We are going to start our next practice tonight, which is, yeah, it's exciting, except that it is on forgiveness.

So, you know, like one, two, one, and it, in well, forgiveness, thank you, one person is excited.

Well, it is exciting. I think there's the reality that there's attention, even when we speak about forgiveness, particularly with those that we like or don't like.

So, I think just like with some of the other practices, this has the potential to hit us at our core, which is why I think more than ever we need to be settled in this space, just to receive what the Lord has for us tonight.

Two weeks ago, a lot of you know that we, as a country, saw a gunman shoot up a high school in Florida, and while there were a lot of different messages that kind of came out of that horrific tragedy,

there's one that has continued to surface as we've seen these tragedies happen all throughout our country over a period of time.

And that is this idea of forgiveness. I saw an interview from this young student who saw her friend get shot in front of her, and one of the things she declared to the interviewer was, that was actually right, I was questioning myself, did you feel that?

I was like, yeah, that's right. The interviewer was that she had forgiven or chosen to forgive the gunman who shot her friend.

And so, we find these messages of forgiveness for the shooter, forgiveness for his family, and forgiveness somehow just oozes up from this place of unspeakable evil and darkness, and it penetrates.

And it changes the way that we're viewing and experiencing what has taken place.

And forgiveness, that's a grandiose kind of expression of it, it comes in all shapes and sizes.

People need to be forgiven or experienced, the forgiving of someone else, if someone has lied about them, and maybe they mistailed on some promotion that they wanted or a parent lied to a kid, it was just small, it wasn't a big deal.

But forgiveness needs to take place in there, right? There's a spectrum when it comes to forgiveness.

And I imagine that none of us in this room are strangers to this concept.

Whatever your experience has been, your relational experience with forgiveness, you'll need it.

So it's part of what I would say the relational fabric of our lives, forgiveness.

If you actually want a dynamic, not a static and dead relationship with someone, you're going to have to at least at some level engage in the practice of forgiveness.

Would you agree? Yeah, which stinks.

So anyway, thankfully, as disciples of Jesus, we have a rabbi who talked about forgiveness a ton.

In fact, it was central to so much of the message that he spoke about.

So if you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 7.

And we're going to read just one example of forgiveness from Jesus in the Scriptures.

...