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    His Miracle of Forgiveness
    His Miracle of Forgiveness
    His Miracle of Forgiveness
    Ebook135 pages2 hours

    His Miracle of Forgiveness

    By Julia Charleston

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    About this ebook

    An eight year old girl sits at her grandmother’s house and peers from across the room at the casket where her father lies. She wonders why her dad chose to put a gun to his head, leaving her alone and unloved.
    Four years later she lies sleeping in her bed. She awakens, alarmed, to see her step-dad standing over her with a grin on his face and his hands under her covers.
    A month later her mother rejects her cry that she’s not safe, and chooses to defend and stay with the drunk who sneaks into her daughter’s room at night.
    Three years later she is in a park with her only friend who convinced her to leave the house in the middle of the night to chase after drink and adventure, only to be abandoned over and over again.
    Two years after that she runs off with a man seven years older than her to escape the rejection she has felt by everyone important to her in her seventeen years of life.
    During her first year of marriage, she sits frozen in a car outside a boat marina where her husband has left her to wait while he goes inside to have sex with another woman.
    She would spend the next 25 years paralyzed in fear and anger...unable to see, unable to feel, unable to love or to be loved, her dreams dashed; her hopes faded. This broken piece of china has been tossed aside like an old used paper plate. Over decades of darkness, lost in a world of hardened people and broken promises, sin and evil take hold; no light is getting through...and no one cares, including her.
    I spent most of my life waiting for apologies that never came, hoping those who had wronged and hurt me would tell me how sorry they were for what they had done to me. Better yet, I felt justified in wanting them to suffer horrible deaths or meet with awful tragedy in their own lives as God’s revenge on my behalf. I needed them to pay the price for their evil deeds, even if they were drunk at the time and did not know what they had done. Once I had my apologies and they suffered I would be able to live a life of purpose and meaning.
    They needed to apologize. Only then would I be capable of loving and being loved, and finally find peace and joy in my world. Then I could forget: Forget I never got to know my father; forget my step-dad thought I was his property rather than his daughter; forget my mother chose not to protect me; forget that I am a bitter, broken person because no one, not one single person in the world, ever cared for me one little bit. The apologies would fix everything. Or so I thought.
    Then one day, I looked up with squinted, tear-stained eyes, and saw a faint distant light. I would soon see the tiny glimmer as a miracle in the making, and everything began to change.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJulia Charleston
    Release dateJul 15, 2015
    ISBN9781311512345
    His Miracle of Forgiveness
    Author

    Julia Charleston

    Julia Charleston resides in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband, Mike, and three children. She is a precious daughter of God, a wife, a mother, friend, author, blogger, speaker, mentor, and whatever else God puts on her heart to be. She is passionate about God’s Word and especially what He has to say about the many facets of forgiveness. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who spent decades in the chains of an unforgiving heart, she shares incredible insights on forgiveness.

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      Book preview

      His Miracle of Forgiveness - Julia Charleston

      His Miracle of Forgiveness

      By Julia Charleston

      Copyright © 2015 by Julia Charleston

      Smashwords Edition

      Edited by Jan Palmer

      Cover Design by Jenni Hodges

      All names in this book have been changed to protect the parties involved.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard of this author.

      This book is dedicated to Lee.

      "If we really want to love

      we must learn how to forgive."

      ~Mother Teresa

      Contents

      Forward

      Chapter One: Father Forgive Them

      Chapter Two: Why Do We Need to Forgive Anyway?

      Chapter Three: My Favorite Daughter

      Chapter Four: Undeserved Grace

      Chapter Five: Enter Through the Narrow Gate

      Chapter Six: Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned

      Chapter Seven: Heap Those Burning Coals

      Chapter Eight: I Forgive You...Not!

      Chapter Nine: Where's My Apology?

      Chapter Ten: Forgive Even a Murderer?

      Chapter Eleven: Give It Up

      Chapter Twelve: Amazing Grace

      Epilogue: The Other Miracle

      Bibliography

      Resources

      Acknowledgements

      About The Author

      FORWARD

      An eight year old girl sits at her grandmother’s house and peers from across the room at the casket where her father lies. She wonders why her dad chose to put a gun to his head, leaving her alone and unloved.

      Four years later she lies sleeping in her bed. She awakens, alarmed, to see her step-dad standing over her with a grin on his face and his hands under her covers.

      A month later her mother rejects her cry that she’s not safe, and chooses to defend and stay with the drunk who sneaks into her daughter’s room at night.

      Three years later she is in a park with her only friend who convinced her to leave the house in the middle of the night to chase after drink and adventure, only to be abandoned over and over again.

      Two years after that she runs off with a man seven years older than her to escape the rejection she has felt by everyone important to her in her seventeen years of life.

      During her first year of marriage, she sits frozen in a car outside a boat marina where her husband has left her to wait while he goes inside to have sex with another woman.

      She would spend the next 25 years paralyzed in fear and anger…unable to see, unable to feel, unable to love or to be loved, her dreams dashed; her hopes faded. This broken piece of china has been tossed aside like an old used paper plate. Over decades of darkness, lost in a world of hardened people and broken promises, sin and evil take hold; no light is getting through…and no one cares, including her.

      I spent most of my life waiting for apologies that never came, hoping those who had wronged and hurt me would tell me how sorry they were for what they had done to me. Better yet, I felt justified in wanting them to suffer horrible deaths or meet with awful tragedy in their own lives as God’s revenge on my behalf. I needed them to pay the price for their evil deeds, even if they were drunk at the time and did not know what they had done. Once I had my apologies and they suffered I would be able to live a life of purpose and meaning.

      They needed to apologize. Only then would I be capable of loving and being loved, and finally find peace and joy in my world. Then I could forget: Forget I never got to know my father; forget my step-dad thought I was his property rather than his daughter; forget my mother chose not to protect me; forget that I am a bitter, broken person because no one, not one single person in the world, ever cared for me one little bit. The apologies would fix everything. Or so I thought.

      God has been prompting me to write a book for a long time. I started and eventually abandoned the process many times, written tens of thousands of words, only to set each attempt aside, neglected and uncompleted. My thoughts have been sitting, simmering on paper, for several years. Clarity gradually emerged, but when God guided my heart to write a book about my struggle with forgiveness, my immediate reaction was fear. It was hard for me to believe that God would entrust me with the task of writing a book about my journey into such a personal and painful life lesson. I have had more than my fair share of times when I needed to forgive or be forgiven, and lived within the bondage of un-forgiveness for twenty-five years, but, despite my fear and misgivings, I was convinced of God’s leading, and knew this was what He wanted me to do.

      As I began to write, I saw my life story unfold on paper. I had to go back to my past, back to a very dark and difficult time. As I relived painful memories, I became discouraged and depressed. It was not an easy process. I stopped writing many times as I struggled, and even took a couple months off. One day, I was moping around the house, throwing a pity party for myself, not happy at all about having to go down dark memory lanes again, when God convicted me of my attitude. I felt like God was speaking clearly to my heart and wanted me to quit feeling sorry for myself and finish what He started in me.

      Eventually, I began writing again, only this time I got caught up in the details of the book itself. Who would possibly want read it? Who might be offended by my recollections? Should I use real names? Would people judge me? I got so hung up on all these questions that I began to worry and again lost focus on what God wanted me to do. I had to keep reminding myself not to worry, that my job now was to simply write, and the rest would fall into place later. I never realized how long it would take to write a book or how difficult a road I would travel in the process.

      I continued to allow life to get in the way, and make excuses for not writing, but it all came down to one fact: I was scared. Most of my life, I have allowed fear to control what I do. I came to the realization that if I want to be obedient to the call God has put on my life, I have to walk towards what makes me fearful.

      One day I came across Proverbs 29:18 which states Where there is no vision, the people perish… I realized my desire to write was perishing because I had no vision. I wanted to tell my story based on my experiences of forgiveness, but God wanted me to write HIS book based on my experiences, to send a message; HIS message of forgiveness, not mine. I came to the conclusion that the problem I was having with the book was me. I was getting in God's way. Finally, I had vision and I was able to overcome my fear to finish the work God started in me.

      This has been a difficult road; there have been many bumps and detours along the way, but with God’s help I have conquered my fears, kept my focus on His will for my life, and persevered. My prayer is that you will experience the wonderful freedom and complete restoration offered to us in Christ as you discover, with me, His Miracles of Forgiveness.

      Back to Contents

      Chapter one: FATHER FORGIVE THEM

      To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

      ~Lewis B. Smedes

      Forgiving someone who has hurt or abused us doesn’t come easy or even make sense. It is much more natural to hold on to our hurt and pain, pick at our wound, and allow that wound to fester and putrefy. Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, year after year we claim past hurts don’t bother us, but it is obvious on so many levels that they continue to hold us captive. Even as Christians, we can allow fear and anger to prevent us from growing and being transformed. We are stuck: stuck in the past; stuck in the darkness; stuck in the aloneness of our hurt and anger and pain is our only visible companion. Holding onto that pain is like putting salt into our own wound.

      My life changed the day I realized God wanted me to let go of the past and its pain, because I had become a new person in Jesus Christ. Could I truly move beyond the abuse I had suffered to become a new person, able to live in the joy Jesus promises? I didn’t know how to forgive, and I wasn't sure I wanted to learn. I wanted to believe it was possible to change, but all I had ever known was heartache and pain. I didn’t know if I was capable of letting go of the past. It defined who I was; it was the only thing I knew I could count on. Pain was familiar territory. Besides, I was comfortable in my misery; misery and I had become best friends.

      The hardest part of being a Christian for me is the fact that Jesus asks us to forgive those who have hurt us. Actually, He doesn’t just ask, He commands us to forgive others.. When Jesus was dying on the cross, being ridiculed and mocked, tortured beyond belief, He asked God to forgive His offenders. How am I supposed to do that? How can I offer genuine forgiveness to someone who has deeply wronged me, who doesn’t deserve my forgiveness after what he did to me? I won’t, and I can’t.

      I cannot forgive someone on my own; twenty-five years of living in bondage has finally taught me that true forgiveness-full complete total forgiveness-only comes from a relationship with God. When a person makes the decision to allow Jesus into their heart, they become a new person and begin to grow and change. God slowly works to replace anger and resentment with forgiveness and love. We are not strong enough to let go of the past without God’s power and strength.

      Why is it so hard for us to forgive? We tend to

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