How to Forgive - Pastor David Peterson

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I am excited to have Reverend David Peterson

with us Reverend Peterson is an ordained pastor and a board-certified chaplain with over 30 years of experience in

Ministry into congregations as well as chaplaincy experience in hospitals fire and EMS law enforcement and hospice he's

provided emotional and spiritual Care on the scenes of devastating events from 9 11 to school shootings and various

Community tragedies and in 1994 he founded Shepherd staff pastoral Services where he was able to provide spiritual

care to thousands via chaplains he trained and placed at long-term care facilities across the U.S a study in

resiliency and forgiveness David has lived all his life with tremors and his hands and arms and navigated the

bullying harassment and harass and embarrassing moments that it is invited from those who lack understanding and

empathy at the age of 12 he was targeted by a neighborhood pedophile who used alcohol pornography and affirmation to

abuse him sexually emotionally spiritually and mentally years of Silence anger shame into

self-destructive behaviors followed before healing and forgiveness transformed him David and his wife Arden

as well as their four sons and their families reside in Chesapeake Virginia welcome David thanks so much for joining

us Dr Lauren what an honor to be with you today thank you so much so that's an

incredible story so that's absolutely amazing tell us a little bit about your

journey for forgiveness like I I don't know how somebody would go about you know transforming everything that you've

been through so so how did you do it and how do other people do it well in the first time it's not a me

it's a it's completely uh I couldn't imagine doing this without the Lord because God's presence in my life uh has

brought me the greatest measure of comfort while I was going through it through the difficulties as well as

provided the change um to to uh

get me moving in the direction that he would have for me and that's a direction

that leads to a much more transparent and real and I'm connecting husband

father pastor and all that I do yeah it's only by him

that's scripture the way that we do it is we don't do it by our own strength have to learn to rely on him but

sometimes that can feel like a Christian platitude though so how does somebody go about actually relying on him like what

do you tell people when they follow it well I like you to share from my own

story and um you know I had to come to realize that there was a point in my life uh you

know it was around 35 or so and now I'm married and I have at that point two

kids and I come to realize that I have

symptoms of unforgiveness that are just you know brewing in my life

and um I had to come to realize that I had some things that I really needed

to surrender to the Lord and for him to get a hold of and I had to realize that I was a junkie I was addicted to

unforgiveness you know and that that can happen and so like many folks in the

12-step program recognizing you have a problem is a first step and then

surrendering and saying God I can't do this without you I just what I had Dr

Lauren I had like a nuclear power plant that was inside of me and it was always

energy there was always manufacturing more anger and more bitterness and

um it was it provided its own anger energy

source and um what I I've come to encounter is an

authenticity in my relationships with others including with myself and God

that doesn't repel folks but welcomes

them into my space in a healthy way yeah absolutely I'm really curious what you

mean by that when you say you were addicted to forgiveness unforgiveness what was it doing for you quote unquote

that you were getting from it that made you not want to give it up oh I mean

when um when you realize that there is an a true energy source in keeping that anger

Brewing oh interesting okay and going back to it and you know but my identity

I came to realize is not in that it's not in what I had been through my real

identity is in Jesus Christ yes and I wanted to see I wanted to come

to know experience the identity that was me and Jesus

and not me and the anger although you know the reality of what I had been

through was very real and there's I'm sure plenty of listeners that you have

and I just want to speak to those folks right now and say your experience is

real it's believed and um

but it doesn't have to hold you captive and sometimes we get hooked on that like

I said it gives us the extra strength to make it through to toughen up as we think to

survive um on various levels and I had to come to

realize there's a price to pay for that

um fabricated energy and it plays out in our in our own

well-being physically um we've come to realize that there are

physical effects that come into being because of unforgiveness and resentment

um and anger that grates on our our physical our

whole GI tract our circulatory system our cardiac level as well as our

emotional our mental there's a a mental level and if you spend all your time

trying to compress this contain it it moves out in depression or anxiety or

whatever so uh it just has mental emotional physical

price tags um and

moving forward in the line of forgiveness and you know there's a lot of pastors and

well-meaning people you've probably experienced doctor that are like well you just have to forgive are you doing a

lot of platitude right look is that any different than the Pharisees that you

know Jesus talked about you know well unto you you keep up heavy packs upon

you know the backs of men and you don't do a thing to lift them off just simply saying well you have to

forgive and you know Jesus talks about forgiveness but you know I love about it if you stop

and like he models forgiveness right I mean here we are we're in Lent we're

going to come up into Holy Week and we're Fort we Face the cross and Jesus

when he encounters such uh

absolutely absolute devastation on so many levels he says father forgive them

for they know not what they do there's a first step and so one of my you know I have 21

Milestones to freedom and one of them I claim that forgiveness is your chance to

play God

play God you know some of those movies

yeah when Bruce Almighty Almighty I had to think of it yeah you're right and really uh if we want to

have a chance to play God and experience that you know

um we can only do that with his power and his authority that's inside of us to say

you know I forgive you it does not does not does not does not

negate what you have been through absolutely and that person

may not deserve to be trusted again

but not everybody that hurts us or offends

us absolutely intended to do that and there's minor infractions

you know even just the minor folks the folks chip us off or you know like I

call them sandpaper people yeah have you ever done that where you

cut out a little you know cut out a little a little uh gingerbread man and

out of out of sandpaper yeah there are people in our lives that are just men

somehow they just you know they just grade us the wrong way but it's making us stronger it's

making us shine that much more but there truly are predators out there

don't deserve your trust right they need to face Justice whether it's in a criminal court system

a legal system or however that is all right but then

there's also folks look one of the greatest things Jesus said when he taught his disciples to pray

was uh forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

and what's that it's basically a boundary violation that's really that's what a trespass is

and so sometimes we're going to say hey

yeah exactly but there's also forgiveness now another thing that Jesus taught Peter you know

when he was approached well how many times do I need to forgive well you may need to forgive over and

over and over and the forgiving Journey is not Smith at the front cover of my

book it has I think the shot is from the Appalachian Trail

and there are challenges their their threats along the way on that journey of

forgiveness but uh it's it's you take one step at a

time and I just tried to do some Milestones of like I said of things that

I found helpful and I I just pray that your listeners uh those you connect

with have a chance to encounter this book because I continue to learn from this book yeah sometimes absolutely very

cool so um tell us a little bit about how

forgiveness is not the same as like that whole forgive and forget thing what do you say to that phrase does that mean

what it sounds like what is what's that all about you know

um in the development of this book one of the things I came to realize was not

just 21 Milestones but the brain science that goes along with it and you might

find it really interesting is I did when I was researching it and coming to

realize things like dopamine one of our brain chemicals

um has an end goal in mind and it propels us toward that

and as part of our forgive and forget there's some things we'd

like we don't want to be hurt again in a particular way and especially if

we're violated at a very deep level good thing to know you know as far as

that goes but really the the uh dopamine that's

that's swirling around in our brains well either Propel us toward an end goal

of reconnecting ideally with someone in a really healthy

relationship in a healthy way and pursue that wholeness or it can Propel Us in the other

direction which is exacting Vengeance on that person and to ruminate about that and to think

about okay first I'm gonna first I'm gonna punch their lights out then I'm

gonna do this and then you know all the way down how am I gonna get back at them

what this does is it gives us a chance not to be

not to be latched on not to be hooked on to that person the because

uh God wants us to live lives that are free of that

but just as simply you know forgiveness is something you probably heard this before we do for ourselves

so you know in the uh intro I start with a little story called

um unforgiveness is Monkey Business and and

um you know it's a fun story that goes like this in in Africa they're having a

problem with monkeys and so the townspeople didn't want to

hurt these monkeys but they didn't want wreaking havoc and so they have you heard this story

before but I had to find a way of dealing with them in a humane way and so somebody

figured out that if you take a little jar and you put a little bit of uh put a

little bit of banana or fruit in there yeah and you attach that jar to a tree

that the monkey could come along and put his hand in that jar oh you won't have a

sense of opening his hand and escaping

can't let it go oh yeah and so I talk

about unforgiveness is monkey business because it's just then that somebody is able to

come and either wipe them out or you know deal with them in another way

goodness but simply that act of Letting Go it really isn't just a self thing we

really need the Lord's help in letting go because you don't know about you and I've got some man

when you when you can pry this out of my dead lifeless hand

yeah so well at least part of the reason why it's so hard for us to let go and give it to God

or just let go in general is because we have that idea of but they deserve justice yeah how how would you respond

to somebody who has that that uh protest don't you think God has ways

of exacting Justice in much better ways than and much great more creative ways

true but you or I could ever do that but

about uh the story in in Genesis about Joseph

yeah oh that's such a good story isn't it a great story

could you imagine that Joseph you know we hear about when his brothers come back he realizes this just is a basket

case just weeping and everything but for him to be able to say you meant

it for evil but God meant it for good and and

um that God had dealt with them and uh isn't that I mean and you know to

to think that we aren't Sinners ourselves

to think that we aren't Sinners don't we learn lessons like that in fact that's one of my uh 21 Milestones it's the

first one is to see the offending sinner as a twenty dollar sinner

and I am a 20 million dollar sinner yeah and uh you know I

yeah I'm I'm not getting necessarily into the ways that I was violated but

when we stop and think you know well we have no sin Jesus told the story about

the guy and you know where I'm going with this about the the guy who was tossed into prison and he owed this huge

amount and then he's forgiven that huge amount that's the 20 million dollars

and then he goes out and what's he do he shakes down a twenty dollar offender

and says you gotta go in there and so the king hears about it and says hey buddy

I forgave you so much and you can't even forgive that okay exactly yeah for sure so what if

somebody says okay I'm going to forgive and with the Lord's help you know we're moving forward into that but they're

still angry and they're still hurt what do you say to somebody that is experiencing that stage of the process

Dr Lauren all I can say is it's you know it's a day by day and sometimes five

minutes at a time or in my case one minute at a time and and uh

a year from the moment there's a while there from when from the moment I opened my eyes

I had to say I submit this to you Lord and say you are Lord

Jesus is Lord I need you to come and be Lord over this area of my life

um there's another you know one of my milestones where I talk about

yes we will go back and we will rethink it

we'll rehash it as if it could have been any different and maybe it could have

been um but perhaps the Lord has something he

wants us to know about that event and you know

our ability to ruminate and go back and chew on stuff

maybe it's just our way of still trying to make sense of what happened the

unresolved feelings that we have and maybe it's it's an opportunity to say

Lord you know what happened to me when I was whatever how old

you were there when it happened is there something you want me to know

about that experience or is there some way you want to show me where you were

and what you were doing when that happened and I I just found so much freedom

because maybe the Lord just happens to show you

that very thing and maybe he shows you something

and maybe for the first time you sense his presence you sense that he

was there he was protecting you or you know he was keeping you from

being further hurt if we say that you know one of these

basic tenets of theology is that God is omnipresent that means he was there

right so those are some ways that I've I've learned to deal with it and

surrendering it to him and going to him absolutely and it's almost like what

you're describing to me it's it's any time I'm trying to hook up to a greater power source for whatever it is that I

can't do myself it's an act of state that I recognize that I have the ability

to draw on that power and it's the process of telling yourself speaking the word over yourself so that it drops from

head to heart and you're doing that as an Act of Faith where eventually it will get down deep so that you can actually

Bear the fruit of forgiveness in this particular case but you you set me up so

well it's good I read the book already

because you know one of my 21 Milestones is to make a bold declaration I release

you from my wrath and it's the third uh it's the third Milestone I don't know

about you but I've found that when I start ruminating or that I start yeah I

go back and I start rethinking it and rehashing it um

I need to say make a verbal declaration out loud and look with what you do you

can probably explain this better than me I just discovered it and that well this

works but if I say it out loud I release you from my wrath it's gone from my mind

and my heart and the process of that I'm getting it out and then I'm hearing it

and I'm taking it in so well

yes for sure it's amazing how how strong it is the power of our tongues and

Solomon talked about that a lot yeah it's what we say we begin to believe it

for sure I I wish you'd been with me while I was writing this book because I can tell you wonderful insights

so um walking what can you tell us about from like a DNA standpoint or a family

experience standpoint how does the way that we've seen forgiveness or unforgiveness modeled influence the way

that we forgive or don't forgive others well I mean it's it's the culture in

which you know it's that nature versus nurture thing we do see things modeled

um I I just happen to think that there's much we're constantly teaching our kids

and we teach them how to tie their shoes we teach them you know how to feed

themselves what if we learned how to teach them

how to forgive and you know the my understanding from

my research is that from from um

conception according to memory theorists from the time of conception all the way

up on 10 till 10 or 12 years old there's an imprint

um based upon the significant events that we go through

that imprint on our psychosocial emotional well-being

that propels us on a trajectory um that carries us up into adulthood and

through the rest of our lives and so if we have deep pains and hurts

it you know that really does you talk about generational curses and generational sin

and um I long for a generation I long for a

generation to know the freedom and we see that there's so much in our culture

just the other other day I I heard from someone that says I hate that person I will never forget

them from some turn around and Then There goes oh

shouldn't say it in front of you not just because I'm a pastor but

because I just written this book oh yeah but hey I can slip into that too any of

us can right um and we learned from our parents we learn

we see this you know from Our Generations from from the people that we

love very much um I just happen to believe that the

Lord wants to satisface imagine how we can live so free and share so

much was such a broken world and

you know I believe God longs for his people to walk in that freedom

something that we can get better at over time does it get faster as you've you know been through movies than when you

recognize that you are holding on to unforgiveness do you let it go now faster than you did when you first had

this revelation I guess finding the tools having the

tools um better equips me and you know I I think about you know

having having Teflon you know where stuff just doesn't seem to stick as much

um you know it it goes out to the people

that I relate with and it could be my own family it could be with the folks that helped me out at the

local Deli you know um if they sense the Fruit of the Spirit

of Peace even when I may be upset about something and I'm thinking about any

other number of things but they just they get what they need

the Lord provides that and that's the gift that's the fruit of the spirit that they're just able to come and get

whatever is needed at their time of need and if that makes it that much easier

for them to to receive the fruit that they need to help them in their circumstances

man that's a Jesus thing I could never manufacture that I certain sure couldn't

do it in some phony way yeah

how do we know once we've forgiven someone um if we should reconcile or if we

should maintain boundaries how would you answer that like what kind of if there's any criteria I'm sure it's a

case-by-case scenario it yeah I think it is I think healthy boundaries we've

heard some wonderful you know stuff come from some very very talented

um authors on having healthy boundaries um

you know it makes for for good healthy relationships but also it helps us to be

more authentic and more transparent in and claiming you know we had this

term and some of my chaplaincy training you know you claiming yourself

you know and claiming your place and everything uh there's there's definitely a

healthiness in that and I believe God wants us because you know when when Jesus said you know

to the to the uh man uh love God and love your neighbor as

yourself he he didn't say love your neighbor more than yourself right it was

to love both yourself and love your neighbor and there's a sense in which I believe

um loving ourselves because you know how many people I talk with um and

you know especially I do a lot of Men's Ministry and I'm you know I'm not

ashamed of that I really enjoy having a chance to minister to guys do you know how few of them all right a

little look in the mirror and say I love you

wow I don't know what your experience is but

to be able to look in the mirror and say I love you and even to start with

I like you yeah you know that you're a great time Jesus Jesus for some reason thinks I'm a

blast just to keep him laughing right

absolutely yeah the self-talk in our culture is very negative in general we're almost taught that that's the way

that we should behave towards our house so yeah that's that's a tough habit to break for a lot of people

absolutely so how can we know that we've actually

crossed that threshold and truly forgiven someone or is it always a bit of a back and forth

you know um in Journey to forgiveness 21 Milestones

to Freedom um I try and address that question I I

think part of it is does this particular episode of being

rhymed still take up as much time yeah in your

brain and you know I like telling folks don't let bums take up space in your

brain unless they're paying for it right yeah exactly evict them right

um how much time is spent thinking about that imagine

what you can do with the time and the energy now that you don't have to think

about them and how much more creative

that you can be in that think about

uh and I think it's a fruit of the experience but there's also you know

it's a journey to be walked out it is a journey and sometimes look hey

you know what are some of the things you know if we're hurting physically if we're you know are experiencing loss

or we're experiencing some some other kind of uh pain in our life where we're

sleepy what's the Classics for for um addiction

um if we're hungry we're sleepy all of those things that get you know Propel us

down a road where we're a little bit more tempted yeah when uh or or headed more towards

self-medicating or self-pity or any of those things um I think it's being real with

ourselves but you know my God I just stress God loves you so so much

and he knows that they're gonna be times when you're gonna have setbacks

and and potholes yep times when you're gonna wrench your ankle on this journey

of forgiveness and you know what just walk in it

embrace it and you know

shake it off and move on you know get back up get going again

you're resilient absolutely so what have I not asked

you have grilled me oh my goodness I'm gonna recover

up you know you're fine I I this is very enjoyable

it's a joy to be with you you know

um come to know

the healing presence of the Lord and um

just keep moving if I can just just put that out there yeah there's gonna be times

um all I can say is in if God can do the work in me and you

read my bio you know my testimony um one in six men

were targeted by a pedophile as a child

the statistics say one in four women were targeted for sexual abuse as

children if you can think of you know being in a

uh being in a room a crowded room and you think one of six

but you have all these folks who are very very broken and the real question is

are they what are they doing how are they are they living free are they

living in forgiveness um being able to forgive

those that wounded them um unfortunately with the statistics I

mean I'll tell you what I'm thankful because the Lord is the only one who could help me beat the statistics and it

plays itself out in self-medicating it plays itself out and um you know relationship disasters and

anybody can have them it can play itself out in infidelity you

know um um ways that we try to cope in our own

energy and all I can say is that if God could

do the work in me and you know and regardless of that

it's like David's smooth Stone if God can take the hard things in our

lives and just like that you know those five rocks that date those five stones

that David bent over and he pulled them out of the Stream those those stones no down had

encountered the water running over them they'd also encountered the vibration of

the water going over them it knocked the garbage off

and they were just there waiting to be used so David could come by for such an

opportunity and pick up those hard things and pulled one out of his his shepherd's

purse and he could take that one and he could use that

hard thing and he could Propel that and get it to

its Target and slay a giant and we already know what he'd do with the other

four Goliath had four brothers oh no I was about to say I've heard that before very

nice and whether he's whether he was the one that threw all the stones from that point or somebody else did if we can all

pick up one of those stones and you know in our lives and it brings

freedom and wholeness to another human being there is no there is no experience like

that and I'm seeing that with this book and it's just it's a simple book and I just pray that the word gets out

forgiveness is a really big deal Jesus was never never casual about forgiveness okay

so tell us one more time where can people go to get your book and to find out more about you I would love for

folks to go check out davidpetersonbooks.com

David Peterson and that's with an s-o-n davidpetersonbooks.com

which will direct you to Amazon so if you prefer just to go hook up with Amazon just go take a look at it there's

an author's bio um davidpetersonbooks.com there's a way to

get in touch with me I'd love to hear your stories your testimonies and and

your thoughts and your ideas um it keeps me keeps me going and I just

I love hearing your testimonies because you're so real so uh go check that out and if you you

know you happen to want to catch some of my preaching it's at apostles-lutherin dot org whereas

Spirit-filled bible-believing Born Again Lutheran Church

thanks for allowing me to give a little plug these are the things that keep me going too yeah absolutely I will put all

of those links in the show notes for anybody who wants to find them and thank you so much for for all of your

wonderful wisdom and for being willing to be so transparent Pastor David that's it's been fantastic thanks Dr Lauren hit me up anytime

you're looking for a holistically minded Healthcare practitioner who truly trees cause rather than symptom suppression

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