How Refusing to Forgive Becomes a Form of Suffering and Spiritual Damage - Micah Davis

Forgiveness flies in the face of all things rational, coherent, and equal. It is fundamentally unequal, irrational, and incoherent, says Micah Davis. It is counterintuitive and often gets lost in a culture where taking responsibility for one's actions appears as weakness. Micah says it's just the opposite. No matter how far you've fallen, God is always there to pick you up and remake your life. If you messed up, God is slow to anger. If you need love, God is abounding in it. If you have been betrayed, God is faithful. If you need forgiveness, He forgives you. More truth being dished out today on the CounterCulture Mom Show. I'm Tina Griffin. We are honored to have you join us today. We are wrapping up Forgiveness week two, eight phenomenal episodes with this doubleheader two-part series with Micah Davis, pastor of the Sanctuary Church. Micah, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, Tina. Thank you so much for having me today. Absolutely, and I love your voice. It's calming. It's a great way to wrap up this eight-part episode series on forgiveness. So I have to ask, this study on forgiveness, you seem like you're a younger pastor in hip and cool, but you got the love of God exuding all over you. You're reaching the younger generation and the older generation. Why forgiveness? Is there something that you've done in your past you needed forgiveness over that really opened your eyes or were you deeply hurt? Tell us why this topic. Yeah, it's a great question. This book was actually on forgiveness, was born out of a teaching on pain. I had released my first book a few years ago and was sharing a little bit about that, and I gave a teaching entitled Three Strikes You're Forgiven, and an executive from my publisher over at Tyndale House was there and pulled me aside after and said, I think that's your next book, which was ironic because I had about five other ideas for books and forgiveness was not one of them. And I was like, really, me? You want me to write about that? Because forgiveness is such a complex, dense topic, right? But as I started to reflect on my own life, I realized, yeah, this is actually a theme of something that I've needed to walk through and it's really dealt with father figures in my life. So I'll give you kind of the 30,000-foot view over that journey. But I'm the son of two pastors, two church planters, and my parents moved from Nashville, Tennessee to Indianapolis, Indiana in 2002 to plant a new community of faith here in the city. And they started with a group of about 12 people, and within three years, there was over 700 people coming on Sundays. It was like this mock miracle that we were witnessing in real time. And then in October 2005, my dad came home from preaching one day and sat my mom down and said, I'm done. I'm done with you. I'm done with our marriage. I'm done with the church. I'm having an affair with your best friend who was also our kids pastor at the time. Maggie- Oh, my word. Paul Yeah, and said, I'm leaving. And you know, Tina, there's like very few moments in life where time kind of stands still, but that was one of those days. I'll never forget watching my dad. I was in the driveway watching him leave our house with dry cleaning over one shoulder and me saying, Daddy, where are you going? And him saying, Daddy's leaving, getting in the car and driving away. And it was sort of this, yeah, just kind of before and after moments. And I wish that was the last time that I had a father figure fail me. But a few years later, my parents miraculously reconciled. That's another story for another time. And my mom went on this beautiful journey of forgiveness, restoration, redemption, all of that. But on the backside of their journey, it actually came out that my paternal grandfather, my dad's dad was living this double life and having this string of illustrious affairs on the side as well. So him and my grandmother get divorced after 30 years. And in the divorce proceedings, it comes out that my dad was actually adopted. And my grandfather had adopted him as a baby. And it was a secret that had been kept from our family for the first 35 years of my dad's life. And so now you're dealing with this string of like, my grandfather is not even my real grandfather. What does that mean for me from an identity standpoint? Fast forward a few years. Oh, no, you can't. No, no, no, no, no. You had 15 questions on this. We'll get through them. We gotta put the brakes on this beast for a second. Okay, so you then found out in a drop the mic moment in this court case that your father who you thought was your father really wasn't your father. So the man that walked out on your life really wasn't your father. And then you're thinking, well, the first father, your biological father also walked out on your life or possibly never knew that you even existed. So my grandfather, so my dad's dad. Yeah, so my dad walked out of our life when I was 10. And then he was your biological father. My dad is my biological father. My grandfather is not my biological grandfather. Okay. Oh, my gosh. My dad's dad's not his real dad. And then, yeah, just a few years ago, my mom sat us down, my wife and I down, and it was sort of like this deja vu moment. And she sat us down and told us that she had just taken an ancestry DNA test and had just found out that her dad was not her real dad either. And that was a secret that had been kept from her for the first 50 years of her life. So talk about father figure after father figure failing and having to walk through that journey of forgiveness in a cultural moment that says failure is final. That's kind of the foundation of the book and the journey that I walked through. I'm usually not speechless, but I think now I know what happened to you at a 30,000 foot glimpse. But what we have to do is get closer and analyze this beast. So how are you doing today? How are you loving the topic of forgiveness? And I know that you're able to relate to so many people, because you just pretty much experience and explain in the first five minutes of this one of two episodes about 50 different possible scenarios that someone watching this could have fit in. You lived it. My gosh. How are you doing with sharing about forgiveness? When you share your story, are people clinging to every word because they can relate to what you're saying? And then are they thinking if he can make it through and forgiven others, surely I can? Yeah, it's a great question. I think in some ways my story is unique. I hope there's not a lot of people out there who both grandfathers are not their real grandfathers, because that's definitely done a number on my family of origin and trying to unpack and uncover who are we? What does our heritage look like? Where do we actually come from? But yeah, I think in going through that journey, I did mention earlier, my parents did miraculously restore their marriage and watching my parents work through that journey from my dad's side of coming to rock bottom and repenting and turning around from his life of sin and choosing to live a life of integrity. From my mom's side, choosing to forgive my dad and walk a hard path of marital restoration when it would have been easy and justified for her to pursue divorce. I think that imprinted on me in a way that is still bearing fruit to this day in terms of how I've been able to live that out in my life. Absolutely correct. I have chills all over my body. Unreal. Can you give us a quick synopsis in about a minute? I hate to try to navigate this quick, but I do not want to have any things, no stones unturned here. How long of a separation was it from when your biological dad left with dry cleaning over one shoulder saying, I'm out of here? Was it until your mom and dad reconciled? Yep. So my dad ended up moving back into the house in Christmas of that year. So it was about three months that they were separated. My dad was living outside of the house and they were in intensive daily marital counseling. And then we spent about six months in intensive daily family counseling before we ended up kind of moving into the next phase of recovery as a family. Well, praise the Lord. It wasn't like three years. All right. We're going to have more with Micah right after this. Have you been feeling a little off lately? Many of us have. The crazy thing is you're not sick. You're being poisoned. GMOs, glyphosates, heavy metals, microplastics, nanobots, and graphene oxide in vaccines. These toxins are everywhere, but there is a solution that detoxifies and goes after the root of the problem with all natural ingredients that work at the nano and cellular levels. It's called Masterpiece. 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This ministry partnership fund is exactly how Counter Culture Ministries got its start and we grew quickly. Capstone Legacy Foundation handles all your legal and accounting paperwork, allowing you time to develop the ministry and God gave you. Call Capstone today at 610-688-8890 or check out capstonelegacy.org for more information and tell them Tina sent you. Partner with Capstone Legacy Foundation to transform our culture for Christ and get your non-profit started today. All right, Micah, so the thing that's phenomenal about this story is it was a three-month gap of time and I was hoping and praying you wouldn't tell me like 10 years later because you were a young kid when he walked out. Praise God he was walking back in three months later even though it was difficult. But how old were you when this all went down? Yeah, I was 10 years old. Oh my gosh, it's such an impressionable age. Okay, and how many siblings did you have in your home? I'm the oldest of five. I had two younger brothers at the time who were seven and three at the time of the affair. Unreal and whatever happened, not that we have to get the dirt, but like part of me is hoping that there is also that woman with the affair deal that she found the Lord in all this. Do you know whatever happened to her? Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't the similar story in their side of the family. They did end up getting divorced, so we don't have any real contact with her now. My mom was on some national news channels back in 2015 sharing their story and she actually wrote a letter to the woman basically declaring forgiveness over her and we never heard back from her, so that's kind of where we left it. Wow, your mom is like a hero. She is. She is my hero. That is amazing. I have another wave of chills. At least she can sleep at night knowing that she did exactly what God called her to do and she showed Jesus to someone that in worldly standards didn't deserve it, but then none of us deserve any of that. You and your story today is challenging me where the Lord's like, Tina, you need to work on this. Tina, you know you gotta talk to that person about that. So I'm feeling convicted here today in a couple of things, so thank you for doing that. I love feeling convicted because then I know God's bringing something to light to have me draw closer to Him and show Jesus more out in the rest of the world. And everybody tuning in right now, radio, podcast, TV, I know that you're getting something massively fantastic out of this episode. Okay, we know that forgiveness is not easy and not natural. Why do you think that is? Yeah, I mean, I think because forgiveness at its essence is costly, right? Like it costs the perpetrator an unbelievable amount of humility to repent and to ask for forgiveness and it costs the offended to extend an unreasonable amount of charity to cancel the very real relational debt that exists in this broken relationship. But Tina, you know, I think what most of us fail to realize is that in withholding what we are to give, we miss out on receiving what we most need and it comes at a cost either way. So to forgive costs us greatly, however, to not forgive may end up costing us more. Forgiveness is a voluntary form of suffering. We can't deny or minimize that. I don't try to sidestep that in the book or anything. I think that's why forgiveness in any and every situation is possible, but I liken it to more of a crucible than a formula. It's not this easy step one, two, three process. It's more like three steps forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back. Okay, you said something profound that I want you to go deeper on. You said if the person does not forgive someone else asking for it, that they actually are missing out on more than if they would forgive. Let's focus on that aspect. What are some things do you think that that person that is not willing to forgive miss out on as a result of saying, nope, I'm going to hold you accountable and your debt will not be repaid? Yeah, I think there's sort of, you know, two routes we can go. We can choose to hold on to offense or we can choose to forgive offense. And in my experience, when we hold on to offense, we end up building offense. I call it the prison of offense, right? And in more situations than not, we typically have the key to be able to step out of that prison cell. Many of us don't want to. We like the safety and security that we've built around the wounds that we've accrued. And instead of stepping out and finding freedom, we're content to just kind of sit in the bitterness. And I think over time, that does damage to our soul. I think what we're missing out on when we fail to release people from the debt that they owe us is we tend to focus more on life being unfair, the things that have gone wrong, and it typically makes us cynical and believing the worst in people. And it's not the way that leads to a life of flourishing. It's not the way that leads to the life and life to the full that Jesus promises to us. You are just dropping some really good bombs on this episode. I knew you would, but these are bigger bombs than what I thought. I don't know how else to say it. You're nailing it. And honestly, you're nailing a huge problem that I have personally had over the years with being deeply hurt. And our marriage is definitely better today than what it was when we first got married. And my husband would attest to that. And we both told each other, we're going to make it through. But let me tell you something, we must do marriage conferences and talk together about what we've lived through because all of this craziness cannot have just happened in vain. We have to be able to help other people to know that you can make it through no matter what comes your direction. But you nailed it. Several years ago, and I've still got a ways to go. You've challenged me a lot. This whole Doubleheader series, the Lord's like, you have no idea, Tina. We're doing it because you need the help, not America. I know everybody can be helped, but it's for me personally as well. I literally remember telling Luke, all of what's happened changed me as a person to exactly the person I don't want to be, which is exactly what you just rattled off. And I'm finding myself again because the hurt and pain I'm turning over to the Lord, not a hundred percent there yet. You know, I'm doing great. And all of a sudden, they'll be able to come back and flood my brain. But you're so right that if we don't fully forgive and give it to God and see they're a person that has value and we're messing up, who have we wronged that? You know, who have I wronged? I'll just make it personal. Then I need to look at and ask for forgiveness. It does change a person. And I used to think that it was the other person hurting me that changed me. And yes, a little bit of that, but also how I respond to it has potentially and could have changed me more by not forgiving. You're just making me seriously analyze my whole life right here. And I'm actually sweating bullets in the studio. All right, let's dig in deeper and see what else you're going to convict me on here, Micah. What are the four necessary acts imperative for forgiveness? Yeah, so the four parts that I sort of walk through and outline are the idea of forgiving others, asking for forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, and then forgiving a forgiving God. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. Can you give, this answer was too short. Can you, usually it's the opposite. Can you go into detail a little bit more about each of those four steps, like as an example or how it can help us? Yeah, sure. So the process of forgiving others, I try to distinguish between the practice of forgiveness and the process of forgiveness. I think those two things need to be distinguished when having this conversation. The practice of forgiveness is pretty self-evident, right? It's the intentional decision that I make to remove the very real relational debt that exists now between you and me because of a hurt or a fracture that has taken place in our relationship. But the process of forgiveness is a bit more dynamic than that. Again, I don't see it as linear. It's not this step one, two, three process, and then boom, it's over. You're good. I see it more as cyclical. So these practices that we need to engage in over and over again and come back to. So that's sort of what I deal with in forgiving others. Asking for forgiveness, again, pretty straightforward, but just how do we actually go about repenting and saying we're sorry when we have failed and fallen short? What does that look like to receive forgiveness, to practice confession, which I think is a lost art amongst many Christians nowadays here in the West. And then part three is forgiving ourselves, this idea that the hardest person to forgive for many of us is the person we look at in the mirror each and every day. So what does it look like to extend to ourselves the grace that we typically can extend to others or at least better at extending to others than we are ourselves oftentimes? And then part four finishes with this idea of forgiving God, and that kind of goes in two parts, this idea of how do we forgive God? And I don't mean that necessarily in a theological way because theologically God doesn't need our forgiveness. He's perfect. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. But I've been a pastor long enough now to sit across the table with people who are trying to reconcile with a God that they have made in their image rather than the image they were actually made in. And so, how do we work through that? But then it's also a play on words. So the book finishes with this idea of a forgiving God, and actually how we were created and made by a God who has been in pursuit of His creation, who, as the Apostle Paul says, one day is going to reconcile all things back to Him. We serve a forgiving God, and that is good news. So that's why we have so many testimonies for aches, ADD and ADHD, allergies, colds and flu, dental, emotions, headaches, joints, kidney stones, nerves, organs, skin health, and so many more. Are you looking to deepen your faith while supporting small businesses in the Holy Land? 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I see you scrounging around on the internet. Okay, here we go. Grab it now. Three strikes, you're forgiven. Encounter a God who wants to redeem your past, restore your present, and transform your future. Five star. Tell us more about this book. Yeah, this is sort of been the summation of the last two years of my life. It's the book about learning how to forgive yourself, others, and God for the past, becoming a person of forgiveness in the present, and how to play your part in the forgiving future of heaven on earth that is to come. You are something else. Okay, but it didn't stop there. You don't sleep because you wrote another book, The Forgiveness Way, a 40-day prayer devotional on letting go and moving forward. What is in this phenomenal read? Yeah, this one's coming out in January, so it's available for pre-order now, but it's sort of a 40-day interactive devotional style book, just meant to kind of create some short conversations around the topic of forgiveness. But then my favorite part of this book is I was able to write 40 specific prayers that kind of were birthed out of my own journey of learning to forgive. And it gets pretty nitty-gritty. It's forgiving family members, it's forgiving past people from work environments. It's pretty all-encompassing, and I hope it's helpful to anyone who reads it. It absolutely will be. And the cool thing is you're literally kicking off the new year when that book is released, so the timing of that is impeccable. Micah, fantastic website we gotta go to right now. It's micahedavis.com. That's M-I-C-A-H-E Davis dot com. What can we find this fantastic site? Can we bring you in to speak? Yeah, this is kind of my one-stop shop for everything that I've written. All of my teachings from our church here at the sanctuary in Indianapolis are on there, speaking form, all the things. All right, everybody. Floodmicahedavis.com. You were awesome. I'm going to grab you again for part two on this eight-episode series for a Home Run episode. So more with Micah right after this. Our ministry of over two dozen committed grandparents, parents, and yes, even teens exists because of your prayers and donations. If you are not currently a partner with us and would love to help us reach more people through the production of this show or through live speaking events, you can give through our website counterculturemom.com by clicking on the pink donate button at the top of the page. Your donations will greatly help us reach more and more people via radio, TV, podcasting, and all the rest. It also helps us cover the cost of reaching thousands of students at schools and conferences throughout America. We received this email 20 years ago from a student when I spoke at our school assembly. Hi, Tina. My name is Kim and you came to my school to speak. I just wanted to tell you how much you inspired me. I've always wanted to be someone to make a difference in people's lives in the way that isn't cliche or by the book. Lately, I've been sort of questioning what I want to do with my life, but you reminded me today and we want to continue doing that as the counterculture ministries team. Once again, if you'd like to donate and help us reach more of America's future leaders, just go to counterculturemom.com and click on that pink donate button. Thank you for helping us reach more people in this critical hour.