Getting Past the Past

SERMON: 2012-03-11--ac1286--getting-past-the-past-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:49:13.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker picking up a previous topic (recap/exposition). It ends with sung material that is clearly part of the concluding worship service structure following the sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the start and end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:06:36.280-00:06:43.020, 00:06:48.320-00:06:54.720, 00:06:57.120-00:07:03.700, 00:07:14.900-00:07:20.100, 00:07:23.060-00:07:31.420, 00:07:55.260-00:08:26.700, 00:40:04.780-00:40:09.060, 00:42:07.740-00:42:16.020, 00:42:17.540-00:42:23.060, 00:44:51.580-00:49:11.520 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: start, end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:06:43.020] [CUT] I want to pick up where we left off last week, and we were looking last week at two of three lessons that I think we can learn from this story here in the book of Acts where Barnabas helps Saul integrate into the Jerusalem community when he had done them so much damage in so many ways. First of all, I pointed out last week the lesson that we can learn is that we all tend to judge people or define people based on their past. And that never more so than when we have been hurt or harmed by people. As the old saying goes, "Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me." Secondly, we all need an advocate. We all need somebody to believe in us. Somebody to take us in, vouch for us, support and encourage us, which is precisely what Barnabas does for Saul. He takes him in, he introduces him to the apostles, and he creates an environment where Saul's integrity can be vouched for. And that too, you will recall, is the theme of Redemption, Inc. that we referred to last week with Kevin O'Leary. It so happened that last Monday night, I caught about half an hour of the ninth and final episode of this particular program. It was a reunion program filmed six months after the conclusion of the earlier series. And Kevin O'Leary and his sidekick, Brian O'Dea, revisited all of the contestants that had been part of the program to see how well they had done financially since they had been on the program. Well, interestingly enough, nobody had made any money, including Aaliyah, who won the contest and who got the $100,000 to form this company, Reliah Gal Snowplowing and Landscaping. It wasn't her fault, it just didn't happen to snow in Prince George this winter. Big disadvantage. But what really intrigued me about the half hour of the show that I saw was my first introduction to Brian O'Dea, because Brian O'Dea was the advisor to Kevin O'Leary in this particular program and Brian O'Dea has quite a shady past. He used to be a humongous drug dealer, owned and operated two major ships to import hundreds of millions of dollars of drugs into the country. O'Dea died in 1988 from a cocaine drug overdose and a heart attack. So he swore off drugs, went straight, but his past caught up with him and he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail, of which he served four years. Since then, he has dedicated himself to coming alongside other people and encouraging them that if he can kick all of those habits, so could he. In fact, at one point he took out a very large advertisement in the National Post to advocate his services and to say, "Listen, if I was this good in my drug dealing days, your company can benefit from my skills." So modesty was not his primary virtue, but he's the one in the program then who comes along and he talks to the ex-convicts and he tells them his story. And in that way he is the advocate that to one degree or another we all need. Which brings us this morning then to the third lesson that we can learn from this passage and I introduced it briefly last week, and that is the fact that trust takes time to rebuild. Trust takes time to rebuild. I said last week, it's naive to believe for the Christian community that just because Barnabas believes in the Apostle Paul and just because Barnabas has introduced him to the leadership, that that means everybody's guard is going to be down and they're going to welcome him warmly into their lives. That is not realistic because the reality of life is that trust, once broken, is extremely difficult to rebuild. To trust somebody is to open up your heart to them, it is to allow them into your life with the expectation that they will not only not hurt you, but they will do you good. That's hard enough for the best of us. That's especially difficult when we feel that we have been violated or taken advantage of. And so rebuilding trust is a process because it includes both forgiveness and reconciliation, and both forgiveness and reconciliation are processes that take time as opposed to a once and for all activity. And I'm sure that all of us here have found ourselves in situations where somebody has hurt us or we have hurt somebody else and in good Christian practice we have sought to forgive and we have worked it through and we thought we had worked it through and it was all gone until we meet that person again and all of a sudden we discover that all the old feelings are coming back. Is that not true? Many of us at some point or another have found ourselves in that kind of situation. What that means is that the process of forgiveness has not yet been fully completed. In the time that we have this morning, I want to walk you through what that process looks like, what the stages of it are, and how you can tell when you are truly at the other end. And to set the stage for that, here is a very short video clip that I want you to look at that captures just how critical all of these issues are even in the context of church community. Let's roll that and take a look at it. How often am I supposed to forgive? [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:06:43.020; resume after this marked segment] I'm not really asking for an answer. I guess just an opportunity to come clean. How often do I forgive the gossiper in my life? How often do I forgive the exaggerator, the outright liar? How often do I forgive the nonstop talker in my life, the interrupter, or person who sits around and does nothing? How often do I forgive a boss who is demeaning, a co-worker who is after my job? How often do I forgive my mother for all she did or didn't do, my father for all he said or didn't say, my brother, my sister? How long is my mental list of hurt feelings? How far back does the account of wrong suffered go? How many people do I mumble to myself about, mentally rehearsing the scene where I tell them off and expose them to the world? How many times do I hear bad news about someone who's hurt me and I'm glad because after all they had it coming? Forgive me for all the times I haven't forgiven, for all the times I've only partially forgiven, grudgingly forgiven, or self-righteously forgiven. Help me to forgive others the way you've forgiven me, not for a moment, but for a lifetime, not seven times, every time. Let me walk you through the insert, the process of forgiveness taken from my book Olive Shoots Around Your Table, but originally produced by a woman by the name of Charlotte Rosenach, who has a doctorate in psychology and runs a counseling clinic somewheres out in the American Midwest. If you'll take a look for a moment, notice in the bottom corner here is what's known as the offensive event. The offensive event is where somebody crosses you or violates your person or your possessions. That can be as simple a thing as you fail to acknowledge my presence when you met me in the supermarket, to as significant a thing as you messed up my marriage, to you kidnapped my child and everything in between. What an offensive event produces is both hurt and anger. Hurt as in, how could you do this to me? And anger as in, who in the world do you think you are to do that to me? Now the degree to which you experience hurt or anger after somebody has crossed you is determined by two sets of factors, the offended factors, that is on the qualities that you bring to the table, as well as the offender factors, the qualities that the offending person brings to the table. Under offended factors, notice there's a list of four, commitment to the relationship. That is to say, the closer you are to somebody, the more power they have to hurt you. I've often said, my wife has the power to hurt me in ways the mailman never could. The psalmist puts it this way in Psalm 55, the verses 12, 13, and 14. It goes like this, if an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. If a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with the throng at the house of God. The closer you are, the greater the ability and the power to hurt and to harm you. The next one then is ego strength. Ego strength is your own personal strength that you bring to the table. Some people are much more fragile than others. The more wounded you have been in the course of life, in some ways the more fragile you are likely to be. That said, all of us have moments when we are stronger or moments when we are more fragile. There are times when you feel good about yourself, there are times when you feel strong, somebody says something or does something, it runs off your back like the proverbial water off the back of a duck because you've got your guard up. But then there are those times when you're tired or you don't have your guard up and all of a sudden somebody will say something or they will do something and it gets past all your defenses to the very core of your being and it cuts you to the heart, isn't that true? When I was a youngster growing up I was very close to a male relative who had sort of taken me under his wing and it was a good cozy relationship and all of a sudden there was one moment and I don't remember what it was that made this happen, I must have bugged him at the wrong time and he told me off in no flattering terms, he told me to go to hell and I remember just being utterly devastated by how that, how could he do what he just did when I thought we had that kind of relationship and many of us I'm sure can remember that kind of experience, the psalmist certainly does because he puts it this way, how long will you assault a man? Would all of you throw him down this leaning wall, this tottering fence, it sometimes seems that the more fragile you are the more people like hounds pour in upon you, they smell the weakness and they try to destroy you and build themselves up at your expense. So there's that but beyond that then is the decision to forgive and the moment an offensive event takes place, whether that be large or small, each one of us is confronted by a decision, will I forgive that person as God in Christ has forgiven me or will I hold on to it and that decision is almost made immediately in the spur of that moment and if I make the decision to forgive then I might well receive grace so that I can walk my way through it. Human nature though being what it is our tendency is to want to indulge in it and the moment I do that the anger becomes deeper and the wound becomes greater and pretty soon it begins to poison my whole life. Beyond that then is a personal history of giving and receiving forgiveness right down here and in the parable of the unmerciful servant that I have included on the insert today why is the master so furious with his servant? It's because the servant had a huge debt cancelled and in gratitude he should have cancelled the much smaller debt of the man who owed him money. Matthew 18, 32 and 33, then the master called the servant in, you wicked servant he said, I cancelled 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? And so the more we have experienced forgiveness ourselves and the more we have learned to extend forgiveness to others as a way of life the easier we can process the anger and the easier it is for us to process the hurt. Those are factors that we bring to the table and they are conditions that determine how deep the wounding goes. Very important to understand that because it explains why you can have two people growing up in the same family under the same situations. One person's life really gets messed up and the other person seems to go sailing through. One is much more vulnerable to the offense than is the other and so who we are and what we bring to the table makes a big difference in how deep goes the hurt and also the anger. Well that's offset then by the offender factors up here and again you will see four listed. The first is severity. Severity is the degree to which the offensive event has caused me hurt or injury. There is a world of a difference between the kidnap and murder of my child and the fact that you forgot to say hello to me when you met me on the street or in the shopping market. Much more difficult to forgive the former than it might be to forgive the latter. If you've been watching any of the news reports coming out of the Tory Stafford murder trial then her father Rodney has been on the news quite a bit and he continues to say that he will never ever forgive the people that are charged with the murder of his daughter and that was indeed as you know an extremely horrific story particularly as the details are coming to light. The more severe the action against you the greater will be the hurt and the damage. Then there is acknowledgement of wrong. There's a world of a difference again between you hurt me but you refuse to acknowledge that you've hurt me or yes I know that I hurt you and I'm very sorry if you've ever been in a conflict then you will know that even while that apology or acknowledgement of wrong doesn't make the pain go away automatically or immediately it does mean that you now at least have common ground you understand what is the reality of the situation and you can start working forward to reconciliation or restoration. The next one then is intentionality. Intentionality makes a huge difference in the sense that it's one thing if I hurt you or harm you accidentally it's quite another if I do it on purpose or if I do it with relish. We all offend at one point or another and many times that will be unbeknownst to us and it certainly will not be intentional but there are also those moments where we get a B in our bonnet and with considerable intentionality we step out into a situation and we not only jab in the knife but we give it a twist because I want you to hurt the way that you have hurt me. The psalmist in Psalm 140 puts it this way he says proud men have hidden a snare for me they have spread out the cords of their net and have set traps for me along my path. I don't know if you've ever had people gunning for you but if you have then you will know it is the most miserable feeling in all of the world because while love covers a multitude the lack of love uncovers a multitude and there is a demonic glee that comes along with being able to find something that I can hold over your head to make you look bad and me look good that is wisdom from below that is not wisdom from above. Then of course we have the whole frequency of the offenders actions it's one thing for me to be unfaithful to my spouse as a once in a lifetime experience that is bad enough and that may mean the end of my marriage it can also perhaps become opportunity to grow our way through this difficult though that would be but if it happens again and again even when you have promised that it isn't going to happen again well then it's only a question of time before all trust is gone and the relationship really breaks down. So you've got all of those factors that enter into the picture you've got the offender factors you've got the offended factors and I was working on this this past week it occurred to me there is an additional element that I want to introduce into this picture that is not part of the original drawing and you'll notice how on top here there is a reference to the spiritual there's God's intervention and the whole role of prayer in fasting. Now it occurred to me as I was thinking through all of this that there is another spiritual factor is there not that is included in this process of offense and hurt and wounding and guess who or what that might be Satan remember him he's the one who delights in miscommunication misunderstanding in hurt in anger and in bitterness and he will find whatever your vulnerabilities are whatever somebody else's vulnerabilities are and if he can stir the pot with his power and with his confusion before you know it the result is chaos and confusion understand that we do not fight against flesh and blood but against principalities and against powers and against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places and one of the reasons scripture admonishes us to put on the armor of God is to make sure that he doesn't get his stick in between the spokes of our wheel and cause us to go flying when we want to be standing firm so all of this then is part of the offensive event which produces hurt and anger fed by Satan you will recall the story of Cain where God says to Cain sin is couching at the door but you must overcome it and the devil was right there feeding in to Cain sense of rejection and the kingdoms of the world are built on God doesn't love me he's not going to look after me so I am going to build my own kingdom worldly thinking is undergirded by that philosophy now what you'll notice here is the little word denial between the offensive event and hurt and between hurt and anger and denial means the inability or the unwillingness to face hurt or anger and I dare say we have all found ourselves in situations where we have been crossed by somebody we have been hurt or wounded or offended but when somebody challenges on it we deny that we have been hurt at all oh this didn't bother me at all I'm not angry me angry I'm too good a Christian to be angry how many of you here would agree there are times when you deny that you've been hurt or deny that you've been angry anybody honest enough there are two reasons why denial is such a powerful coping mechanism the first reason is that we simply can't handle dealing with the feelings and we go into shock and a lot of us will find ourselves in situations where this is just too much for me to handle so I don't want to talk about it I go quiet I need time to process it a perfectly normal and natural thing as long as we do deal with it eventually and process it you can't blow all the circuits all at once but the second reason and a much more subtle one and that is that there's a category of people who cannot admit that they might truly have feelings of hurt or that they might truly have feelings of anger there are people who are so out of touch with negative feelings who are so prideful if you will about being good Christian people that whenever they experience a negative emotion they have been so shamed they cannot acknowledge negative emotions in their own lives and so you can hurt them you can see them hurt you can you know everybody else knows how full of toxicity and poison they are but they're still going around saying oh well I'm not angry did you say I was it no I'm not angry don't try to tell me that I'm angry I'm not hurt I can handle this in the meantime they spread their poison seventy-five feet all around them everywhere they go and so what happens is that you cannot process what's there until you begin to process both the hurt and the anger and you have to push through denial some people are so good at denying negative emotions that they have split off into two separate personalities if you will and they will constantly show you one side but they will be totally out of touch with the negative the Lord will push us through denial into a place where it's okay to acknowledge that I'm human and as a human being I do feel hurt when you lie about me I feel hurt when you slender me I feel hurt when you you know interfere with my marriage or with my friendships or with my life and not only do I feel hurt I get angry because even God gets angry so now the process continues because what happens is that the offensive event gives room to hurt gives room to anger which now goes to information gathering and information gathering is a process that we're all familiar with because it's where you start asking the questions why did you not say hello to me in the grocery store why did you abandon me as a father when I was a three-year-old child why did my husband or my wife walk out on me when I thought we had such a good relationship information gathering can even be addressed towards God as in God why did I get sick when I did and and why didn't you hear my prayers when I cried out so hard for you to give me answers information gathering is a process that takes place as we try to process both our hurt and our anger and here's the thing that I want us to understand about this as we carry on this process of information gathering notice the arrows come back to anger come back to hurt come back to anger and come back to hurt it becomes a cycle a lot of times you will notice that when you start processing a relationship or a difficulty things get much worse rather than better is that not true and sometimes we say to ourselves I wish I had left alone because now I'm in deeper manure than I was before I started but that is the normal process of forgiveness and it's our failure to do that that puts us into situations where we say oh well I have forgiven and everything is still all right I've told you this story we used to have a family two families in the first church that I pastored who every time there was communion they would shake hands and make up and then they'd go back to fighting again because they never ever processed the underlying issues so yes when I find out what really happened and how you really jabbed me or stabbed me in the back and I break through the denial now my anger goes through the roof and my hurt becomes deeper than ever and I am in worse shape than I ever was but you see it's a necessary part of the whole process of forgiveness because out of this comes the next stage of the process of forgiveness which becomes the first step towards truly forgiving and that is a thing under here that is called reframing and reframing means exactly what it sounds like reframing means that I'm now getting answers to my questions and I'm able to start putting it in the proper context and so I thought you were just turning the cold shoulder to me in the grocery store because you ignored me and that's why I got hurt and that's why I was angry but now that we have worked through this process of information gathering I've come to understand that you happen to be preoccupied and you in fact didn't even see me well that makes a world of a difference doesn't it because now it's no longer personal now all of a sudden I understand it was your stuff it wasn't about me and I used to think that you left me when I was three years old because I threw up all over the carpet and you got mad at me and I thought I was the cause of the failure of your marriage and you pointed out to me that it had nothing to do with that whatsoever it was because your drinking got in the way of your relationship with my mom and you were afraid you're going to kill one of us and so you decided you'd leave home information gathering leads to reframing and reframing helps me to understand the difference between the stuff that's my responsibility and the stuff that is your responsibility and that doesn't immediately make all the hurt or all the anger go away but it goes a long ways into bringing me to a position where I can start leaving this behind because I'll tell you something questions that have not been answered situations that have not been resolved they leave you stuck back there and a lot and a lot of people will say leave stuff well enough alone why is forgiveness so important I'll tell you why it's important it's not important because of the person who has offended against you but it has made you a prisoner to them into the past because you'll wake up every morning feeling resentful you wake up every morning wondering hoping that ill will come to them and you will not be able to go on in your own life with God because it chews away at your insides reframing reframing then brings you to the next stage which is huge releasing the desire to retaliate the desire to retaliate comes as naturally to the human heart as breathing and we retaliate in many different ways you know anywhere from hoping that it will come upon you to an inability to rejoice with you when in fact you do well and releasing the desire to retaliate brings us to a point where we can say it's no longer my job it is God's job I can let go Paul in Romans 12 of course puts it this way do not take revenge my friends but leave room for God's wrath for it is written it is mine to avenge I will repay says the Lord on the contrary if your enemy is hungry feed him if he is thirsty give him something to drink in doing this you will he burning colds on his head do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good and that of course brings us then to the very last stage of forgiveness the place where we know that truly forgiveness has been realized and that is when we can wish the offender well and I tell you when God brings us to that place we know that the process has been completed because now not only do we no longer wish evil upon that person but we wish good to that person in scripture of course talks about that very clearly when it says bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse and in the Christian world this is rooted in God's forgiveness towards us because as the parable of the unmerciful servant demonstrates so clearly the debt each one of us owes to God Almighty is beyond comprehension in the parable what that man owes the king is more money than the richest person in the world could have possibly possessed God in Christ has forgiven us everything and once we have known the reality of that forgiveness and Christ comes to leave in us by the power of the Holy Spirit then what he wants to do is work in our lives through this process to bring us to a place where we can truly forgive those who have sinned against us in a few moments we're going to do an exercise together to give you opportunity to consult with the Holy Spirit about places in your life where you have been hurt or where you might still be angry it might only be a very little thing it might be a very major thing and I'm not at all suggesting that we just quickly and glibly step into it and pretend it's all better no but I think what the Lord is calling us to as a community is to engage in the process of getting past the past because many of us in many ways have been hurt and wounded relationships have been strained things have been said things have been done that have left us with pain and with confusion sometimes we don't know who to believe or what to believe God is moving us forward and to set the stage for that here's a video that I want you to watch of a person who was called upon to forgive under the most difficult and extenuating of circumstances please watch this about three o'clock in the morning I'd be awoken to gunfire I remember those shots how loud it was and I remember raising up in the bed and throwing my body out trying to shield the gunfire I would take a blast in the face that shot would blow me out of bed there I'm laying on the floor there bleeding in shot not sure again who's in my home a few minutes later one of the gunmen came over aimed the gun at my back and shot me in the back four times and once in the back of the leg shooting me a total of 11 times and left me for dead I hear commotion in the living room I hear furniture being overturned I hear two male voices but again I can't make it out what they're saying and then I would hear my 13 year old son Matthew cry out he would say no Charlie no why are you doing this no Charlie don't and then when I heard Charlie's name being mentioned I knew who was in my home and I knew why he was there he was to get revenge all because we made him break up with our daughter and then I heard the gunshots I heard Matthew being shot and then they took turns stabbing my eight year old son Tyler to death as he hid in a closet I finally managed to get to my feet I scanned the bedroom and I can't find Penny anywhere but I'm blinded by smoke and blood and my first thoughts were to get out get through the bedroom door to get upstairs to my children but by this time the house was totally engulfed I could hear windows exploding I went back on my side of the bed climbed over the mattress and one idea when I climbed over the bed there I found Penny and she was already gone it was a horrific scene I couldn't get her out I didn't know how to get to my children and probably the hardest thing I did that night was when I climbed out our bathroom window knowing they were inside and I couldn't get them out the whole time I crawled to my neighbor's house I wasn't really feeling the pain I think I was just running on adrenaline and shock and once help came that's when the pain began to set in I realized at that point that no effort on my part was going to change what happened that I realized that they're all gone but my sister came to me and said that Erin my daughter she was alive and I'm thinking how can this be because I thought she had died in the home as well but right before I went into the operating room I'd find out that Erin had been arrested was being charged with murder when I heard that I remember raising up from that hospital bed and I was yanking tubes out of my nose IVs out of me and I was just screaming let me die let me die I had [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:40:04.780; remove through 00:49:13.000] a home I [CUT] had a wife and three children and now it's all gone and I remember going back to my property I was angry at my daughter of course I was angry at those two young men but just to be honest with you I was angry at God too I said God I don't understand why did you do this why did you take my family none of this is making any sense God why and when I said God why I looked over to my right and I seen a piece of paper and when I picked it up and I began to read it and when I read that first line I literally fell to my knees because I knew God had just showed up it said God I don't understand why you would take my family and leave me behind to struggle along without them and I guess I may never totally understand that part of it but I do believe that you're sovereign and that you're in control and I tell you when I read that page I just felt on my face on those ashes God must have spared my life for a reason it was by no accident that he left that page there for me he let me realize that day that hey I've got a purpose for you I want to use you I want to take this tragedy to help others it wasn't long after I found that burnt page that God began to deal with my heart about my bitterness by this time I had already forgiven my daughter I mean she's my daughter my flesh and blood so I think that came a little easier but those two young men that took my family I'm like God I'll do anything they don't ask me to forgive them this could go one of two ways I can stay bitter or I can get better and I think at that point I was determined that I was not going to let Satan get the victory because what Satan meant for evil God was determined to good I want to use this tragedy to bring honor and glory to you to honor my family and there in the courtroom I stood in front of those two young men and I forgave them I said I don't forgive what you did because what you did was wrong and you'll have the rest of your life to think about what you did but I said I've God has commanded me to love you and I forgive you it wasn't until that day when I walked out of that courtroom that I realized that you know what I think everything's gonna be okay that life is gonna go on my life here on earth is gonna have meaning and there's still some good days ahead that's an extreme example and thank God most of us in our lifetime will never be called upon to demonstrate God's forgiveness to that degree but that doesn't mean that he doesn't invite us to step into situations of great pain that sometimes we would much rather avoid in the pew in front of you in the pocket is a little piece of water soluble paper want to ask you to take that out and if you have a pen or a pencil write on there the name of a person or persons who come to mind that the Lord has been speaking to you about the need to forgive might be a parent might be a son or a daughter it might be a friend it might be a business acquaintance it might be a brother or sister the family of God write it down and then as the Holy Spirit leads you and I know this is always a risk to take and we want to do this in the privacy of our own hearts before gone as the music begins to play and the Holy Spirit is prompting you to enter into this process of forgiveness I'm not saying it's gonna be done with once and for all this isn't like some magical little motion and now we're all gonna be okay no no this is a commitment that says Lord I know that this is what I need to step into don't even know how to do it don't know if I want to do it but you've forgiven me so help me to step into this as you have opportunity come forward we have four sets of bowls here put your piece of paper into the bowl and watch it dissolve as a testimony of the fact that you're committed to this process of forgiveness as God in Christ has forgiven you let's just pray for a moment Lord you know what lives in our hearts and you know those places where we feel that we have been misrepresented misunderstood those places where we ourselves have seen the Lord gone and we just want the restoration that only your Holy Spirit can bring about we don't even know how to do it how to get there but we just want to take this first step and say Lord just do in me and through me whatever you want to do to accomplish your purposes in Jesus name amen Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth Speaks righteousness for me stands in my defense Jesus it's your blood Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth Speaks righteousness for me stands in my defense Jesus it's your blood What can wash away our sins? What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood, nothing but the blood of Jesus What can wash us, your ass, no? Well, couldn't ask the friends of God Nothing but your blood, nothing but your blood Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth Speaks righteousness for me stands in my defense Jesus it's your blood What can wash away our sins? What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood, nothing but the blood of Jesus What can wash us, your ass, no? Well, couldn't ask the friends of God Nothing but your blood, nothing but your blood Jesus What can wash away our sins? What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood, nothing but the blood of Jesus What can wash us, your ass, no? Well, couldn't ask the friends of God Nothing but the blood, nothing but the blood of Jesus What can Jesus, what can Jesus It's your blood, it's your blood [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:49:13.000; resume after this marked segment]