Forgiveness, Grace & Finding Gratitude Through Faith
Episode 6 of Wolves & Wisemen Reignited kicks off The Check In with a topic submitted by a member of the community: forgiveness versus grace.
Wolves & Wisemen Reignited — Episode 6
About This Episode
What's the difference between forgiving someone and giving them grace?
And is one harder than the other?
The guys have talked about forgiveness before, but this time the conversation goes deeper into what happens after someone screws up.
Is forgiveness something you do for them—or for yourself?
Does giving someone grace mean letting them back into your life?
Can you forgive somebody without trusting them again?
And how many chances should somebody get before grace turns into allowing the same behavior to continue?
The conversation develops into a bigger discussion about faith itself and why the guys believe conversations about God don't have to happen inside a traditional church building.
Faith doesn't require pretending you're perfect.
It doesn't require dressing a certain way.
And it doesn't mean three imperfect guys have to suddenly stop being themselves before they can sit down and talk about God, Scripture, their mistakes, and what they're trying to learn.
Sometimes church can simply look like a few people sitting together, asking questions, sharing different perspectives, talking about God, and helping each other become better people.
With Thanksgiving only days away, the second Check In turns toward thankfulness.
Using Philippians 4:6, the guys discuss anxiety, trusting God's plan, appreciating what you already have, and learning to recognize the blessings that can be hidden inside some of life's biggest frustrations.
Sometimes the thing that gave you nothing but problems ends up leading you to the people who change your life.
And sometimes being thankful isn't about having everything you want.
It's recognizing what you already have while continuing to work toward where you want to go.
Of course, it's still Wolves & Wisemen.
So between the faith conversations, Episode 6 includes current events, ridiculous news stories, cars catching fire, death threats over golf, a woman waking up in a coffin, questionable conversations about blind people, road rage, flying cats, old stories, Thanksgiving chaos, and plenty of reasons for the guys to admit they probably need to pray after the show.
What We Talk About
The Check In
Forgiveness versus grace
What forgiveness actually means
Giving grace when someone screws up
Forgiving someone without forgetting what happened
Whether forgiveness is for them or for you
Letting go so someone doesn't continue living “rent free” in your head
Whether grace should come before forgiveness
Trust after someone has wronged you
Forgiving someone without letting them back into your inner circle
Giving grace to family and children
How past experiences can affect your ability to trust
Why nobody is perfect
Following God without pretending to have everything figured out
Faith versus organized religion
Whether church has to happen inside a church building
Creating a place where regular guys can talk honestly about God
Asking questions about Scripture instead of simply being told what it means
Why different people can read the same verse and take something different from it
Building a faith community through conversation
Inviting the Wolves & Wisemen community to submit future Check In topics
Thankfulness
Philippians 4:6
Anxiety and worrying about things you can't control
Putting situations into God's hands
God's timing versus our timing
Being thankful for what you already have
Appreciating needs instead of constantly chasing wants
Finding blessings inside frustrating situations
Why gratitude doesn't mean you have to stop striving for more
Being thankful for family and friends
Appreciating a home, food, work, transportation, and everyday necessities
Learning from things that go wrong
How an old Mustang helped create friendships that eventually became family
Being thankful for another day
Recognizing the people who choose to stay in your life
Scripture From This Episode
Ephesians 4:32
The first Check In begins with the call to be kind and compassionate toward one another and to forgive others as God has forgiven us.
That opens the larger question of what forgiveness really requires.
The guys discuss forgiveness as something that can free the person doing the forgiving—not necessarily something that erases what happened or automatically restores trust.
Colossians 3:13
This verse continues the conversation about bearing with one another and forgiving grievances.
But the discussion raises an important distinction:
Forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean somebody gets unlimited access to your life.
You can let go of the anger while still remembering the lesson, establishing boundaries, and deciding who belongs inside your circle.
Ephesians 2:8–9
The conversation then shifts from forgiveness to grace.
Grace is discussed as something that isn't necessarily earned or deserved. It's something freely extended.
That leads to one of the biggest questions of the conversation:
Which is harder—giving someone grace or forgiving them after they've hurt you?
The answer isn't the same for everyone.
Philippians 4:6
The second Check In focuses on anxiety, prayer, thanksgiving, and trusting God.
The guys connect the verse with something they've discussed before:
There are situations in life you can control—and situations you simply can't.
When you've done what you can do, constantly worrying about the rest doesn't change the outcome.
Sometimes you have to pray about it, put it into God's hands, and keep moving.
Key Takeaways
Forgiveness and grace aren't exactly the same thing. Forgiveness can involve releasing anger over something that happened, while grace can mean extending patience or understanding that someone hasn't necessarily earned.
Forgiveness can be for you. You don't necessarily need the other person to apologize, understand, or even know that you've forgiven them in order to stop carrying the anger yourself.
Forgiving someone doesn't mean forgetting the lesson. Letting go of a grudge doesn't require pretending something never happened.
Grace doesn't automatically mean unlimited chances. You can show somebody grace without allowing destructive behavior to continue indefinitely.
Trust and forgiveness are different things. You may forgive someone while still deciding that they no longer belong inside your closest circle.
Different people struggle with different parts of forgiveness. For one person, forgiving may be easier than extending grace. For somebody else, grace may come naturally while true forgiveness is much harder.
Nobody has faith completely figured out. The goal isn't pretending to be perfect. It's continuing to learn, ask questions, strengthen your relationship with God, and become better than you were before.
Church doesn't necessarily have to be a building. A group of people gathering together to talk about God, Scripture, life, and faith can create its own form of Christian community.
Questions can strengthen a faith conversation. Different people can read the same passage and connect it to completely different experiences.
The Wolves & Wisemen community is becoming part of The Check In. Viewer-submitted verses, struggles, questions, and perspectives can create conversations the hosts might never have come up with on their own.
You can't control everything. When something is outside your control, endless anxiety doesn't solve it. Sometimes you have to do what you can, pray about the rest, and keep moving.
Being thankful isn't the same as settling. You can appreciate what you have today while still working toward something better tomorrow.
The small things matter. A roof, food, a job, a vehicle, another morning, good friends, and people who care about you can be easy to overlook when you're focused entirely on what you don't have.
Some blessings don't look like blessings at first. Problems, mistakes, broken cars, setbacks, and unexpected situations can create experiences and relationships that wouldn't exist otherwise.
Sometimes the thing that caused the headache created the relationship. One of the episode's best examples is the realization that a troublesome old Mustang ultimately helped bring people together who became family.
Chosen family matters. Some of the most important people in your life aren't there because they're obligated to be. They're there because they choose to love you, support you, call you out, and show up when you need them.
Be thankful for another day. Not every blessing has to be complicated. Waking up and getting another chance at life is something worth appreciating.
Rebel Report
Episode 6's Rebel Report jumps through several stories making headlines and circulating online around Thanksgiving week.
The guys discuss the annual White House turkey pardon, including Gobble and Waddle, before bouncing into everything from a reported cancer-vaccine development in Russia to a Thai woman who began moving inside her coffin before cremation.
The segment also gets into the backlash and threats directed at golfer and content creator Paige Spiranac over a rules controversy, a Utah jewelry-store robbery attempt, a million-dollar Aston Martin being stopped on a Utah highway, and the kind of current-event rabbit holes that usually turn the Rebel Report into something completely different from where it started.
As always, Rebel Report is the guys reacting to and discussing stories—not pretending to be a newsroom.
Folks on Fire
This week's Folks on Fire starts close to home.
Fit Chick gets recognition for becoming part of the show itself—not only regularly participating in the live chat but submitting the Scripture and perspective that helped create the first Check In conversation about forgiveness and grace.
That's exactly where Wolves & Wisemen wants The Check In to go: members of the community bringing questions, Bible verses, struggles, and perspectives into the conversation.
The segment also includes the guys' reactions to other people and stories they felt deserved recognition during the week.
Boners
Episode 6's Boners segment takes a darker turn with a road-rage shooting in Henderson, Nevada, in which an 11-year-old boy was killed.
The guys react strongly to how something as ordinary as anger between two drivers could escalate into a situation with permanent consequences.
The segment then takes the usual Wolves & Wisemen turn into the bizarre with a story about a reported death connected to a hickey, before somehow eventually arriving at an eagle dropping a cat through a vehicle windshield.
Because apparently that's where the show was destined to go.
Fringe Files
Fringe Files doesn't officially make it off the launchpad this week.
The guys tease a possible conversation involving dinosaurs and dragons, but with the show already approaching the two-hour mark—and with Thanksgiving coming up—they decide to skip Fringe Files and finish the episode with something more important:
What are you thankful for?
What We're Thankful For
The final conversation brings the entire episode back around to the theme introduced during The Check In.
The guys talk about being thankful for:
Their families
Their children
Their wives and partners
Friends who became family
Careers and opportunities
Having homes and the basic things they need
The people who have stood beside them during difficult periods
The podcast
The live chat and Wolves & Wisemen community
Being able to openly talk about God
The friendships between the three hosts
The opportunity to build something together
The conversation gets especially personal when the guys talk about the people who have stayed beside them through difficult parts of their lives.
Family isn't always defined by blood.
Sometimes it's the people who aren't required to stay—but choose to anyway.
And those people can become some of the biggest blessings in your life.
Watch & Listen
Follow Wolves & Wisemen Reignited
New episodes. New conversations. Faith, life, current events, the unexplained, and plenty of chaos along the way.
Wolves & Wisemen Reignited isn't about three guys pretending they have all the answers.
It's about three imperfect guys trying to strengthen their faith, understand Scripture, become better men, and have conversations about God without pretending to be somebody they're not.
The Check In is also becoming more connected to the people watching the show.
Have something you're dealing with?
Have a Bible verse that means something to you?
Have a question about faith, life, forgiveness, family, relationships, or something else you think the guys should talk about?
Send it in.
Your topic could become the next Check In.