Finding Freedom Through the Art of Forgiveness

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You can try all you want to get even and get revenge, and even if you succeed, you won't be happy because you'll still be in bondage. Today on Focus on the Family, Pastor Phil Waldrop explains the pain of betrayal and how to find freedom and forgiveness. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. Well, the new year is a great time to let go of old baggage, and we're going to hear how to do that when it comes to anyone who has betrayed us. Our guest, Phil Waldrop, is a pastor and the author of the book Beyond Betrayal, Overcome Past Hurts and Begin to Trust Again.

My guest would be a lot of the audience would put their hand up to say, okay, I'm in that spot. So if you can't stay with us, let me encourage you to get a copy. Yeah, you can get the book from us when you partner with us in ministry. Just look for Beyond Betrayal. We've got the link in the show notes.

All right. And before we get going, if you've got young children nearby, use your earbuds because there's some sensitive content coming up about midway through the show. With that, here's Phil Waldrop speaking at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, on today's episode of Focus on the Family. Several years ago, I was invited to speak in a church and I arrived and is the norm for most churches you go to nowadays. There's a very clear plan for the worship service. You know who's singing and who's praying and who's making the announcements and so forth. And so we met the young worship leader, the pastor and I, along with some others, met before the service.

We went over in detail everything that was going to happen and the band went out and got ready. The choir was out and the worship leader, the pastor and I were about to walk into the auditorium. And as we got to the door, the door in that church, there was a glass in the door so you could see actually the crowd in the church.

You could see the people. And when we got to the door, the young worship leader started to put his hand to push open the door and he froze. I mean, he literally froze.

I mean, his hand was in the air, his eyes weren't moving and he just stood there. It was rather awkward. And the pastor said, are you OK? And he said, no, pastor, I'm not. Well, the pastor thought what I thought, that he had some medical emergency, something didn't feel right. And the pastor said, let's get you a chair. Sit down.

Well, I'll get 911. He said, no, pastor, I'm physically fine. But I've got to go home. He said, OK, but you're physically fine, but you must go home. Yes, pastor. Trust me, pastor. I've got to go home.

I'll text my wife and tell her I've gone home. And he left. The pastor immediately said something to one of the band members who stepped into his role and led worship. And the next day, that young man called to explain to me why he froze as he went into the auditorium. He said, Brother Field, do you realize that when I put my hand to open that door and I looked into the crowd, he said it was it was just an unusual moment that I saw seated in the crowd, my father. He said, I knew it was my father and seated to my father was his live in girlfriend.

For a moment, I was glad they were in church. But he said, Brother Field, I have not seen my father in nearly 20 years. And why he chose to come to church today, I don't know. But he said, I got to tell you, when I saw him, my mind raced back to that time when he left my mom for his girlfriend.

He left me and my sister and we went through hard times, not just emotionally, but financially, because our father walked out of our life and he's never been heard from since. But today that yesterday, he said that day, he of all days, he chose to come to church. And I couldn't do it. And I looked at him and I said, young man, I need to tell you. I know how you feel. Now, I said, I have to be honest to tell you, my pain is not as deep as your pain.

Because I think having a parent or spouse walk out would be the worst. But I've been there and I've done that. I, too, know the pain of betrayal.

20 years ago, we launched our ministry and things were going well. The man who would I consider my best friend, the man who who was like a brother. Got involved in immoral and unethical behavior. And he went on for a long time. His wife did not know. I did not know. His closest friends did not know. And it came to light when some legal things happened that didn't pertain to us and legal things that didn't pertain to him. But in the process, I learned he had betrayed me, his family and others. But the problem was it left me in shambles, emotionally, spiritually, financially. You see, his sin wounded me and others. The sin of that father walking out wounded his children and his wife. Betrayal hurts people.

Across this auditorium, there are many of you today know exactly what I'm talking about. Might have been a parent. Spouse. The girlfriend or boyfriend.

You were going to do life together. Your best friend. Your friend who told all the things you shared in confidence, knowing they would never tell it.

The business partner who went astray. It's a long list. But you know exactly what I'm talking about. So you'll understand when I tell you there is a series of emotions you go through. The first I think is denial. It's like shock. The closest I can compare it to is like hearing someone you loved has been killed in an accident. And just the suddenness and the shock and you weren't prepared. It's unexpected. And in that moment, the best you know to do is just to say it's not true.

Tell me it's not true. Shake me. I know this is a bad dream. But eventually reality settles and you realize it is true. I have been betrayed. So you find yourself getting angry. You may act on it.

You may not. But you're angry. And I got to tell you, that is a normal response. In fact, Paul said in Ephesians 4, we can be angry and sin not. Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing. But when anger gets you, which often happens in a betrayal and that anger turns into rage. Now it is an unhealthy thing. But you're so angry.

And so you find yourself in that moment. You start reviewing everything and you start thinking, why do they do this? In fact, that's the one question everybody wants to know. Why did this person betray me?

Well, I can answer that for you. Betrayers always betray for the same reason. They're selfish. They're acting in selfishness. They're putting their desires and their wants ahead of your needs and their love for you. They may not intentionally intend to hurt you, but they have put all of their desires ahead of your love and your needs.

They do it because they're selfish. And I say that because in your anger, you start thinking you aren't worth anything. Maybe my love wasn't worth anything. Maybe just maybe I wasn't a good enough kid for my parents.

No, let me help you this morning to understand something. When you are betrayed, it's not your fault. If you have a spouse who's been unfaithful, they may have told you how you didn't meet their needs.

They may have told you all of those things. But let me tell you, you can go to the word of God from Genesis to the Revelation, find every case of adultery in the Bible, and not one time that God ever blamed the innocent party for the adultery. Selfishness. But you're angry. If you're not careful, your anger turns to bitterness. And a root of bitterness comes in your life.

And bitterness puts a filter over your eyes. So that every relationship you have is filtered through your betrayal. You trusted this person, therefore you say, I won't trust anybody else. No, I'll never trust anybody again. One person hurt me.

How could I have been that stupid? You find yourself feeling worthless. You feel like they've shattered your life and there's no future. You become bitter about it. And bitterness sometimes leads you to seek revenge. Now, yes, there are extreme cases where people do harm to other people. But what I find with most Christians is we seek revenge, but we don't do it physically. We do it verbally. When someone says a kind word about a person, we make sure that we just immediately correct them.

No, he's not that good of a person. Or that's not what I heard. And we just feel we have to verbally destroy people because we're trying to even the score. So you've gone from denial to anger to bitterness to revenge. And many of you have been living for years in that world.

And what you have discovered is it's not a fun place to be. Here's the truth that has set you free. Forgiveness frees me forever.

I want you to hear that carefully. Forgiveness frees me forever. So let me just for a moment before I kind of unpack that phrase, forgiveness frees me forever.

Let me just kind of for a moment unpack some things, maybe clarify some things you've heard all your life. Because see, when I tried to forgive my betrayer, all this stuff came up that I'd hurt. Like for example, some people had told me this, forgiveness means you forget.

And if you ever think about it again, then you've not really forgiven. Well, some great wisdom from Pastor Phil Waldrop today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And you can find further insights in Phil's book, Beyond Betrayal.

Overcome past hurts and begin to trust again. We can send that to you when you make a donation of any amount to the show. And to this great ministry, we'll include a free audio download of the entire presentation with extra content as well.

Donate generously and request those resources when you follow the link in the show notes. Or give us a call, 800-A-Family. Let's return now to a rather dramatic story from Phil Waldrop. And if you've got young children nearby, you might want to use some earbuds or listen later.

This is going to be some fairly sensitive content. With that, here's Phil. You can forgive a person and never forget what they did. Doesn't mean you call it to memory, you don't act on it, but it's there.

Let me tell you something else I discovered. I kept thinking that forgiveness meant I had to restore the relationship to the same level it was before the betrayal. If the relationship is going to be restored to the level, trust has to be earned. We give forgiveness, trust has to be earned. And some situations are so deep and so painful and so hurtful, we may never be able to have a relationship with that person, even if the betrayer seeks the relationship at the same level. Now, I want you to understand, forgiveness does not mean that I have to restore everything to the same level. Trust has to be earned.

Hear me carefully what I'm saying now. You're not using it to punish, but trust has to be earned. Forgiveness is something you give. Well, if that's true, then please tell me, what is forgiveness?

I will. Forgiveness is when you give up all rights to revenge. Forgiveness is when you choose not to get even. Forgiveness is when you are able to say, even if that person is blessed, it's okay. I'm not going to try to destroy the blessings on their life. But it means that if I am given the opportunity, I will not get even with the person who hurt me. That's forgiveness. Now, you say, Phil, if I make that choice and I start that journey, what is it going to do? Well, that's the good part.

Let me tell you two or three things it's going to do. First of all, when you forgive the person who betrayed you and hurt you, it frees you from the person who betrayed you. You don't realize it, but as long as you hold on to unforgiveness, your betrayer, the person who hurt you, has got a chain around you. They do. And they're controlling you.

Oh, no, they're not. Okay, let me ask you. My worship leader friend who sees his father in that moment, he is totally emotionally paralyzed.

He can't even lead worship because he had to come to realize that even though he had not seen his father in years, his father had this emotional chain around him that just seeing him. Now, granted, you might be uncomfortable, it's different, but he literally was controlling his actions. Everybody, when they're hurt, they want to get even. It's a natural reaction. We just want to get even. Here's what we want. We want the person who hurt us to hurt at the same level as we're hurting. So we feel it's our responsibility to inflict as much pain as we can upon that person. Sometimes if it's an unfaithful spouse, we do that with our kids. Sometimes it may be the people who took the side of the betrayer, maybe mutual friends, maybe members of their family, and we want to hurt them because we just want them to know the pain. I want to ask you a question this morning.

I want you to think about this. Have you ever met anybody who got even? I don't mean a biblical story. I mean just really your life. Have you ever met anybody who got even?

Who got the opportunity to legally get even? I have. Debbie and I have a dear friend. Her name is Debbie Morris.

Now, her name probably doesn't resonate with you, but let me tell you her story. When Debbie Morris was 16 years of age, she was on a date, not a boy she was going steady with, but just a boy who asked her out on a date in their little town in Louisiana. And it was kind of the custom in that little town that everybody would kind of go to the movie or do their thing, and then everybody kind of ended up at this little Dairy Queen in town. Dairy Queen type of place.

I don't know if that's the name, but a little soda fountain type place. And so she and the boy she was with had gotten there early, and they were just sitting in their car waiting for their friends to arrive. And another car pulled beside them, and two men, two adult men, got out and immediately grabbed Debbie and the boy she was with. They put the boy in the trunk of the car, put her in the back seat and sped away. Unknown to Debbie and that boy at that moment, that a man named Robert Lee Willie and his accomplice had just kidnapped them, and Robert Lee Willie was a serial rapist and murderer.

Years later, a major motion picture called Dead Man Walking would be made about his life. But Robert Lee Willie took him across Mississippi, got into South Alabama near Mobile, got the boy out of the trunk. They literally, if you can believe this, they cut his throat, they shot him, and they hung him. And miraculously, when he was found, he was alive and still lives today.

He has some challenges, but he lived through it. But they took Debbie to friends after they brutally raped her, and they let all of their friends rape her. And over that weekend, they began to tell her about all the girls they had killed, actually took her to places where the murder had occurred and told her and taunted her by telling her that she too was going to die.

That happened for several days. And for a reason nobody really understands, Robert Lee Willie drove back to Louisiana near where they had kidnapped her, and he stopped the car and told her to get out, and she got out. They told the story, they found the young man, later they were arrested, and they came back for trial. A trial that really would involve one of the girls that they had murdered.

But yet Debbie was one of the key witnesses. And she said, I love sitting on that bench and giving testimony of what he'd done and what he had told me had done and where he had put bodies and how they had found out of that. And she said, I thought, boy, this is sweet because of what you did to me. You ruined my life.

You scarred my life. Robert Lee Willie was given the death penalty. And on that December day when she got the call that Robert Lee Willie had been executed in the prison in Louisiana, she said, much to my surprise, I wasn't free. And I wasn't happy. I had gotten the ultimate revenge. But I wasn't happy.

Can I tell you something this morning? You can try all you want to get even and get revenge. And even if you succeed, you won't be happy. Because you'll still be in bondage. But the moment you do it God's way and you say, I choose to forgive, even when I don't feel like it, I choose to forgive the person who betrayed me. I choose to forgive the person who hurt me. And therefore I don't have to pursue them anymore in trying to get revenge. When you can give up that right to revenge, then you're going to find you're going to start being free. But through it all, let me tell you what else forgiveness does. Forgiveness frees you from the pain of a betrayal. Now at this point, I don't want to mislead you.

So let me be very clear. When you choose to forgive a person, the pain doesn't go away immediately. The pain doesn't go away in 24 hours. A week. Two weeks.

A year. The pain will lessen. But if you start that journey, you will one day get to the place where you're free of the pain.

Hey, can I be transparent with you this morning? It took me nearly 20 years to be completely free of the pain. Now it lessened.

I'd forgiven. But to finally get to the place where there is no pain. Can I tell you about the day I realized I was free from the pain? You see what happened in my life is what's happened in your life if somebody's wounded you. It attacks your self-worth. You feel like nothing. And you start examining your life and you find that the betrayal has shattered your life and your life is in pieces.

So you look at your life and think, wow. Even if I try to put it back together. It will never look the same. I'll never be where I was.

It's what I thought. And one day I was speaking in a church and I had a lot of down time and I thought I'd go somewhere and just kill time. So I remember I walked over to this antique shop and I was just walking down through there. And one of the things that's always fascinated me personally is old pottery. And so I was walking through this antique shop and I saw some pottery and I went over and they had several nice pieces of whole pottery and rosemary pottery and other types of expensive pottery. And then they had this one piece of pottery. And I really thought it was kind of there as a joke. Because it obviously was in bad shape. Now it had been repaired, but you could tell somebody had dropped that piece of pottery and it had gone in all these different pieces and had been broken and had been put together and they didn't even try to hide the flaws. And I thought, well, somebody's put this in here and trying to sell it.

No, looked at the price. And I thought, wow, that's expensive, far more expensive than all the other pieces. So I went over to the lady who worked there and I said, I got to just ask you, why is that piece so expensive? She said, oh, sir, you don't realize what that is, do you? And I said, no, I do not. She said, that's Kinsuchi. I think that's the way she said it. And I said, that doesn't mean anything to me. What does that mean?

She said, let me explain to you, sir. You see, over 100 years ago, wealthy people would use metal to eat, but all the average people, poor people had pottery. And in the Japanese culture, when a piece of pottery was broken, instead of throwing it out, they would pick up the pieces and they made an epoxy and they would put it back together.

But when they did for it to work, they had to include in the epoxy gold. And that made it whole together. And she said, sir, that piece of pottery is about 150 years of age. Yes, sir, it has been shattered, but it was put back together with that epoxy made with gold. And, sir, it is worth far more now than a piece of pottery from that same era that had never been broken. And I stood there and I realized that though 20 years ago, my life was shattered in 20 years when I had given my broken pieces. And I said, here, Lord, I can't do anything. I give you my brokenness that he took the power of his word and his love and the preciousness of who he was and doing it his way by forgiving.

Not trying to seek revenge, not trying to even the score, not trying to do those things. I let him put my life back together. And when he did, can I tell you, friend, it's not egotistical to stand here to tell you today that I see today our ministry is worth more.

And I don't mean financially, but I mean an impact in value for far more than it was before the betrayal. And what I'm trying to tell you today is something very simple. You've been betrayed and you've been hurt. The pieces have been shattered. They're all over in your life.

My life is worthless. I'll never be the same. I got news for you. If you'll pick up the pieces this morning, you'll say, Lord, I give you the broken pieces for you to put back together. You'll do it his way.

You'll discover what I discovered. Forgiveness frees me forever. Well, that brings us to the close of a great presentation from Pastor Phil Waldrip on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Pastor Phil shared a lot of excellent advice, and this message was well-timed. Over the past few months, we've heard terrible stories about families in strife over political and cultural issues. Holiday dinners were literally canceled. Family members have stopped speaking to one another, and we've even heard of several divorces.

That breaks my heart. Our family relationships are the most important bonds in our lives, and we don't want to allow the chaos of our culture to tear those bonds apart. And please, if your family is in that kind of pain, get in touch with us. Our friendly staff would count it a privilege to hear your story and pray with you. And if needed, they'll have one of our Caring Christian counselors call you back for a free consultation.

That's a service we've provided for over 40 years, and I'm so glad we can do that. If your family's doing well, maybe you could consider making a donation to help other families in this kind of turmoil. When you make a donation of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Pastor Phil's book, Beyond Betrayal.

Overcome past hurts and begin to trust again. Yeah, and you can donate and get the book when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Or donate online and request the book, Beyond Betrayal, when you follow the link in the show notes. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Take a moment and leave a rating for us in your podcast app. That helps with the discovery of the show and share about this episode with a friend and all the resources Focus on the Family has to offer. Your word-of-mouth endorsement means the world to us, and I'll thank you in advance for doing that. Well, I'm John Fuller, and join us next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.