Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, my friends, welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. This year for Come Follow Me, John and I are taking on an individual question for each week’s lesson.

Hank Smith: 00:11 The lesson this week is the last few chapters of Genesis, John, where Joseph of Egypt does something I think is absolutely incredible and I’m going to take him that he’s genuine and sincere here. He forgives his brothers for selling him so long ago. It’s almost as if he’s like, “Hey, come on. It’s all right. Who hasn’t sold a sibling, right? We all make mistakes.”

Hank Smith: 00:38 I have had students and friends and even my own family, my own self say through the years, how do you forgive? How do you forgive these? I’m not talking about little things. My roommate drank my milk, right? You’ve got to be able to get past things like that. But sometimes people do things that have lasting impact, like Joseph and his brothers, right? This is serious impact on the rest of your life and he says, “I forgive you.”

Hank Smith: 01:09 So John, I’m going to throw this right in your lap. How do you counsel others to forgive these major offenses that come in life?

John Bytheway: 01:18 Well, Hank you’ll forgive me if I don’t answer that.

Hank Smith: 01:21 Yes. Okay. You’ll have to forgive me for I don’t know the answer.

John Bytheway: 01:27 We can come to a realization, which is a good thing, that I can’t do this without God.

Hank Smith: 01:33 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:33 I don’t have the strength in me to offer this forgiveness. I’m going to have to get outside help and maybe that’s a good thing to realize that. There’s so many verses of scripture that we kind of intellectually understand we have to forgive. I will forgive, whom I’ll forgive, of you it is required to forgive all men. Or in the Lord’s prayer: Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors or those who sin against us.

John Bytheway: 01:56 But don’t you think that’s true that there are some, where I think I’m going to need God’s help to be able to let go of this and to move on or to just say, you take the justice and mercy, and that’s the way I like to look at it. There’s still going to be justice and mercy, but I’m going to put that into the hands of God and let him do it and I’ve got to move forward.

Hank Smith: 02:17 I think that’s wise, that at some point you have to say, I’m turning this over to you. I’m going to have closure on this. And then you keep returning to that closure because it’s going to come back to your mind. And then you say, well, I handed this over. I handed this over to the Lord a long time ago. And you can keep coming back to that moment of saying, I made a decision. Right.

Hank Smith: 02:39 I remember Elder Holland says, sometimes you have to forgive and then forgive again, and then forgive again. So, I think the Lord knows this is going to be a process for us. I don’t think he’s expecting everything happen right now.

John Bytheway: 02:57 Yeah. I don’t think it’s instantaneous. I think a lot of us will struggle with that and that’s part of the growth process, perhaps. We finally get to that point where we say, you know what? I’ve got to turn this over to God because I can’t do it myself. Or, I need his help to be able to forgive because I don’t have the strength in me, so that’s probably a good thing.

Hank Smith: 03:19 In Matthew 18, the Savior talks about a man who was forgiven of a big, big debt; 10,000 talent debt, an incredible amount. Billions of dollars. Then the man went out and sought one of his fellow servants who owed him a little bit of money, a couple thousand dollars.

John Bytheway: 03:36 Like a hundred pence or something

Hank Smith: 03:39 He’s really mad and he takes him by the throat. He lays hands on him and he says, “Give me what you owe.” And the guy says, “I can’t do it. Please forgive me.” And the guy says, “I’m going to put you…’ He puts him in prison and then the guy who forgave him of the big debt, he calls him back in and he says, “Oh, that wicked servant. I forgave thee, all that debt because thou desirest me. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant? Even as I had pity on thee.”

Hank Smith: 04:08 So there is a moment where the Lord says, look, when I forgive you, I expect you to one, to be thankful for that. Two, learn from me. Learn how quick I am to forgive. I want you to try to become more like me. I want you to practice being like me and that you be quick to forgive.

Hank Smith: 04:33 We both know Chris Williams, that incredible story of his family. Members of his family being killed by a drunk driver and his decision. He said, I had to make to forgive, or this was going to eat me alive. It was going to destroy my life if I couldn’t forgive.

Hank Smith: 04:52 That’s part of this idea of, I’ve got to try this. And one thing I’ve learned from that parable is don’t go seek out these people and seek revenge. Don’t stalk them on Facebook. Don’t stalk them online. Don’t go seek them out. That’s part of forgiveness is I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m not trying to seek you out. Maybe it hasn’t happened in my heart yet, but my actions are, I’m kind of staying away. Does that make sense? I’m not seeking you out to hurt you.

John Bytheway: 05:23 It’s kind of just an old saying, I guess. But when we refuse to forgive, we burn the bridge over which we ourselves must cross, that idea. It’s just, the scriptures I think, we sometimes call it the doctrine of reciprocity, of if you will not forgive neither will your Father in Heaven forgive you. It goes both ways. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And if I want mercy, I have to be merciful. If I want forgiveness, I have to be forgiving. That doesn’t make it easy but intellectually it helps me understand. I’ve got to forgive if I want forgiveness.

Hank Smith: 05:59 Right. We should probably say, John, that forgiving doesn’t mean you’re going to go put yourself back in a terrible situation or that you-

John Bytheway: 06:04 Never.

Hank Smith: 06:05 Need to reconcile and that you’ve got to say, hey, come back walking into my life again. If someone were to hurt my family, I can forgive them and not allow them too near my family and that’s still forgiveness.

John Bytheway: 06:18 Right.

Hank Smith: 06:19 The Lord never says forgiveness looks like this, where the two… I mean, if you can reconcile, that’s beautiful. Right? We’ve just discussed Jacob and Esau in our podcast and that’s a beautiful moment where the two come back together again and they can rebuild their relationship but sometimes that can’t happen and that’s okay.

John Bytheway: 06:37 An example I think of is Nephi got to a point where, 2 Nephi 4, Lehi dies. 2 Nephi 5. I just have to go.

Hank Smith: 06:46 I have to separate.

John Bytheway: 06:48 There’s no reconciling. I have to separate from my family, which must have broken his heart. I mean maybe Lehi said, keep the family together. Maybe Nephi tried but I just have to go. He could forgive, but he didn’t stay because it was too dangerous. Maybe that’s a good example of what you were saying a minute ago.

Hank Smith: 07:09 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 07:09 You don’t bring your family into a bad situation because I forgive. You can forgive, but you may need to separate and maybe that’s opening more than we want to tackle right now.

Hank Smith: 07:19 But there needs to be boundaries. You’re okay to have boundaries that protect yourself.

John Bytheway: 07:26 Right.

Hank Smith: 07:26 Right. I think there’s plenty of scriptural basis for that. I’m reminded of President James E. Faust, some of our younger listeners won’t even remember who that is, but he was one of my favorite speakers when I was a kid. I remember sitting in priesthood meeting, in the priesthood session and sit and watch him and he had Parkinson’s. He would shake and his very last talk, we can look this up. Easy, just use your Google and thumb him and look up James E. Faust, forgiveness. It’ll be the first thing that comes up and his last talk was on forgiveness and it was incredible talk and it centered on this.

John Bytheway: 08:00 Is that the Amish? The story of the Amish?

Hank Smith: 08:03 These Amish people. This terrible, terrible tragedy of these shootings that occurred in a school there and the way they reached out to the family of the shooter to comfort them. This idea of they’re in a bad place too and we need to help them. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment. Really was.

John Bytheway: 08:26 That’s a really good resource to point people too, because that had an impact on me. I remember that talk, especially because he was talking about people who are not of our faith, but people who had power to forgive. That was a great one.

Hank Smith: 08:40 Yeah. So just remember I think, John, this is a process, not an event. You might have to forgive over and over and over, but your heart’s in the right place. You want this to happen. And like you said, we might need to outsource this a little bit and bring God in and say, I need your help. I can’t forgive. You’ve got to give me help and then let the Lord do his work.

Hank Smith: 09:03 Well, we hope this has been helpful. We want you to come join us on our full podcast. Come join us this week. We’re with Dr. Mike Wilcox talking about Joseph of Egypt and the incredible person that he became and how he was able to forgive his brothers.

Hank Smith: 09:16 If you can’t do that though, that’s okay. Come join us next week for another FollowHIM Favorites.