Tag Archives: Forgiveness

Ep96 We Are Our Culture

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:56 — 31.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len invites us to grapple with the virtues and character we value, permit, model and promote and the effect they have on us and those around us.

Support Wrestling with God Productions: https://www.GiveSendGo.com/WWGProductions

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Culture over time is the most important force in shaping our identity. When an entire community prizes certain things, these things just seep into our pores.
  • Our emotions and values are very infectious. They move through a community faster than a virus.
  • Change happens, for better or worse, when entire communities unite around virtues and character they value.
  • There’s undeniable proof that an individual’s character and values effect all of society.
  • We take on the values of the communities to which we belong.
  • Virtues and character that are valued by a community are inherited by the community’s children.
  • If we want to change the world, we have to change our hearts. We are the culture. We are the system.
  • What impedes us empowers us.
  • Failure and struggle cause the hero in every hero story to become a hero.
  • Grit is frequently a greater predictor of success than talent.
  • Grit or fortitude is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
  • You need grit to become a spiritual person.
    • It takes grit to forgive when you’ve been wounded.
    • It takes grit to become prudent and know how and when to hold your tongue.
    • It takes grit to become patient.
  • We can lose our grit when life is good.
  • Grit is like a muscle. You’re not born with it. You train yourself into it.
  • “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth
  • “Democracy in America” by Alexis De Tocqueville
  • Beatrice Webb
  • Patrick Lencioni
  • What virtues and character do you value, permit, model and promote and how do they match up with the values of the communities to which you belong and, importantly, what are you going to do if they don’t?
  • We all have a big stake in our community’s culture and the effect it has on us and those around us.

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to More Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Ep80 The Purpose of Prayer

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:52 — 13.6MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len explores two Bible stories about the purpose of prayer beginning with the time the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. This is a preview of episode 3 of the new podcast from Wrestling with God Productions, featuring Father Len, titled “Life Lessons from Jesus and the Church He Founded.”

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len shares a fun story about his experience with a Protestant minister and his wife who have a very different idea than Jesus about the purpose of prayer.
  • The purpose of prayer is not to ask God for help getting something as if God is the big Santa Claus in the sky.
  • We don’t pray to get something. We pray to become something.
  • “If your definition of prayer is to get something you want, you better be careful. You may become a very self-absorbed person and then call it religion.” – Father Len
  • We pray for the bread of life so that our lives become bread for other people. We hand on the bread of life to other people in the way that we live our lives.
  • Becoming the bread of life for other people requires persistent prayer, day after day, year after year.
  • The Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke refers to the forgiveness God gives us when our lives become a force of forgiveness and we free ourselves from all grudges and resentments.
  • Becoming a constant force of forgiveness isn’t easy and takes a lifetime of prayer.
  • Prayer is a type of hospitality.
  • The prayer life of the prophet Abraham, the father of religion and hospitality, was all about welcoming and praying for the life of other people, not for himself.
  • True prayer is not being concerned about yourself. True prayer is this hospitality where your prayer life feeds other people.
  • “You have a choice. When you offer hospitality to other people, God grants you greater life. When you only care for your own life, God will take away the little life you have.” – Father Len
  • Prayer is a constant lifelong dialogue with God about becoming holy.
  • Bible stories explored in this episode:
    • Book of Genesis 18:20-32
    • Gospel According to Luke 11:1-13

Ep27 How to Forgive

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:45 — 39.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len shares the forgiveness method he uses along with his experiences learning to forgive.

Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom

  • Father Len confesses that he is “not great at forgiving,” but he’s working on it.
  • Forgiveness is a skill that can be learned just like all the other virtues.
  • Forgiving is like an exercise, the more you do it, the better you get.
  • If you learn to forgive small things, you build up the forgiveness muscle so that later you can forgive other things.
  • The LETGO forgiveness method Father Len uses has five steps:
    • L – Look deeply at what went wrong.
    • E – Apply Empathy
    • T – Tell a better story
    • G – Give forgiveness
    • O – One more day to remember choosing to forgive.
  • You may not be able to forgive immediately after an insult or injury because you need time to mourn.
  • Anger prevents forgiveness.
  • Prolonged anger can turn into bitterness.
  • Anger is a reaction to a feeling. You can train yourself to replace anger with forgiveness.
  • Forgetting the insult or injury is not the same as forgiveness.
  • If you don’t give yourself time to really feel the pain of the injury or insult, it can become easy to hide behind anger.
  • Quick compulsive forgiveness may actually be fake forgiveness and a form of denial of the insult or injury as well as a sign that you’re more comfortable being a doormat.
  • Empathy is thinking about what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes and awareness of their pain.
  • Stories change our opinions, not evidence.
  • Stories with a message of hope cause the greatest change.
  • Telling the same story to yourself over and over carves a deep rut in your memory. That can be good or bad.
  • We must learn how to forgive ourselves for stupid things we’ve done.
  • Praying that you’ll have a sincere desire for forgiveness, even if you don’t have the ability, God will answer that prayer.
  • Releasing an expectation that is causing you to suffer is a significant element in the forgiveness process.

Ep16 What is forgiveness and why do it?

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:33 — 25.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len explains what forgiveness is and isn’t and the powerful positive effects it has on us and those around us.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • We live in an age of anger. It defines our politics, the way we drive, our Facebook posts, and even our religion.
  • A lot of religious people baptize anger and make excuses for it by calling it righteous.
  • Nowhere in the Bible does it mention God’s having righteous anger. There is no righteous anger. Anger is anger.
  • There is a joke about Irish Alzheimer’s. It’s when you forget everything, but those you’re mad at.
  • People often confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation.
  • Everything is forgivable, but not all things can be reconciled.
  • Forgiveness means you’re not going to be trapped in a prison of anger, bitterness, and resentment. It’s a source of freedom.
  • Attempts to reconcile with the sociopath can be problematic. An invitation to get hurt again and again.
  • Forgiveness that skips over justice and doesn’t hold the offender accountable is fake forgiveness. Its amnesty and submission to the wrong. It turns forgiveness into the way of the weak and not the strong.
  • Why should we forgive? First and foremost because God said so.
  • Father Len describes how forgiveness gave Nelson Mandela freedom.
  • Father Len tells the amazing story of a young actress whose career was ruined by Alfred Hitchcock, but she was able to forgive him and later attend his funeral free of anger, bitterness, and resentment.
  • Bitterness has a long-term effect on the brain. It makes you dumber.
  • Anger contributes to bad decision-making.
  • Wounded people wound others. If you hold on to anger and a really deep hurt, you’re likely to hurt other people.
  • Forgiveness silences the voice of the offender that keeps telling you you’re a victim and you have no dignity.
  • Forgiveness contributes to better health and a longer life.
  • Dr. Robert Enright’s “International Forgiveness Institute”
  • “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – CS Lewis
  • The book, “A 1000 Acres” by Jane Smiley is a great story about the power of forgiveness.
  • People who’ve been able to forgive a deep hurt have a much greater capacity to love.