Lewis B. Smedes

I'm wishing them the best," right? [laughs] And then an hour later I'm like, "Yeah, but they did this and it's still impacting me." So realize it's not a one-time event.

It's a process, right? But it's so worth it, and I love this quote by Lewis Smedes.

He says, "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was," who? You.

So often we're like, "Oh, man, they don't deserve it.

And then the third thing is, we need to have the experience of acceptance.

And the way that Lewis Smedes, a theologian at Fuller, when I was there, expressed it is, there's only one thing that heals shame, and that's grace.

Grace is the powerful feeling of unmerited acceptance, that I feel accepted for who I am despite my failings, including all the things I did wrong.

But while I was a sinner, God still accepts me.

But then at the same time, isn't that what we do? We build these fences around us, right? And we're trying to protect ourselves, keep other people out when we're just imprisoning ourselves.

I think it's Lewis Smedes that says to forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you.

And I just don't think we can talk about friendship without knowing how to reconcile well and realizing the importance of that.

Yeah.

And we need to never forget that.

Lewis Smedes, in his book, A Pretty Good Person, reminds us that we are good at putting labels on people.

We put labels on people the way we put labels on clothes, he said.

We let the labels tell us what people are, what they're worth.