To hate is easy. To disregard and abandon is natural. But to love, to forgive, to have hope for a lost soul—that is supernatural
by Steve Prokopchak
When I was seventeen and a senior in high school, a friend introduced me to my Savior, Jesus. After a four-month struggle of counting the cost, I received Him as my Lord one night while alone in my bedroom.
And Then There was My Father
My father hated my new life direction. Late one evening he barged into my room and screamed, “I’d rather have you on drugs than believing this Jesus nonsense.” He said this at around the same time I was reading in the Bible how Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” I spoke the same prayer for my earthly father: Father, forgive him for he knows not what he is saying. He has no frame of reference for what has happened to me. He doesn’t understand and the only response he knows is anger. This choice I have made is out of his control. It would be Jesus who would teach me to love my father with a love that was honest and sincere. For to love when we are not loved or do not feel loved is only possible through divine power.
The depth of Christ’s forgiveness for me presses me to forgive my father. It forces me to wonder what evil was inflicted on him through his father and others. What abuses did he have to endure and what deep secrets had he suppressed? Out of his wounds he wounded others, even those he loved.
To hate is easy. To disregard and abandon is natural. But to love, to forgive, to have hope for a lost soul—that is supernatural. As a youth, tormented by my father’s out-of-control rage, I wished that he would die or leave our family, never to be seen again. After accepting Christ, I would only long for his redemption. My heart was being healed, and that resulted in an in-depth healing of who I was and who I was to become. For if I chose to hate, to be angry, or pursue retribution for my father the remainder of my life, it would be me who would suffer, not him. Unforgiveness is certainly one road that we can take, but it comes with a steep and heavy emotional, physical, and spiritual price.
The price of love on the cross was too great. I cannot transgress that sacrifice which was made for every person on the earth, including my father. Perhaps I will never forget the pain, the sleepless nights, the many tears, the sadness, and the loneliness I experienced while growing up. Yet even if the memories linger, those experiences will never dictate or define who I am, how I walk out my life today, or who I am becoming. They will instead make me a better person, a healthier person, and a more determined person who runs into my heavenly Father’s arms.
Emotional Wounds
True forgiveness will eventually allow me to forget the wrong. Deep wounds can lose their sting long before the mind forgets. When we suffer a deep cut, we tend to it immediately. We rush for an x-ray and get injections to numb the pain. The wound is stitched up, antibiotics are prescribed, a tetanus shot is certain, and the wound is watched for weeks to come. When it comes to emotional wounds, however, we often administer a little bit of, “Oh, it’s not very deep, it doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t need any spiritual attention.” We couldn’t be any more wrong.
Wounds—any wounds—need attention. Dr. Jesus is the best when it comes to healing deeply, because based on His touch, eventually one forgets that there ever was a wound. That physical cut soon fades to being merely a scar, but in time, even the scar can disappear. Similarly, the very memory of that emotional wound can disappear through the healing cross of Calvary.
Pain, a Gift from God
Pain has a way of receiving our full attention. It is an indicator that something somewhere is wrong. Pain, at times, could be considered a gift.
As I stood over my wife in the emergency room, I felt helpless and teary. They were poking, prodding, sticking her with needles and scheduling a CAT scan to try and discover what was physically wrong. She had been in severe abdominal pain and finally agreed to go to the emergency room.
Physical pain always tries to reveal something. Doctors pore over us, attempting to diagnose the condition so they can come up with a treatment. Tests are carried out, blood work is done, and vital signs are taken. We rush to find the cause so that we can bring the cure.
Perhaps for different reasons, we perceive emotional pain as different. We tell ourselves things like, “Time heals, and all this will go away… eventually.” It doesn’t. It is undiagnosed. It settles deep into the soul and tries to hide itself. We cover it up with laughter and a “I am not going to let this bother me” type of attitude. However, it becomes more severe and grows like a cancer, eating away at us. It can even become infected and, at just the wrong time, surface in another form which is familiar or perhaps unfamiliar to us.
Mary’s appendix had ruptured, and poison filled her abdominal cavity. She needed emergency surgery that night and IV antibiotics for over twenty-four hours. Wounds from our past can likewise rupture, and poison can enter our minds, our emotions, and our spirit. I have experienced this very thing.
Pain Caused Me to Blame My Father
I blamed my father for most everything negative in my life. After all, aren’t parents supposed to be kind, generous, and loving? Shouldn’t they give their children first priority? Yes and no. Not every parent is whole enough to be all those things to their children, as each one is in a different stage of healing and growing up themselves. But still, I expected perfection from my father. He was older, wiser, and stronger than me. I held him up as the one who should take all the blame for my messed-up life.
That mindset only worked for a while. One day I heard God whisper these words, “It is true, Steve, you did not have a perfect father, but you were never a perfect son and you, yourself, are not a perfect father.” Talk about God’s hammer hitting the nail on the head! Those words were strikingly true. I was not a perfect father, as much as I tried to be. I messed up with my children—perhaps in a different way than my father—but I still made plenty of mistakes, nonetheless. God was confronting me, kindly and with His truth. I decided that day the blame game was over and that Jesus’s prescription to me read, “Forgive as you have been forgiven.” It was the only way forward. It would be the only way I would really know God as my heavenly Father and not project upon Him that imperfect image of my earthly father.
And then God reminded me of something else.
God Was and Is the Perfect Father
God is the perfect Father. He loves us perfectly. He forgives us perfectly. He disciplines us perfectly. He has our best interest in mind. God created a perfect garden within a perfect world. He created mankind and placed him there with the perfect job. He then created the perfect life mate. Yet, by Genesis chapter three, they were walking away from Him. Not long after that, in Genesis chapter four, Adam and Eve’s son committed murder when Cain killed Abel in a fit of rage.
Can you imagine? From a perfect world and a perfect relationship with God Himself, God’s first grandson committed murder.
Your Bloodline Has Changed
As a believer in Christ, you no longer belong to the bloodline of your biological family and all its sin, dysfunction, history of illnesses, addictions, mental illness, or wrong behavior. You now follow the bloodline of the family of Christ. The proof is in the Word of God. You are justified, redeemed, reconciled, free, and purchased by Jesus’ blood.
- We have been justified by His blood. – Romans 5:9
- We have redemption through His blood. – Ephesians 1:7
- We are reconciled by His blood. – Colossians 1:20
- We are freed from our sins by His blood. – Revelation 1:5
- We have been purchased by His blood. – Revelation 5:9
Your family identity is now and forever, because of the cross, found in the family of the Son of God.
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure (1 John 3:1–3).
One day as I was thinking about the steps I have taken to be healed of family wounds, I took time to write down what I felt was part of the process. What follows are those steps. They are not a once-and-done process, but sometimes require a second, a third, and perhaps many revisited deliberations, because occasionally we regress in our healing. I cannot say for sure that each step is one that you need, but I would ask you to concentrate on those that God shows you are presently applicable to your life.
They can be your experience, as well, as you pursue your destiny in Christ.
1. Realizing that my heavenly Father is not angry with me.
If God were meanspirited, angry, or trying to “get me,” I would already be “got.” Instead, He placed all of His anger with sin and disobedience upon His Son on the cross, and not on me.
2. Acknowledging that my heavenly Father planned me from eternity.
He so much wanted me to be born that the family I was born into was and is inconsequential. The truth is, He so much desired a relationship with me that, according to Acts 17:24–28, this is the time, the season, and the place of all eternity that I would be on the earth to be loved by Him.
3. I became a son of God.
The message of the gospel was presented to me. With time, I asked for forgiveness of my sin and received the unconditional love of my Savior.
4. I stopped blaming my earthly parents for all the issues in my life.
They were not perfect. The revelation from God is, “You were never a perfect son or daughter.” To this day, I am not a perfect father. Neither am I a perfect son. I had to let my earthly parents off the hook from perfection and realize that they carried a lot of generational pain and hurts themselves.
5. The more of the love of God I received for myself, the more of the love of God I received for my earthly parents and family.
I am a child of the King and a vital part of His kingdom. Through me He changes culture—even family culture. I am an adopted son by which I now cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15).
6. I am no longer in need of the approval of my earthly father or mother.
I know I have the approval of my heavenly Father. Romans 15:7 says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you.” I am accepted.
7. God spoke words of affirmation over me.
When my heavenly Father told His Son that He was His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, He also spoke those words over me. My identity and my esteem were no longer in who I thought I should be, but in who I already was in Christ. I was destined for adoption as a son, according to His will and His purpose. (Ephesians 1:5–6).
8. Life is not about me.
It is not about my stuff, my need for healing, or my brokenness. If it were solely about me, I would still be broken and be walking in the curses of the generations before me. Christ became a curse for me so that the curses from my father’s father to my father to me and to my children are broken through His death on the cross. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).
9. There is no longer need for retribution or self-justification.
What happened to me became a reason to pursue wholeness, maturity, security, and sanctification in my God and His truth. I needed to get back at no one. Jesus took this need for human justification by being the only Just One who can (Romans 3:21–31). I am justified by faith.
10. Today, I set healthy boundaries.
As I walk in spiritual and emotional health and healing, I speak the truth in love with respect and a spirit of honor to my parents, my family, and myself.
My father—the Best Part of the Story
Ten years before his passing from this life, my wife, Mary, prayed with my father to receive Christ as his Savior. At the age of eighty-seven, he bowed his knee to the lover of his soul and asked for forgiveness of his sin.
I truly believe that the love and forgiveness we offered along the way in our relationship allowed him to see more clearly the love and forgiveness that his heavenly Father was offering. If we would have chosen to treat him as he treated us, I fear that prayer for salvation may have not taken place.
Thank God for the love and forgiveness of His Son, Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls. He first forgave us so that we can forgive others.
Learn more about forgiveness in another article, also by Steve.
Truth from God’s Word to set you free
Provoke biblical change from the inside out. Dozens of scriptures describe who you are in Christ. Read them over and over, allowing the truth of God’s Word to set you free. Space provided to make a personal commitment.
A handy tool that tucks right in a Bible for repeated reference.
