THE AWESOME POWER OF LETTING GO

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors...For if ye forgive men

their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye
forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. - Mt 6:12-15

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee,
Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. – Matthew 18:21-22

Hurt people hurt people.

Bitterness and unforgiveness can be likened to drinking hemlock and

expecting that someone else would die from its effect.- Tope Popoola

A few years ago, I spoke in a church on the subject of forgiveness. I encouraged

people to let go of every hurt and release the people who caused it from the
prison of their hearts. A few days later, the Pastor called me to share testimonies
about what God did at the meeting. In particular, I was struck by the story of a
lady who had come to church that day to ask God for forgiveness in advance for
what she planned to do that same week. She was going to poison her father! As
it turned out, her father had deflowered her and her sister on the premise that it
was the tradition from their place of origin. She had become so shattered by the
experience that, believing she had no dignity left, she could no longer say no to
any man who wanted to sleep with her. Afterall, if her father did it, why
couldn’t anybody else? Her life was in such a mess that she decided the best
option was to kill her father and subsequently herself. But for some strange
reason, she decided she needed to get God to identify with her dilemma and
forgive her in advance, so she came to church and the Great Healer Himself
took care of the matter.

On another occasion, I had finished speaking and was praying for people who
needed healing in this area. Many people came out in tears to be prayed for but
of particular interest to me was a young lady in her teenage years. As I stood
face to face with her tear-soaked eyes, I felt such compassion that I could not
help but burst out weeping with her. As the tears poured out freely (and trust
me, I am not too given to demonstrative emotional effusions) I felt drawn
deeper and deeper into her pain and anguish. I had to switch off the microphone.
I drew her closer to know what was hurting her so badly that God had to give
me a slice of that pain. Between sobs from both sides, she regaled me with her
story. During a long vacation, she had been asked by her trusting parents to go
and spend her holidays with an uncle. This uncle not only deflowered her but
thereafter severally violated her sexually with a threat that terrible things would
happen to her if she ever told anyone. She had carried this pain and nursed such
terrible resentment and hatred for him. Afterall this was the man she had grown
up knowing as her ‘second Daddy’! Thank God that night she was delivered as
she let go of the hurts and the attendant pains.

Imagine this. Masked armed robbers broke into a home. After subjecting the
entire household to the horror of violence and taking everything of value, they
raped the two female children of the house. One of the two eventually became
psychotic as a result of the trauma and eventually died. The other became
pregnant and later gave birth to a baby boy. She promised herself she would
never forgive the person or persons who inflicted such pain on the family. So
did her parents.

A few years down the road, one of the robbers met the lady with the child in
church and not being able to recognize themselves, they started dating. As the
friendship progressed, she had told him about her family’s experience in the
hands of armed robbers and the emotional toll to the family. When it looked as
if the affair was becoming serious, she invited her home to meet her parents. He
recognized the house but did not betray his emotions. Only that he sweated
unusually profusely. They eventually got married. A few months later, the truth
came out in a casual discussion. Meanwhile she was already heavily pregnant
for him! He wept profusely as he begged the family for forgiveness claiming
that he had become born again and old things had passed away. What would
you do if you were a member of that family?

TWO
The past is a school, not your prison

Every so often, I see or hear about bitter chapters of people’s lives and the hurts
they nurse even several years after the hurt took place. Every time the story is
told, you can feel the anger and the freshness of the nursed memories that just
refuse to go away. Even I was well into my adult years before I forgave my
father and some of my serial stepmothers for the anguish of an unloved
childhood and the pains of being a victim of conflicts I did not cause and could
not help. It was as if being the first male child came with the price-tag of
persecution. How I survived those growing years remains a miracle!

What is the story of your own hurt? A betrayal by an associate you had grown
to trust so deeply? A business deal that left you broke and frustrated while your
partner smiled to the bank? A father who refused to send you to school even
when he could afford it? A spouse who cheated and is rubbing it in? A
promotion you missed because someone hated you?

The closer the source of the offence is, the deeper it hurts and the more difficult
it is to forgive. Judas was not a distant disciple. He was one of Jesus’ closest
twelve; in fact, the group Accountant! It is easier to walk away when offended
by a stranger or someone you have no close relationship with. But the story
changes when the offender is very close to your skin. One of God’s favourite
strategies for developing character in you is to use people closest to you to train
you. At such times, it’s not about what is happening around you. It’s about what
is happening WITHIN you.

If you were David and your mentor turns out to be your tormentor, how would
you react? Wouldn’t you have picked up the spear and thrown it back after
Saul’s second attempt? If you were David, would you have spared Saul when
you saw him in a most vulnerable state where killing him would have been very
easy and would have rid you of your tormentor forever? However, the more
David persecuted Saul, the more evident it became who really deserved to be
king.

Cutting off your nose because you resent your face does nothing to enhance the
value of the face. When you camp around a negative experience long enough,
you arrest further movement into your future and foreclose the possibilities of a
better tomorrow. Think about the many great things that stopped happening in
your life because you are hurt. Simply because someone took advantage of your
cheerful disposition, you have lost the smile that used to light up the atmosphere
and made you the soul of every gathering. Yet in the mind of God, your destiny
may be tied to your capacity to sustain that smile regardless of provocation! For
the simple reason that your giving in time past did not seem to have been
reciprocated, you have lost the capacity for generosity and with it, a guarantee
of the flow of God’s benevolence into your life.

Be honest. What really caused the high blood pressure you are nursing now?
Toxic unreleased hurts? In that case, no anti-hypertensive drug can heal it. The
cure is IN you. When you truly let go and let God, you will see your blood
pressure return to normal, often without medication!

When people hurt you or betray your trust, it’s really not about them. It’s ALL
ABOUT YOU! Have you ever prayed for the fruit of the Spirit especially the
capacity to love? God’s answer to that prayer is to send some unlovable people
into your life who will hurt you and literally throw your affection back at your
face. I have an adopted son who came into my family at age nine. When he first
came, he could test the patience of Job. Foul-tempered and highly self-
opinionated, he was any parent’s nightmare. Several times, I was tempted to
simply send him back to his village. But through the hurts and the offences, I
chose the path of love. Sometimes tough, but sincere. Fourteen years on, he is a
quintessential gentleman that any parent would be proud of. The way he has
turned out gladdens my heart. A prize-winning sportsman, he is proof to me that
only those who can endure the thorns qualify to enjoy the rose.

What you call offence or even betrayal is actually God’s way of propelling you
to the next level. How else would you have learnt to pray like you now do if
there was no one to hurt you? Without Judas to betray Him, how else would
Jesus have gone to the cross? If He never went to the cross, how else would He
have become the Saviour of all? Everyone calls Judas a betrayer but Jesus calls
him “FRIEND”. What did He know that we don’t but need to?

THREE
Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee,
Lord:
this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter,
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou
savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. – Matthew
16:22-23

Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever

I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to
Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.
And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come?... Matthew 26:48-
50

As Jesus drew closer to the denouement of His life mission, He felt it was time
to share with His disciples some deep things regarding the process He would
have to go through to accomplish it. But first He asked them two questions. The
first had to do with who people thought he was (as He was certain that they
would have discussed such to the hearing of His followers). After they had
given various perspectives, He pointedly asked who THEY (His disciples)
thought He was. Peter was the first to blurt out what Jesus affirmed was a
divinely inspired answer. Peter was not only promptly commended but also had
a christening ceremony as a memento of the inspired revelation which was
going to be the bedrock of the enduring nature of Jesus’ life mission. Convinced
that His disciples were on the same plane with Him, Jesus began to share details
of what He would have to endure for the mission to become a reality. Riled by
the horrific details, Peter promptly rebuked Jesus and forbade Him from saying
such things as no such affliction would be allowed to befall his Master. Jesus’
response was prompt and sharp; ‘Get behind me SATAN! Because you are only
speaking from your limited human understanding, not from God’s perspective’
(my paraphrase). These two incidents happened only a few verses apart!

In the second passage quoted above, Judas Iscariot had come at the head of a
group of soldiers and Jewish elders to betray and ultimately arrest Jesus. As
soon as Jesus saw Judas, He said ‘FRIEND, why have you come? The one who
was trying to prevent His death He likened to Satan and the one who was going
to hasten it He called Friend! What did He know that you must know if you are
to live victoriously and fulfil destiny? Your real friend is the one whose actions,
positively or negatively propel you in the direction of your life purpose!
Conversely, your enemy may be the one who even with the best of intentions, is
trying to prevent you from taking the tough road and decisions that hasten your
journey!

You probably would not be as successful as you are today if a boss had not been
bad enough to sack you! When you first got the letter, you threw tantrums and it
hurt you for days. But that experience woke your brain up from sleep and made
you go after that business idea you had neglected for so long. Here you are
today, an employer of labour. If I were you, the moment I finish reading this, I
will simply go and find out where that boss is, then go to a store, buy a very
expensive gift with a Thank You card and take it to him in appreciation of his
liberating gesture without which my life would still have been wound around a
take-home pay that would probably not be taking me home.

You do not have to be manacled to the floor in a German cell before you
experience prison. The most horrific dungeon is the one you create in your own
heart. When you keep anyone in the prison of your heart, you have also given
yourself an obligation; that of supervising the prison to ensure that your prisoner
does not escape. Implication? You yourself are compelled to stay there together
with him! Forgiveness therefore is about opening the prison door only to
discover that all along, you were the real prisoner! You cannot be bitter and
expect your life to be better at the same time.

FOUR
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what
you were.
Cherie Carter-Scott

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

Josh Billings
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Ghandi

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.

Oscar Wilde

I once told a lady in her thirties that the only reason she was still single was
because she was NOT single! She was dazed but she got the point after further
discourse.

I meet many ladies who are neither married nor in a much-desired relationship.
Yet they are not single. They have been through several prayer sessions but the
partner is not coming. Why? They still have an unending romance with the pain
of a relationship that hit the rocks at a very critical point. After a lot of
counselling, they claim they have let go, but they go into the next relationship
with an emotional dossier of the previous one.

They see the present innocent person in the mould of a previous lover who
messed up and so they cannot give the new relationship their best shot. In some
cases, in an attempt at a forced renaissance, they overcommit because, still
looking from the binoculars of the past experience, they felt they did not
commit enough. So they compromise their core values.

Whichever way, it is still a REACTION predicated on the dictates of an

experience that should rather have been confined to the dustbin of history where
it belongs! For this reason, many are stuck with the ghost of their romance with
the past. It therefore becomes impossible for them to be properly engaged
because they have yet to disengage from the previous relationship.

Unforgiveness sometimes chains you to the fear mode, fear of what someone
did could or could have done to you. Hear Lewis B. Smedes, "We attach our
feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And
we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us,
hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate
does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die - for it is a
parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it.
Forgiveness”

How do you checkmate hurts before they checkmate you?

Acknowledge your hurt. A Yoruba proverb says that it is the height of delusion
when a man receives six blows of a cudgel and with a sheepish grin, says that
not a single one hit him! The pain will remind him of the experience. It is not
heroism to deny that you are hurt. Never deny or underplay your pain. If you
have to cry, do so. Weeping is not only the prerogative of the weak. Joseph
wept. So did Jesus. Tears have a therapeutic effect when shed for the
appropriate reasons.

Identify and at what point the hurt came and who and what caused it. Instead
of focusing on the details of the hurt, focus on your exit strategy. Identifying
who, what, when and possibly how will help you map out an effective strategy
for letting go. It will also help in drawing necessary boundaries in subsequent
actions and relationships. No doctor can heal a pain you have not first identified
and localized. This is why doctors prescribe investigations and tests especially
when you cannot clearly define the symptoms you feel or if there are more than
one disease manifesting the symptoms you described. It’s all an attempt to help
the patient localize the pain so it can be appropriately treated.

Itemize what you have to lose if the hurt continues. Is the loss of your joy,
peace, and perhaps your vision for the future worth it, especially when those
who hurt you have moved on oblivious of your tango with the attendant pain?

I do not subscribe the ‘forgive and forget’ philosophy. Scars are indications of a
wound we carried on our body at some point in time. The reason we carry scars
is not continue to nurse the wound; because a scar is an indication that the
wound is healed. It is to serve as a reminder of where, when and how we
sustained the injury. The scar is not the injury, just a reminder. How can a
divorcee forget the experience? How can the victim of sexual abuse forget when
there is no replacement for the hymen? How can a physically abused child who
has scars all over his body as evidence of a lifelong serial abuse forget? How do
you forget a sack just when you thought your career was headed for the stars?

Practice selective amnesia. This involves choosing the experiences you want to
recall. Champions show the scars of battle to their protégés to let them know
that if – in spite of all they went through - they made it, the protégés can! That
is really the thrust of ministry to others! How can you heal my hurt when you
have never been injured and healed? No one can give what he does not have.

Don’t nurse them. What you nurse you are compelled to feed. What you feed
will grow. The more you nurse a hurt, the more monstrous it becomes and the
more miserable it makes your life. You have the erroneous notion that you are
actually in charge of your emotions but in reality, someone else is holding the
remote control! Forgiveness is a gift you owe yourself. If you have so much to
accomplish in life, getting stuck in the snapshots of past hurts will not get you
there. Your faith actually feeds and grows on your capacity to let go of hurts.

Don’t rehearse them. People around you have many issues they are dealing
with in their own lives. Don’t complicate matters for them by regaling them
with stories of your hurts at the slightest opportunity. Misery loves company.
When hurt people meet, they have nothing worthwhile to share except stories of
their woes as if in a desperate move to legitimize their wounded feelings. Resist
the temptation. Each time you rehearse a hurt, you discover new chapters about
the whole scenario that would have been best forgotten. The pain gets even
more pronounced.

Don’t retain them. When it comes to hurts and offences, keep a short memory.
True, you may not forget a hurt in a hurry, but when you choose to let go and let
God heal your heart, you can actually perceive things differently. You cannot
really be said to have forgiven until you can genuinely feel no resentment
against the cause of your offence. Can you look at your former spouse or
business partner without feeling a fresh an outburst of anger and pain at the
years you believe the locusts have eaten in the course of the relationship?

Don’t reverse them. People may cause you pain but never be the one who
causes anyone pain. Happiness is not a luxury that an unhappy person can share
with another. Retained resentment may lead to reversed resentment where you
start looking for every opportunity to get back at the one who hurt you.
Forgiveness becomes a reality in your life when you can think about those who
hurt you and actually from the depths of your heart, wish them well and pray for
their success! Life is too short for you to spend it perpetuating a cycle of pain.
Better to be cheated than to be the cheat. Better to be defrauded than to be the
fraudster.

Do not wait until the one who hurt you asks for forgiveness before you forgive.
Nobody will ask you for forgiveness seventy times seven times daily. So what
do? Look at the word again. Break it into two: fore + give. It means to give it in
advance. Waiting every time till it is asked for may put your emotions on
destructive steroids that can permanently damage your achievement muscles.
Too costly!

Finally, even if you don’t want to let go for your own sake, think of the several
hundreds of people in the world who are hurting and are just waiting for
someone who has passed through a similar experience and who has been healed
to show up and show them the way out. Why must you delay their healing any
further by your own refusal to quit the victim mode? The healer in you will only
arise when you allow the hurt in you to be healed.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!