The It Factor

I want you to think of this phrase, the “It Factor.” All of you have probably seen it, experienced it, read about it in some kind of capacity. When I talk about the IT factor, I think of “that person,” I think of “that group,” or even you can think of the “It Factor” in the context of a church: sometimes you’ve been to a church and you’re like, “They have it” Then you go to another church and you’re like, “They don’t have it.” It’s just hard to describe… There’s even times you’re singing songs and maybe you’re looking in the room and you’re like, “That person seems like they have it and That person looks like they’re bored out of their mind,” you know, like that. Maybe there’s that person you look up to and they have a spiritual dynamic that you say “I mean, they just have it.”

To give you an example in scripture, Jesus talks about these kinds of moments and he puts more details into it. Look at this in John 20.19-21: 

“That Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.”

Now let’s pause and give it a little bit more context, because those are just some words that sound like the disciples were hiding. You have to add some more layers to that because they’re hiding for multiple reasons: 

1. They’re scared they’re going to die. Their leader, Jesus, just got killed by the Jewish leaders and now they’re wondering “what’s going to happen to us.” 
2. The last moment they had with Jesus, they all deserted him. Peter is thinking “I kind of denied Jesus three times. So I’m not doing too well either.”
3. Now there’s these rumors that maybe Jesus is alive and he’s walking around and some of the disciples are saying, “No, I’ve seen Jesus” and others are rebutting them saying, “No, you haven’t, You’re crazy.”

They’re in this room just feeling the weight of this moment. There is confusion, there is hurt. They’re feeling like they cannot forgive themselves. 

So I want you to picture whatever you have going on right now. Think: “All right. That’s my room. This dark room where I’m scared to go deal with this. I’m scared to acknowledge it.” It has to do a lot with forgiveness, forgiving other people, and forgiving yourself. Disciples are sitting in that, and Jesus knows this. So John 20.19-21 continues and says:

Suddenly Jesus was standing there among them.

Love that. Jesus is all of a sudden standing with them! Yeah. Okay. They’re already scared, now they’re scared even more, but in a good way.

But peace be with you, he said as he spoke. He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord again, He said, Peace be with you as the father sent me. So I am sending you.

You just read those few verses and you think that’s a cool moment, but you have got to see how profound this is. They were stuck, they were lost, they were confused. Jesus’ first thing is to say, “I come with peace.” Now hear this: When we’re in the midst of struggling to forgive, we’re also desperate for peace.

So, the disciples are struggling to find that peace. What does Jesus offer? Peace! 

And so they’re filled with joy. On top of that, he’s working on them. You need to understand the layers that are going on here. There’s such a bigger miracle happening. You are forgiven for all the past, present, and future. That’s the peace Jesus is giving you.

I love this quote by the theologian G. Campbell Morgan:

I just thought it all said he had faced talking about Jesus. He had faced and defeated all the forces which destroy the peace of man. so good. And as he said it, peace be with you. He was doing infinitely more than expressing a wish. He was making a declaration. He was bestowing the benediction. He was imparting a blessing.

I want you to hear this: Jesus is walking into your dark room where you’re scared, where you’re confused, and you’re struggling to forgive. Jesus is saying that He is giving you a blessing of peace and he has the power to do that because he brought the power of forgiveness into this conversation. It’s such a beautiful thing. We start to understand God’s first step with us when we’re struggling is to bring you peace. Are you willing to accept it? Are you willing to walk with it?

Jesus didn’t stop there. He tells his disciples, “I bring you peace.” Here’s the next part of John 20.19-21:

 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

This turns a page. Jesus is like, okay, I’ve given you peace but here’s the next part of it. If you have learned to accept that, you’ve learned to take that on. What I’ve done for you now I’ve given you authority to forgive.

So what do you do with that? Forgiveness matters.

Who you choose to forgive, I’ll forgive. Who you choose not to forgive, I will not forgive. That’s got some weight behind it. Now, some of you are like: “I kind of like that. That sounds good. Some power there. This is good.” I think the disciples understand what Jesus is teaching them: We’ve got this peace because of Jesus, but he’s also giving something to us. There’s authority with forgiveness. It’s crazy. The next few weeks and months after this, there becomes a moment where the disciples get to put this into action. They are standing there on the temple steps and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit comes on a bunch of people. We know this as Pentecost. [Acts 2 is the moment I’m describing]

There’s all these people speaking in different languages, but everybody can understand it. Some people are saying they’re crazy, they sound drunk, they sound… (you fill in the blank). The disciples are watching all this happen and they’re going, Wait, I think I’ve seen this before! Remember when we were in that dark room and Jesus met us there? I think people are experiencing the same thing!We’ve got to tell them about forgiveness! We’ve got to share this moment with them! We just have to! And so Peter steps up he gives this message on forgiveness. He finishes it with these words in Acts 2.37-39:

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God.”

The disciples have taken this authority. They had to share it with somebody, this whole group of people. And you know what happened? It movement that day! 3,000 people came to the Lord!

That’s an it factor. That’s the power. That’s the authority. And so sometimes you think it’s crazy. You’re thinking “I’d love to experience it.” God’s saying you can! God wants you to experience the transforming power that He has. God wants you to experience it within your marriage. God wants you to experience it within your family. God wants you to experience it within your church and your community.

That’s what God wants, and He’s given us the authority to do it, but it’s all about what we do with forgiveness.

So I write all of this to hopefully add some depth, add some weight to this, because here’s what the ultimate crux of what I am trying to say is: Forgiveness offers us peace, unforgiveness feeds a monster. When we choose to forgive, we start to experience a freedom that only Jesus can provide. Unforgiveness starts to create more of a monster in your life to where now you’re trying to control things, now you’re trying to make sure you don’t get hurt again and those things start to become monsters as we’re trying to understand forgiveness.

Does Jesus teach forgiveness?

Absolutely! Let’s dive in:

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Jesus is trying to make an exaggerated point that would be like owing a debt, a millions billions, whatever number you want to put on there. That seems way out of reach when he’s speaking to this audience and not speaking to us. He’s giving us that number. Here’s the debt. It’s a debt that can never be fully repaid. And so here’s the one thing you’ve got to recognize in the story that God is making a point. The master is God, the servant represents us [humanity] and how we treat other people. Here’s the one thing I want you to recognize: God forgives us for debt we can never pay back. That’s the forgiveness God is offering to us! You’ve got to recognize unforgiveness when we say, “I’m not willing to forgive somebody.” It reveals that we don’t value God’s forgiveness. We’re saying, “God, I hear you, but man, you don’t know the situation. What they’ve done is worse than…”

God is saying “No, no, no, I gave up my life so that you could have life for forever.”

Sometimes we compare the things of this world to the spiritual world, and they are not the same.

I know for me personally, I’ve struggled with this because sometimes when it comes out. Unforgiveness, I had this. My biggest struggle was forgiving myself because I knew God, I had gone to church, and tried to be a good kid. You know, all that kind of stuff. I heard that God died for me, God did this for me! I told myself “Man, that’s awesome! God, I appreciate that, but here’s the deal: I’m going to try to live such a good life that I was worth dying for!” And has he ever played this game?

God kept telling me that trying to live such a good life to be “worth dying for” is not how any of this works! You cannot make it up. There’s nothing you can do here in this world that will make up for the sin that Jesus has covered. God kept telling me that “I want you to live a good life, but not because you’re trying to prove something to me. I want you to live a good life because you are loved and you are!” But I was like, “No, no, no, God, I want to control it.” I like controlling it. That was my monster. That’s what came out of this unforgiveness.

So I wanted to control what God was doing in my life and some of you, it’s different things. When you try to take control, you create your own prison. That’s the part that I want to recognize, maybe the reason we’re struggling with forgiveness is because we don’t understand the grace and mercy and forgiveness that was shown to us.

Now hear me, let me be clear: Forgiveness is letting go of judgment. It does not mean that because some of us have some bad theological theology on forgiveness does not mean that you forget it at all. It does not mean that everything’s okay. It is merely going, “God, I don’t have control over this anymore over this, but you do. God, as much as I would like to sit on your throne and tell you how the world should work and tell you how these people should pay and tell you how I think I should be doing life, the truth is that you are God, I’m not.”

You’ve got to let go of that judgment. That’s what forgiveness is! You have to be humble enough to recognize that “God. You’re the king. You’re the one that saved me. I am just your humble servant. Teach me how to forgive so that I can experience peace.” That is learning to let go so that other people don’t get to change your identity.

You, yourself, do not get to change your identity. God gets to define it

Think of it this way: Forgiveness is our armor to strengthen our peace, forgiveness is not something we do one time.

It is an ongoing thing. We have put on this armor.