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    Forgiveness: Overcoming the Impossible
    Forgiveness: Overcoming the Impossible
    Forgiveness: Overcoming the Impossible
    Ebook164 pages10 hours

    Forgiveness: Overcoming the Impossible

    By Matthew West

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    About this ebook

    Whether giving or receiving, forgiveness is the key toward true healing and blessing. 

    God says there are no limits to forgiveness toward others or ourselves. And when Matthew West set out on a journey asking people to share their true life stories, Renée shared about how she chose to forgive the drunk driver who hit and killed her daughter. 

    This remarkable story and others like it bring peace and healing to the one needing and the ones giving forgiveness. Fifty powerful stories share forgiveness through divorce, betrayal, addiction, abandonment, death, and more. Each story ties into the promises of God’s faithfulness and healing, and ends with the story of God’s ultimate forgiveness through the message of salvation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateJul 16, 2013
    ISBN9781400323029
    Forgiveness: Overcoming the Impossible
    Author

    Matthew West

    Matthew West has built his career as a revered storyteller. The five-time GRAMMY nominee, dubbed by Billboard as "one of Christian music’s most prolific singer-songwriters," has been awarded multiple RIAA Gold and Platinum certifications, notched 30 number one songs combined as an artist and songwriter, and has more than 250 songwriting credits to his name. Matthew is passionate about providing hope and healing through the power of prayer and story. My Story Your Glory marks his seventh book following: Give This Christmas Away, The Story Of Your Life, Forgiveness, Today Is Day One, Hello, My Name Is and The God Who Stays. The new 30-day devotional was inspired by his 22-track album of the same title which was released in 2023. Matthew and his wife, Emily, live in Nashville with their two daughters, Lulu and Delaney.

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    • 5/5
      I received this book as part of a giveaway from the publisher. This in no way affected my review of the book

      This is a great book that includes testimony from several people who wrote to Matthew West about how forgiveness affected their lives. It also includes parts that are written by Matthew West, the famous Contemporary Christian artist. These parts include scripture and quotes from other people that help to back up the biblical teachings that West presents in this book. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people of all ages.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Forgiveness - Matthew West

    FORGIVING OTHERS

    This section begins with a true story told by a woman named Renee. In fact, her story is actually the reason why this little book exists. A few years ago Renee was among the first to respond when I asked people to share their story. The moment I read her tragically beautiful telling of the freedom she found in forgiveness, I thought to myself, The whole world needs to hear this story. So here it is. . . .

    00-01_Forgiveness.

    RENEE

    Inever understood why God would ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the son he had waited so long to have. I also always hoped He would never require such a sacrifice of me.

    Once my first child, a son, was born, I really couldn’t understand how Abraham just did what God told him to do. The love a parent has for a child is like no other. God also blessed me with three daughters, the last two being identical twins. I love my children with all my heart and could never imagine living without any one of them.

    I now have a mission I did not choose: DUI presentations.

    On May 11, 2002, a twenty-four-year-old drunk driver named Eric killed one of my twins, Meagan, and her friend Lisa, both girls twenty years old. This event was devastating for all three families involved and the countless friends who mourned the loss of these precious girls. Words cannot fully describe the pain and loss I felt.

    In the weeks and months that followed, I spiraled into a dark hole that I could not seem to get out of. Eric was the one behind bars, but I felt like the one being held prisoner. I could not imagine life without Meagan. I wanted to go back and fix it. But I couldn’t do that.

    I’d always had a childlike faith, but suddenly my faith had been shaken like never before. Everything I’d always believed in had been thrown up in the air, and I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But I needed to know that there was a heaven. I wanted to believe my daughter was there and I would see her again. The grief was so heavy, I felt like it was going to suffocate me. I had no joy. I would listen to praise and worship music in my car, but I couldn’t sing. I had so much anger inside of me, so much rage. But God wrapped His arms around me in that darkness. He let me know that He was with me.

    I began to turn in the direction of forgiveness at Eric’s sentencing, seventeen months after the accident. Throughout the entire trial Eric had shown little remorse for what he had done. This only served to fuel my anger. But I walked into his final sentencing already knowing in my heart I needed to forgive him. Then, as my entire family sat in the courtroom waiting to hear the judge’s verdict, Eric stood to share some last words. He began to weep as he said how sorry he was for what he had done. Then he turned to face my family and me. He stood there in handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit, tears streaming down his face, looking at me, and he said, I would give my own life if it would bring back these girls, but it won’t . . . and I’m so sorry.

    That was a moment when healing began in my life. Suddenly, instead of anger, I began to feel compassion for this young man who had made a tragic mistake. For a long time I’d thought that by forgiving Eric, I would be betraying my daughter or, in a way, leaving her behind. I thought forgiving Eric was almost like saying, What he did doesn’t matter. But God showed me that forgiving Eric was the best way to honor Meagan and to assure that her loving legacy would live on.

    Today my story is a story of healing and forgiveness. My family and Lisa’s family chose to forgive Eric. We even appealed to have his twenty-two-year prison sentence reduced. The judge granted our request, and today Eric is a free man. But he’s not the only one who is free. I’ve been set free from the burden I carried for so long, the burden of bitterness.

    TWO PRISONERS, ONE WORD

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

    Lewis B. Smedes¹

    Agood story can make you lose yourself. A great one can help you to find yourself too. A great story has the power both to inspire you and trouble you. It can leave you challenged but also conflicted. Renee’s is a great story.

    Usually I tend to work out my thoughts and emotions in response to stories like Renee’s in my songwriting. But I humbly admit that, as a songwriter, I hadn’t the slightest clue how to give her story a voice. How could I paint a delicate picture of a topic that so many find so difficult? The main hurdle I couldn’t seem to get over was my fear that writing a song telling people they should forgive would make me the greatest hypocrite in history: How can I write a song encouraging people to forgive like Renee has when I have a hard enough time forgiving the guy who cuts me off in rush hour traffic, let alone extending grace to someone who deeply offended me or—as in Renee’s case—took the life of someone I dearly loved? That kind of forgiveness seems impossible. That’s why the lyrics of the chorus wound up being written as a prayer from a fool who struggles to forgive rather than as a command from an armchair quarterback:

    Show me how to love the unlovable

    Show me how to reach the unreachable

    Help me now to do the impossible

    Forgiveness

    Those words stirred something in my soul, but the rest of the song remained unwritten. So I carried Renee’s story around with me in my guitar case for a couple of years. Something just wouldn’t allow the song to be finished, but I couldn’t get Renee’s story out of my head either. I now realize that God’s perfect timing was the reason for the delay. Little did I know that very soon Eric would be released from prison. Since Renee had written to me, I had no idea how her story—and Eric’s—had unfolded.

    Out of curiosity, on the day I finished recording Renee’s song, Forgiveness, I did a Google search of her name to see if I could find any updates to her story. I sat in shock as I read in The Huffington Post of Eric’s pending release from prison. Now I understood: the song that I had struggled to complete was not meant for two years ago; it was a song for such a time as this. My heart leaped for joy upon the realization that Eric would be released from prison, a free man, just as their song would be playing on radio stations all across the country. This was shaping up to be a special season that God had undoubtedly orchestrated. Soon the world would have the chance to witness what I had seen a few years earlier through Renee’s testimony: the power of

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