The Devil in Pew Number Seven (31 page)

For the Love of God

Second, I have an opportunity to display God’s love whenever I offer forgiveness in the face of hatred, personal betrayal, and persecution. When I forgive, that act of divinely inspired grace allows me to become a light in a dark world, pointing the way to Jesus. Make no mistake about it. People are observing you and me to see how we, as Christians, deal with the hard knocks of life. When they see that we’ve been wronged, offended, wounded, ripped off, shortchanged, or “done a wrong turn,” our response can either attract those who are watching us to the Savior or give them yet another excuse not to follow Him.

Jesus said, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16,
NIV
). I’ve got to admit, while I desire to be a light for Christ, while I can think of nothing more important than to be a living tribute to His grace, this can be a challenge when you’ve been hurt as deeply as I have been wounded. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easy for the bitterness from the past to surface and weasel its ugly taproot into my heart.

To be perfectly blunt, when you finish reading this book, when you place it on the shelf or pass it along to a friend, that’s it—you’re done. You get to move on from my story to other worthy books if you choose to do so. Our lives will have intersected for a moment in time, and for that I’m grateful. But long after you’ve put down the book, I’ll still be carrying the story in my heart every waking hour—and it still sometimes pops up at the most unexpected moments.

Like the time when I, at age thirty-five, was sharing a meal with friends at a restaurant. We had just watched a movie with a lot of violence. As the conversation turned to other violent and scary films, I found myself alone, transported into my own world without anyone knowing I had mentally checked out.

I pretended to be engaged in the exchange but in my mind I was suddenly a five-year-old all over again . . . in my bed . . . eyes wide open . . . scared . . . listening to the footsteps outside my window. The unnerving sound of a home intrusion spiked my heart; someone uninvited was on our property. I could hear the grass yield under each step.

Was there more than one assailant in our yard? Were they outside my window? Were they going to come in our house this time or continue to hide in the blackness of night until the moment when they’d launch their attack? Should I scream? If I did, they’d know where I was. I had been taught to remain quiet, to keep the lights off, to stay away from the windows—and to get down if I heard gunshots. But this time would it be another round of bullets flying through my window or the blast of a bomb?

Before something bad could happen, I willed myself to join the present moment and reenter the conversation with my friends. Even though we were sitting close around the table, they had no idea I had been alone in my own frightful world of memories. Sure, I tried to appear interested in the banter over film violence, but somehow I couldn’t escape the questions I had had as a five-year-old: Am I safe now? Will I ever be safe? When the sun comes up, will this nightmare finally be over?

Even though the events took place thirty years prior to the movie night out with friends, an old wound was cut open. The trauma required more than a few days for me to get over. I went to my Bible, as I have done so many desperate times before, to find healing and peace once again. I had to remind myself that God promised to be with me every second of every day. He said, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10,
NKJV
).

Even when I’m alone with my thoughts.

I didn’t ask for this abrasion on my soul to be a part of my life; it just is. Now, day after day, I have the choice to forgive the two men who took so much from me, or I can choose to wallow in a toxic brew of bitterness. True, I forgave Harris Williams a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t have to forgive him again and again . . . on my mother’s birthday when she’s not there for us to celebrate her . . . every Easter because that was the season when gunshots cut down my parents and shattered my world, and the list goes on and on.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not suggesting I’m the only person who has experienced deep and abiding hurt. Far from it. In this fallen world, all of us have had—or will soon experience—wrongdoing at the hands of others. Some of those actions are petty, bush-league stuff; other actions cause major league–size wounds. Maybe you were molested as a child, or were raped, or live with a verbally abusive spouse, or are haunted by the mean-spirited pronouncements of a friend who betrayed you. You and I cannot walk away from what’s been done to us.

At the same time, as crazy as it sounds, we’re
commanded
to speak the language of heaven, to forgive as we have been forgiven—generously, fully, and freely. That means we forgive with no strings attached; that may require us to forgive repeatedly. When we do, we shock the world with God’s power at work within us. When they shake their heads in wonderment, when they struggle to understand how anyone could forgive like that, we have the opportunity to point them to the Cross, the ultimate act of forgiveness.

Get Out of Jail

The third lesson I’ve come to discover in my journey of forgiveness is that I’m the one who remains in jail if I withhold God’s grace by failing to forgive when wronged. As I’ve presented my testimony at various women’s conferences, someone invariably approaches me with her “strategy.” She views withholding forgiveness as a means of leveraging control over the offending party, like meting out some sort of punishment.

Guess what?

Aside from the fact that such a strategy is not an option for the believer, it often backfires. The offending person might not even have a clue that he or she has hurt you. Not all offenses are intentional, right? So, while you’re harboring bitterness toward that person, when you fail to release him or her through forgiveness, you end up punishing yourself in the end. As someone once said, “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Author Lewis Smedes, whose book
The Art of Forgiving
is one of the best on the subject, put it this way: “When you forgive a person who wronged you,
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you set a prisoner free, and then you discover that the prisoner you set free is you.” I love that perspective. In a way, when I forgave Mr. Watts,
I
was the one who benefited in the long run. If, however, I had allowed the root of bitterness and unforgiveness to take hold in my life, I’d be the one in jail—not him.

Why? Think about what happens when we don’t forgive. For me, rather than forgive and move on, I become preoccupied. I overanalyze the offense and, in turn, find that my thoughts are dominated by how I was hurt. That, in turn, creates a huge distraction in my daily routine. I remember once being so engrossed with unforgiveness that I had forgotten to make dinner. As the dinner hour came and went unnoticed by me, my kids said, “Hey, Mom, are we still having dinner?” I was completely shut down because I hadn’t taken the steps to forgive the person who had hurt me earlier that day.

The writer of the book of Hebrews says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (12:15,
NIV
). Being quick to forgive, then, prevents bitterness from keeping my heart captive to the wrong that’s been done to me; what’s more, it breaks the bondage of bitterness from being passed to the next generation.

I don’t want my children to be harboring anger at Mr. Watts or Harris Williams because they’ve watched me be destroyed by their actions. To be sure, if I had given in to the trap of having a pity party for myself over the fact that Mr. Watts got out of jail early, my kids would have watched me serving his time in my own self-pity-induced prison. I’d much rather that they see their mother being free in Christ and learn, as I’m continuing to learn, about the power of forgiveness to set us free.

At times, when I was younger and feeling self-pity about my situation, Aunt Dot would help me put my life in perspective. She’d say, “There are a lot of people who have been through worse things than you have, Becky. What’s more, they didn’t necessarily have a supportive family or God to help them through it.” I hadn’t thought of that.

She reminded me, “There are children who have never heard their parents say, ‘I love you.’ Your parents loved you and Daniel so much and said so regularly. More importantly, God loves you, and you know He’ll never leave you. He’s right by your side until you’re reunited with your parents in heaven.” The thought that other kids had gone through worse things than we had awakened compassion in me and got my focus off myself and my pity party. It also opened the doorway to forgiveness.

My aunt Dot went a step further by giving me a practical way of knowing whether I’ve truly forgiven someone from my heart. She said that, if I were to see the offender walking down the street, I should be able to wish him or her well. Forgiveness is a choice, she said, not a feeling. Aunt Dot wasn’t suggesting that I have to have a relationship with such people again or invite them into my life or be their friend.

Some people still have serious issues.

Others have toxic personalities.

For some with unresolved problems, the damaging things in their lives could spill over and hurt me. But that shouldn’t prevent me from wishing them God’s best . . . from a distance if necessary.

No Apology in Heaven

The journey of forgiveness takes an interesting turn in the road with the fourth observation: If I have trouble forgiving, it might be because I’m actually angry at God, not primarily at the person who wronged me. Our inability to forgive others often has to do with our unwillingness to make peace with God over what has happened. Whether or not we’ve stopped long enough to see that this dynamic is at work, subconsciously it’s possible we’re mad at God for not preventing our pain in the first place.

You know, it’s God’s fault that such and such has happened.

For example, God could have stopped a spouse from committing adultery—or from being a lazy bum who’s unwilling to provide for the family. God didn’t intervene, and now we’re mad at Him because our marriage has fallen apart or because the bank has foreclosed on our home.

Perhaps we think God could have stopped a business partner from embezzling the profits or kept a prodigal from leaving home after all of our prayers on her behalf. He didn’t. We’re so filled with anger and disappointment that God didn’t show up at the last minute and answer our prayers, there’s no way we’d ever forgive the business partner or wayward child.

What’s more, it’s tempting to think that God owes
us
an apology for the betrayal, suffering, insults, hard knocks, or wounds we experience here on earth. When we get to heaven, we’re gonna have it out with Him; we’ll march right up and say, “Why, God, didn’t You heal my mate of cancer?” . . . “Why, God, did You allow my sweet daughter to marry that creep of a guy?” . . . “Why, God, did You blah blah blah?”

I’ve got news for you.

There isn’t an apology coming.

In my case, the devil was in pew number seven, and God knew about him all along. He knew what kind of fellow Mr. Watts was, as well as the severe damage that his actions were having on my daddy’s nervous system. In spite of this knowledge, God didn’t prevent Mr. Watts from carrying out his five-year campaign of terror against us. Had God stopped Mr. Watts in his tracks, Daddy wouldn’t have suffered with paranoia. Perhaps he’d still be alive.

If I’m honest, I must admit that my real issue could be with God, not necessarily with Mr. Watts. I might be tempted to withhold forgiveness because I’m actually mad at God. Thankfully, with the help and teaching of my parents, I learned to keep things in perspective. They helped me see that God is still God even when things don’t make sense. God hasn’t made a mistake yet, so He can be trusted even when my circumstances suggest otherwise.

He is the Potter; I am the clay.

God is still good even when life is hard.

As I mentioned in the last chapter, my need for God trumped my need to be mad at Him. I’ll admit I lost track of the number of times I pounded my fists on the gates of heaven, demanding an explanation from God as to why He permitted what He had allowed. Somewhere in the midst of that ongoing wrestling match, just after my sixteenth birthday, I found the Scripture that says that God is a Father to the fatherless (see Psalm 68:5). I hung on to those words with everything I had.

I came to see that I had to make a choice: I could contend with God, exhausting myself every day in the vain pursuit of securing an apology from Him. Or setting aside that fruitless quest, I could immerse myself in the Scriptures where the Maker of my soul was quick to meet me and give me His peace.

What’s more, God reminded me that He has the long view in mind. I only see through a glass dimly. As 1 Corinthians 13 puts it, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (v. 12,
NIV
). To paraphrase evangelist and American reformer Hannah Whitall Smith, a great many things in God’s divine providences do not look like goodness. But faith sits down before mysteries such as these and says, “The Lord is good;
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therefore, all that He does must be good no matter how it looks.”

Again, in my case, the long view that God had in mind was the use of our suffering to bring Mr. Watts into a place where he accepted Jesus into his heart. I’d love to believe that one day the same will be true for Harris Williams. Which brings me back to something I mentioned earlier—forgiveness isn’t necessarily a once-for-all action on our part.

Even if we’ve made our peace with God and have set aside that crazy notion that one day He’ll apologize to us in heaven for exercising His sovereign will on earth, forgiving someone might require repeated doses of grace.