When God first called me to vocational ministry, I moved back to my hometown and took a position as a youth minister. I’ll never forget my first day on the job when the pastor walked me into a musty office in the corner of the old church building.
“I’ll use my home office during the week,” he told me, “so you can work here.”
I remember him walking out the door and making his way back to the parsonage while I sat down at an old wooden desk and stared at my computer.
I had no idea what I was doing.
That was 24 years ago, and if I’m honest, I still have little idea what I’m doing. Sure, I have a couple decades of experience and a degree of higher education that says I ought to know more than I did back then, but the truth is that most of what I do is fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-trust-in-the-grace-of-Jesus type of stuff.
I also have been a parent now for 19 years. You would think that I had gained some wisdom in all my time raising two girls, but honestly, I’m guessing most days and trusting Jesus to protect my kids from my bumbling missteps along the way.
The reality is, that although we gain experience and maybe even a bit of wisdom as we get older, there is no manual for how to do life, parenting, and ministry. Every situation and every circumstance has dozens if not hundreds of variables that make your situation unique, and most often what you should have done doesn’t come into focus until it is in the rear view mirror. As they say, hindsight is 20/20, at least… most of the time.
I often think about the decisions I made, the things that I said, the promises made and unkept when I was in my early 20s and cringe with embarrassment. How could I have been so foolish? What was I thinking?
It’s in those moments I have to remind myself of God’s grace in my life. The amount of times I screwed up are only surpassed by the amount of grace, love, and forgiveness that Jesus has poured out on me. I am so thankful, and so needful of His compassion.
But that’s the easy party. Resting in the forgiveness of Jesus is an awesome place to dwell. The more difficult part is found in Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness. As followers of Christ, He has instructed us to forgive others with the same measure He has forgiven us.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins,
your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32
When I was young a naive I thought I did this pretty well. Then I moved back to my hometown and started working with kids at a local school, and I discovered that total forgiveness wasn’t quite as easy as it seemed on the outset.
I had no business teaching PE to elementary school kids
Getting a gig as a youth minister was actually pretty easy. In the early 21st century there was no shortage of small country churches longing to pay some young ambitious chap $150 a week to hang out with middle school boys a few times a month. Unfortunately, that didn’t pay the bills, so I had to supplement my income, and I took a position teaching PE at a local Christian School. I had no business teaching PE, but the Athletic Director was a member at my new church so she got me an interview, and I landed the job.
It was a part time spot that required me to teach PE to kids kindergarden through 8th grade. I was completely unqualified, but none-the-less and grew to love the job, the kids, and my coworkers.
And then one day, while leading a group of sweaty 3rd graders back to their classroom, a little girl in front of the line got my attention.
“Hey, Mr. Powell,” she said, “I think we are cousins.”
At first I was a bit confused and asked for clarification to which she responded, “Your dad and my dad are brothers.”
At that moment, a pit in my stomach found its way into my throat. She wasn’t talking about my dad who had raised me. My father who adopted and chose me. She was talking about my biological father. The man who had abandoned me not once but twice. The man who had fought to keep my family from peace for so many years. Who fed my abandonment issues. Who caused me to have panic attacks.
That man.
After nearly 20 years, he was back in my life, and my entire body revolted at the thought.
Old Trauma Same Response
A few years ago I got to go to a place called Onsite, which author Donald Miller describes as sleep away therapy camp for adults. It was there I learned that trauma is no respecter of time. It doesn’t matter when the pain occurred in your life, or how well you think you have dealt with it, triggers can send you right back into the moment of offense.
There, in the hallway of my little school, this precious eight year old—who had no idea what she was doing— sent me spiraling back to the time a little boy was forced to visit a family he had never known.
Over the course of that school year I had a handful of interactions with the family, and though I never once saw my biological father, the experiences forced me to deal with a harsh reality. I had never fully dealt with the lingering pains inflicted on me so many years before.
But the school year came to an end, Jodi and I moved 800 miles away, and I shoved those feelings back down into the dark places of my heart where I could ignore them. Then I met RT Kendall.
My Rock Stars are Not Your Rock Stars
RT Kendall is a popular author and speaker who pastored Westminster Chapel in London for 25 years. He had recently retired to the US and also happened to be a former student of Leo Garrett, a member at my church in Fort Worth, TX. Dr. Garrett heard the RT was going to be in town and invited him to our church to speak about his book Total Forgiveness.
If you haven’t read the book, stop right now and go get it. I’ll wait…
It’s great isn’t it?
In the book, RT uses the story of Joseph as a model for what total forgiveness looks like.
If anyone had a right to be angry over past wrongs committed and trauma caused it was Joseph. Sold into slavery by his brothers (talk about sibling rivalry), wrongfully accused and imprisoned by his employer, and forgotten in jail by friend, it seemed that everything and everyone was working against poor Joe. Everyone except God. In fact, throughout the story, we are reminded, that “the Lord was with Joseph.”
What?
If the Lord was with him he would have no need to be on a first name basis with the jailer. If the Lord was with him, then he wouldn’t have been sold out of his father’s house into slavery, tossed into prison because of a lying woman, and forgotten about by a friend. If God was with him, he wouldn’t be going through all of this drama, right?
And then, when he least expected it, the day of reckoning came.
A famine struck the promised land. Jacob sent his sons to Egypt in search of some food, and who do they find in charge of the distribution of goods? Little baby brother, Joseph. Only they didn’t recognize him.
But he knew who they were.
This is the part of the story where you would expect to have scripture say something like, “And then Joseph slew his brothers removing their heads from their bodies until the last bit of life drained from their necks, and thus the Lord vindicated Joseph and brought justice to the oppressed brother.”
Then Joseph would drop the sword and the tale would be told of how you reap what you sow, how the brothers got what they deserved, and how God is a God of justice.
But that isn’t what happens.
RT Kendall points out Joseph “totally forgives” them. He pre-decided to not hold anything against them; he didn’t ask for them to apologize; he didn’t go to twitter to share with everyone else how he had been wronged. He let go of revenge, and he blessed his offenders.
Meaning that he didn’t pay them back for what they did; instead, he wanted—and even provided—good things for them.
Sounds simple, right?
I can’t remember if RT said it in his sermon that night, if I read it later in his book, or if I just inferred it from all of the above, but at some point it dawned on me. Until I was willing to totally forgive my biological father, I would be a prisoner. Until I released him of the crime that he may or may not be sorry for (or even knew he committed), I would continue to be the one in shackles, forced to relive the trauma of my past hurts every time his name came up.
To totally forgive him, I would need to process my pain, let go of any claim I had on vengeance, and change the way I spoke and thought about my offender.
The next couple of years would be a process in learning to forgive as I have been forgiven. The process is not for the feint of heart.
Then one day, as my parents were going through a divorce and as Jodi and I endured our biggest struggles in our young marriage, it finally happened.
Sitting in my parent’s basement I had this realization: I hoped my biological father hadn’t lived his entire life carrying regret or shame for what had transpired when he was in his early 20s. I certainly don’t claim to understand what he was thinking, but I’m sure that whatever decisions he made so long ago made perfect sense to him at the time. After all, he was just a kid, without a manual, trying to figure out how to do the right thing.
Maybe in hindsight he would have done things differently, maybe not, but either way I had been given an amazing father, and a pretty good life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There was no reason for him to carry sorrow, because though what occurred to me was certainly bad, God intended it for good.
And now, do not be distressed an do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. Genesis 45:5
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:19-20
After all, I have been the recipient of such a great amount of grace for my blunders, the least I could do is offer the same grace to a young man who undoubtedly was just doing the best he could, with what he had been handed.
In that moment I remember thinking, “I hope he’s had a good life. I hope he was able to have a family of his own. I hope he doesn’t carry around the weight of his past mistakes, because I am in no place to hold it against him.”
And as I sat there pondering these things, I was reminded of RT Kendall, leading us in a simple prayer of forgiveness, and telling us that to forgive someone is to set a prisoner free and realize the prisoner is you.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize the prisoner was you.
— RT Kendall
I was blessed to have been given an amazing father who chose me in spite of my brokenness and my “As is Tags.” In doing so he provided me with a living breathing object lesson as to what our heavenly father does when he invites us to be a part of His family.
But I am also blessed to have been given the opportunity to learn what it means to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it and hasn’t asked for it. It’s pretty amazing, and reminds me of a time when I needed forgiveness and didn’t deserve it, and how my heavenly father not only forgave, but threw a party.
I’m very aware of grudges I still carry, and what a struggle it is to forgive someone who has wounded you deeply. Forgiveness is still a skill I need to sharpen, but thanks to my past experiences, I have a better understanding of how freeing it can be to forgive someone totally… you know… like we have been forgiven.
So today I wonder if you might be willing to begin the process. To release yourself from the burden of the grudges you carry by totally forgiving someone. It may be that you set a prisoner free, and then realize that the prisoner is you.
Jeremy Powell 