We live in an incredibly independent culture. “Mind your own business and stay out of mine” is a motto many, if not most, people live by. But what if that’s not God’s way? What if, rather than being independent, God has designed us to be interdependent? What if we really are our brother’s keeper?

Each family member who spoke in court that day expressed a grace that can only be found in the Gospel. And the world noticed. While some criticized the decision to forgive so quickly, most people sat in awe of the families’ choice to forgive, and, for the most part, the Charleston community followed their lead. Instead of returning hate and anger with hate and anger, love and mercy prevailed. The result was a climate that allowed the massacre to be denounced by all sides while reasoned and gut-level conversations about racial division led to substantive dialog and decisions. Instead of a race war, actual healing and reconciliation took place.

One evening in our darkness and despair, Toni and I decided to get out of the house and take a walk around our neighborhood. It’s a 2-mile circular trek around a series of six cul-de-sacs. We were pretty quiet through the first two cul-de-sacs when one of us said, “God has not abandoned us. Where have we seen Him in all this mess? What have we seen Him do in us and for us in the last three months?” We began quietly recounting all the ways our gracious Lord had revealed Himself to us, sustained us, delivered us, provided for us, and worked in us in the three months since everything began to fall apart. For the rest of our walk, we took turns reminding each other of God’s goodness to us in a period of time when people had not been. With each memory, our hearts got lighter as our praise began to drive out the darkness.

Toni was wrapping up her summary of the Forgiving Forward message as I returned. I looked at George and said, “Do you want to be free from your torment... Now? Will you allow me to coach you to forgive your son right here on the beach?” With tears in his eyes he quietly said “Yes. Please help me.” I moved my beach ottoman over by George’s chair and gently coached him to forgive his son for taking his own life and for all the wounds that decision had caused. I then helped him come to terms with his anger towards God and we watched as George’s entire countenance changed as his tears of sorry became tears of release.

A.W. Tozer defines God’s mercy as “an attribute of God, an infinite and inexhaustible energy within the divine nature which disposes God to be actively compassionate.” Because of His mercy, God is eternally predisposed to be kind toward sinful man. God’s mercy is what compelled Jesus to shed His blood to cover our sin debt and rescue us from the eternal punishment our sin deserved. What punishment did we deserve? Death! Death is separation from God, the breaking of mankind’s holy connection with our loving Creator. The punishment for Adam’s sin that passed to all his descendants was a severed relationship with God. We all, every single one of us, have earned death. But God……

Perhaps our greatest struggle in our spiritual walk is our memory. I know that I tend to forget and revert. I forget what I know to be true about my new identity in Christ and revert to behaving like my old identity in Adam. Romans 5-8 is one of the most theologically significant sections of the New Testament. Chapter 5 teaches us about justification by faith that transforms us from our old identity in Adam into our new identity in Christ. The contrasts could not be starker. Adam’s one act of sin brought condemnation and death to all mankind. Jesus’ one act of righteousness brought grace and life to all who believe. Faith in Jesus changes everything. Grace overcomes sin. Every. Single. Time.

Since we launched Forgiving Forward, we have personally coached hundreds of couples in crisis to find freedom through forgiveness. Many of them have been on the verge of divorce, some already divorced, and all with significant issues between them. Each couple’s story is unique, yet they all have one thing in common: 100% of the time, the wound that’s causing the torment that’s driving the conflict in the marriage predates the couple ever meeting. Every. Single. Time. It has never not been this way. There is always a “Lisa”, someone who inflicted a root wound that is being projected onto the unsuspecting spouse. Often the one who inflicted that wound is a parent, a close friend, or a previous mate.

I thought about those conversations in downtown OKC this week as I listened to news of the horrific murders of nineteen children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. One of the things that struck me as I listened to all the media’s reports and commentary is that the questions haven’t changed. “How could this happen, and what can we do about it?” Each time an event like this occurs, politicians, pundits, and ordinary people argue back and forth about the why and offer various iterations of ideas that will never provide hope for effective change. Why can’t we fix this?

In a simple but hard ten-minute span of time, we witnessed 17 years of torment drop off of Brad. Brad reached out to us, after someone on a social media site, had recommended our book Forgiving Forward to him. For 17 years Brad had been seeking help from any person, any source, any place—including social media, that would help him get free of the torment that gripped him day and night. “It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night.”

Many people ask, “How can I forgive them when I know that it’s going to keep happening?” That is not an insignificant question. We all have those “repeat offenders” in our lives that wound us on a regular basis. How long do we “put up with it?” Isn’t there a limit to how often I should forgive?

All of us struggle when other people show us their “humanity”. When someone messes up or does something to hurt us, we can be quick to judge, move into condemnation, and cancel them. But as Christ followers, we are called to a different way. Tucked in the middle of Colossians 3, Paul gives us a series of commands that run counter to our old “go to” in relating to people who blow it.

In every movie about forgiveness that I have seen, at some point in the storyline, the main character struggling with forgiving reaches a crisis point. Standing at the end of a dock or in the woods or alone in a room, they scream in desperation, “I don’t know how to forgive!”, or something to that effect. The scene shifts to one in which the character, having forgiven, is now at peace. What we don’t see is HOW he forgave. Specifically, what did he do? The how is important. Wanting to forgive is not the same as choosing to forgive.

What moved me that day was the reminder that the fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins is true for everyone, not just me and you. “Lose all THEIR guilty stains.” Could it be that if we, as the redeemed, celebrated the power of the Gospel to cleanse sin in other people’s lives as much as we do our own, the world would change?

When we embrace the goodness of God combined with the Sovereignty of God, we will never be undone by anything God permits. This belief is especially important when we are wounded. So often when someone does something that offends us, the hurt steals our focus and dominates our thoughts. The more we dwell on it, the bigger the issue becomes until it becomes all consuming.

In one night, we found complete and total healing of our marriage through forgiveness. I was able to not only forgive my husband, but also my friend, as well as several other things that had left me a wounded person. My husband was able to forgive himself as well as several things from his past which had led him to that behavior. In just a few hours we felt like we were given the other half of our salvation! We learned that forgiveness was not just something to accept, but something to allow to flow through us to others, even the ones who hurt us the deepest.

There are certain abiding principles that we must continually reaffirm in our daily lives, particularly at the dawn of a new year. One of those key principles is Abiding: staying constantly connected and desperately dependent on Jesus. Abiding in Christ is recognizing that we bring nothing to the table except our nothing and our faith.

Jesus came to us, sent by His Father, because we couldn’t get to Him. Unredeemed mankind is incapable of living righteous enough to settle their sin debt or conquer their sin nature. We could never defeat sin... ever! So, He came to live among us so that, through His death and resurrection, He might come to live in us. The way He lived among us is how we live His Life in us… constantly connected to and desperately dependent on Him as we wait for Him to come again.

One of the primary misconceptions about forgiveness is that we need to wait for the offending party to repent before we forgive. Conventional wisdom says, “The person who hurt me will have to admit that what they did was wrong before I will consider whether or not to forgive them.” In other words, I don’t have to decide to forgive until they choose to repent. Yet, the way of Jesus was never conventional. Jesus predetermined that He would forgive us.

Jesus never let the offense determine whether or not He would forgive someone. No one ever comes to Jesus in repentance and is told, “I don’t think we covered that!” Why? Because Jesus loves people more than He hates their sin and He hates sin so much that He died on the Cross to pay for their sin. There is no sin so great, so bad, or so heinous that Jesus’ blood does not cover it.