Explore 3 primary mindsets national Israel adopted at different points in their history: slaves in Egypt, sons in Canaan, and orphans in Babylon. Discover that the identity you adopt as you experience painful life circumstances can create mindsets and filters through which you interpret the heavenly Father, determining your trust in His nature and promises. John 8:31-36 reveals that Jesus’ identity as the Son is key to your freedom.

Explore the two paths you can take when you experience pain or offense in a relationship: The Path of Love or the Path of Fear. As children we didn’t know how to confront and reconcile sin in a biblical way, so we were hardwired to react to pain and offenses from those who hurt us by concealing our pain, detaching from the source of pain, and allowing bitterness to take root in our emotions…the Path of Fear. But there is another way…the Path of Love.

Learn the 5 primary wounds we can experience because of the sin and offense of others in our past. We’ll give practical examples of what that looks like in everyday life, and we’ll also discover the different walls we put up in our hearts to protect ourselves from further pain. Why is this important? First, we must identify and name the pain in our hearts so that it doesn’t stay concealed under generalities or confusion. And second, we must admit that the walls we’ve built to protect ourselves are out of mistrust towards God.

We’ll dive into the root to fruit connection of Hebrews 12:15. The goal this session is to take the wounds and walls terms from last session and begin to personalize them and apply them to our own stories. To do this we’ll walk through some really practical exercises, including the “Bitterness Tree” and “Faces of My Past” where we summarize and clearly define the pain we’ve experienced with the most important people in our lives as well as the pain we’re causing to ourselves and others today.

We’ll dive into Truth vs Lies, digging into Jesus’ definition of truth and learning about three types of lies that work to destroy our lives: spoken lies, unspoken lies, and lying mindsets. Discover practical tools to help you identify and uproot these core lies and replace them with the truth of God’s Word. We’ll also introduce some powerful exercises in the “Go Deeper at Home” section that will help you see the difference between the fruit of the truth operating in your heart and the fruit of a lie operating in your heart in your day-to-day life so you can start winning the war in your mind and emotions.

In this session, we’ll prepare you to write letters of biblical confrontation to those who have caused you pain in the past. Remember, this is the second step on the blue path of love. We are putting practical obedience to Jesus’ command to go to those who have sinned against us as well as the command in Leviticus 19:17-18 to rebuke our neighbor so that we don’t bear the sin of hatred against them in our hearts because of avoiding them or detaching from them in bitterness.

In this session, we’ll prepare you to write letters of repentance to those closest to you. Remember, there are two problems and two solutions. Think of the blue Path of Love. There’s the first problem of the sin of another against me, the offense, which requires the solution of revealing the pain and rebuking or confronting the sin of another against me. But then there’s problem #2, and we see this on the red path of fear, which is our sin of bitterness, pride, hatred, and vengeance against the ones who hurt us because we didn’t confront the sin on the day it occurred.

You might recognize that phrase, man of sorrows, from Isaiah 53 when the prophet writes in verse 3 that the Messiah will be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. This is where we’re going next on the Blue Path of Love…the step of surrendering our right to vengeance through Isaiah 53.

Understand Jesus’ Kingdom definition of forgiveness out of Matthew 18 through the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. With Jesus’ sacrifice in Isaiah 53 fresh on our minds, we want to, in obedience by revelation, fully surrender our right to vengeance for the ones who hurt us so that we can access the grace of God and forgive them from our hearts so that we can be restored to freedom, and if it’s appropriate and safe to do so, the relationship can one day be restored when the other person is willing.