Mike
Forgiving the Unforgivable
Introduction
My name is Mike. I have a new life in Christ. I have a new identity in Christ, I’m a child of God.
I’m married. I have a beautiful, amazing daughter, who’s 21 and I am in a place where I never thought I would be, where I confessed the things that I’d been holding on to forever, and I walk in freedom because of it.
Mike’s Journey to Faith and Healing
Over the years, I faithfully attended church. I was desperately seeking God, but I didn’t really know what that was. There had been countless times when I’d go to church and hear a great sermon, or incredible worship music and be completely overwhelmed and filled with the Holy Spirit. I just didn’t know what it was.
Then this one particular time was back in July of 2022, I remember like it was yesterday I had been filled up with the Holy Spirit, and then the worship music hit and emptied me and then the music stopped, just like every other time. It was like a light switch got turned off.
I composed myself, and I walked out. I was there by myself, and as I walked out of the church, this guy stopped me, and he could see that I was emotional. He said, “Hey, man, you okay?” Of course, I wasn’t, but I said I was.
And he said, “You don’t look okay. Can I pray for you?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” I just really wanted him to leave me alone so I could get to church. He prayed for me, and he asked me a question that changed my life.
He said, “If you died tonight, do you know you’re going to heaven?” I couldn’t control the tears, because I knew that if God were real, and he knew everything about me, he knew all that I did, and there was no way that he would let me in.
So I tried to compose myself again, and he said, “Well, man, I think you might need Regen. So reluctantly, I went, and I kept hearing these testimonies of people who had found what I was looking for, and what it was to know Jesus.
Confronting Past Trauma
Throughout the first three steps of Regen, which are Admit, Believe, and Trust, I had to come to a place where I realized the answer to the question that Bob asked me in church, “If I died tonight, did I know I was going to heaven?
I found that freedom. I believed that Christ on the cross died for my sins and that that was enough to punch my ticket to heaven. What a relief, I didn’t have to do anything, and I didn’t have to earn my place, because there was no way that I could.
I kept going through the program. It was amazing. The steps that came up in the Regeneration inventory process were really hard for me. I had to dig up all the stuff that I had buried. And I buried it to preserve my safety because I was unprepared to deal with that stuff.
When I was six years old, I was living in a foster care home in Maryland, there were probably 22 kids in the house, and there was a guy there, who was the son-in-law of the lady who was the foster care caregiver.
The son-in-law lived in the basement with the boys, and there were nine of us, and he sexually abused all of us, all the girls, all the boys.
No human should have to experience that kind of trauma. Those things shouldn’t happen to anybody, much less a six-year-old kid, and because I didn’t know at the time what was going on, right? It was a secret. That’s what this man said to me, all of us, he said, “It’s okay. It’s not bad. What we’re doing is okay. It feels good, right? And it’s just, that we have to keep it a secret.”
I keep thinking about the things that happened to me as a kid, bad stuff. The whole time I'm thinking that it was His plan, but God does not want us to go through that stuff. I believe that He saw what happened and it crushed Him and He wept for me.
As I grew up, I realized that something was wrong, but it was something wrong with me. I believe that, in the depths of my spirit, something was wrong, and I was responsible for what happened. I was so angry and hurt that this had happened. I felt so much shame I didn’t feel like I could tell anybody.
I held on to anger and bitterness and resentment and rage at times. I kind of just wiped it out of my memory. Then as I went through Regeneration, there were several times were I almost quit.
Forgiveness and Its Impact
During step eight, forgive, I remember vividly, that I was going to quit because there was a part that came up in the book that said, “If the people that harmed you the most were to give their lives to Christ, how would that make you feel?”
Originally, man, I wasn’t having it. I was like, there’s no way that they deserve anything but to go straight to hell. That night I had a dream. I dreamed that the people who harmed me the most were sitting in the row in front of me at church with their hands in the air, praising the same God that I was.
As I saw it, I saw what grace truly looked like. If God was able to forgive me for everything that I had done, why couldn’t I forgive them?
It was incredible. It’s almost impossible to explain. It was just gone, gone overnight, like that, it just disappeared. I don’t carry that unforgiveness anymore.
I did an exercise at my men’s group. It’s awesome. Imagine, 60 dudes wrapped around at Rosa’s cafe in a horseshoe. This guy comes in there, and I start loading him up. He’s a big guy too. Six foot two. Six foot three, 240, fireman.
I had him hold a case of water. Then I put my 25-pound backpack, on his shoulder. Then I started adding more things. I said, “Let me know when it starts to get heavy.”
After about a minute, he says, “It’s getting pretty heavy.” I said, “You told me before that you carried resentment, bitterness, anger, and unforgiveness towards people in your past and people in your life right now.”
I took the backpack off and said, “That’s your resentment towards your wife gone, just give it to God” We started doing that with all the stuff. As soon as I took the water out of his hands, which was the last thing you could see, him completely go, “Ah, this is what it feels like not to carry all that stuff. And that’s what it feels like to forgive. Amazing.
Can I tell you that guy, his walk with Christ, after that…He didn’t want to give up the things he was carrying it was ruining his life.
An hour after that exercise, he called me. He goes, “Do you have any idea what God just did?” Then he got freedom the same way I did. He went through a 12-step program and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, he forgave, and through forgiveness, it’s like God just took that stuff away from him. He didn’t have to carry it anymore.
What an amazing thing. Can you imagine if everybody in the world were able to do that?
Confession and Freedom
The follow-up to forgiveness was amends, and there were things that I had done that I had to make amends for. So I confessed everything that I had ever done, that I was ashamed of, that I felt guilty about I confessed to my wife. I confessed it to the brothers in my Regen group.
It’s amazing how much freedom there is in confession. I didn’t have to carry that part either anymore. The program is awesome. The resources are great, but all that it did was point me to Jesus, and I was able to find him. So I’m a big fan of a recovery program. There are tons of them out there.
What I found. What I discovered was that if I gave everything to Christ, and said, “I give up, I surrender all of it to you.” I took all of it and I put it at the foot of the cross, and Jesus said, “I forgive you. My grace is enough. It covers everything that you’ve done and everything that you will do.” I realized too, that God stepped in every single time and said, I’m here and I have blessings for you.
Helping Others Find Hope
I stopped and helped some guy on the side of the road with car problems, and here I thought, big Mike’s gonna come in and rescue him. I got the jumper cables out but it didn’t start because God had other plans for me.
Sometimes when I pick up the cross in the morning, I walk as far as I want to walk, and then I put it down, and God says, “If you carry a little bit more, I have so many blessings for you. Do you want them?”
This kid struggled with drugs and alcohol for years. 22-year-old kid, I purposely didn’t call him for three days, because I knew that I was going to get into a messy situation, that it was going to cost me something, and I had no idea that God, all he was doing was blessing me.
He lost his job on Friday because his car broke down. Saturday and Sunday went by. Late Sunday night, I called the kid. He was texting me all weekend, saying, Hey, if you have a minute, I would love to talk to you more about God.
I had ignored him. Then when I did call, he told me that a friend of his had gotten out of rehab and asked if he could come stay with him. Sunday, he goes out and starts looking for jobs, comes back and his kid overdosed on his floor. Praise God, the paramedic saved him, but he felt guilty, and when I called him, he was a mess.
We got to talk about what God can do. I asked him the same question that was asked of me, “If you died tonight, are you going to go to heaven?” And he said, “I don’t think so.”
In 15 minutes, he gave his life to Christ, and he said, “I give up. All I want is to draw close to you.”
The Redemptive Plan and Purpose of God
And so I keep thinking about the things that happened to me as a kid, bad stuff. The whole time I’m thinking that it was His plan, but God does not want us to go through that stuff. Matter of fact, I know that. I believe that he saw what happened and it crushed Him and He wept for me.
But He knew that today would happen that I would have an opportunity to tell somebody else what He did and so they would have hope to.
It’s pretty amazing.
