain preachers, sort of independent, or not independent, but like fundamentalist background where at church you should not use secular, quote unquote secular instruments. You should preach in a suit. There’s a certain order to the worship service. And so he did not agree with the way that we led worship and sung songs and the skits and humor that we might use, things like that. It was just a different opinion on how things ought to be done.

But he so disagreed with it that he never heard me preach except one time, and that was when my father died. My father’s father, this man that I’m talking about, he came to the funeral, and that’s the only time he ever heard me preach. And he voiced an offense at the way I preached my father’s funeral. I preached Romans 8:28-29-30, that all things work together for good. And I talked about in that passage, the Bible says that God’s plan and purpose for us in saving us is to conform us to the image of Christ. And I said, My earthly father for all of his struggles, that’s a different conversation that I’ve shared here before. For all of his struggles in the end of his life, he desired to be conformed to the image of Christ. And his funeral message, I said, he’s now conformed to the image of Christ. But in that conversation, in that message, I used the word, but I said something about my dad whipping my butt one time when I was a kid. And my grandfather got offended because I used the word, but, B-U-T-T in a sermon. And he didn’t like that.

And I thought, man, what a sad thing that here we’re trying to honor a man who’s died, my father and this man’s son, my grandfather’s son, and all he took away was he’s offended that I said, but. And, man, there was friction between us. There was beef between us that I never understood. I just didn’t understand it. And to be honest, to this day, I don’t. And I’ll run into people who will say, your granddad. Oh, you’re, you’re so and so’s grandson. And, man, he was a Godly man. He was the greatest preacher. He, he was the great influence in my life, and. People will talk about him with admiration and reverence. And I’ve gotten to a point in my life where that doesn’t offend me. I’m thankful God used him. Snowbird was 16, let’s see, 16 years old when he died. Now, the last few years of his life, he had dementia. And so, I would say for the first about 13 years of Snowbird’s ministry, he was, especially the first 10 years, he was still speaking some and he had retired from pastoring, but he was still doing ministry in different capacities. And he never came and heard me preach, he never supported us in any way, he never gave any sort of credence or credibility to our ministry.

And to the contrary, he only said, condescending or negative things. And I preached one time at a preached two, three times, three times at events within five miles of his house here in Western North Carolina. He, I lived about 70 miles from him. So Snowbird’s campus was about 70 miles away. And I lived about 70 miles from him, but I preached at an event in Haywood County, North Carolina. Three separate occasions. Two of those were at Lake Junaluska Assembly, which is a big camp and conference center owned by the Methodists denomination. And at one of those, there was about 2000 people there and he didn’t come to it. And another time, and this was where, this was the one I really don’t understand. I spoke, there was a, there was a, the Haywood County Association of churches put on an annual event. And at this particular event, I spoke on one of the nights. It was a, I think it was a three night event. And they did it at the, at the Ag Center. Was that, it was kind of, it was not an outdoor event, but it was at the Ag Center. So where they do rodeos and cattle sales and stuff like that, cattle shows, it was there in that Arena.

And I preached and he didn’t come and there was a lot of other preachers there, pastors from his association didn’t come. He didn’t come hear me. And then the last thing, and I’m not, please hear me, y’all. I’ll get around to the positive and all this. I’m not bitter angry. I’m not whining, complaining. I’m not playing the victim. I just want to make a point here. The other thing was, this is the one that I have resentment that I have to battle. And I really have to fight for. After my dad died, my brother, who I love so much and who I’m so close with, he got married. And my dad was dead when my brother got married. And my brother’s marriage took place at Snowbird. We got him married up. We got him hitched up to his awesome wife. And they’re doing great. And now, you know, almost 20 years later, they’ve been married. 18 years and the Lord has blessed them and they’re faithful people. They love Jesus. They serve the Lord with, like all of us, they’re not perfect. Serve the Lord to the best of their ability. They’re faithful to their sons and raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

They fight for their marriage and man, it’s just an honor to know my brother and his wife. When they got married, my grandfather did not come to that wedding ceremony. Now, I would add, me and my brother are the only two namesakes in his family. So my grandfather had one son, that was my dad, who had two sons, that’s me and my brother. My grandfather had three daughters, so my dad’s three sisters. And They all had sons who were just as much grandsons to that man as I am. But the point I’m making is me and my brother are the only ones that have his last name.

We’re Holloways.

And he did not come to my brother’s wedding just a few miles down the road. Now, my maternal grandfather was there, and that’s a different conversation. I’m going to do an episode where I tell his story sometime. Because it’s the opposite. He was not a Christ follower my whole life. My mama prayed for him and we got to see him turn to the Lord late in life and begin to follow Jesus. But this granddad, my paternal grandfather, didn’t come to my brother’s wedding. And y’all, I’m gonna tell you, I have struggled with bitterness and resentment over that because I love my brother so much. And isn’t that how it works? You can endure offense or pain or, you know, people can talk ugly about me. It don’t bother me. But if somebody says something ugly about somebody I love or care about, that fires me up. You know, you get fighting mad. And so it hurt me for my brother. So anyway, that’s a, man, that’s a long story I just told, but I’m telling it all to say I love my grandfather. I I can genuinely say I don’t hold offense or grudge against him.

He’s gone to be with the Lord. And I want to focus on the things he did well because I’ll tell you this about him. He was somebody who would witness and share the gospel with anybody. He didn’t go anywhere that he didn’t share the gospel. And when he preached, he wasn’t expositor. He wasn’t an expositor. He was kind of the old school form of mountain preachers is that they get up and kind of give three points and and just preach topical sermons, you know, but he was faithful. He wasn’t unfaithful to the scripture, he preached it faithfully. And so I wrestle with that, and here’s what I’ve chosen to do. I forgive him, and then I recognize that there’s some things that he would need to forgive me for if he was here, and I refuse to live in bitterness over that relationship. But I know that. That I have aunts and cousins that were hurt by him. And I know that one day the Lord will reconcile those relationships when we’re. When we’re with the Lord. And so let me. Let me wrap this episode up here. Here’s how I want to wrap it up.

Okay? So if you’re still with me, because I sure feel like I’ve rambled, if you’re still with me, let me. I can wrap all of this up. This is interesting, by the way. I’m driving past the exit where my granddad lived, but I haven’t been to his. You know, it’s been a long time, but I’m driving past that exit right now, which is also the exit where I preached at those three events at those two different venues. I’m driving past the lake. Junaluska exit right now, so that’s. That’s. That’s wild. But anyway, if you’re still with me, I hope you are, I can wrap all of this up really, really, really quickly. And I think I can put it into a concise summary that’ll make it all make sense. You can experience reconciliation to God when fellowship is broken with another believer that leads to your bitterness or resentment where you don’t have the right heart or attitude before the Lord. You can make things right with God, even if you can’t make things right with that other person. So someone who’s died and gone on that. That. That did you wrong and you can’t reconcile that relationship, you can give that to the hands of the Lord and refuse to live with bitterness or resentment, and you can be reconciled to God.

You can be reconciled to another. Person if you’re both willing to work towards that reconciliation. I forgive you, you forgive me. Let’s live at peace. Let’s put this behind us. Let’s move forward. And some of you listening to this episode might need to go have a conversation with somebody. It’s time to reconcile that broken relationship. There might be a dad or a granddad, and you need to go apologize for the way you wronged your son or daughter. When you should have been an example to them, there might be a lady who is listening to this that needs to go to her husband and say, Hey, I’m sorry I’ve wronged you. My attitude’s been wrong. There might be a man that’s listening to this that needs to go to his wife and say, Hey, I’ve not been caring and loving and kind. I’m sorry. There might be friendships or that are broken. There might be someone in your church and you’re worshiping together on a Sunday and you need to make this thing right. Work towards reconciliation. The Bible says we are ministers of reconciliation. And so in order for people to be reconciled to God, there is a need for both of us to be willing to sit down at the table and have conversations that lead to that reconciliation.

But you can forgive somebody even if they don’t seek it. And then here’s the other thing. You can ask for forgiveness. You can confess your sin to someone else. You can repent. You can apologize. And they may choose to hold a grudge and not forgive you. But that ain’t on you. That’s between them and the Lord. And you can be reconciled to God by confessing that. You can live in freedom, even though that person holds a grudge against you. I know for a fact of a few people that are holding grudges against me, that I wish we could reconcile it. And I’ve asked for forgiveness. And I know some people that are holding grudges against me, and I’m not willing to ask for forgiveness because to do so. Let me think how to say this. They’re, they’re holding something against me that I believe for me to ask for forgiveness would be to admit to something that I believe the Lord would, would. I believe I’ve acted in a way that is in alignment with the leadership of the Holy Spirit. And, and there’s not an admission of wrongdoing that I need to make because I need to be.

I need to live with conviction over that decision, if that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. I’m speaking a little bit cryptically there. But there may be a time where someone wants you to apologize, and to apologize would be to admit that something is wrong that is not wrong, and you don’t need to do that. But as much as it is possible to live at peace with people, and there’s other people, that I’ve asked forgiveness of, and they can’t extend it, they’re too bitter, or whatever that might be. So reconciliation is the ministry of every believer. We need to strive towards it and know that we can be reconciled to God, and sometimes it’s difficult to be reconciled to another believer. In the next episode, I’ll get into grace extended, even though the consequences of our actions might linger, and that there might be something where you have to live in your life for a long period of time in broken fellowship with somebody because you have what someone might call irreconcilable differences. We can’t get past this. I love the Lord, this other person loves the Lord. We just don’t know how to move forward.

And I share situations like that. But in this episode, I hope that it shed some light on how you can be a person who lives with confession and repentance. You can be a person who extends grace and forgiveness, and we can all strive to be people who live at reconciliation with the Lord. And this is all just real fresh to me right now because there’s a relationship in my life where I don’t know how to move forward. There’s actually a few relationships in my life. I don’t know how to move forward and seek reconciliation. I don’t know what that looks like. I’ve tried and I’ve tried to extend the olive branch. And it’s not been received. And that’s hard, man. It’s hard. And I know that part of why it’s not been received is because I’ve caused hurt to this person. And how do I seek forgiveness from someone who feels like I’ve hurt? You know, it’s tough, man. So some of you might be in a situation like that where it’s not as simple as just say, I’m sorry, and then say, I forgive you, and let’s move on. Sometimes it’s more complicated than that.

We’ll get into that in the next episode. That might be helpful for someone who’s dealing with conflict that, man, how do you move forward and you’re having a hard time moving forward? And we’ll get into some more stories. That’s where I’ll get into a couple of pretty hard, intense stories that are heavy. But in the meantime, let’s be people who have ministries of reconciliation who strive to show grace and have the mind and attitude and heart of Christ towards others. Do the best we can. Hope you’re still with me after my rambling driving down the road for almost an hour here. I hope it, I hope it’s been beneficial and helpful and we’ll see you on the next episode of no Sanity Required.

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