So really it is: I've really done wrong, this is what I did wrong, and this is how grieved You must be, and I so grieve that I have injured our relationship by what I did. Now that's more like it, because true sorrow not only takes responsibility for the event, or the thing that happened. It acknowledges the grief and damage to the relationship, and as soon as you acknowledge damage to the relationship, you're positioned then, for forgiveness to come. The Bible says: don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Oh, that means I can grieve Him. Did you ever think when you sinned, instead of just saying: sorry God; actually starting to also take time to think: Holy Spirit, I took You to things I never really wanted You to go to. I've taken You places which have grieved and wounded You. Forgive me for grieving You. Holy Spirit, arise within me and fill me again with all Your goodness and holiness. Become conscious of the spirit of God, and what we've done. He is grieved by some things. And of course we have to talk to other people. Now this is the hardest thing, is how to make a good apology.
Most people say: oh sorry; and implied in that is: you've got to forgive me now. I don't think I will, I don't feel you're sorry. You see, true sorrow has repentance, and it actually acknowledges the relationship was damaged. If you don't acknowledge the relationship was damaged, you can never get proper forgiveness and release to take place. Suppose you did something, you damaged someone's property, or suppose you stole something from someone, then you come and admit you stole it, and return it. Now you actually haven't got back to where you were before, because the person now doesn't trust you; because they haven't heard in that apology, what they were looking for. You hurt me. I trusted you, and you let down my trust. You understand that a real good apology will always acknowledge how the person has been affected, and be open for the person to be able to even share how it's affected them.
I've found often in Christians, we want to apologise and smooth everything over, without actually understanding how the person was hurt; so sometimes in working it out with someone, you've got to stop and listen, find out how do they feel, how did this affect them. We don't want to do that, but when you do it, the person feels like: now you've understood me. Then you now are apologising, not for just the action, but for taking the relationship for granted, and wounding the person, and you can learn from that. Boy, you can really learn from that. It's looking good, isn't it aye? Well you're getting all quiet now.
Well anyway the last one is very simple, we need to move on, please move on. [Laughter] Forget the failures, we're going to move on; and the moving on, you actually have to just progress with your life; and there's two ways you progress with your life of course, if you've learnt from it. One is sometimes, you've just got to keep trying, and persevere until we do get the breakthrough; and the second thing, sometimes we need to do is admit: well actually, that's the end of it. So if you've blown up a relationship, and the relationship is over, well it's over. Just grieve, and have a funeral, and grieve over it and goodbye, you know? We've got to get over it. See sometimes you actually have to acknowledge that it'll never be the same again, and you have to let go, and that's like having a funeral. There's something died, so I grieve over it, weep over it but I can't do anything about it, now I do move on with my life, after I've grieved. So failures in life, some are little, some are big, but they all have the same possibility of teaching us something. It's better if we learn from our little failures, than have massive ones, and our life's in turmoil for a long time.