The Battle Inside

Damascus Road Community Church

There is a famous scene in the 1985 cult classic film Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where Pee Wee is talking to a woman about her life’s dream of one day living in Paris. In the scene Simone hedges when Pee Wee encourages her to chase her dream, she responds with “I know you’re right, but…”

Pee Wee pushes back with “But what?! Everyone I know always has a big but. Come on Simone, let’s talk about your big but.” The audience can see what Pee Wee and Simone can’t, her terrifyingly large boyfriend begins to eavesdrop on their conversation but only catches the last sentence, just as Pee Wee is asking his girlfriend to talk about her big but.

The scene is hilarious and devolves into comedic brilliance.

Our message series on forgiveness these past few weeks has brought that scene to my mind a few times. We can all be like Simone, can’t we? Forgiveness may sound great in concept, it feels like something we should aspire to do, yet we have all had times in life when we know we should forgive someone for hurting us and we find ourselves hung up over a big BUT. Forgiveness can seem more like a dream than something we could actually do in real life.

“I would like to forgive BUT you don’t know how much pain they have caused.” Or “I would forgive BUT they haven’t apologized.”

Yet Jesus commands us to forgive – no if, and, or BUT.

Join us this week for week three of our Forgiveness series as we deal with the battle inside that each of us faces when it is time for us to forgive or seek forgiveness. This week we will talk about our big BUTs; I promise that you won’t want to miss it!