As a mother-daughter duo, Susan Litchford and I, Martha Gano, invite you on a journey through the spiritual landscape that intricately weaves into the fabric of our everyday lives. With the resonance of a story close to our hearts, we reveal the stark reality of judgment's boomerang effect, as experienced by my sister—a testament to the scripture, "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap." Our conversation navigates the transformative power of spiritual laws, akin to natural laws, and their unyielding consequences when neglected. Through this episode, we aim to equip you with the wisdom to break free from the chains of unforgiveness and the vicious cycles that often ensnare us.
Venturing deeper, we explore the ancient sin of judgment, tracing its roots to Lucifer's envy, and the imperative steps to recognize and relinquish unrepented judgments. The episode crescendos with a guided prayer, leading listeners like you through the vital stages of confession, repentance, and embracing a life liberated from the burdens of past grievances. We wrap up by extending our deepest gratitude to you for joining our heartfelt exchange and encourage you to imbibe the scriptural tools we've shared. With a promise of spiritual freedom in your grasp, we invite you to continue this transformative exploration by subscribing to our podcast and connecting with us on social media for further insights and updates.
As a mother-daughter duo, Susan Litchford and I, Martha Gano, invite you on a journey through the spiritual landscape that intricately weaves into the fabric of our everyday lives. With the resonance of a story close to our hearts, we reveal the stark reality of judgment's boomerang effect, as experienced by my sister—a testament to the scripture, "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap." Our conversation navigates the transformative power of spiritual laws, akin to natural laws, and their unyielding consequences when neglected. Through this episode, we aim to equip you with the wisdom to break free from the chains of unforgiveness and the vicious cycles that often ensnare us.
Venturing deeper, we explore the ancient sin of judgment, tracing its roots to Lucifer's envy, and the imperative steps to recognize and relinquish unrepented judgments. The episode crescendos with a guided prayer, leading listeners like you through the vital stages of confession, repentance, and embracing a life liberated from the burdens of past grievances. We wrap up by extending our deepest gratitude to you for joining our heartfelt exchange and encourage you to imbibe the scriptural tools we've shared. With a promise of spiritual freedom in your grasp, we invite you to continue this transformative exploration by subscribing to our podcast and connecting with us on social media for further insights and updates.
Speaker 1:
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too, and it's okay. My name's Martha Gano, and in this podcast we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. It'll be just you and me. Sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about. Okay, hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:
I'm so excited to do episode number three with my mom, susan Litchford. We've been talking about some really powerful, impactful ideas for life and faith, and today we're going to actually put it all together. The first time she joined us, she just shared stories of freedom where people were living stuck either in patterns or they become the things they hated or the things they swore they never would tolerate. They were living that in their current lives again, or maybe even stuck in unforgiveness, that they found freedom. Then, the next episode, if you guys want to go back and listen to it mom explained the concept of spiritual law and how they found freedom. And I'm really excited today because she's actually going to walk us through the process that if you, as a listener, have a place where you're seeing that you would like freedom, she's going to walk you through how to find it, based on these principles of spiritual law that are in the scriptures.
Speaker 1:
We have lived and danced and memorized them our whole lives, but this teaching puts it together and explains so much that previously I never understood about why I was stuck in different places in my life, and now it's clear as a bell. So I'm really excited about you guys having the opportunity to walk through this for yourselves. Or maybe there's someone else that you know that is in a stuck place, and if you're not stuck now, you're going to get stuck at some point, because that's just life on this planet and this is going to be a fabulous tool to put into your life and faith toolbox about how to handle the brokenness of the world, really, I guess. So, mom, how about just start us off with a quick recap of the concept that you taught us about spiritual law? What are we talking about?
Speaker 2:
Well, basically, we have no trouble at all, martha, thinking about natural law and the fact that we obey it. Whether it's a law of physics, math, chemistry, the law of thermodynamics, the law of lift or gravity, we obey gravity all the time.
Speaker 2:
And whether we believe it or not, if we decided we were going to disobey gravity and jump off the roof of a two-story building, the repercussions would be death and the consequences would be evident that we violated that law. And we in the spiritual realm we also have law that governs the universe. Nobody in the world thinks it's okay to just wholesale murder people or to steal or lie, but we don't understand that violating that law has a consequence in the spiritual realm. We don't think about that. One of the verses that really stands out to me is in Galatians, chapter six, which says do not be deceived, god is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will reap. And you think about Jesus saying the same thing. He said don't judge. In Matthew seven, he said don't judge because in whatever way you judge, you'll be judged. In other words, I don't know if you remember your sister, when she was 17 years old, said um oh, I didn't know.
Speaker 1:
We're going to talk about my sister. Yes, yes, yes, and she said that.
Speaker 2:
She said something ugly about some of her friends and within 20 minutes she heard the same things being said by somebody else about her and she walked through the den and said I don't know why Jesus called it a judgment. He should have called it a boomerang. Wow, which is true. It came right back on her. She threw it out there, judgment and hate against her friends, and that same thing came back on her which Jesus says don't, do not judge, because in whatever way you judge, you'll be judged.
Speaker 2:
Now, judging is not assessing. A judgment is what has sinned behind it. It has hate, vengeance, um, or simply looking down on another person from a place of superiority. I would never do what they're doing, I don't do what they do and I don't treat people the way they treat people.
Speaker 1:
So it is standing in a place of prideful superiority saying that there's a sin you would not commit and you'll turn around or or even offense right, and I think it's important to recognize that when people do terrible things to people, it is a natural response Unless you are Jesus, it's a natural response to judge. So no one's saying that this. You don't have to be a terrible person to do it. You have to be a human person and you're just going to judge the people who offend you. So what we don't realize is the impact of unrepented judgment on our own lives, and that's what I'm excited to talk about, and it's an ancient sin.
Speaker 2:
It goes all the way back to Lucifer, who judged God for withholding from him the power that God had. He wanted it, and then he connived and judged and had hate in his heart against God, ended up cast, been cast out of heaven I say a 14 and then a third of the angels to chose to follow him. So that's what we have. It's a punishment paradigm, it is a fear paradigm and we tend to have a standard that other people and we tend to have a standard that others do not meet, and when they don't meet it, then we meet out that hate, vengeance, judgment and looking down on them.
Speaker 1:
We punish them. It can be a standard that they should have kept. It can be some. When people do wrong things to us, they should not have done those wrong things.
Speaker 1:
This is not saying that anything that is done against us is okay. This is just looking at the impact of what we do with the wrong things that are done against us. So what does it look like if someone has an unrepented judgment in place in their lives and you go back to that scripture where you say you know, you who, you who judge, you do the same things or the way you judge is going to be meted back out to you somewhere in your life? What can that look like? Give us some practical examples.
Speaker 2:
Well, and I would say this to it it's the key factor is not as much what is done to me. What impacts me is my resentful response to the wrong thing done to me yes or my resentful response to the wrong thing I have done, where I condemn myself for having made a bad choice. I condemn myself for having made a bad choice, I judge myself or I judge God for letting something terrible come into my world. I just say that out loud. Okay, yes, yes, so, um, so, what could?
Speaker 1:
it look like when.
Speaker 2:
I find so. For example, for me, I did not realize until I was in my 40s that I held it against my dad for traveling. He was a traveling uh, his job required traveling, so he was gone Monday through Friday. We didn't see him much over the weekend either. So I held it against him and it felt like abandonment and rejection to a little girl. So I I was like I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:
When I realized that I was holding this against him and God was calling me to let my dad go, to let him go, and so I prayed, prayed a prayer or something like this, and I would say, after having listened to these three podcasts, you definitely are seeing someone that you have your hands around their throat saying you owed me better than that, and and so whoever that person or persons is, this would be a prayer that you could pray about for or about that situation as well. So, first of all, we confess the sin and we repent of the sin, and then we choose a new way of living. So I would say something like Lord, you've said in your word that forgiveness is not an option. So you have said I'm simply to choose. So I feel like I can't even do that. So please do for me the thing that I cannot even do myself, and thank you for empowering forgiveness to flow through me. So, lord Jesus, as an act of my will, I give you all the rights I have felt were mine to throw others and even myself into a debtor's prison. Lord, I've been holding on to my right to hold this debt of hurt against others, myself and you.
Speaker 2:
I Recognize that I have judged, and then you fill in the blank with the person's name, for Then you fill in the blank with what they did and I've locked myself into that same behavior, attitude or Reaping it in my spouse, children or authority at work. I choose to take this list of judgments to the cross and proclaim them dead. Your death on the cross was sufficient for my sin. Lord, forgive me for judging this person, these people. I choose to forgive and release my anger and bitterness to you. Lord. Please remove it from my heart.
Speaker 2:
Forgive me also from the bitterness, powered by my expectancies and judgments, that expects my friends, my family, my wife, my husband, my children, my Employer, to be just like this person that I judged, lord, I also renounced the vow that I would never treat anyone else the way that they treated me, and I see that the bitter root is producing a bitter fruit. As I reap what I sowed, lord, I also resign as their judge, their jury and their jailer, and I take the key to the jail cell that I've had them locked in. I unlocked the door in Jesus, I give you the key and I just say to you, friend, walk out of that prison in Jesus name.
Speaker 2:
Jesus said in Matthew 18, when he was Sharing about the unforgiving servant. He said he handed this servant who would not forgive his fellow servant. He handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed. And then Jesus says and such will it be for you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart, believe me, bitterness, hate, anger and Even denial of deep hurt and unforgiveness, believe me, it's torture.
Speaker 1:
It is torture and and I think it's so important to say Again, and I think it's important to repeat it, because when you've been deeply wounded, it feels so unjust that if you Hold unforgiveness against the offending party, that then you are judged for it because you're not the one who did the terrible thing. Are you kidding? So let me just reiterate this doesn't mean it was okay, it doesn't mean it was not wrong. What it means is that Jesus knows so clearly that when we let unforgiveness lodge in our hearts, it actually increases, it keeps us connected to the offender. It increases the terrible impact of what was done to us. It makes it just last forever.
Speaker 1:
It's not Jesus, isn't the one that's doing the torturing. He's saying get away from the torturers by letting that thing go, by cutting off the damage that was done to you and letting yourself heal from it, instead of Living in the damage and the wounding. So I think it's really important to identify. For people it is now. Sometimes you're a. You know that you're bitter and angry, but Sometimes there are wounds that are so deep down You've forgotten about them. You don't, you may not feel like you're a bitter, angry person, but there is. There is a way to see that there is unresolved pain because there's a pattern or what we call a fruit in your life.
Speaker 2:
Can you?
Speaker 1:
give like just an explanation of what that could look like.
Speaker 2:
Well, I had been a student of the word of God for decades and taught the word love God. But what? Every time I prayed and now I'm in my 40s I had given my life to Jesus when I was 12 years old but the same thing was true all those years, and that was when I prayed God was felt distant to me. He felt far, far away. And one day I just said to him what is wrong with us? That's a fruit and, as you know, I judged my dad for being gone. He was distant, he was not involved, and that was my view of God. My view of God was distant, uninvolved. I felt like he said here's, susan, here's the Bible, learn it, figure it out, and I'm gonna go over here to Asia and help some people out over here that need me and you can figure this out. You got it and he was distant. So when I repented of judging, I asked him. I said what's wrong with us? And he said it's your dad.
Speaker 1:
Wow.
Speaker 2:
And so in that moment, the things that I've shared with you became revelatory and I knew that I had crammed God into my earthly dad box and that's what God looked like to me. So that's just one small fruit. I would say to people ask God, say. I said to him, I am blind, I cannot see, show me me. And I'm telling you, when he started showing me bitter roots that I had, that's Hebrews chapter 12, where it says pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see God. Don't come short of the glory of God. Beware, unless any root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many be defiled. So we defile, whether we are aware of it or not. So I was blind, I couldn't see, and I'm telling you he showed me so much, martha, I started taking communion every day.
Speaker 1:
That was back in the 90s. Well, and I think, and then to recognize that's a lifestyle, because we're never gonna actually stop until we're in heaven for the Lord to expose those bitter roots that are really cancer in our hearts and digging them out. So I love this as like a lifestyle tool. It explains why the person who grew up in an alcoholic home ends up becoming an alcoholic and can't figure out why. Or oftentimes, people who are molested as children end up becoming molesters.
Speaker 1:
I remember a friend of mine that had a very dominant, angry mother and then in her life she kept reaping in different places a dominant, angry female authority. And so why was it in place? It was this deeply buried pain that had never been forgiven. And once it's forgiven, then asking God in His mercy to stop the reaping from what, all the judgment that we had sown, and seeing Him begin to heal that wound. So I just am so excited about what the Holy Spirit is even opening up right now. As you listen to this, I think that breakthrough is coming for so many people as you learn more about this and then do what mom said ask God, where is this in my life? And then commit to having that kind of repentance and openness to what God would show you about the deep roots in your life. Become a lifestyle so that they never become as powerful as they've been in the past. You can get them dug out.
Speaker 2:
I think Martha too, for me is. I don't want to reap one of some, but sometimes there are consequences that are in place and they continue on. However, the bigger thing to me is my relationship with God. I did not see him as my loving father and as a good, good father. My view of him was so skewed.
Speaker 2:
There is a scripture in Isaiah, chapter 58, that where the Lord says it's talking about the fast that he chooses and one of the things in the fast that God chooses. He says if you will remove the yoke from your midst A yoke is what they put on oxen to enable the oxen to pull a very heavy load he says if you will remove the yoke from your midst the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness Then your light will rise in darkness. You'll be a repairer of the breach, a Restorer of the streets in which to dwell. And I think about who do I want to be? I want to be the person that bears light, that brings life and love to the earth. And I also think about how Jesus.
Speaker 2:
To me, the whole thing about forgiveness is that that is why Jesus came. He came so that we would be forgiven of a massive sin debt, and then him in me looks like forgiveness, and the language that I speak is love, not punishment. So, as I am Sanctified, the things that are not God are brought to death in me. I'm Transformed into the image of the one that I love, who died for me, who gave up his life for me, and Evidence of him in my life is forgiveness. That's evidence so good, wow well.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much. That was amazing. That was like a spiritual Filet mignon in a really short amount of time. So appreciate you coming on to share it, and I'm so excited To hear about the breakthrough that's going to happen in lives because you've shared this today, mom and the other episodes as well, so thank you for being here.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for having me. All right, you guys can't wait to hear what God's done in your life. We're praying, actually right now. I do just pray that the Lord will open your eyes to areas where Roots have dug deep in your heart and created, created darkness in your heart that he wants to expose and dig out and heal that wound in Jesus name and change the trajectory of your life forever. So thanks for joining us. It's been awesome to have you with us. Have an awesome day and we will talk to you next time. Hey you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you've got some refreshment from this sip from the fountain. If you're curious to hear more or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast Wherever you listen to yours, or follow our Instagram account, sips from the fountain, or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for cover our photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much. Love y'all you.
