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Nov 10, 2024 06:00am

The Freedom of Forgiveness

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On November 17, 2021, I got the most shocking news of my life. I was getting ready for school when my brother called me at 6:30 a.m. Strange. He never called this early. I answered the phone thinking it was about my mom . . . instead, he said the words that I will never forget: “Amber, dad died.”

Immediately, I was in shock and said the only words I could think of: “I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye . . . I didn’t say goodbye!” In a second’s notice, my world changed.

Growing up, I don’t have many memories of my dad being happy. He lived in a world of depression and looked for ways to self-medicate. The highs were high, and the lows were, well, unbearable. He was hurting and oftentimes took his pain out on us. For many years, my body and my heart took a beating. It was a hard life, and my hate for him boiled over. It felt too much for a young girl to handle. Then, my mom did something brave: she divorced him. My dad’s whole world came crashing down on him and all of a sudden, he was alone.

And it broke him.

I saw my dad lose everything of true value in life. At that point, something else broke: my unforgiveness. My hatred turned to sadness for this broken man.

So, day after day, year after year, I invited him into my life. He was there when my children were born and was grandpa to them. But, life really took a turn when he came to church with me. You see, staying at rock bottom does something to your heart: it makes you hungry for hope. He found hope in Jesus. He rededicated his life to a God he used to curse. He became softer in his older age. And when he got throat cancer, I drove him to his doctor’s appointments. We talked. We shared. We bonded. He lost his voice in the process of dealing with this cancer, but the Lord healed him of cancer through it. His voice, which was so full of anger and meanness when I was younger, turned soft, almost whispery, and loving. We didn’t need to talk about the past. We both knew what had happened. I had already released him from it. You see, it was in those little moments of life we had made peace with the past.

As my siblings and I prepared for my dad’s funeral, the Lord brought to mind our last moment. We were sitting next to each other in church and during the sermon, my dad picked up my hand and kissed it. Then, he said softly, “I am so proud of you, daughter.”

I looked down at my hand. A tear was on that hand. His tear.

We ended well. He ended well. God had made all things new in my dad and our relationship through the freedom of forgiveness

In that moment, God nudged me, “Amber, you two already said goodbye.”

Friends, I share my story to show you the power and beauty of forgiveness. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s ugly. And yes, it’s hard . . . quite possibly the hardest thing you will ever do. But, as I found out, you don’t forgive someone because they deserve it. In fact, if we’re being honest, we’ve all messed up. We’ve all hurled words like weapons (and maybe more). Romans 3:23 says that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. None of us deserves forgiveness . . . and yet, our Father, through the price and the penalty of sin, gave us forgiveness in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross.

We forgive others because God forgave us. We forgive others because He calls us to–even 77 times if we have to (Matthew 18:21-22). You see, God wants us, His children, to experience the freedom of forgiveness. For years, I was a prisoner of anger and bitterness in my own jail cell. You know what? All that anger and bitterness grew bigger in my heart and made me a colder person. It held me captive. It became a poison that consumed my heart.

But forgiveness . . . oh friends, there’s freedom there. Forgiveness trusts God with all the knotted ends. Forgiveness lets God take control. Forgiveness births the peace that surpasses all understanding. Forgiveness opens the door to our jail cell and releases us from our self-imposed shackles.

Not only does God call us to forgive others, but He also says something else very unsettling: if we choose to not forgive others, He won’t forgive us for our sins (Matthew 6:14-15). This is frightening–I have far too many grievous sins in my life to let unforgiveness hold me back in my relationship with the Lord. What if I had never forgiven my dad? I would never have seen him go to church and surrender his life to Jesus Christ. I would have missed out on our talks driving to and from the doctors’ appointments. I would have missed out on enjoying life with him. He became more of a father in the last ten years of his life than he had been his whole life. I would have missed out on his whispery voice saying, “I’m so proud of you, daughter.”

Oh friends, let us choose to forgive. It leads to healing. It leads to new paths in life. It leads to freedom.

It’s where God makes all things new.