No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Is Forgiveness Always Required? | Part 3
How do you forgive someone while still protecting the people you love?
In this bonus episode, Brody clarifies the story behind a 3 a.m. call, a threatening voicemail, and the difficult choice to forgive a teen—while still protecting his daughters and community.
He digs deeper into why grace doesn’t erase consequences and what Scripture teaches about trust, safety, and redemption. If the last episode left you with questions, this one brings clarity and hope.
Is Forgiveness Always Required (Parts 1 + 2)
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Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
I'd like to record just some follow-up thoughts from this past Monday's episode. The reason I want to do this, it's it's actually Tuesday morning right now, and what I what I did is I went back and listened to it. And y'all, it was raining so bad when I was recording that in the truck that it came through pretty, I don't know, pretty, pretty loud, pretty rough. Um, and so I just wanna I'm gonna leave it up. I talked to JB, we're gonna leave it up, but I'm gonna just give some some more concise thoughts to go along with that. And it m so if you didn't listen to that last episode, you don't have to go back and listen to it. I'll cover the same basic content. I'll do it more in a more brief format and just give some thoughts and ideas that maybe will be a little easier to track and follow along. I did get some feedback from a few people saying they they liked that last episode, which is funny because I was listening to it and I was like, oh my gosh, it's so obnoxious, the rain pounding, and I'm yelling because I was in the truck and I wasn't sure if if you'd be able to hear me with that. I mean, I was driving in a monsoon. At one point, I even made a comment, well, this is good for my food plots. That's where my head was. I'm driving along thinking, you know, we hadn't had rain in a couple weeks at that point, and I was I was like, man, this is great. But anyway, what I want to do here is just a little bonus episode to nail down the main thoughts and ideas and talking points from that episode. So welcome to this bonus episode of No Sanity Required.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.
SPEAKER_01:The point of the story that I told in that last episode, and again, if you didn't listen to that episode, then let me just tell that story and much more briefly. What happened was years ago, one of my daughters came under a threat, and it turned out to not be a threat at all. But what happened was I received a phone call in the middle of the night one night. I was on the road, I was pretty far from home, my phone rang, it was a blocked and scrambled number, and it was and a voicemail was left. I didn't answer the phone, I sent it to voicemail thinking that it was my alarm going off. It was this was at three or four in the morning. I think it was three o'clock in the morning. And my alarm was set for like four or four thirty. And I think just when I woke up to that phone ring and I thought it was the alarm going off, and I just kind of reached over and and bumped the phone. And uh, and so I'm laying there and I hear the voicemail notification. So I sit up on the edge of the bed and I listened to the voicemail. It was a very perverse, dark, threatening phone call about my daughter, one of my daughters. So I raced home. I was probably three hours from home. I raced home, got my wife on the phone. It took me a few minutes to get her on the phone because she was dead asleep, got her on the phone, uh, alerted her that I thought maybe my family was in danger. This this phone call was real perverted. It was very sexual, and then it was also uh it had it was laced with obscenities, um, F bombs, uh sexual by nature, comments about my daughter, and but also just had a threatening feel to it. And it was from a blocked number, so I had no idea who sent it. So I got home by daylight, by sun up that morning, I got home. I I made good time and I hustled home and got to my family and started an investigation with the local police, with local sheriff's office with their cyber detective, and he was able to track down the the source of the call. And so I I was able to set up a meeting with this man who the phone was registered to, and it turned out he was from a church that attends Snowbird. And so I went, met with him. It was his son that had left the call, a a teenage boy who was at the time, my the daughter that was threatened was about twelve years old. So this kid was was several years older than her. I'm gonna say 17, something like that. And I don't know why he did what he did. It was really dark, it was really demented, it was really uh messed up. But I also know that when I was a teenager, when I was a 17-year-old boy, I did things that were dark and demented and messed up. I didn't do something like this. I think, you know, it's easy to minimize our own sin and and say something like, Well, I would have never done that. I did X, Y, and Z, but I didn't do that, what this guy did. So I don't want to do that because I know I did things that were very broken and sinful, and we all have. We've all fallen short of God's glory, and I believe this young man was repentant, especially when when he was confronted with him. And it was pretty intense. We drove, my son and I drove to meet with this boy and his dad, and we had the pastor of the church there, it was the student pastor at the time, who's a really good friend of mine, a close and dear brother. And so we worked through this thing together, and what we came up with was that that young man would not be allowed back at Snowbird. The reason I want to be clear, and I hope this didn't get lost in the first episode. The reason we weren't allowing him back to Snowbird is we needed our girls to know that we would protect them. Because when I got that call, I had to let my family know someone has threatened one of the girls. And we have to be vigilant. And I remember there there was a stretch of time there. It took a couple of weeks before we got to the bottom of it. And during those two weeks, I was locking the doors at night, going through the house. If I had to be away, if I had to be over at camp, I would go to the house. Literally, I would go through the entire house to make sure no one was in my house. I can remember going from top to bottom. It's a three-story house because we finished our basement and then we have a loft bedroom. So I'd go from the loft to the basement, look in every closet, look in every corner of the house, make sure nobody had come into my house. I'd look around the house, I would lock my family inside, and then I would go back for whatever events were going on at Snowbird for the evening because a lot of nights I don't get home till midnight or later. So I'd go back, you know, for the for for two, three hours to Snowbird to camp. And it was pretty scary for my family because we had to, I played that, I played that message for my kids because I wanted them to be afraid. I wanted them, as my three older kids, I played it for. I wanted them to be super alert and aware and not be just aloof, you know. And so by doing that, I'd put a lot of fear into my family. And so I needed to show them that, hey, we found out who did this and we he will not be coming around. Don't worry about it. And that was the right move. My I talked about it through the years, and my girls felt like, you know, we felt very protected, we felt very cared for. Um, it would have been confusing if you'd have said, oh, it was just a kid playing a joke. Now we can just move on and he can come back to camp. That wouldn't have gone well. And so I wanted to make the point in in these two episodes to kind of tie into the episode on reconciliation, forgiveness, and repentance. That sometimes you can say, I'm sorry, you can ask for forgiveness, two people can be reconciled, but then the nature or the dynamics of that relationship don't go back to what they used to be. An example would be a husband who is unfaithful to his wife. He may ask for her forgiveness, she may extend it to him, they may be reconciled, they might enter into counseling, but then he can't get upset when she doesn't fully trust him for a long, long time, maybe, you know, maybe ever. That's just the consequence of his action. And he he doesn't have a right. I've we've counseled people in the situation where one spouse was unfaithful, the other spouse from that point forward had a really difficult time with trust. They had trust issues toward that spouse. And I get that. That's that's understandable. You know, you you betray a person's trust and you can't just go back to life the way it was. There's there's a there's a a lack of trust that I think you could say that that's a lingering consequence. You know, the sin has been forgiven and the relationship's been restored, but I don't ever totally fully trust that person the way that I used to. So that would be an example. Another example would be where I hate to use the word consequence, but where the the impact or the results of someone's sin linger. So let's say that that man is unfaithful to his wife, and I know a scenario where this happened. I actually know multiple scenarios where this happened, multiple situations where this scenario happened. He's unfaithful and he gets the other woman pregnant, and uh now there's a child, and so the child is brought into the world, and the consequences of that might last for a couple generations, even, maybe more. There was a family I knew 30 years ago, and the husband got a divorce, he remarried, then he had an affair with the first wife. So with his ex-wife, who he had divorced, they she got pregnant, they had a child together, but he had moved on into this new marriage, and so it created this crazy, I mean, a wild family dynamic because the second wife wanted to make it work, and so they ended up sort of co-parenting this kid. But but I will tell you this: there was a lot of grace the Lord extended to that family, but there was a ton of dysfunction. I mean, there was a lot of dysfunction in that family. It was it was pretty messed up. And so sometimes the consequences linger. I I said I hate to use the word consequence to describe a child or a human life, but the consequence I'm referring to is the the broken relationships, the dysfunctional dynamic. And you gotta learn how to work with that and live through that and work through that. And the Lord is his He gives more grace and He gives us what we need to get through those situations. And um there was a there was a, you know, a time where in that first story I told, that boy's parents, they were very critical of me and of Snowbird because we didn't allow that young man to come back. And I tried to explain to them we forgive him and and we can move forward in the relationship. He just he can't come here. He he burned that bridge. It's not a lack of grace, we're not withholding forgiveness, it's just lingering consequences. And that's a hard principle. And the point I was trying to make in that last episode was as a as a father to daughters, there's a there's a a part of you that will do anything to protect those girls. And and part of that is making them feel protected. They feel loved and cared for when they feel protected. And so that was that was what I was committed to. Little was committed to. I remember talking to Little and saying, Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I being too heavy-handed? And she said, Absolutely not. These are our girls we're talking about. They need to know that they are safe in their home. They need to know that they matter to you more than ministry uh at Snowbird matters to you. And so that was important, and I feel like we were able to convey that to our girls. The illustrations I used from Scripture were the three stories that I hope sort of drove that point home. One was Moses, God forgave Moses for his sin, but the consequences of Moses' actions lingered. For 40 years he didn't get to go into the promised land. So you could say, well, where's the forgiveness? Where's the grace? Well, the grace, the grace doesn't mean that Moses just got to do what Moses wanted to do. There were consequences to his action. Same thing with David. We talked about David's sin in that in that episode and how he not only did he commit this terrible act of adultery, and not only did he kill the husband of the woman to cover it up, he killed a bunch of people to cover it up. I mean, he killed several men, a whole, like an entire platoon of men, you know, an entire fighting force. He sent them into a suicide mission to get them all killed so that he could try to hide his sin, but he didn't hide it because God made it clear, and the result was there were consequences to it. And those consequences lingered. But God's grace was sufficient for David. Even when you see the dysfunction in his family, you don't go, man, where's the grace? Why is all this going on? Why didn't God just make everything back to happy and healthy and wholesome and everybody loves everybody? And it's like a 1950s or 60s sitcom. Because that's not how it worked. There were consequences to those actions. And sometimes we got to live with consequences to our actions, and that's what we learned in David's story. And then the uh the other story that I told, the story about John Mark, I love that story because we see eventually those consequences do, they do get kind of put on a shelf or put behind them and they go away, and John Mark is restored to his position on a ministry team, and the Lord really uses that. He really uses it. And ends up using John Mark in a powerful way because Paul says of him, John Mark is useful to me for ministry. And I love that. I love that he went from being kicked off the team, not kicked off the team, he quit the team and then wasn't allowed back on the team. But then eventually he was restored back, not just to fellowship with Paul and the rest of the team, but he was restored back to ministry responsibility. He was given responsibility, which is really cool. I love that story. So in that story, you get to see it, you know, all come full circle. So the the principle, the point that I was making was that in our lives sometimes we have to live with the consequences of our actions even after God has given us forgiveness. And that can be very scary. I don't want to have I don't want to live like with that. I want to be set free from those consequences. I want to be released from that. But sometimes that's just how it's gonna go. And what I need to know is that the Lord will give me what I need to endure difficulties of putting my life back together after a broken relationship, or you know, finding out that someone I care about or that I love deeply has betrayed me, or um or that I've betrayed someone or their trust, that the Lord will help me and He'll help them. And what we have to do is walk in humility and grace, extend that grace to the Lord, extend it to others, and remember that grace has a backbone. I can extend forgiveness to someone else, but that doesn't mean that I'm just gonna let them come back into my life in the same manner in which they once lived. I mentioned the I've mentioned here the story from last March about a guy in ministry that really did a lot of damage. And to this day, he's not welcome here because he came here and betrayed our trust and did a lot of damage. I hope and pray that that man is truly repentant and he's walking with the Lord, but he's not going to be allowed to come back to Snowbird because he came here and he was predatory and he did things that caused a lot of damage and pain in people's lives. And so the consequences to his actions affect a lot of people. They affect his own family, they affect I mean, he he was he he had an opportunity to be really effective in ministry and he and he took advantage of that in a in a bad way, and so the result is that he can't come back. So anyway, I wanted to just share a little bit of clarifying thoughts. And I don't know that these thoughts are any clearer than the first episode, but maybe it's not as loud. For some people, I don't think it mattered. They're good listening through that. But for some people, it might have been distracting that background noise. So I just want to give some clarifying thoughts. Uh let me know what you think, or if you got questions, if that if that doesn't tidy things up, please let me know. But just remember to extend grace to others and to seek reconciliation, that's our that's our goal. We are ministers of reconciliation, but sometimes actions have lingering consequences, and what I've got to do is make sure my heart is right before the Lord. Let me close with this thought. My heart and attitude towards that young man in the story was not bad. I forgave him. I was truly, I moved on, I moved past it. But I had to, with conviction and like like make some decisions that were uncomfortable for a lot of people. I forgave him, and in my mind, my heart was settled, my mind was settled before the Lord. He just couldn't, he just couldn't be here on this property and and send that message to the ladies that we're responsible for, here the young ladies, my own children as well as some other gals, you know, staff girls, and because we had spread that story, we wanted everybody to be alert. So everybody was kind of in a heightened sense of alert awareness. And so um I stand by that decision, sought counsel on it too. Had I remember uh Rob was very involved in that and several other guys, um, and we made that decision and and we stand by it, and and I can honestly say I forgive that young man. I want the best for him, and I think he's gone on and and is doing well in in his adulthood, um, to my knowledge. And I'm grateful for that pastor that that that worked through that with us, and he continued to minister to that family, to my knowledge. And um so it just takes all of us being faithful, and sometimes uncomfortable situations uh arise, and we just got to work through them and do the best we can. Keep your mind set on Christ and keep your, you know, keep stay in the word, keep your your focus, daily renewal of your mind through the word of God and the washing of of his word over our mind and live with conviction and everything will be fine. Everything will work out in your life for God's glory and for your good. Um, yeah, bonus episode. Might not have needed it, might have been just fine the way we were, but I felt like sharing those thoughts and uh excited again for the next couple episodes we've got coming up. We got some the next few episodes, we got some incredible interviews coming up, and I'm really excited for y'all to hear them. We just, JB and I just sat down with Emily Foreman and her husband Lewis. Those are not their actual names, those are pseudonyms to protect identities because um they are they are in some pretty intense ministry um in a part of the world where uh there's some radical jihad, you know, some radicalized uh Islamic uh I guess terrorists would be the word that operate there. And so Emily's first husband, Stephen, was murdered. He was martyred, he was killed for his faith, gunned down in the street. And we tell her story, we listen to it, and we we talk to them. JB and I talk to them. Uh it takes a couple episodes to work through their story and what now and their uh as she's remarried to Lewis, what they're doing to continue the work that Stephen died for. It's just awesome. It's it's one of the most powerful stories I've ever heard. I've known them for some time, very close personal friends to our family. And then also, I think I mentioned we have a a really cool uh No Sanity story from a former staff member that um is coming up too. So several stories coming up, and I'm excited for y'all to hear those. And uh hope you have an awesome week this week. Uh awesome rest of your week, and we'll see you soon, Lord willing. Maybe you get up to Snowbird.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at swoutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources. And we'll see you next week on No Sanity Required.
