by Louie Giglio
Also, just so we’re clear right up front, I’m not encouraging you to continue to put yourself in harm’s way or refuse to shine the light of accountability where needed, if that’s the case. No, forgiveness is not turning a blind eye to wrong. God didn’t do that with our wrong. He leveled it squarely onto the innocent life of His Son and punished our sinfulness to the full extent of the law. When God offers forgiveness, He’s not ignoring our shortcomings and rebellious ways. He is offering a Son He had to turn away from in His last moments on the cross and extending to us grace we did not deserve.
To forgive your dad is not to release him from the consequences of his actions. Rather it’s to release him to God who has said, “Vengeance is mine . . . says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19 esv ). You don’t release your dad FROM SOMETHING as much as you release him TO SOMEONE . You offload the role of being judge and jury to God, who is just and fair, knowing full well that your heavenly Father will exact justice at the right time and in the right way.
Bitterness continues to pave a path to your past, while forgiveness paves a way to your future. Trust me, your dad won’t get off the hook with God. But by extending forgiveness, you can get off the hook of resentment and anger that’s been keeping your life stuck in reverse.
Your dad may not want forgiveness, or even think he needs it. He might reject your efforts at making peace and never answer your offer of grace. He may never take your call. He may even be dead. But the power forgiveness can bring to you does not happen when and if your dad receives it. The power of forgiveness breaks your chains the moment you offer it.
You may still be thinking, Why on earth would I want to do that?
I get it. It’s a big deal to let go of something you’ve been carrying for a long time. But, in Christ, God wants you to see yourself in a completely new way. God wants to bring you out of that state of mind where you see yourself with less—that’s the you that was left to fend for yourself while your dad was busy being an addict or a workaholic or “finding himself.” God invites you to have a new set of eyes with a new vision of yourself taking your seat at His royal table. You now have the blessing of a perfect Father—and the position, and the forgiveness, and the power of the Spirit that comes with being His.
Your life is no longer dictated by what was done to you. Your life is defined by what Christ has done for you. You are not a victim, but a loved child sharing in Christ’s victory. You’re no longer smashed into the ash heap, but you are raised up with Jesus to sit with Him in heaven’s heights. You are a child of God. And you are free to rise above the past and do for your dad the same thing your heavenly Father did for you—forgive.
The Poison of Unforgiveness
In the end you may choose not to forgive. That’s your decision. But before making that choice please consider the deceptive nature of unforgiveness. To not forgive gives us a false sense of control. We think, My dad did all this to me, and I had no say in that. But I’ve got control now and I can decide how I want to treat him . By hanging onto our urge for revenge, we think we’ve got the upper hand.
But is this really true? Or is it possible that the Enemy has duped us into a faulty way of thinking? He wants us to think that by not forgiving, we hold the power. Yet any time we refuse to forgive we continue to give power to the past. Think about it: you could be stuck in the past with a root of bitterness eating a hole in your soul, while your dad is on a hunting trip in Utah oblivious to the fact that you’re not forgiving him again today. He’s not even seeking reconciliation.
If we refuse to extend forgiveness to our father, that action doesn’t punish our dad. Rather, it imprisons us. It anchors us to the negative while God wants to move us into the fullness of who our heavenly Father is and who He says we are in Him. It’s impossible to fully experience all God has for us while we are holding on with clenched fists to the past.
So, I gently ask: Is your refusal to forgive your dad bringing you more peace or more hurt? Is it helping you move forward or is it always pulling you back into the past? Has unwillingness to forgive led you to the freedom you hoped it would, or is it unsettling to your heart?
If the answers are all negative, then please know that God desires to give you the “revelation sight” we talked about before. This is sight not just to see the God as a perfect Father, but to see the cross of Christ and the resulting power you can now access through the Spirit within you. The passage we noted goes on to say this:
I pray that the eyes of your heart my be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe .
That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Eph. 1:18–21, emphasis mine)
God wants you to see that you have true power through Him. Power, not to tightly grip the past, to hold out and never forgive. It’s the opposite—God is giving you the power to let go of anger and offer to your dad the grace he doesn’t deserve.
Forgiveness is not easy work, and often the seemingly easier route is to try to lock our disappointment and anger away in a closet while we zone out on X-Box, binge on another TV series, scroll through social media, dive deeper into raising our kids, amp up our workouts, or invest all our energy at excelling at work. The process of forgiving someone who has deserted us or wronged us is sometimes as painful as the hurt we experienced in the first place.
But this healing is worth the hurt.
Fixing Broken Things
The simple apartment where I grew up was a three-bedroom, two-bath affair in a sprawling complex off a busy road in the suburbs of Atlanta. Each building had four units and we lived in a downstairs unit on the right. One summer night my friends and I were sitting on the hood of an ole’ timey car parked at the end of the adjacent building. The car was parked above the retaining wall that rose about three feet higher than the ground and it had a thin metal bumper that stuck out like an arc. I rested my feet on the bumper as we sat on the hood, and when my dad opened our front door and let out his trademark whistle, it told me it was time to head for home.
My plan was to slide off the hood, spring with both feet off the bumper, leap into the air and land on the ground. Sadly, my right foot slipped and my right leg slid between the bumper and the car. But it was too late to stop my motion, and the rest of me tumbled airborne. Somehow my leg flipped and got free, but when I landed on the ground I screamed in agony and grabbed my right leg. I knew right away it was bad and asked a friend to run to my house and get my mom. My mom didn’t come, but the friend returned with a message instead.
Your mom said you better get home right now. If not, you’re going to be grounded!
Go get my dad , I said, knowing he’d be there in a flash. A few minutes later I was in my dad’s arms and headed to the house. He sat me down on the toilet seat in the bathroom while my mom surveyed the huge abrasion on my shin. I’ll put some Bactine on it , she offered, and we’ll keep an eye on it.
No, mom, it hurts really bad, I insisted.
Okay, try to stand up and see if you can put your weight on it , she said, while talking on the corded phone to my grandmother who worked as a nurse at the local hospital. My scream was even louder this time as through tears I told my mom I couldn’t stand up. As a last resort, my dad loaded me into the car and we headed to the emergency room at Piedmont Hospital where they X-rayed my leg. The doctor on duty was Dr. James Funk, a renowned orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta at the time and the team doctor for Atlanta’s professional sports teams. He quickly assessed the problem—my shin was snapped in two about an inch below my kneecap.
It was clear from his expression that Dr. Funk had a plan in mind.
Poor dad. He didn’t do well with watching me or my sister suffer. I
n fact, I think he was actually puffing on a cigarette in the corner of the examination room. (It was the 1960s, after all). He was in about as much pain as I was. Dr. Funk announced he’d have to set my leg and put it in a cast. Within a few minutes a nurse appeared with a needle that was long enough to knit with. She proceeded to stab me in the shin while another nurse held me down. Man, did I yell. Dad puffed harder.
Once my leg was numb, one of the nurses grabbed me around the waist while Dr. Funk set my leg bone in place. Oh man. This hurt worse than the needle. I screamed even louder.
By now I had forgotten about the initial crack I heard when I fell off the front of the car. The trauma of trying to stand up in the bathroom for my mom was a distant memory. The pain I felt now was on a whole new level. Satisfied he’d gotten the bone straight, Dr. Funk turned to my dad and said, He’s going to be just fine in a few weeks. We’ll get a cast on it and he’ll be running again by the end of the summer. Oh, and please, you can’t smoke in here.
The plaster cast stretched from my hip to my toes. I think it weighed more than I did. It had a rubber stopper-type-thing attached underneath my foot so I could walk. What a fun summer that was!
In time, my leg healed. When they sawed the cast off in Dr. Funk’s office my leg had shriveled to the size of a broomstick. When I walked, I turned my leg to the right like I’d been doing on the rubber thingy for twelve weeks.
Slowly I regained strength in my leg. In a few months, I recovered my confidence in walking and running. By the next summer I was moving as fast as ever.
Repairing wrongs and forgiving wounds is a process something like that—not pain free, but the pain is worth it. Setting broken things right is never a cakewalk. Yet through Christ, God has set your life at peace with Him and He is giving you the power to be a peacemaker with those around you—including your dad.
And there’s something more. Once God helps you forgive, you can flip the script and bless the father who never blessed you. It starts with receiving—with humbly standing under a waterfall of blessing you didn’t earn and can never lose. Soon you are looking at your dad in a new light. Again, you’re not excusing the past, but you are seeing him as a son, maybe a broken son who never has known the blessing we all crave. Some of you can see it. You know your father’s father and know what kind of world your dad had to endure while he was growing up. You see the gaps and have heard the sharp words. Maybe granddad is the antagonist, or was absent, or abusive.
With new sight and new blessing, you have a greater ability to understand your dad. Maybe your father didn’t pass the blessing down the tree because he had no idea how to do that. Or maybe when he lashed out at you, he was trying to work through all the blows that had been inflicted on him. Our job is not to psychoanalyze or counsel or even confront all the demons that might be in our dad’s past. Our role is to see him as a human being desperately in need of a father’s blessing and to recognize that we can offer him the blessing he’s never known.
As Scripture encourages, our new way of life is to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Rom. 12:14). How do we make the shift and respond in this way? We begin by asking God to help us approach others with compassion, and we constantly take our cues from the way God responded to us on the cross.
Decades later, I sat with my dad in the very same hospital where Dr. Funk had set my broken leg. That’s where Dad told me he had never been loved; no one had ever wanted him; and God didn’t want him either. That day I saw my father in a way I’d never seen him before. Though my dad was in his sixties, I saw a little boy standing in a doorway watching the people he was counting on most vanish from his sight. I’m sure others were careful not to use the word abandoned when they tried to explain why his mom and dad weren’t around, but did it matter? When you’ve been left behind you don’t need people to tell you what you already know.
While I was learning to live under the heavenly waterfall of a perfect Father’s blessing, my dad had spent his whole life searching for a drop of water in a wasteland of desertion. I had come to understand and enjoy the fact that God loved me with arms outstretched. But my dad only knew the opposite, the sound of footsteps walking away from him. He had been forsaken and he felt like there was nothing he could do about it.
When I understood this about my dad, everything shifted for me. I realized I had enough blessing for the both of us. I understood it was my privilege to send the blessing up our earthly family tree. I started to tell my dad how much I loved him, how incredible he was to my sister and me. I’d tell him how much I admired him, and how, even though we hadn’t shared the common ground of faith—the most important part of my life—we shared the same blood, the same loves, the same sense of humor and the same name. I loved Louie Giglio #2 so much and I wanted him to hear me say it—Dad, you’re amazing. I love you!
A few years later a heart attack took my dad from us. When my sister called to tell me, it was the most crushing pain I have ever felt. I cried for weeks, steamrolled with the memory of all the pain we’d been through. There wasn’t going to be a pretty bow on the end of our story. There was only pain, and loss, and death.
I don’t know how much of the blessing that me and my family were able to speak over my dad was actually processed, received, and believed. But I will forever be grateful for how his disability allowed me to see him in a whole new light. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to forgive (though I really never held much against him) and to bless him. When my dad died, I wasn’t mad at him. I mostly felt sorry for all the pain he’d been through. And I wished I’d spoken even more blessing than I did over him while he was alive. But I spoke enough that I believe he knew how much I loved him and how much God loved him, too.
A New Tree Blossoms
I’m convinced that once we’re in heaven we will never regret letting go of wrongs and forgiving others in the same way our Father has forgiven us. We will only regret the bitterness we harbored and the anger we held onto while on earth. When we see the risen Jesus, scars still marking His wrists and side, we will wish we’d trusted Him more to empower us to turn the tide of hate and loss and take our place as agents of a better kingdom. When we see the mighty throne of God, and understand fully that all justice rests in His hands, we’ll wish we had extended more olive branches of peace to those around us.
For now, I simply encourage you to park under the waterfall of a better blessing. Remember from the outset it’s a blessing you didn’t earn or deserve. It’s the blessing of a perfect Father with extravagant love, a Father who has never lost sight of you and will never let you go. He is a perfect Abba who will not leave you powerless, but who will make you powerful—powerful enough to extend to others the blessing He is extending to you.
As we conclude this chapter, I invite you to come back to that picture of your earthly family tree. Again, it may be the most awesome family tree of all-time. Or, maybe your family tree isn’t so solid. Maybe the leaves are sparse and discolored. The apples are wormy, and some are rotten. The branches are cracked and broken and there’s a lot of hurt in your family tree. Here’s what I want you to do:
Leave your earthly family tree exactly where it is in your mind. Sure, it will always be a part of your life. To some degree you’ll always be working through your family tree, figuring out what was passed along to you, sorting out what’s helpful and harmful.
But now, superimpose another family tree on top of your earthly family tree. A new family tree, a heavenly family tree. Lay it right over the old earthly tree. This is the gift that God offers us. This family tree has steady branches and a sure trunk. I invite you to overlay a new and fresh image right on top of the old one. This new tree has two main components, with a straight line connecting the two:
God, your heavenly Father.
And you, child of God.
In this new family tree, you are always loved, always accepted, always supported, always hoped for, always championed, always cared for. In this new family tree, your pe
rfect Father God says something like, I’m the one who knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I’m the one who orchestrates your path. I’m the one who bought you back at a great price. I’m the one who has redeemed you. I’m the one who calls you by name. You are the apple of my eye. I’m the one who fulfills all my promises to you. I’m the one who never leaves or forsakes you. And I’m the one who loves you with an everlasting love.
My encouragement to you is always to keep your eyes on this new family tree. With this new family tree in mind, you can know so deeply that you are the loved child of a perfect Father. You are chosen, not forsaken. And you are the beneficiary of a blessing that is yours every day for the rest of your life. A blessing, as we will discover in the next chapter, that you can reach out and take hold of right now.
Chapter 7
Discovering the Perfect Father
When you’re invited to visit the President of the United States, especially if the meeting is in the Oval Office, it’s obviously a big deal. And you know you’re not just going to walk up to the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and ring the bell. Visiting the Head of State doesn’t work like that.
After going through all the security clearances and background checks, you eventually arrive at a series of checkpoints. Once through, you’re handed a credential with a big “A” on it that you place around your neck. You’ve probably seen a replica of it in an episode of The West Wing or some other American political drama or sitcom.
I’ve put that credential on and walked through the West Wing doors a few times, and though it makes you feel like you’re important, cruising around one of the most secure places on the planet is less about the “A” on the badge and more about who you’re walking beside. If it happens that you’re being escorted by an intern as you’re making your way through the White House, it’s likely someone will scrutinize the badge. But if you’re walking with a close advisor to the President, you won’t get much attention from the security staff at all. You learn in time that it’s not the badge that gets you the credibility and access in this situation; it’s the proximity of someone who is actually important in that world that gives you the blessing.