Ep. 125 | Mindsets (Part 7): Unforgiveness Is a Cancer

May 12

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

In this episode, Rob Dayton breaks down one of the most freeing and most difficult mindsets of Jesus: forgiveness.

Or more specifically… why unforgiveness is a cancer.

Jesus talks about forgiveness way more seriously than most of us do. We tend to justify resentment, replay offenses, and hold people hostage in our minds without realizing what it’s doing to us.

But Jesus paints a different picture.

Unforgiveness shuts down love. It re-empowers the enemy. It keeps us stuck in judgment and bitterness. And according to Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant, it puts us in jail right alongside the person we refuse to forgive.

Rob walks through why forgiveness is not weakness, why grace is the operating system of love, and how to start retraining your mind to see people the way Jesus sees them.

This is not about pretending people didn’t hurt you. It’s about learning how to stay free while still living in a broken world.

You’ll Hear

Why Rob calls unforgiveness “a cancer”
The terrifying warning Jesus gives in Matthew 18
How unforgiveness re-empowers a defeated enemy
Why forgiveness is actually freedom
The difference between justice and personal unforgiveness
How to identify hidden resentment in your heart
Why Jesus still sees people as holy and blameless
The mindset shift that opens your heart back up to love

Journal Prompts

Holy Spirit, who am I holding resentment toward?
Papa God, why do you love this person so much? What do you see that I don’t?

Welcome to the 100X Life Podcast, where we activate people who desire to live the words of Jesus and experience the abundant life He promises. I'm your host, Rob Dayton, and I hope this podcast inspires you to put in the work of following Jesus. Rob Dayton (00:36) Hey, 100xLivers, welcome back to the podcast. Per usual, super excited about this 10 part series on mindsets. I hope you're enjoying this, this on mindsets that I'm hope that you're actually tracking along and getting in the gym and doing the exercise to actually develop these mindsets. They are so powerful. and I just got back from Santa Barbara yesterday. So and also happy Mother's Day. We're recording this on Mother's Day and then Tuesday it'll drop. But happy Mother's Day if it was you. We're celebrating our mothers. Kendra had her first, my daughter had her first Mother's Day, which was awesome. And we were in Santa Barbara and on the way back to Bend, stopped in San Luis Obispo because we had a TMP class the master's program is actually pretty special. In that when people graduate, it's kind of a holy moment and Holy Spirit was in the room in a powerful way. A lot of people were getting doused. That's kind of a lingo for hit or overcome by Holy Spirit would might be one of a word that you use. It was just so powerful. Well, let's get into the mindset, but before let's just do a review of where we've been. the first week we talked about the mindset of believing in the one God sent, which is Jesus. And that is foundational. If you can't believe in Jesus as the Son of God, or as a member of the Trinity God himself, all three in one, that's gonna be a challenge. Jesus has to be preeminent. So your whole mindset is to put and place him as preeminent. He is the way to the Father's house. So we need Jesus. We need to think of that way. Week two, we talked about the mindset of living as one led by Jesus, actually thinking as though, okay, Jesus is over there. Where are you, Jesus? You're over there. Let me follow you. Where are you going? Where are you taking me? Just carrying that thought process with other people. What do want me to say? What do you want me to do? Just that thought of being led. is such a powerful mindset. Week three, we talked about seeing the words of Jesus as your freedom. Man, that is so powerful. Not as a sacrifice, but as a freedom. So when we get just kind of confounded by, you want me to pick up my cross, you want me to forgive this person, we're going to talk about that today. Instead of saying that this is sacrifice, it really isn't a sacrifice because he's inviting us into the abundant life. If we abide by His words, it will be freedom. So you've got to look at His words as containing your freedom if you're going to obey them. Week four, we focused on the reality that you are the dwelling place of God and that you actually dwell in Him. I in Him, in you. So there's a two-way street. Jesus was dwelling in the Father. The Father was dwelling in Jesus. That's what the picture that Jesus paints for us and invites us to be the dwelling place. of the Trinity. Week five, we focused on the reality that all people bear the image of God. This mindset, I hope that you really did well practicing it just looking at people and seeing them as image bearers, the face of Jesus, the face of God on someone else. How does that change the way treat them, the way we love them, the way we condemn them or don't condemn them? If we see them as image bearers, it makes all the difference. And then last week, we were focused on the mindset, I am a servant to all. I am a servant to all. Yeah, I were working on that one, because love is a service. If you are going to embody the language of love, you are going to be a servant. We talked about The greatness in the kingdom is being a servant to all. That's the mindset. So whoever's in front of me, how am I serving you? the mindset that emanates if we're focused on service, we're gonna love people more naturally, we're gonna give to them. Okay, so that brings us to this week and we are focused on the mindset of forgiveness. And here it is, unforgiveness. a cancer. And that's, you know, that's my, I like to say that as a cancer and I'll explain why that is, but I'm gonna invite you to frame this one. way that's going to work best for you. Why do I unforgiveness is a cancer. Why do I carry that mindset with me? Always thinking, my gosh, am I in danger That could be cancer to me. Why do I say that? Why do I think that? Well, you can't have love without forgiveness. And right off the bat, if you can't have love without forgiveness, then that is a cancer to you because you want to move into the behaviors of love. that Jesus has. We possess the power to forgive. I think that this one is the one the church misses completely. You have power to forgive. This is what Jesus, the first thing he did, he comes in the upper room. This is after the resurrection. And here's what he says. This is John 20, 21 through 23. Peace be with you. As the father has sent me, I also send you. And when he had said this, breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. Now, that's pretty cool. This is actually the first moment you could say they become Christians. In other words, the indwelling of the Spirit, Jesus and Papa into them is happening as Jesus is breathing on them. And here's what Jesus wanted them to know. First and foremost, first and foremost, when they had the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, he says to them, you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained. You have been given the power to forgive. Just like Jesus, we're just like him. He had the power to forgive. We have the power to forgive. It's not the same thing as Jesus's forgiveness, that brings us into salvation. But we have the same kind of let someone off the hook action or grace we're going to talk about that Jesus has. So we've got to get serious because Jesus is serious about forgiving. This was his subject that's most serious. gives us, remember the trifecta in the words of Jesus, forgive, do not judge, do not condemn. And he says, boomerang, if you judge, you're going to be judged. If you condemn, you will be. condemned. So right there, three different aspects of letting people off the hook. And then the scariest parable in the entire Bible, in my opinion, in Matthew 18, this is 21 through 35. This is the parable of the king who's getting accounts with his servants. And one of the servants comes in and he owes a lot. He owes millions and millions of dollars. And he pleads with the king and the king says, I'll let you off the hook. And wow, his whole debt was was wiped out. But then when he leaves the king, he sees another guy who owes about and proportionately, this is about millions to 100 bucks. He owes 100 bucks. And the the person he's confronting about the debt pleads with him just like he pleaded with the king and said, give me time. I will repay it. what becomes known as the wicked servant said no, and he threw him in jail. And then when the king found out about this, he went to him and he said, you wicked servant, shouldn't you have forgiven them as I forgave the debt? And because you haven't, I'm going to hand you over to the jailer to be tortured. Oh my gosh. Who's the jailer? to torture you. And again, this is not a hell. this is a life parable. It could relate to hell too, but it's the invitation that if you want to live on this planet to be tortured, you will not forgive. And remember, God has always forgiven you first. The first servant is God's relationship with who becomes the wicked servant, that's God's relationship with Him. And it is the same with us. He's forgiven us this massive debt. And then we've got all these people on planet Earth that owe a little bit. They just owe us a little bit. And then Jesus is inviting us to, hey, let's avoid being tortured by the jailer and actually let's forgive. And the thing about that parable that I think most people don't think about is that when you don't forgive, not only are you being tortured, but remember in the story, the guy that the wicked servant threw in jail is still in jail. It's the end of the parable and no one's out. And remember this parable was given to the disciples because Peter asked, how much should I forgive my brother? he's like, isn't there an end to this? And Jesus is all no, there's no end to it. Some other scary words in the Bible at the end of the disciples prayer, this is Matthew 6, 14 and 15. Jesus says, after he gives the disciples prayer, he says, if you forgive others their transgressions, Your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. my gosh, are you serious, Jesus? Yes. not sure I even comprehend those words. I don't think it's a lose your salvation. Again, I think this is about living and how we live. I don't think it's a lose your salvation word. but it's like living under the curse of unforgiveness. And here's what you need to know is that the operating system of love is grace. Think about that. The operating system of love is grace and grace contains both forgiveness and favor. In other words, grace is more powerful than forgiveness. So if love includes forgiveness and favor, The classic one I like to talk about and I've heard this, I actually didn't make this up. Someone else did. I just don't remember where it came from. But if a cop pulls you over for speeding and gives you a ticket, that's justice. If he pulls you over for speeding and says, no problem, you don't have a ticket, that's mercy. But if you're speeding and the cop pulls you over and gives you a thousand bucks, not only did he forgive you for the speeding, but he favored you. This is the way God operates with us. favors us even when we let Him down, He's always favoring us. Think about that. How does the Trinity see? How does Jesus do this? How does Papa God do this? I think the cross is so powerful to remove sin. He hides your sin from His sight at a minimum. This is what He does at a minimum. He hides it and possibly He no longer even sees our behavior as missing the mark. In other words, He might see it as different than he did before the cross. Instead of missing the mark, maybe now it's just missing out on the abundant life. And the Trinity dwells in us. There's only one way for the Trinity to in us, and that's because we are sinless. Because Jesus is looking at our future perfect mindset. He thinks with a future perfect mindset, which means that we are perfect and holy, Ephesians 1-4 that we are holy and blameless. So you can adopt this mindset too. You can adopt the mindset of Jesus. You can see people in future perfect. And here's the downside if you don't. This is the real problem. If you don't, the enemy uses unforgiveness to destroy us. He destroys us. We destroy each other. know, when Jesus is resurrected, he said, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. And that means that the enemy has none. But we can give the enemy our authority through unforgiveness. We re-empower a disempowered enemy when we walk in unforgiveness. So it's really, really important that we get this mindset. If you're struggling with mindsets and you're not sure which one to implement first, this one is probably going to give you the most traction in your faith, in your life, living the abundant life, because truly, forgiveness. is freedom, just like unforgiveness is torture and being in jail. Forgiveness is freedom. Let's talk about how this mindset works. So for me, as I talked about in the beginning, I said unforgiveness is a cancer. And that's what works for me because I don't want cancer. And most people are like, yeah, cancer, like it's the worst thing. The church, if you announce you have cancer, you got all this love, you got a meal train, you got all these people with compassion against you. But if you say that you're pissed off, at someone who wronged you, you're going to get support for how are going to get back at them? How are you going to sue them? How are you going take them to court or get them in jail? And that's the wrong response. The response of the church instead of, just like the real cancer, when we hear in church that people have someone who's legitimately wronged them, and I want you to hear this, legitimately wronged them, and then they're upset at that person, we need to... Fire up the meal train We need to have the prayer chain. We need to give them empathy and say, how are you gonna work through this to forgive them? Cause you don't wanna be handed over to the jailer to be tortured. So that works for me. It works for me to have the mindset unforgiveness is cancer. It might not work for you. So I invite you to try on, here's some other ones. You can tailor this mindset to what works for you. How about this one? Forgiveness is the pathway to my best life. Yeah, that might work for you. How about this one? Unforgiveness is self-torturement. I think that's a good one. Unforgiveness re-empowers a disempowered enemy. So maybe if that struck a chord with you that the enemy who's disempowered and powerless and no authority, if you're giving them power, maybe that one struck a chord with you and that'll work better. Or maybe I see everyone as holy and blameless, kind of that Ephesians 1, 4 verse. I'm gonna be like Jesus, I'm just gonna see everyone as holy and blameless. So I can't hold anything against them. whichever one works best for you, try it out. Once you frame the mindset the way you want it, then we're gonna put it into practice. And the best way to put it into practice is just simply to ask Holy Spirit, who are you holding resentment for? Who are you holding resentment for? And you can apply the FACTS, F-A-C-T-S, which is who are you frustrated with? Who are you annoyed by? Who are you complaining about? Who are you threatened by? Or are you scared of? If you ask those questions and you know the answer and you can put a who there and a name, that means you're probably walking in unforgiveness and we need to let them off the hook. These are all targets that your forgiveness can address and get you more freedom. And by the way, when you forgive them, will also be free. Because if that wicked servant in Jesus' parable had forgiven the debt the one that owed him just a little bit, then he would have been free. So you're freeing other people as well as yourself when you forgive them. You will grow this mindset by exercising it in real time with others. That's what's going to happen. So remember, Jesus sees you as perfect and holy right now. Become a person who also sees people as holy and blameless. This happens first in the mindset. So you've got to first transform the way you think. Remember Jesus, repent. and believe, transform the way you think so you can Get it through your head. Think as though, man, unforgiveness, toxic, bad people are holy and blameless. Maybe you marry this one up with their image bearers, not only their image bearers of God, but their holy and blameless post-cross. So as we talked about in the book, under Jesus' word, forgive, we got to make a declaration to free them. So if you, if Holy Spirit makes you aware of someone, why didn't you just free them? Free them off the bat. Go back to the book in the word, forgive. And I've got the little declaration where you actually picture yourself in the heavenlies before a judge who's trying to condemn the person who wronged you. And you release that person and you tell the judge that he has to forgive them and that the enemy can no longer condemn him because you no longer condemn him. Now, some people as I'm talking through this might, might say, well, what about the, what about the repercussions of people's actions? You know, shouldn't they be addressed like people are legitimately wronging me. And you know, the first thing I would say is that's the role of the state, the role of the state and the prosecutor and the police. Those people are not defending themselves. They're defending the defending people who don't have a gun, let's say, who are being having bad acts committed on. So the state is in their set up by God to keep the rule on the law and hold justice. So the The law of society is to hold justice and the role of the individual is to forgive. So think of those two things. we don't, the government is not supposed to let people off the hook. The government is not a person. The government is a society overbearing, which says, hey, if you do this thing, here's the consequence and we get justice. You individually though can practice forgiveness. And people must be held accountable but not through unforgiveness. They need to be held accountable through understanding. So Jesus himself told a story. You might ask yourself, what story are you telling yourself? Jesus' story was, Father, forgive them because they know not what they are doing. So he's telling himself a story as he's being tortured by people and saying, you know what, Father, these people don't know what they're doing. If they knew what they were doing, they would not be crucifying me right now. That was Jesus' story. What's your story? that you're going to tell with your mindset. Maybe it's they don't know any better, or maybe they're just not mature enough to know, or maybe Jesus hasn't taught them that yet. Or you could have like an empathy story you tell yourself, like, man, it's just too bad that they have to steal, that they haven't figured it out, that that's actually bondage for them, or they haven't figured out how not to hate, and they're You know, Jesus just free them, free them from this hate. what story are you going to tell yourself that moves you toward forgiveness and sees the other person as Jesus sees you? You remember, Jesus is patient with you. He has given you so much time to grow. Can you imagine all the times that you screwed up? I'm just imagining mine all the times I screwed up. And he was so patient and gentle to bring me back to him. It wasn't because he was condemning me. or judging me, was because he was loving me. How do you love someone who's actually coming against you? This is the mindset we're trying to capture. And again, this one is the most freeing, it's most powerful. We've got to find a way to give people space to grow. know, and most people are already beating up. You know, like, for instance, they do something wrong and they're just as frustrated. at themselves. might steal something and then they're just so guilt ridden. Why do I do this? Why do I steal? Why do I hate? Where did this anger problem coming from? And they're beating themselves up too. You know, it's really interesting. Nancy and I have gotten into pickleball and Jed and Martina, my son and daughter-in-law are up here in Bend and we were playing pickleball with them and I was just doing awful. I was just, I just couldn't, it's like I couldn't return a ball and I was so frustrated with myself. thinking Rob. How do I get out of this? And then Nancy's like, hey, you should do this. should do this. She's like trying to help me out. And I'm thinking to myself, that's not helpful. I'm already beating myself up. And that was really beautiful. That's a really beautiful lesson. That's a great picture for me and helped me is like, I don't need to give people advice when, or I need to be very gentle with it when they're in the middle of screwing up because most people are just. They bring shame, they're beating themselves up, they're already frustrated. And if you pile on, it's just gonna be too explosive. Remember this mindset opens up love. Unforgiveness closes off love. This mindset opens up love. So we want to carry this picture of people. We wanna carry forgiveness with us. We wanna see them as holy and blameless. We wanna let the state take care of the laws. We want to let people off the hook and let them grow with love. Because Jesus says, my love that brings you to repentance. And we want people to repent, but we have to give them love. OK, so for your journal, here's what I want you to do is write down the best way you want to frame this mindset. What is the one that worked best for you? Write down how you're going to frame this in your mind. What's the story you're going to tell yourself when people wrong you or the people who've already wronged you? Then you're going to ask Holy Spirit, who are you holding unforgiveness for? And you're going to journal, okay? Who are those people? And maybe come up with a rapid fired list. I don't want to have anyone that I'm living unforgiveness to because it's a cancer. I want to root that out. I'm going to chase that as far as I can to make sure there's not even remotely an ounce. of me walking in unforgiveness. I've got a great story in play that about people that they just didn't know what they were doing. Yeah, that's the way I want to live. And then the next thing is ask Papa God, why do you love this person so much? What do you see that I don't? So you're asking the father about what he sees and then and then like you don't see that, but he sees it. If you can find out from the father. why he loves someone so much, that will really help you, that will release you to walk in this mindset. Then, as always, journal in the first person from one member of the Trinity, so in this case, Holy Spirit, and from the Father, and then write down your plan to exercise this forgiveness mindset for the week. I really encourage you guys to write something down, have some notes in your times with God in the morning. work on these front mindsets all week. You have this perfect opportunity. If you got these 10 mindsets down, man, you would be your maturity would go full tilt. This would be amazing, radical obedience. Remember, we obey Jesus. We move into the operating system of love by actually living his words. So this is going to give you motivation. It's going to give you a head start. If you have these mindsets, it's going to be very easy to live the words of Jesus, guys. Thanks for listening. I'm hoping this is really helping you. And I'm excited about next week. And I bless you in Jesus' name to be able to forgive, forgive, forgive. We'll see you next week.