What is up, everybody? And welcome back to the Young and Love Podcast.
I am Darius Covington, the host of this great podcast.
The Young and Love Podcast is a podcast where being young in love
has absolutely nothing zero zelch with your age and love,
but has all to do with your maturity and your experience in love over time.
Here at the Young and Love Podcast, we talk about love in three different forms.
We talk about the love with our faith, the love of God.
We talk about the love with others.
And then we talk about the love that we have with ourself.
Whoo. In addition to all of that, there are a lot of relationship
podcasts out there that oftentimes kind of y'all just be mean to each other.
They're mean. The men are mean to the women.
The women are mean to the men.
This is not ever going to be that kind of podcast.
Even as we grow on the continued shooting episodes and start having more people
come on the episodes, it will be known and be real clear
that this is not that podcast where you're going to be hyping on the other sex,
the other gender. That is not our goal.
That is not the vision.
That is not the plan for this podcast.
If you're tuning in, you know that I
I think I'm supposed to be uploading podcasts every Thursday.
And really, I do like one Thursday every other month.
And then I just reappear all of a sudden.
But I am trying to keep myself on track for the rest of this year,
every Thursday for the rest of this year.
I don't know how many.
So we have, I guess, I think tomorrow is the last Thursday.
Today's Wednesday, the 27th of September.
So this will be uploaded on the 28th.
Right. So we have that Thursday.
We have the four Thursdays.
I think let's just estimate the four Thursdays in October,
four Thursdays in November.
That puts us at nine episodes and then four for the December.
So what is that 13? Right.
What's about 13 more episodes to get out?
So if you've been listening to the podcast,
you know that the last episode talked about if you haven't watched it,
by the way, go back and watch that because it'll kind of catch up
to where we are right now.
The last podcast episode talked about forgiving God.
This episode is talking about forgiving others.
And then next week's episode is about forgiving yourself.
So we're going on this journey of forgiveness in the first episode.
I talked about moments where we might have been hurt or impacted
by things that God allowed to happen in our life.
And I use my grandmother's death as an example of something
that happened in my life that I obviously was not ready for,
I was not prepared for and how that affected my relationship with Christ.
And then you can always watch the episode and apply it to different ways
that things happen in your life.
That might cause you to be kind of, I don't want to use the word
like strained from God, but that might put you put your relationship
back with God in a weird kind of situation.
Your faith is a little shaky now.
You're trusting him is a little shaky now.
You're just trying to figure it all out.
That was the first strand of this forgiveness series.
The second strand of the forgiveness series today is about forgiving other people.
I recently made a tick tock post.
If you don't follow me on tick tock.
I don't know what you're doing, but I made a tick tock post
and I talked about forgiving other people being hard sometimes
because we are oftentimes left, especially as we get older.
We're left with the responsibility to forgive people who never apologized to us.
And and you guys will see in a couple of episodes moving forward,
I did an episode with my mother that will be coming out in a few weeks
and discuss with her some things that have happened in my life
that I had to forgive people for who never apologize.
And sometimes it's because they didn't even know that they had to apologize
because we don't always communicate or at least let me take a moment.
I don't always I did not always communicate when my feelings were hurt by somebody.
And I didn't always know how to communicate that those things.
And there were different experiences that I faced in life that also shut my mouth
to expressing how I felt or what was going on.
And so as I grew older, I started to realize you hold in a grudge against people
or a person who you never told that you were upset with.
But the way you act around them, the way you show up around them,
the way you speak to them is very.
Clear that you have an awe against them that you need to fix.
So before we hop into the depths of this episode, you all know, I love the Lord.
And if you don't know, I love the Lord.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I want to start off with a scripture
that talks about forgiveness, one of the most popular scriptures
that we know that we know of in the Bible is a scripture
where Jesus was hanging on the cross and they were casting lots with his clothes.
And this scripture specifically comes from Luke, the twenty second
chapter in the thirty fourth verse, and it says Jesus said.
It says Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.
And then it says, and then they divided up his clothing by casting lots.
The reason why that scripture resonates so much with me
and why I feel like it's important to talk about in this episode
or to dive into in this episode is because what I just said earlier,
sometimes we're we're left to accept apologies.
And I'm pretty sure if you're watching this, you might also be on.
I don't know that I would necessarily call this my journey,
but you might be on a journey where you are getting older and realizing
things that have affected you in your past and people who might have hurt
you in your past that you haven't forgiven.
And so in this scripture, Jesus specifically says these people
don't know what they're doing, but he's asking God to forgive him.
And in a way, right, Jesus is God.
He's granting, he's gracing these people with forgiveness
because they don't even know what they're doing.
And how many times have we found ourselves in situations,
whether it be relationships where your boyfriend did something
or your girlfriend did something that you didn't like and it hurt your feelings
or broke your heart or the way that relationship ended, broke your heart
or they cheated on you or they lied to you or they disrespected you.
Same for experiences that we have.
We talk about church hurt very often.
Same for experiences that we have in church.
And oftentimes the safest place that you think to go
sometimes can be the place that hurts you the most.
And then situations that might happen with your family,
where your family member might or your family member
might say something out of the way your mom or your dad
or your sister or your brother or your aunt or uncle might say
or do something out of the way or a friend might say or do something
out of the way to you.
And they might not know the lasting impact that it has on you.
Because oftentimes we feel like we are so far removed from that situation
or from when it happened that we don't speak up about certain situations
that happen. And so we're left to having to forgive people
who don't even realize that they did anything wrong in the first place.
Where is my water? That's a lot of words.
Intercession. What?
Intermission. Do.
So, yeah, so that scripture resonates with me in a way that is very
that there's a lot of passages that talk about forgiveness
or that talk about grace in the Bible.
But that passage specifically points, shoots out to me,
or that that scripture specifically shoots out to me.
Because could you imagine that you hang out on a cross,
and these people are literally about to murder you and ripping your stuff apart
and casting lots with it?
And you talk about forgive these people.
People have done much less.
People have done much less to me, and I have the hardest time
or I've had the hardest time forgiving them.
Growing up, I held I held I held very, very tight unnecessary grudges.
And so specifically for myself, though,
I was at a church service at my church a while ago, a while ago,
and my pastor, Bishop S.
Way Unger, preached a sermon called.
I don't have it written.
I think it was I think it was called used by God.
If I can find it, I'll put it in the description.
I might also say it in the last episode as well.
But he preached a very, very heart pricking whatever sermon
talking about being used by God and talked about how the man
there was a man in the Bible at the gate called the man of the Bible.
There was a man in the Bible at the gate called Beautiful.
He was lame. He couldn't walk.
He couldn't move. He was paralyzed.
So the disciples turned to Jesus and they asked him.
He said, Why is this man?
Why was this man born paralyzed?
Why was it? Why was he born lame?
And Jesus looks at the disciples and he says to them or excuse me,
they they say to Jesus, you know, is this man, was he?
What was it something that he did?
Was it something his parents did to have caused him to be in the situation
that he's in? And Jesus is like, Oh, no, this this happened
to this man so that God might be glorified.
It's not because of anything he did, not because of anything his parents did.
But this is all those also that God can get the glory.
And my pastor broke that passage down
and talked about how sometimes we experience different trials or tribulations
in our life. And we try we are always trying to.
I am always trying to place a blame
or responsibility is a better word, because it's not necessarily like what you did.
Blah, blah, blah. But place a responsibility on why is this situation?
Why is this situation like this?
And oftentimes we try to place responsibility on these things
where in this passage, we learn that some things just happen
because that's the way that God intended for it to happen
so that God might get the glory out of our life.
And so as I was standing up while he was preaching that message
and going through that and just started to think about a situation
or the Lord pressed it on my heart, a situation that like
I had been holding a grudge against a person for literally 18 years
or 18 years. I was holding a grudge against this person
that they didn't know about because I did not communicate.
But also that they were not actually responsible for
and when I went when when the Lord took me on that that journey, that experience
and started ministering to me and saying this is not that person's fault.
It's not even your fault that these things happen.
But your responsibility, whether it was their fault or not,
your responsibility is to forgive.
And one of the things the pastor says all the time
is that forgiveness is not for other people.
Forgiveness is for you.
Think about how many times, right?
I think a lot of the girls might be doing this thing
where you get into arguments and you think about things
that you could have said, but like by the time you come up
with these grandiose ideas of comebacks, you could have given
or which I'll be calling it like reads.
You could have been given you're in the shower thinking about these things.
You're going over the argument in the shower.
You're laying down in bed going over the argument in the bed.
Here you are. So consumed with this situation that happened.
You can't even take a shower in peace.
You can't even go to sleep in peace. Same is likewise
to different situations that we face.
Where we are on where we where we are holding grudges
against people who we have not forgiven that we show up
in different capacities in our life that we cannot fully.
I'll never forget.
I was at the altar the Sunday before that and one of the ministers
came up to me and she was saying she said the Lord wants to enlarge
your territory.
He wants to, you know, increase your increase your boundaries
or your borders, whatever.
And she said that and I was like, hmm, okay, you know,
just not really what I need to hear because I mean to me
when you say increase your territory, it sounds like, you know,
God is going to give you more money.
He's going to give you more access or whatever.
And literally I went from praying with her and I just went
to the altar was praying by myself and the Lord just started
to speak to me and say in order for you to move forward to
enlarge to be in an enlarged territory.
You are going to have to let go of grudges that you had against
other people and against yourself.
We'll talk about that yourself peace next week because I think
that is probably the most important part and probably the
first step in all this.
But once I realized that like the grudges that I hold against
people who have not a pot now, it's one thing to hold people
responsible for their actions.
It's another thing to hold a grudge against somebody for something
that they did that they didn't know they did or something that
they did and they know they did and they didn't apologize or
something that they did.
They know they did it.
They didn't apologize.
Then it becomes my responsibility to move on from that situation
because when I don't my interactions around that person are
like we can be two separate people two separate groups at
the same restaurant at the same church and how I act how I
respond, you know with that person in my vicinity.
It shifts my actions that shift my thoughts.
It shifts my motive shifts my emotions and I think that when
we don't let go of forgiveness or when we don't let go of grudges
and when we don't forgive other people then it affects how we
show up specifically for myself.
I didn't realize how I was showing up towards this person in
an unforgiving way until I realized that like I had like I
didn't like sorry like sorry to you because I am holding a
grudge against you and you don't even know and oftentimes what
I find to be true is that a lot of times people who hurt us
have been hurt a lot of times in the same ways that they have
hurt us because it is a response.
It's a trauma response.
It's a it's a it's a I feel like it sounds so tricky to be
like it's a generational blah, but when I think when it does
happen in family, I don't have my mother has never been like
Kick me out the house, but I think that sometimes we hear
stories about you know, your grandmother kicked your mother
at the house and your mother kicked you out the house and
then you grow up and you end up kicking your kid out the house.
Sometimes I think those generational things like continue
to carry on but it's because like that's what your parent
that's what your mother knew and when you don't learn any
different you continue to do the same thing over and over
and over again when you don't break that that that that
bondage of forgiveness you continue to pass on the traumatic
experiences that you faced to the generations that are to
come. So again forgiving other people isn't for it.
It's not I think for them like I'm forgiving you but I'm
forgiving you for me even if you tell me sorry and I and
I genuinely accept your apology cool, but like this is for
me and I think that some people might might have experience
or a lot of people due to the comments in the DM's that I
get from you. A lot of people have experienced traumatic
experiences in relationships and I say traumatic but that
traumatic is such a subjective word because cheating for
one person can be traumatic and being lied to, you know by
another person could also be traumatic but a lot of people
have experienced situations in relationships where they find
it hard and I I I never been hit on.
However, I would feel some kind of way if I was cheated on and
I probably wouldn't be able to film this episode if I found
out that I was cheated on but I do think that even in that
that we have and I don't think it's a Christian thing.
I don't think it's a Jesus thing.
I think it is a I want to live my life free from you kind
of thing and I want to be able to walk in that in large
territory and walk in those increased borders.
I think in order to do that, we really have to have forgiveness
and have grace for other people.
Again, I do believe in holding people accountable.
I believe in holding people responsible.
I believe in being held responsible and being held accountable
for my actions and things that I might have said or did to
you that might have hurt your feelings, but I also think that
we have to learn to apply grace to people because the reality
and I just figured this out.
This has been a this has been an interesting week interesting
two weeks.
I just I think I just figured out that like we all trying to
figure this thing out.
We are all trying to figure this thing called life out.
We're all like none of us have ever been here.
One of the elders at my church elder Brittany, we filmed a
video for her and she one of the things she said stick out
to me.
She said like none of us have ever been here before so we're
all navigating our own emotions and sometimes in that navigation
of our own emotions.
We hurt people without even knowing we hurt people and sometimes
let me sometimes I have said things that I knew were going
to hurt somebody and it's I'm not saying this as an excuse,
but like I never been here before like I like at 21.
I probably said something that hurts somebody or at 25.
I look at that.
I'm like dang Darrys like you could have you could have said
that a little bit like you could have said what you meant,
but you could have said it a little bit differently.
You could have timed it right or you could have just kept
your mouth shut altogether in general, but even giving grace
for myself to me like all right, like, okay.
I'm learning.
I've never been here before.
I've never experienced this before.
So giving myself grace in that area, but also holding myself
accountable to say if you do it again.
Yeah, you been this your first time on this earth, but it's
your second time doing it saying the same thing or doing
the same thing at some point you have to learn to to do better
to do better.
Then in our forgiveness of or in our forgiving other people.
It is it's one thing to say I forgive you.
It's another thing for your actions to say I forgive you.
I think sometimes we can apologize.
We can accept apologies or we can say I've forgiven this
person and we really haven't forgiven them.
I think there's a difference between forgiving somebody and
moving on from something right.
We people talk about forgiving and forgetting or forgiving
and forgetting.
I don't I don't I don't I don't I don't my name ain't Jesus.
I don't know.
I don't have a see a forgetfulness to throw you'll you'll
stuff in so I'm going to remember and oftentimes right.
I'm a work in progress.
I've only been here.
This is my phrase.
I'm here.
Oftentimes I find myself.
Or I have found my thing.
I'm doing a lot better.
I have found myself reacting to people based off of my experiences with them.
And so there are some people who have done things to me who
have apologized right and I've forgiven them.
I guess I haven't really forgiven them.
I just moved on from the situation like I moved around the situation
not really focusing on it anymore.
But in reality what I did was I moved around the situation.
I never buried that thing.
I never threw it away.
I never settled it.
I never dealt with it.
I just moved around it.
And so every time I come around you I'm reminded of that situation.
And so naturally my body reacts to you right.
So naturally my body reacts to that experience with you my mind my
mental it reacts to that experience with you my emotions even react
to that experience that I had with you.
And so I've learned or I am on this journey of learning that forgiveness.
Oh, sorry.
And so I'm learning or I'm on the path of learning.
I think I'm doing a really good job being more aware of the fact that
like forgiveness looks like something and if you forgive somebody then
now granted let me say be wise right be wise.
We ain't trying to forgive people just to get you know hurt again.
And I think that there are certain situations that we face where we
can forgive somebody and our actions look different.
That doesn't mean that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be
around you at all.
Don't mean I'm being around you 24-7 don't mean that you have access
to talk to me doesn't mean you have access to my to my space anymore
just because I've forgiven you.
But the look of forgiveness you got to wait sir, but the look of
forgiveness might look like if I pass you on the street.
I'm not I'm not terribly reminded about that situation or if it's
a smaller situation.
It might be like, you know, you stole $5 from me once in your life,
but you know, if you ever need $5 again, I'll be here to give it
for you.
But being wise being wise.
I think forgiveness.
I think forgiveness has to come with wisdom.
I definitely think that we are to forgive if Jesus was on a cross
and they were killing him and he was forgiving them.
I think that we are to forgive people as well.
However, that word just keeps coming up be wise and your forgiveness
and knowing that you don't want to put yourself in a bad situation
where you are negatively affected by somebody who you knew had it
in them to do this thing again being wise, but also genuine
forgiveness looks like I completely like I'm not just over the
situation, but I completely forgive you for the actions that
you did for the things that you said for the experiences that
we had together that might have hurt my feelings.
So the reality is so the reality is and I stated this a few
minutes ago in the middle of this episode is that as much as
we are trying and attempting to forgive other people.
I think that forgiveness is done.
Well, When we learn how to forgive ourself first, I think oftentimes
we hold grudges against ourself.
There I say we are upset of decisions that we made or things
that we allowed to happen when the things that we did not do.
I think the most important person to show grace to my might
be the one that you have to wake up to every morning and go
to sleep with every morning and even when your spouse isn't
around you're still with that person.
That person is yourself.
So I think that I'm only as I say this very often when I talk
about relationships.
I'm only as good to you as I am to myself.
If I don't even take care of myself, I'm probably not going to
be a good boyfriend to you.
Yeah, I'm probably not going to be a good husband to you.
If I'm not aware of my own mental state, if I'm not actively
like thinking about Darius, how are you doing mentally?
How you doing emotionally?
I get married.
I'm probably not going to be asking about your mental.
Your emotional state because I even worried about mine.
It's I think for the challenge for us is and again, that's
the next episode in the last part of the series.
The challenge for us is to forgive ourselves of experiences
that have happened that we either blamed ourselves for and
we really weren't even responsible for them.
We just again needed to find somebody to be responsible and
just made sense that we were responsible for those things
but also to for the situations that I was responsible for
that.
Like I did allow that to happen.
I allowed that to go on for too long.
I didn't speak up when I had the chance and sitting in sitting
in that experience sitting in now that experience then and
understanding that like I hope I wish this would come out
of my mouth the way that I am like formulating it in my
brain but sitting today in an experience that happened in
the past that you blame yourself for in realizing like that
person then is this person today.
So in order to move past that situation you have to forgive
yourself today.
Because I can never I can we can talk about forgiving other
people.
We can talk about letting going of letting go of grudges.
We can talk about forgiveness being a look but if I never
forgive the person who was the closest to me being myself.
Then I'll never truly be able to forgive other people and
when God took me on this journey of forgiveness man like
it was literally like a back-to-back thing in the church.
It was like one week the next week the next week and in that
first week God like dealt with me with situations that
happened in my life that I blame but that in reality those
situations like I had they were my fault.
I had nothing to do with them and when God dealt with me on
that he then took me to the next week and he was like so now
that you're good on yourself.
I need you to be good on these other people too.
Yeah, so this forgiveness series is almost is almost up.
It is it's not triggering.
It's just reminding me of that that forgiveness journey that
God took me on first in order to give this out.
So again that first episode if you haven't watched it, please
go back and watch it is about forgiving God.
I think forgiving God is just as important like we I
we cannot forget.
I don't think we can forgive and give truly give grace to
people without God.
So giving forgiving God first and then this episode.
Thanks for watching.
If you're here this forgiving other people forgiving them is
what it's called and then the last episode is forgiving yourself.
Wow, thank you guys for watching this episode.
Again, we are trying to hit every single Thursday but
the rest of this year because that will end season one of
this podcast and I'm going to take some kind of if I do it
back to back.
I'm going to reward myself to some kind of hiatus and that
could literally just be me going to the park, you know,
instead of filming the podcast episode and so season two is
going to require a lot of a lot of logistics that season
one does not require because season one I just I just set
down with a camera and a computer and a microphone and
a light and I got to do this and so season two season two
is going to be a little bit different.
But if the podcast picks up if it does well and I feel like
oh we get a little less you for another season then we'll
do another season until then.
Thank you guys for watching this episode.
Thank you for watching the podcast in general.
If you're watching on YouTube, thanks for watching on YouTube.
I try to keep the visual going that makes that is what makes
a podcast the most stressful part of podcasting but I try
to keep the visual going because I am a visual podcast
watch a watcher if you have a podcast and you don't have
a YouTube channel for your podcast.
I probably don't watch your podcast.
But thank you all for watching.
If you're watching on YouTube, if you're watching on Apple
and Spotify, let me just say this real quick.
I checked them them them Apple them Apple numbers and I
checked them Spotify numbers the other day.
I don't know who your people are.
But y'all y'all y'all y'all supporting your boy y'all
support your boy and y'all y'all y'all and in the continent
of Africa and I don't remember what the countries are.
I just know that they're in Africa.
Y'all are y'all like big time y'all big time support.
Now y'all know me in Africa.
The people know me in Africa.
That's great.
Anyway, anyway, thank you all for watching the podcast.
If you enjoyed it, go ahead and leave a thumbs up interact
leave a comment down below until next time we are shipping
over.
I'm probably literally about to air drop this video to my
laptop and shoot right over to filming the forgive yourself
episode right now.
Peace out.