Understanding Forgiveness in Relationships

That would make amends, oh, how did we ever lose our way? And try to say love is a losing game. We will never be the same. Bring your love back to me. Stop this insanity before we go too far. Before we go to, And I know that we can be there. Be there till the end. We're going to be there till the end. Sometimes a lover can be angry till the end. Oh, but it's always the friend inside that will make a man go. Oh, dear. If we ever lose our way And stop to say Love is a losing game We will never be the same Bring your love back to me Stop this insanity Before we go too far Before we go too far See you before we go. Before we go too far. Before we go too far. Before we go too far. Before we go too far. I have to do this. All right. That was a song that we thought was very befitting for forgiveness. Because it's a song of reconciliation. It could be a song that we're splitting up. But that all depends on you. He's asking a question. How did we lose our mind? Sometimes we need to ask ourselves, how did we lose our mind? But sometimes lovers and friends can be angry until the end. Sometimes we let it go far too far. When you let it go. Far too far. This is what you have. Mariah, Tawana, what do you see? I see a house that is on fire. Infernal. Okay. Totally demolished. There you go. It's totally demolished. Sometimes when we don't have the power in us or the willingness to forgive, then what happens is we have ish. We have fire. And if you look at this, what happens with fire, fire spreads. Sometimes it spreads to our family. Sometimes it spreads to our friends. If we have close neighbors, it'll spread to your neighbors. But this house is totally demolished. If you look at it. My husband was an adjuster. You look at it, it's burning from the inside out. And that's sometimes what we do. We burn from the inside out. We can't get a hold of the situation, so this is what happens. And our thing is we want you to stop before you get too far. Don't lose your mind. They used to say when we were growing up, you're righteous. Stop the insanity. So what happens is this house will never be rebuilt. It's totally demolished. And if you look at the frame, the frame looked like it was a very beautiful house. But even the frame is being burnt up. And that's what we do sometimes with each other. We totally burn up our frame. That means our relationship with one another. So these are statistics for 2020. The state of marriage in America, the first marriages, if you are in a first marriages, 42 to 45% will terminate with a divorce as a result. as a result of a lot of different variables. Second marriages, 60%. If this is your second marriage, 60% will terminate with a divorce as the result of poverty, as a result of neglect. I'm going to call it neglect. We used to say that when you cannot forgive, then your children, we have to stop saying your children because children will say, I'm sorry to one another. But the third marriage is 73% will terminate with a divorce as a result of the same things. African-American couples between the ages of, listen to this, 50 to 59 are most likely to divorce. And we've had some older couples that said, I'm done. It's over. Our divorce rate went up. to, that should say, 48% in 2020. In addition, Black couples have the highest chance of their first marriages ending within 12 years at 47%. We, right now, we are living in a, it's not my way, it's the highway kind of situation within our homes, within our communities. It's so easy to get divorced. But when you get married, you're married with three people, you and your spouse or your ish, and you and yeah, you're in a three-way relationship. And when you see the fire burning, that was a, that, when I saw that, that disturbed me because that was a situation that can't be review So what happens in divorce, one of the top five reasons of divorce is poor communication. We are not at poor communication. We just have poor communication. We just, oh, we either communicate very little with one another after certain amount of years, or we communicate not at all with one another. So poor communication. We're not going to say poor yet. We got to poor. We had poor communication. Most of the people that we counsel, they have poor communication. They don't know how to communicate with each other. And that's part of the forgiveness. So in Genesis 2 or Bariat 2, and Adam gave names. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Excuse us, we have some technical difficulties, but those statistics were very startling to me. And for the year 2020, when they thought that people had to stay indoors with one another, they found that many people, the divorce rate overall went down. However, in the African American or Black community, it went up. And that's pretty startling to find that out. In Bereshit chapter 2, verse 20, it says, And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found an Ezer or help me for him. And Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, closed up, and he slept. the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which Yahweh Elohim had taken from man, he made a woman, and he brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. And what you see down below is the Masoretic Hebrew. I put in... read down in the Masoretic Hebrew, Esha, the word Esha and Esh. Now this is, I put it there to remind us that the name for man and woman is Esh and Esha. That is the name that was given them by the Most High. We sometimes forget. that we are Isha and Isha. It's not just necessarily husband and wife. It's Isha and Isha. And I have here some paleo-Hebrew letters for our observance. On the far right, your far right, is the Hebrew letter Aleph. And Aleph looks like an ox head, and this means strong one. The next one in the middle is shin, and the shin has a meaning to it, and the meaning is teeth or consumption. And then, of course, we have at the very far left, we have the Hebrew letter he, and this spells Isha. This means the woman, and if you put the two together, it means a strong conception with revelation. Now, the next slide is the Hebrew word for man, and it's aleph, which is strong one, the yud, the hand of Yah, which is in the middle, and then, of course, you see on the far left again the sheen, which means consumption. Now, this is a very interesting work. Because within that word, you have two letters that make it different. And the letter is the yud. If you look at the very top, the yud on the right would be the letter on the right. And the letter on the left would be the hey. You put the two together, they spell yah. Now. Each letter, one of those letters is in the name of the woman and the man. But if you take out the letters, what you're going to end up with is ish. Ish is fire. Now, the thing of it is, we are fire. If I go back to the previous slide. What you see is if I took out the letter Yah, that means strong consumption. Now, isn't it no wonder that men and women have a tendency when they forget Yah. Now, we get into our private situations and sometimes men, we act up and sometimes women, you act up. And then what we do is consume one another. And in all the years that we have been counseling, I would venture to say that the number one cause of divorce is poor communication. And as my wife said, Pope, because we don't even have the other part to that word. We just go straight up raw. And, you know, you have women. cussing out men in front of their children, men cussing out women in front of their children. And it's just a bad situation. And sometimes just like the singer Gregory Porter was saying, we have to stop before it goes too far, because if you let it go too far, you're going to burn each other up. So the, the, uh, Yon placed his name inside of his people. And if you, but if you choose, and these are choices that we do, if you choose not to involve Yah in your situation, all you're going to end up is with strong consumption. Now, I want you to look at this picture. Is this you? When you're mad and angry, is it you? Do you have fire coming out of your mouth? because of the words you are saying to your ish or ish look at the fire out of his mouth is this the way we communicate with each other yeah we do when we're angry this is what it looks like this is what it looks like to the most high um we don't see ourselves but he sees us and he he recognized everything that we are saying or should be saying or should not be saying to one another Sometimes we say too much and we have not come together to apologize or say I'm sorry to ask for forgiveness. We're going to go into that. But look at how bad this looks. This is how bad we really look when we are talking to each other like we should not be. And look at how bad we look if our children really could see this, could see the words, the words turning into fire. one another. So we don't want to be like this. So ask yourself, I hope when you are in an argument, in a disagreement, that you don't look like this. I hope these pictures become a reminder to you that I don't want to look like this to my kids. I don't want to look like this to my isha. I don't want to look like this to anyone. I don't want to have fire. literally coming out of my mouth. And there is a syndrome I found. There is a syndrome that said mouth burning syndrome. It's a real syndrome. Burning mouth syndrome. That's what we have. That's what you saw here. Burning mouth syndrome. We can't close our mouth. And that used to be me. I used to love to argue with men. Men, I almost lost my job arguing with the superintendent. Because I don't know how to close my mouth. I learned how to close my mouth, but I felt like it energized me. It energized me to have to look like this lady right here. I was energized. So I had burning mouth syndrome. It's a condition that causes a burning feeling in your mouth. And that's what you should have when we are talking to each other inappropriately. We should have burning mouth syndrome. It's a sensation that can develop suddenly, occur anywhere in your mouth. It's commonly felt on the top of the roof of your mouth, on your tongues and your teeth. Isn't that something? This condition can become a chronic thing that you're having an everyday problem, or it can occur periodically. Isn't that something? Burning mouth syndrome. So when we are cussing each other, we're screaming at each other, we're talking inappropriately to one another. We have, remember, you have burning mouth syndrome. Tell each other, I don't want to have burning mouth syndrome because I don't want to look like this to the most high. And I don't want to look like this to you because this has gone too far. This is when you've gone too far. You will have burning mouth syndrome. James. 3 and 6 says, and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. So is the tongue among our members that it defiled the whole mouth. Look, their whole body is being affected by what's coming out of their mouth. And set it on fire, the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell. Look at what James 3 and 8 says, but the tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly. It's evil, full of deadly poison. And look at this. When you are gossiping, somebody needs to tame your tongue. Look at this man. He's got a whip and he's trying to get that tongue to go back in his mouth. And he's having some trouble with it. He's got a chair to keep the tongue from him. These are pictures that will depict how we should not look to one another. James 1 and 26 says, if any man among you seem to be religious when i looked up religious the word meant a worshiper it said of god but i'm putting a worshiper of god of yah and and bridled you can't he didn't have any restraint not in his tongue but this he deceives he deceived her he's beguiled by his own heart this man's religion or his worship to yah is in vain So when we're talking to each other like we don't have any sense, we're talking to each other inappropriately so that we don't care what we're saying and how we're saying it, then we are people that I don't care how much you worship, how much you read, how much you study, you are and you can't bridle that tongue. You have no restraint in your mouth, but you deceive your own heart. You'll be guy of the stock. It's Nate. A snake will beguile you if you sit and watch it. It will beguile you. His own heart, this man's religion, it's vain. Very good. That was some very good pictures concerning how we talk to one another. And what we're trying to do is just show ourselves like a mirror and see what are we like. If you're having difficulty in your marriage, nine times out of 10, you haven't figured out how to communicate. The basis of a lot of this is selfishness or someone figuring. I'm just not going to let you run over me. You're not going to tell me what to do. You ain't my daddy, that kind of syndrome. But we have to learn, we have to bridle that tongue. And that takes practice. You can't just do it overnight. Because much of this fire in your mouth, so to speak, is that you are walking around without forgiveness. Now, when you do that, There's confusion. There's decreased levels of happiness within your home. Sometimes it's infidelity. Many, many people, when they are committing infidelity, what they tend to do is create confusion so they can continue to do what they were doing. And that creates fighting. Also, there's intense arguments. An argument is healthy, but an intense argument is very unhealthy because many times, especially if you have children, they are listening to you. Now, I don't know about you, but I grew up in a household where my parents did have intense arguing. And my father... in some occasions, placed his hand on my mother. And it almost, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today because me and my brother, we're going to kill him, you know, had he touched our mother again. And we went, we just went to sleep on it. But I'm saying that this creates problems, not just between the two of you, but the whole family suffers because of these intense arguments. And One of the root causes of this is selfishness. Now, we want to blame it on poverty and lack, but many times couples will tell you that have endured over the years. Some of their best years was when we didn't have much. You know, we had to share everything and we knew we we didn't have much. But so you can't just blame it on poverty or lack of. money and things. Sometimes you have too many things. And finally, the end result for all of this, forgetting or not attempting to bridle your tongue is finally divorce. Now, I got to say something about that for a minute too. To get married, you have to go two places. First, you go to the law. You go to the legal authorities that are controlled by the state, and they offer you some type of certificate to get married and call it a license. So now you are licensed, like I'm an insurance person. I got a license. Now you have a license for marriage. But then you also have to go to Yahweh, because Yahweh supposedly has joined you together. One of the first questions we ask people when they're about to get married and they come to us for counseling, is this the person that YAH has given you? And we sit there and look at each other while they say, oh yes, I love this person. YAH definitely gave me this person. Well, three years out, they are, you know, ready to get divorced. What happened? Now the problem with divorces. You only have to go to one party, and that is the state. This is the problem, because when you come together, when Yah has joined together, let no man, including the person that, the judge, that is allowing you out of this marriage. I know I'm talking to some people who's been married more than once, but I'm just telling you, you have to also go to Yah. He allowed you to get in it, but you only go to the authorities to get out. Now they make it so you want to get out, pay me. So you got to pay dearly to get out of this license that he gave you. And then once you think you're out, well, you still haven't reconciled this with the creator himself. So sometimes you do have a change in economic status. Emotional problems occur. Maybe there's a sickness involved. Child custody. Now, once you get divorced or you're planning on getting divorced, this is where really intense arguments occur because one wants to keep the children and the other ones say no. But you must realize that you have broken your covenant. This relationship is not. a contract with the state. And it's not a just any old ordinary contract. It's not an agreement. This is a covenant that cannot be broken. I don't know. We have we have married how many people, maybe 30, 40. OK, of all these people that we marry, this is what we start off by saying. We're gathered here in this. sight of God and before all this great cloud of witnesses. Now, we always mention the Most High first. So they know that you're gathering here in the sight of the Creator to make a covenant. Now, all the witnesses are there to say, yeah, they did it. I saw them when they did it, yeah. So what you've done is you've come together just to make the covenant agreement. with the Most High as a witness as well. So if you try to get out of it, you need to go back to the source and let him know what was going on. Some reasons we fail to forgive. One reason is sometimes I just can't forget it. Now, I don't know how many times people say, you know, he did me so, I just can't forget this. and another one is I don't talk to her or him like that why do you think he can talk to me well you know I'm trying to get like we are so if my vernacular is not the best I'm just being for real or sometimes we say I don't I don't need have to say I'm sorry I didn't do nothing It says here anything, but I would be saying I don't I didn't do nothing. And then sometimes we'll say, well, who are you? You think you my daddy or something? Or you think you my mama? I don't know how many people have done that in their marriage. And one, especially among the Hebrew community, they're saying you're supposed to submit. And don't nobody know what the word submit. They feel like you need to be like subservient to me. And then another one is just close your mouth and don't say another word. Just shut up. Now, these things occur. These are real occurrences in our marriage. But these are reasons that carry us into divorce if we don't learn how to forgive one another. The definition of forgiveness is the act of pardoning. an offender. In the Bible, I don't like to quote a lot of Greek, but the Greek word when it's translated as forgiveness literally means to let go, as when a person does not demand payment for a debt. So you're saying, okay, you're excused. So forgiveness is excusing the offense. Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve your forgiveness. Just as important as defining what forgiveness is, is understanding what forgiveness is not. Expert. who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. And if you play this thing down, that's one of the causes that for unforgiveness, because you're playing it down and the person is hurt. No, you got to realize that this was serious. I did this to you, and I have to repent for that. Teshuvah. Teshuvah doesn't just always mean turn back to God or the Creator. It means turn back to your wife. You know, ask her for forgiveness. Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind. and frees him or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative feelings. How many people sitting here today? I want you to be honest because I know some of us are going through some stuff. How many people have held on to negative feelings? Now, you know, I found something out over the course of my marriage. I'm just, this is impromptu. I'm going off script for a minute. I found something out in dealing with this woman, my wife. She sometimes was holding something and I didn't even know it. I didn't know I did something. And I did do something, but I didn't know I did something. And later on, she held it so long, when it finally came out, it was a huge problem, because I couldn't figure out where all of this was coming from. And sometimes when you get into that argument, and all these things start bubbling up, that's because people have held on to some deep, deep negative feelings. And that way it improves you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting the pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life. So forgiveness is a wonderful thing that the Most High, the Creator, has set forth for you and I. We have to learn to forgive. I'll turn it over to you. Okay, Matthew. Matthew 5, 23 and 24 says, therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother or your spouse are going to say something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar first, go and be reconciled to your brother or your spouse, then come back and offer your gift. So he's saying you can't pray, can't pray and offer me anything. Until you go and get that thing straight with your wife. I don't know how many people I've seen. I've seen preachers or husbands or husbands. I've seen so many preachers that get up in the pulpit whose wife have just been arguing in the hallway and they can get up there and do their thing. I call it doing their thing because it's just a bunch of foolishness to me. Fooling the people. I call it fooling the people. And that's one thing I told Pastor Mike a long time ago. I said, I will never let you fool the people. Never, never, never. If you were sitting in church and we haven't got the things and they call you, I'm going to stand up and say, I'm sorry. Not today. Not today. Because I will never let him fool you. I will never let him fool you. If he can't treat me right, how is he going to get up before you? And so those of you that have ministries or assemblies. And you want to have a sin that you've got to remember that you cannot go before the people unclean. That's being unclean. And that and that's being an ingenuous to Matthew 6, 14 and 15. If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. You need to write this down somewhere. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. So we can't forgive one another. then he ain't going to forgive us. And we need to really, really home in on that because we want forgiveness from him, but I don't care about having forgiveness from Mike. I think I can go on without him and just tell the most high what I want to say to him. I can just tell him. And without doing anything to you, you don't even count. But you can't. operate like that. We cannot operate like that. For if you forgive, you don't forgive your wife, your ish, or your isha. When they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, if you can forgive. But if you do not forgive men, your ish, your isha, their sins, their faults, their wrongdoings, your Father will not forgive your sins. Can I say something? Sure. Okay. I just want to reiterate what she's saying. If we follow these principles, there would not be divorce. I want you all to listen because there's too many divorces amongst, first of all, the African-American community, and second, the Christian community, and last, the Hebraic community. When the Hebraic people start talking about getting divorced, then something is very, very wrong because we are following Torah, and these scriptures are there to help keep us. And one of the causes for you not wanting to forgive is selfishness and a lack of respect for your fellow man. or your husband or wife. Okay, I'd like to add something else too. Think about Yeshua on the stake. What did he say? One of the things he said was, forgive them for they know not what they do. So forgiveness is part of the blood covenant that he cuts with us. Forgiveness. Forgiveness is very much a part of the blood covenant from the cross, from the stake that he had with man. that he had with Ish, he had with the Isha. So in Matthew 18, 21 and 22, then Peter came to Yeshua and asked, Yeshua, how many times shall I forgive my Isha, my Isha, when he or she sends against me? Up to 70 times? Seven times. Yeshua answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven. That's how much you're supposed to forgive that other person. So forgiveness, and you have to remember that it was cut at the cross. At the cross, when he said forgive them, they don't have a clue what they're doing. Okay. Now, we're getting ready to go into the group discussion. So I want you to listen to the scenario. You might need to take some... some um You might need to take out a pen and pencil because you're going to be put in groups. You're going to go into rooms that you're going to have some discussion about this scenario.

That would make amends, oh, how did we ever lose our way? And try to say love is a losing game. We will never be the same. Bring your love back to me. Stop this insanity before we go too far.

Before we go to, And I know that we can be there. Be there till the end. We're going to be there till the end.

Sometimes a lover can be angry till the end. Oh, but it's always the friend inside that will make a man go. Oh, dear. If we ever lose our way And stop to say Love is a losing game We will never be the same Bring your love back to me Stop this insanity Before we go too far Before we go too far See you before we go. Before we go too far.

Before we go too far. Before we go too far. Before we go too far. I have to do this. All right.

That was a song that we thought was very befitting for forgiveness. Because it's a song of reconciliation. It could be a song that we're splitting up.

But that all depends on you. He's asking a question. How did we lose our mind? Sometimes we need to ask ourselves, how did we lose our mind? But sometimes lovers and friends can be angry until the end.

Sometimes we let it go far too far. When you let it go. Far too far.

This is what you have. Mariah, Tawana, what do you see? I see a house that is on fire. Infernal. Okay.

Totally demolished. There you go. It's totally demolished. Sometimes when we don't have the power in us or the willingness to forgive, then what happens is we have ish. We have fire.

And if you look at this, what happens with fire, fire spreads. Sometimes it spreads to our family. Sometimes it spreads to our friends.

If we have close neighbors, it'll spread to your neighbors. But this house is totally demolished. If you look at it.

My husband was an adjuster. You look at it, it's burning from the inside out. And that's sometimes what we do.

We burn from the inside out. We can't get a hold of the situation, so this is what happens. And our thing is we want you to stop before you get too far.

Don't lose your mind. They used to say when we were growing up, you're righteous. Stop the insanity.

So what happens is this house will never be rebuilt. It's totally demolished. And if you look at the frame, the frame looked like it was a very beautiful house.

But even the frame is being burnt up. And that's what we do sometimes with each other. We totally burn up our frame. That means our relationship with one another. So these are statistics for 2020. The state of marriage in America, the first marriages, if you are in a first marriages, 42 to 45% will terminate with a divorce as a result.

as a result of a lot of different variables. Second marriages, 60%. If this is your second marriage, 60% will terminate with a divorce as the result of poverty, as a result of neglect. I'm going to call it neglect.

We used to say that when you cannot forgive, then your children, we have to stop saying your children because children will say, I'm sorry to one another. But the third marriage is 73% will terminate with a divorce as a result of the same things. African-American couples between the ages of, listen to this, 50 to 59 are most likely to divorce. And we've had some older couples that said, I'm done. It's over.

Our divorce rate went up. to, that should say, 48% in 2020. In addition, Black couples have the highest chance of their first marriages ending within 12 years at 47%. We, right now, we are living in a, it's not my way, it's the highway kind of situation within our homes, within our communities. It's so easy to get divorced.

But when you get married, you're married with three people, you and your spouse or your ish, and you and yeah, you're in a three-way relationship. And when you see the fire burning, that was a, that, when I saw that, that disturbed me because that was a situation that can't be review So what happens in divorce, one of the top five reasons of divorce is poor communication. We are not at poor communication. We just have poor communication.

We just, oh, we either communicate very little with one another after certain amount of years, or we communicate not at all with one another. So poor communication. We're not going to say poor yet. We got to poor.

We had poor communication. Most of the people that we counsel, they have poor communication. They don't know how to communicate with each other.

And that's part of the forgiveness. So in Genesis 2 or Bariat 2, and Adam gave names. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Excuse us, we have some technical difficulties, but those statistics were very startling to me. And for the year 2020, when they thought that people had to stay indoors with one another, they found that many people, the divorce rate overall went down. However, in the African American or Black community, it went up.

And that's pretty startling to find that out. In Bereshit chapter 2, verse 20, it says, And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found an Ezer or help me for him. And Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, closed up, and he slept.

the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which Yahweh Elohim had taken from man, he made a woman, and he brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

And what you see down below is the Masoretic Hebrew. I put in... read down in the Masoretic Hebrew, Esha, the word Esha and Esh.

Now this is, I put it there to remind us that the name for man and woman is Esh and Esha. That is the name that was given them by the Most High. We sometimes forget.

that we are Isha and Isha. It's not just necessarily husband and wife. It's Isha and Isha.

And I have here some paleo-Hebrew letters for our observance. On the far right, your far right, is the Hebrew letter Aleph. And Aleph looks like an ox head, and this means strong one. The next one in the middle is shin, and the shin has a meaning to it, and the meaning is teeth or consumption.

And then, of course, we have at the very far left, we have the Hebrew letter he, and this spells Isha. This means the woman, and if you put the two together, it means a strong conception with revelation. Now, the next slide is the Hebrew word for man, and it's aleph, which is strong one, the yud, the hand of Yah, which is in the middle, and then, of course, you see on the far left again the sheen, which means consumption. Now, this is a very interesting work.

Because within that word, you have two letters that make it different. And the letter is the yud. If you look at the very top, the yud on the right would be the letter on the right. And the letter on the left would be the hey. You put the two together, they spell yah.

Now. Each letter, one of those letters is in the name of the woman and the man. But if you take out the letters, what you're going to end up with is ish.

Ish is fire. Now, the thing of it is, we are fire. If I go back to the previous slide.

What you see is if I took out the letter Yah, that means strong consumption. Now, isn't it no wonder that men and women have a tendency when they forget Yah. Now, we get into our private situations and sometimes men, we act up and sometimes women, you act up. And then what we do is consume one another. And in all the years that we have been counseling, I would venture to say that the number one cause of divorce is poor communication.

And as my wife said, Pope, because we don't even have the other part to that word. We just go straight up raw. And, you know, you have women.

cussing out men in front of their children, men cussing out women in front of their children. And it's just a bad situation. And sometimes just like the singer Gregory Porter was saying, we have to stop before it goes too far, because if you let it go too far, you're going to burn each other up.

So the, the, uh, Yon placed his name inside of his people. And if you, but if you choose, and these are choices that we do, if you choose not to involve Yah in your situation, all you're going to end up is with strong consumption. Now, I want you to look at this picture. Is this you? When you're mad and angry, is it you?

Do you have fire coming out of your mouth? because of the words you are saying to your ish or ish look at the fire out of his mouth is this the way we communicate with each other yeah we do when we're angry this is what it looks like this is what it looks like to the most high um we don't see ourselves but he sees us and he he recognized everything that we are saying or should be saying or should not be saying to one another Sometimes we say too much and we have not come together to apologize or say I'm sorry to ask for forgiveness. We're going to go into that.

But look at how bad this looks. This is how bad we really look when we are talking to each other like we should not be. And look at how bad we look if our children really could see this, could see the words, the words turning into fire.

one another. So we don't want to be like this. So ask yourself, I hope when you are in an argument, in a disagreement, that you don't look like this.

I hope these pictures become a reminder to you that I don't want to look like this to my kids. I don't want to look like this to my isha. I don't want to look like this to anyone. I don't want to have fire.

literally coming out of my mouth. And there is a syndrome I found. There is a syndrome that said mouth burning syndrome.

It's a real syndrome. Burning mouth syndrome. That's what we have.

That's what you saw here. Burning mouth syndrome. We can't close our mouth.

And that used to be me. I used to love to argue with men. Men, I almost lost my job arguing with the superintendent.

Because I don't know how to close my mouth. I learned how to close my mouth, but I felt like it energized me. It energized me to have to look like this lady right here. I was energized. So I had burning mouth syndrome.

It's a condition that causes a burning feeling in your mouth. And that's what you should have when we are talking to each other inappropriately. We should have burning mouth syndrome. It's a sensation that can develop suddenly, occur anywhere in your mouth. It's commonly felt on the top of the roof of your mouth, on your tongues and your teeth.

Isn't that something? This condition can become a chronic thing that you're having an everyday problem, or it can occur periodically. Isn't that something?

Burning mouth syndrome. So when we are cussing each other, we're screaming at each other, we're talking inappropriately to one another. We have, remember, you have burning mouth syndrome.

Tell each other, I don't want to have burning mouth syndrome because I don't want to look like this to the most high. And I don't want to look like this to you because this has gone too far. This is when you've gone too far.

You will have burning mouth syndrome. James. 3 and 6 says, and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.

So is the tongue among our members that it defiled the whole mouth. Look, their whole body is being affected by what's coming out of their mouth. And set it on fire, the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell.

Look at what James 3 and 8 says, but the tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly. It's evil, full of deadly poison. And look at this. When you are gossiping, somebody needs to tame your tongue.

Look at this man. He's got a whip and he's trying to get that tongue to go back in his mouth. And he's having some trouble with it.

He's got a chair to keep the tongue from him. These are pictures that will depict how we should not look to one another. James 1 and 26 says, if any man among you seem to be religious when i looked up religious the word meant a worshiper it said of god but i'm putting a worshiper of god of yah and and bridled you can't he didn't have any restraint not in his tongue but this he deceives he deceived her he's beguiled by his own heart this man's religion or his worship to yah is in vain So when we're talking to each other like we don't have any sense, we're talking to each other inappropriately so that we don't care what we're saying and how we're saying it, then we are people that I don't care how much you worship, how much you read, how much you study, you are and you can't bridle that tongue.

You have no restraint in your mouth, but you deceive your own heart. You'll be guy of the stock. It's Nate. A snake will beguile you if you sit and watch it. It will beguile you.

His own heart, this man's religion, it's vain. Very good. That was some very good pictures concerning how we talk to one another. And what we're trying to do is just show ourselves like a mirror and see what are we like. If you're having difficulty in your marriage, nine times out of 10, you haven't figured out how to communicate.

The basis of a lot of this is selfishness or someone figuring. I'm just not going to let you run over me. You're not going to tell me what to do. You ain't my daddy, that kind of syndrome. But we have to learn, we have to bridle that tongue.

And that takes practice. You can't just do it overnight. Because much of this fire in your mouth, so to speak, is that you are walking around without forgiveness. Now, when you do that, There's confusion.

There's decreased levels of happiness within your home. Sometimes it's infidelity. Many, many people, when they are committing infidelity, what they tend to do is create confusion so they can continue to do what they were doing.

And that creates fighting. Also, there's intense arguments. An argument is healthy, but an intense argument is very unhealthy because many times, especially if you have children, they are listening to you.

Now, I don't know about you, but I grew up in a household where my parents did have intense arguing. And my father... in some occasions, placed his hand on my mother.

And it almost, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today because me and my brother, we're going to kill him, you know, had he touched our mother again. And we went, we just went to sleep on it. But I'm saying that this creates problems, not just between the two of you, but the whole family suffers because of these intense arguments.

And One of the root causes of this is selfishness. Now, we want to blame it on poverty and lack, but many times couples will tell you that have endured over the years. Some of their best years was when we didn't have much. You know, we had to share everything and we knew we we didn't have much.

But so you can't just blame it on poverty or lack of. money and things. Sometimes you have too many things.

And finally, the end result for all of this, forgetting or not attempting to bridle your tongue is finally divorce. Now, I got to say something about that for a minute too. To get married, you have to go two places.

First, you go to the law. You go to the legal authorities that are controlled by the state, and they offer you some type of certificate to get married and call it a license. So now you are licensed, like I'm an insurance person. I got a license.

Now you have a license for marriage. But then you also have to go to Yahweh, because Yahweh supposedly has joined you together. One of the first questions we ask people when they're about to get married and they come to us for counseling, is this the person that YAH has given you? And we sit there and look at each other while they say, oh yes, I love this person.

YAH definitely gave me this person. Well, three years out, they are, you know, ready to get divorced. What happened? Now the problem with divorces. You only have to go to one party, and that is the state.

This is the problem, because when you come together, when Yah has joined together, let no man, including the person that, the judge, that is allowing you out of this marriage. I know I'm talking to some people who's been married more than once, but I'm just telling you, you have to also go to Yah. He allowed you to get in it, but you only go to the authorities to get out. Now they make it so you want to get out, pay me. So you got to pay dearly to get out of this license that he gave you.

And then once you think you're out, well, you still haven't reconciled this with the creator himself. So sometimes you do have a change in economic status. Emotional problems occur.

Maybe there's a sickness involved. Child custody. Now, once you get divorced or you're planning on getting divorced, this is where really intense arguments occur because one wants to keep the children and the other ones say no. But you must realize that you have broken your covenant.

This relationship is not. a contract with the state. And it's not a just any old ordinary contract. It's not an agreement. This is a covenant that cannot be broken.

I don't know. We have we have married how many people, maybe 30, 40. OK, of all these people that we marry, this is what we start off by saying. We're gathered here in this. sight of God and before all this great cloud of witnesses. Now, we always mention the Most High first.

So they know that you're gathering here in the sight of the Creator to make a covenant. Now, all the witnesses are there to say, yeah, they did it. I saw them when they did it, yeah. So what you've done is you've come together just to make the covenant agreement.

with the Most High as a witness as well. So if you try to get out of it, you need to go back to the source and let him know what was going on. Some reasons we fail to forgive. One reason is sometimes I just can't forget it. Now, I don't know how many times people say, you know, he did me so, I just can't forget this.

and another one is I don't talk to her or him like that why do you think he can talk to me well you know I'm trying to get like we are so if my vernacular is not the best I'm just being for real or sometimes we say I don't I don't need have to say I'm sorry I didn't do nothing It says here anything, but I would be saying I don't I didn't do nothing. And then sometimes we'll say, well, who are you? You think you my daddy or something?

Or you think you my mama? I don't know how many people have done that in their marriage. And one, especially among the Hebrew community, they're saying you're supposed to submit.

And don't nobody know what the word submit. They feel like you need to be like subservient to me. And then another one is just close your mouth and don't say another word.

Just shut up. Now, these things occur. These are real occurrences in our marriage. But these are reasons that carry us into divorce if we don't learn how to forgive one another.

The definition of forgiveness is the act of pardoning. an offender. In the Bible, I don't like to quote a lot of Greek, but the Greek word when it's translated as forgiveness literally means to let go, as when a person does not demand payment for a debt. So you're saying, okay, you're excused. So forgiveness is excusing the offense.

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve your forgiveness. Just as important as defining what forgiveness is, is understanding what forgiveness is not. Expert.

who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. And if you play this thing down, that's one of the causes that for unforgiveness, because you're playing it down and the person is hurt. No, you got to realize that this was serious. I did this to you, and I have to repent for that. Teshuvah.

Teshuvah doesn't just always mean turn back to God or the Creator. It means turn back to your wife. You know, ask her for forgiveness. Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind.

and frees him or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative feelings. How many people sitting here today? I want you to be honest because I know some of us are going through some stuff. How many people have held on to negative feelings?

Now, you know, I found something out over the course of my marriage. I'm just, this is impromptu. I'm going off script for a minute.

I found something out in dealing with this woman, my wife. She sometimes was holding something and I didn't even know it. I didn't know I did something. And I did do something, but I didn't know I did something. And later on, she held it so long, when it finally came out, it was a huge problem, because I couldn't figure out where all of this was coming from.

And sometimes when you get into that argument, and all these things start bubbling up, that's because people have held on to some deep, deep negative feelings. And that way it improves you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting the pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life. So forgiveness is a wonderful thing that the Most High, the Creator, has set forth for you and I. We have to learn to forgive. I'll turn it over to you.

Okay, Matthew. Matthew 5, 23 and 24 says, therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother or your spouse are going to say something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar first, go and be reconciled to your brother or your spouse, then come back and offer your gift. So he's saying you can't pray, can't pray and offer me anything. Until you go and get that thing straight with your wife.

I don't know how many people I've seen. I've seen preachers or husbands or husbands. I've seen so many preachers that get up in the pulpit whose wife have just been arguing in the hallway and they can get up there and do their thing.

I call it doing their thing because it's just a bunch of foolishness to me. Fooling the people. I call it fooling the people.

And that's one thing I told Pastor Mike a long time ago. I said, I will never let you fool the people. Never, never, never.

If you were sitting in church and we haven't got the things and they call you, I'm going to stand up and say, I'm sorry. Not today. Not today. Because I will never let him fool you. I will never let him fool you.

If he can't treat me right, how is he going to get up before you? And so those of you that have ministries or assemblies. And you want to have a sin that you've got to remember that you cannot go before the people unclean.

That's being unclean. And that and that's being an ingenuous to Matthew 6, 14 and 15. If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. You need to write this down somewhere.

But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. So we can't forgive one another. then he ain't going to forgive us.

And we need to really, really home in on that because we want forgiveness from him, but I don't care about having forgiveness from Mike. I think I can go on without him and just tell the most high what I want to say to him. I can just tell him. And without doing anything to you, you don't even count.

But you can't. operate like that. We cannot operate like that.

For if you forgive, you don't forgive your wife, your ish, or your isha. When they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, if you can forgive. But if you do not forgive men, your ish, your isha, their sins, their faults, their wrongdoings, your Father will not forgive your sins. Can I say something? Sure.

Okay. I just want to reiterate what she's saying. If we follow these principles, there would not be divorce. I want you all to listen because there's too many divorces amongst, first of all, the African-American community, and second, the Christian community, and last, the Hebraic community.

When the Hebraic people start talking about getting divorced, then something is very, very wrong because we are following Torah, and these scriptures are there to help keep us. And one of the causes for you not wanting to forgive is selfishness and a lack of respect for your fellow man. or your husband or wife. Okay, I'd like to add something else too. Think about Yeshua on the stake.

What did he say? One of the things he said was, forgive them for they know not what they do. So forgiveness is part of the blood covenant that he cuts with us. Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is very much a part of the blood covenant from the cross, from the stake that he had with man. that he had with Ish, he had with the Isha. So in Matthew 18, 21 and 22, then Peter came to Yeshua and asked, Yeshua, how many times shall I forgive my Isha, my Isha, when he or she sends against me? Up to 70 times? Seven times.

Yeshua answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven. That's how much you're supposed to forgive that other person. So forgiveness, and you have to remember that it was cut at the cross.

At the cross, when he said forgive them, they don't have a clue what they're doing. Okay. Now, we're getting ready to go into the group discussion.

So I want you to listen to the scenario. You might need to take some... some um You might need to take out a pen and pencil because you're going to be put in groups.

You're going to go into rooms that you're going to have some discussion about this scenario.

Transcript for:Understanding Forgiveness in Relationships

Transcript for:
Understanding Forgiveness in Relationships