Early Thanksgiving morning, all was quiet in the Sim’s household with Maverick, their aging golden retriever, sleeping beside Charlene’s hospice bed. Suddenly, at 3:45 AM, Maverick uncharacteristically jumped up and ran to Steve’s bed and nuzzled him awake. When Steve got up to check on Charlene, she breathed her last few breaths and flew into the arms of Jesus. In that moment Steve lost his wife and best friend and Forgiving Forward lost a dear friend and our most passionate team member.

Did you know that Forgiving Forward is now available in 6 different languages? It’s true! In addition to English, our book has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, Korean and our most recent translation, Russian. Each version has its own “God story” behind the translation process that would amaze you. We regularly hear reports of how the Forgiving Forward book is making an impact in people’s lives who would never be helped through the English edition. This story from Korea will bless you.

I have been asked, “How do you teach forgiveness to those who don’t believe in Jesus and who follow other religions?” My answer was this: “My friend Mike Wells used to say, ‘There is The Way and there is not the Way. Jesus is the Way and every other way is not The Way.’ I only have one bullet in my gun, it’s the Cross of Jesus. If someone won’t accept The Way (Jesus), who is the only Way, why would I give them another way that will lead them away from The Way? If they won’t accept the Cross of Jesus, I have nothing for them.”

Recently, Toni and I were teaching Forgiving Forward in Costa Rica. On the Sunday we were there, I had the privilege of sharing the message in a church in Santa Cruz. Each week around 40 people meet in a small cinder-block building with light circles on the floor from the holes in the tin roof. There was no AC, fans, projector or screen for media. There was no worship team or worship band. The worship was led by the pastor who played prerecorded worship songs from his phone through a small PA system. It was hot and dusty with little airflow. It lacked anything that many consultants would consider to be “essential elements for an effective worship environment.” But did it really?

There are sins in our culture that are considered unforgivable. It’s a growing list! In fact, there are certain offenses that violate common sensibilities when we forgive them. Forgiving these things can actually offend those closest to us so much that they will often try to talk us back into unforgiveness. We have actually witnessed people coerced into repenting of their forgiveness, which brings the torment back to a more intense level. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the results are heartbreaking.

Not long ago, I met a man who asked me the common introductory question, “What do you do?” After I shared with him a quick summary of Forgiving Forward, he said, “I wish you could meet with my son and daughter-in-law. They have been through several counselors, and nothing seems to help. The daughter-in-law now wants a divorce, and our son is confused and hurt. None of this makes sense to us. She recently said to him, ‘You’re meaner than my father!’” I responded. “It makes perfect sense to me. She is in torment because she has deep wounds from her father that she hasn’t forgiven.”

Satan wants to steal our freedom. He knows he cannot steal our Life in Christ, but he can steal our freedom—if we let him. He can steal our peace, our joy, and our trust in God, just to name a few. And he does so through unforgiveness.

At Forgiving Forward, we believe that if you take people to the Cross of Jesus, they will find freedom. If you take them anywhere else, at best, they get an anesthetic.

Redemption is the reason Christ came to earth. Jesus’ death and resurrection were the means by which that redemption was accomplished. The Cross and the Empty Tomb are the most significant events in human history, not because they happened, but rather for what they made possible… mankind’s reconciliation with God. Reconciliation required two things: forgiveness and repentance. Forgiveness was required because of the sin debt we owed. God’s justice could not allow our insurmountable debt to go unpaid or ignored, and we could never survive the judgment our sin deserves. That’s why His forgiveness was necessary.

Forgiveness is such a central part of the Gospel message that no true believer would ever say that forgiveness is a bad idea. We often meet with people who believe that they have forgiven yet are still very much in torment, which is an indicator that they have, in fact, not forgiven. Much of the teaching that is out there about forgiveness, including from Christian sources, comes from a flawed secular foundation. Yet true forgiveness always produces freedom. So how do we know when we have truly forgiven? We can be assured that we have forgiven when we forgive as God forgave us.

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?