What if I am Still Tormented After I Forgive Someone?
HOW TO KEEP FORGIVING AGAIN AND AGAIN
Bruce Hebel: When someone chooses to forgive, after having experienced the signs of unforgiveness, the depression, anxiety, paranoia, anger issues, control issues, some physical things, or however the torment is expressing itself, they find freedom. (The torment is allowed by God to bring us to a point of repentance, to the point of forgiving.) The moment we forgive, the discipline ends because God's discipline for us is not punishment. It is there to bring us to rethink, to change our mind, to get us to a new understanding of the blood of Jesus and how it covers our sin. When we honor the blood by applying it to what has wounded us, then the reason for the torment is over. The discipline is gone.
God, on his own will do it. You don't have to ask, "God, would you please remove the tormentors?" We've never done that. In fact, any physical healing we've seen, it's spontaneous. It just happens. God Himself tells the tormentors to leave. Whatever that torment and however that tormentor expressed itself, is what will change. So anxiety ends and depression ends. We have one young man who was addicted to cocaine and had tried for years getting off of it, and he forgave and his cocaine addiction ended. Most people will say things like, my heart is free, I can breathe again.
Someone described it as like (he's a backpacker) at the end of a long day, he has to counterbalance himself by taking the backpack off. He felt like somebody had taken the backpack off. One lady said, "My heart was full of rocks when I came in, and now it feels like cotton candy." There's a freedom that happens when someone chooses to forgive.
Toni Hebel: And the same is true with us. When we forgave, we experienced freedom. What happens if the freedom... we don't feel it anymore? We forgave and we experienced, like me, freedom from depression, but what does it mean if it comes right back?
Bruce Hebel: To me, it means you've missed something. Oftentimes we find that people will come in, they're dealing with the surface, the current things, and will forgive the current things. But most of the time, those current things are hitting old wounds from the past. Where are the root wounds? This happened when I was three, four, eight, 10, when I was a kid - what happened then? That's just telling us we haven't gone deep enough and there's something else that we need to forgive.
Toni Hebel: I was working with a lady one time, just as an example of this, and she determined it was her father that had wounded her the deepest and the greatest. It's where the root was, where things began. She forgave her dad for all these things. She — I don't know how to say this — but she was more masculine in her behavior and in her appearance as a female. She'd never been married and just didn't think that she was beautiful in any kind of way, didn't dress in any female-type dress. So anyhow, when we finished forgiving her father I asked her, "How is your heart?" And she said, "Hmm, it's a little better maybe, but I really don't feel a whole lot different." Now when we hear that we can either, "Oh, no, what have we not done or what's wrong or whatever." But we've learned to say, "OK, there's something that you have not dealt with. There is something hidden that you're not either allowing to come to the surface or God hasn't revealed it. So let's ask Him." So we did.
Sometimes God gives it to us and sometimes God gives it to the person who is forgiving. In this case, I heard the Holy Spirit say to myself, "Did your dad ever say to you as a little girl that you were a delight to him, that you were valued, that you are beautiful and he appreciated you as a female? Did you ever experience that kind of daddy-daughter relationship with him?" She started to cry and she said, "No, he never wanted me. He wanted a boy. And he never said I was beautiful. He never made me feel beautiful. He never embraced me. In fact, I just don't feel like I was valued at all." Well, that brought up a whole different set of language that we used as we were forgiving. She forgave those specifics. "I forgive my dad for not embracing me as a little girl, not making me feel valued like I was worth something, that I was worth something as a female." We went through all of those pieces. When she finished that, she was set free. She was completely different. I saw her not too long ago, and it's been probably four years since that meeting, and she was still beaming. Just totally, even in her appearance, looked different because we realized we had not gone deep enough. And that's what we find with most people that say, "I haven't got that freedom." It's because we haven't gone deep enough.
Bruce Hebel: Oftentimes our parents are the root wound. It's not because they meant to be. It's just their own wounded-ness. Wounded people wound people. But if a father doesn't affirm his daughter’s femininity, in the case of this young girl, and "I'd rather have a boy," then she tries to become what her dad wants. If a mother doesn't affirm a daughter, she'll try to become something. Or if she doesn't affirm the son and doesn't respect the father and doesn't respect the son, then the son will be injured and not even know it. So oftentimes the Holy Spirit reveals and takes us deeper and deeper.
Toni Hebel: And if people call us three weeks later and say, "Hey, I was free when I left your house, or the coaching room or whatever, but I'm not now," then we will kind of take them back there and ask questions to say "who have you not forgiven?" Because we can't forgive everybody in one sitting. Don't expect to forgive everybody in one sitting. God gives freedom in one sitting, but three days later he may say, "OK, now it's time. I want you to forgive these wounds that have happened in your life. You haven't dealt with this piece yet." So we will ask questions to lead them to see who is new in your life or what wounds are new that God is bringing and revealing so that you can get completely free of any wounding that's taken place. You can put them all at the cross.
Male Speaker: I think that's very helpful. Let me ask a question to kind of follow up on that there, Toni. So what you're really saying is that, in some cases, the wounds that we know we're harboring resentment for and we have unforgiveness for are super obvious to us. We can probably name them pretty easily. But at times there are wounds and there are things that we'll need to dig a little deeper in order to really uncover. What are the first steps that we need to take in terms of digging deeper and finding the source of those additional wounds that might not have been so apparent and obvious as the big ones?
Toni Hebel: Well, we believe that in the silence, the Holy Spirit speaks. We will have long moments of "let's just listen to the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts and reveal the wounds in our life that have never been dealt with." Because as humans, we come up with these mechanisms on how to cope and we will push things down. We won't go there. Sometimes it's our pride. Pride keeps the heart closed and humility is what opens the heart. So our pride will keep it closed and we'll put a wall around it because we don't want to hurt. But we have found that you hurt the more you keep it in. So let's get to it! We will ask the Holy Spirit to reveal who wounded me the deepest in my life and what did they do? And then we will wait. As we coach people, we ask questions that will probe them to bring these memories back to them. Then as they begin to forgive, more things will come to mind.
Bruce Hebel: One of the questions we ask on the superficial wound, the ones you're talking about that are super obvious, we'll say, "OK, who's the first person who made you feel that way? When's the first time that emotion happened in your life?" Because we'll blame the current. "They betrayed me, they did this." Well maybe this is an overreaction to that kind of a betrayal. That was maybe even not a betrayal. You're seeing it as one. So where's the first betrayal? Where's the first abandonment? When did the first person make you feel like you weren't valued? When's the first time you felt this way? Those are indications because wounds hit us at the heart level. We got to go to the heart. And that may be even another issue. Oftentimes, when people are not getting free, it's because they're doing it with their head. They're not really getting into their heart. That's why the silence and the quiet get to the heart.
