Forgiven

Disclaimer: This journal entry and testimony are deeply personal and intended to connect with those who may be facing a similar situation. I hope to illustrate that true peace, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration are possible.

My Testimony

In the past, I viewed Jesus and God as condemning and controlling, struggling to grasp the depth of His grace and forgiveness. At times, I even thought that His grace meant I could simply “believe” while living however I wanted in sin, relying on His mercy.

Neither of these perspectives is true. And, there's mercy and freedom in that:

Regardless of your past, you can be fully forgiven and set free by the grace of God. When you place your trust in Jesus and walk in His Spirit, available to all who believe, you will experience profound grace, mercy, and true inner freedom. For those unfamiliar with my testimony, I was involved with almost every sin possible under the sun, until one night in my bedroom, I fully and finally surrendered to God after trying every healing practice, solo travel, crystal, and party you could think of. None of it brought the true inner peace, rest and spiritual wholeness I was truly looking for.

The surrender was sparked by a 'successful' women's New Age Leadership Coach I looked up to for years. When she renounced her entire business online after years in that space, and said the true peace she found was in a relationship with Jesus, my first thought: she's crazy. Second thought: Maybe I should pray and see for myself? So, with the little faith I had at the time, I did. And, she was right! That night in my room, I prayed for a relationship with God, wanting this "Holy Spirit", acknowledging Jesus, and I unexpectedly got saved and filled with God's Holy Spirit. This "Holy Spirit" is God's Spirit given at salvation, as a gift, which I get into later. In that process, unforgiveness and bitterness and even this "third eye" chakra that I was developing from meditation and Reiki were immediately healed and taken away.

I remember reading this and being taken back at how much my own experience was testifying to 2000 + year old scripture: “This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws upon their hearts, and write them on their minds, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will no longer remember.” Hebrews 10:16-17

This exact radical level of forgiveness is what I experienced. In that radical forgiveness received, I felt a freedom that I had never experienced before, a freedom that only the love of God can bring.

For so long, I had tried to find healing on my own, through meditation, Reiki, yoga, breathwork, crystals, and other practices. But in an instant, all the striving and searching were replaced with the power of God’s love.

His love healed what I was trying to heal on my own. It was His love that broke the deep, strongholds in my heart that night. The love of God not only shows us what true love, mercy, and forgiveness are, but it also teaches us how to extend that same love and forgiveness to others. The love of God enables us to forgive even our worst enemies. Through our strength, this seems impossible. But when God’s love is poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5), what was once unimaginable becomes possible.

Forgiveness is a gift, an act of mercy, and a reflection of God's heart. The ultimate expression of forgiveness was shown to us on the Cross.

Christ died on the cross to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Through faith in Him, we are justified, declared righteous, and filled with His Holy Spirit, who writes His laws on our hearts, and like Hebrews 8-10 says, remembers our sins "No More". He demonstrated the essence of His love for us through His sacrifice, as captured in 1 John 4:10: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

But what about the unforgiveness, bitterness, and resentment that may still linger within our hearts today throughout life and after receiving salvation?

Recently, as I was going through a really challenging betrayal and hardship, God brought me to a powerful scripture that resonated deeply:

“Then summoning him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:32-35

Though this might feel like a heavy warning, it’s a loving invitation from the Lord, a call to freedom from the inner torment that unforgiveness causes.

Now, this is not saying forgive and continue to allow yourself to be abused if you can leave and set boundaries. And yes, boundaries are both loving and biblical. Heck, even Jesus had boundaries, and this is seen as you read the Gospels and look at how He walked. But, this 'forgiveness' is more of an inner posture of the heart, that we are responsible for before God. At the same time, He gives us the grace to overcome unforgiveness through the power of His love and Spirit placed in our hearts at salvation: "This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." Romans 5:5. Reminder to those reading: if you are not sure you have God's Holy Spirit and feel a nudge that you want it, continue reading, or go to the very end as an invitation to pray for it as a free gift of grace.

Now, back to the passage I just shared in Mathew 18:32-35, this passage illustrates how harbouring unforgiveness and bitterness can lead to mental anguish and unrest in our souls. These feelings can “torture” us internally and disrupt our relationships with God and others. This is what I realized was bogging me down for so many years, and this is not God’s will for our lives. His desire is for you to understand His mercy, grace, and forgiveness so deeply that His love overflows into your interactions with others (1 John 4:19).

This deep love is what broke down the yokes of bondage within my heart the night I called upon Jesus. He calls us to walk as He walked (1 John 2:6) and to love as He first loved us (John 13:34). But to do this, we must first receive the free gift of grace and forgiveness for ourselves and allow the love of God, poured into a believer’s heart (Romans 5:5), to overflow unto others.

If forgiveness has felt impossible for you, you are not alone. It’s not something we can manufacture by willpower. But when we allow God’s love to soften our hearts, forgiveness becomes possible and deeply freeing.

Jesus warns us in Matthew 6:15, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” The more we grasp how deeply forgiven we are in Christ when we believe, the easier it becomes to extend that forgiveness to others.

Let me leave you with this: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We love because He first loved us. If someone claims, “I love God,” yet hates their brother or sister, they are lying. We cannot truly love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love those we can see (1 John 4:19-21).

Again, it’s deeply and intimately knowing His love for us that allows us to truly understand the Gospel message and walk out the seemingly impossible command to “love one another, even as I have loved you” (John 15). This love is known as Agape, a love that extends even to the worst of enemies.

If you’re unsure whether you are saved or feel distant from God, know that a right relationship with Him is only through Jesus. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

To receive salvation:

“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth, he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

To watch a personal testimony on forgiveness and being radically saved by His love: