Podcast

Overcoming Father Wounds. Kia Stephens

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kellie Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions, such as how do I trust God’s heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine? We’ll hear from people just like you and me, who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.

My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His word and His love through these conversations. Happy new year and welcome to the 1st Unshakable Hope podcast of 2025. It’s good to be back after several weeks off. I have a great lineup of guests coming out over the next few months, and I can’t wait to let you know more about them.

These are guests whose stories will increase our faith in our faithful God, and increase our desire to know and follow God’s word. I also wanted to ask if you have a [00:01:00] word for the year. I don’t know if it’s your practice to ask God for a word, but I’d encourage you to consider it.

Last year, the word, or rather the phrase, I sensed God placed on my heart was release and restore. We watched God release blessings and restoration across the lives of many of our loved ones as he answered prayers. Some we’d prayed for decades. and the cool thing about asking for a word is that you actually get a glimpse into the heart of God.

it alerts our minds to know one of the ways that God is going to be working in our personal lives over the next year. If he has given you a word for the year, I’d love for you to share it with me. You can email me kelly at kelly hall. org. God’s word tells us in Isaiah 43 18 and 19 that he is doing a new thing. He’s always up to something new. I pray this year, along with my faithful prayer team, that God would [00:02:00] open our eyes more and more to the very real activity of his goodness and love being poured out in our lives.

Now on to the show.

 

Kelly: Hey friends,

I am so excited for you to meet my guest today. She is a powerhouse for the kingdom. Kia Stevens is the founder of Entrusted Women, which she created to equip Christian women communicators of color.

She’s a contributing writer for Ibelieve. com, for Beloved Women, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and Crosswalk. She’s also a recurring speaker at SheSpeak. And I heard her give a keynote at the Speak Up conference last summer, and she was just phenomenal. We are going to be discussing her powerful book, Overcoming Father Wounds, Exchanging Your Pain for God’s Perfect Love.

Kia, I am so thankful, friend, for your time, welcome to the podcast.

Kia: Thank you, Kelly. It’s an honor to be here with you and your listeners.

Kelly: I’m so glad you’re here. And I noticed something really exciting recently. You had [00:03:00] your story recorded to be circulated among women in prison.

Is that right?

Kia: Yeah, it’s true. I was reached out to by the director, producer. On social media, but someone that he knew had heard an interview idea with Dr Gary Chapman building relationships. And after that, he wanted to reach out to me and see if I would be interested in working on the project.

And most certainly I would be interested primarily because of where it’s going to be. Seen for women in prison, you know, I think women in prison, there are probably many that have experienced father wounds. I mean, the statistics say, children who grow up in father absent homes are more likely to get involved with crime or experiment with drugs and alcohol.

Have sex at an early age, you know, so, [00:04:00] of course, I would want to be involved in that project.

Kelly: Yeah, that is so exciting. Do you know when it may be released?

Kia: I don’t, I don’t know. , maybe early or mid next year. Okay. So there’s a possibility the project could go in some other places, but , I’m not sure other than prison.

Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. That’s very exciting. I have friends that work with women in prisons that minister to them, and I was thrilled to hear that this is going to happen. I’m so excited. Well, I want to read a portion of your back cover. Okay. And so just get comfortable. I’m just going to read a little bit. This says,

take heart, daughter. You can be made whole again. If you have been hurt, neglected, rejected, or abandoned by your father, it may feel like every aspect of your life is affected by that broken trust, even your relationship with God. But there is hope. Your father wounds do not have the last word in your life.

God does. [00:05:00] Amen. That is so beautiful.

Kia: Yeah. I’m like, who wrote that?

Kelly: I think it’s this lovely young woman in front of me

And I just want to say this when I, I’m going to have you talk to us about father wounds and what that means, but I just want to say that as I read your book, Kia, your warrior spirit just shines through.

It is so obvious that God has put in you a passion to bring healing to women who are wounded in this way. I just loved it.

Kia: Praise God. Yeah. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been told that I had a warrior spirit. I’ve heard people say that they think I’m strong and it’s so interesting because I haven’t necessarily felt strong, you know, when you, when you wrestle with your wounds, which is what you will do if you have them you most often feel weak.

So, but I am [00:06:00] grateful that. God gives you the strength, as it says, as Paul said, three times. I asked him to take this thorn from me, but he said, my grace is sufficient for you for , my power is perfected in your weakness. So I’ll definitely, put that compliment back on God and say, it’s God who gives me courage and gives me strength and gives me the passion and the drive to go after the women feel wounded and feel forgotten or who feel abandoned or like they’re stuck and they’ll forever be stuck.

Kelly: Right, yeah, absolutely. The strength comes from the Lord, but you fought through and you leaned on God and you allowed him to heal you in those places. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about. So explain to us what a father wound is and you’ve already shared some of the stats, but it’s pretty common isn’t it?

Kia: Oh yeah. Father wounds are synonymous with [00:07:00] father absenteeism. So, you know, you can have an absent father by way of divorce, abandonment, abuse, incarceration, drug addiction premature death, alcoholism, , or even a physically present father, a father that was in the home, but they were emotionally absent, just unavailable.

Not present at all for the child.

Kelly: Yeah. Wow. That just brings tears to my eyes as I think of people I know who lived with a physically present but emotionally absent dad who would just step over them. When they needed help, who would absolutely ignore them when they were in dire need of his attention.

So I, I know that there are many who are wounded in this way. There was a point when you realized you were, and you were surprised by it. And at one point it ended up with a really big, ugly cry in a car. So can you talk to us about how God revealed to you and [00:08:00] uncovered this wound?

Kia: Sure, and I think that, the Lord is so wise and so understanding of us in terms of how he reveals layers of our story to us.

But I think the 1st time I really had that recollection. I was in college and, I mean, I’ve had I had a situation in a car to, you know, tons of situations, but I remember being in college freshman year and I was in a friend’s dorm room and she had a bookshelf and I said to her, where’d you get that bookshelf from?

And she says, oh, I made it with my dad. It was kind of like, you know, in the movies with my dad, with my dad, with my dad, you know, and for whatever reason, you know, The heart, the phrase with my dad signified to me that she had a relationship and she had something I didn’t have and

and it just triggered me and I remember leaving out of her room going into my, [00:09:00] my room, which is right down the hallway, doing the best.

I could not to let her know that I had been emotionally impacted. And in that room, I, I just. Boohoo, you know, because it was just hitting me in the face that, I didn’t have it. And not only did I not have it, I wanted it. I wanted it right there. I wanted to know what it would be like to build something with my dad to do anything with my father.

And, it was after that I ended up going to another friend to confide in her and tell her what happened. And to my surprise, she could relate. She too had experienced a father wound. And so she told me this story. how she detailed all the events that her father missed in her life. And then she invited him to be a part of her life to start at that juncture.

So I was like, okay. And I’m a very [00:10:00] methodical person, I’m looking for a method I’m looking for. A equation 1 plus 1 equals 2. and so when she said that, I was like, I’m going to do everything she did and I’m going to have the same outcome. So I wrote my father a letter.

I, I detailed all the events that he missed from kindergarten on up to college. And then I said, dad, I’d like to have a relationship with you. And from that point. My dad did respond back and I did begin to spend time with my dad, but, I’ve discovered that you can’t just add water and stir when it comes to a relationship with the father that you’ve been estranged from 1, it takes time to build a relationship and 2, it may not be the relationship that you fantasized over.

As it was in my case and I forgot to say to that. It’s 1 in 3. [00:11:00] that’s the statistic 1 in 3 kids grow up in father absent homes. Wow. Yeah.

Kelly: So your father did not live up to your expectations. You did have contact with him at that point. But there was a lot of disappointment and a lot of hurt along the way.

And I think one of the things that surprised you, that surprises all of us, is that our wounds have far reaching impact on our daily life and we don’t really understand. So can you explain some of the ways that your father wounds became apparent in your life and you didn’t really understand why?

Kia: Sure, it’s hard to figure out where to start. But I think I want to go back to just the relationship with my dad. Number 1. It would be difficult for my father to meet my expectations because my expectations were really rooted in a fantasy.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, I’m a product of the [00:12:00] 80s. So I grew up with the Cosby show. I grew up with growing pains and family matters and all of these shows with these iconic. Television dads that were perfect. And, you know, they said the right things. They had the right jokes. They they spent time with their kids.

And so that was my idea of father. And so it would be difficult for a human to meet the expectations that were based on. Television, which is not right. And I think that the woundedness in me really reached for that. I pursued my dad with everything in me, and now that I am more aware of this term, the inner child, which I didn’t talk about in my book, but, the inner child that child that is constantly reaching for [00:13:00] what they didn’t receive when they were a child. It’s still reaching as an adult. Yeah, , it’s still reaching for the affection reaching for the affirmation reaching for the unconditional love. Reaching for the acceptance, reaching for the pat on the back that that a girl and I could see that in my relationship with my dad.

I’m reaching. I could see it in my relationship with my husband. I’m reaching. I could see it in my pursuit of accolades and achievement and performance. I mentioned the performance trap, you know, because you will get affirmed when you perform.. And so if you’re desperately trying to get those unmet needs met and you get a semblance of them met by doing X, Y, Z, let’s say, achieving winning [00:14:00] or speaking or being the clown or what, whatever you’re doing you’ll repeat those behaviors.

Because you desperately want to get what you didn’t receive. So, you know, with, in saying that , I saw my woundedness in a lot of areas of my life.

Kelly: Yeah, and the people around you could not meet those needs

Kia: we know, this, you know, some may turn to alcohol, some may turn to men, some may turn to drugs, some may turn to food or, or addictions and, and other things, the, all of those are substitutes.

Kelly: Yeah,

Kia: there are substitutes and they will not satisfy the internal longing of our souls. And, people are not able to fill a void that a child has. God may choose to use them. But God has [00:15:00] to be the ultimate source. That’s the conclusion that I have come to, you know, because , he’s never changes because he is capable of meeting the need that went unmet.

Yeah, because he provides us with unconditional love. He provides us with affirmation through his word. And it requires no performance on our part. There is no condition. There is nothing that we need to do in order to get this from him. There, there are no stipulations. Well, of course, we accept Christ Jesus as our Lord and personal Savior.

But then there’s all of these promises.

To us in the word of God, and I think the beauty of a relationship [00:16:00] with God, I don’t even know what question I’m answering at this point, Kelly, but the, beauty of that is that we can come to God he will wait on us to try out all of our substitutes and to have the revelation on our own that these substitutes are not going to work.

And he’ll still be there. Yes. Waiting with open arms. You know, if it takes us a year, two years, a lifetime, we go through our 20s 40s, failed marriages, struggles with alcohol, struggles with addictions and things like that, God will wait on us. He will wait on us to come to the end of ourselves , and realize, man, he’s been there all along.

He’s, he’s been there all along with the love that , I’ve been craving.

Kelly: Hmm. Hmm. That’s so good. And one of the things that you’ve [00:17:00] described just now so beautifully is that he never leaves us. He never forsakes us. He is always with us. Fighting for our souls. Psalm 23 talks about he’s our good shepherd who walks with us and restores Our soul he never steps away from our woundedness.

In fact, he is right there in the middle of all the mess Loving us in those places I just I love so much how patient and kind our god is and you’ve described that in your story in multiple areas I wanted to You Bring up this one verse , Isaiah 41 10, where he says, don’t be afraid for I’m with you.

Don’t be discouraged for I am your God. I’ll help you and strengthen you and hold you up with my victorious right hand. That just highlights the very intimate and Detailed attention God provides for our souls. I say all the time, he may not [00:18:00] heal our physical bodies while we’re on this earth, but he will absolutely be in the business of healing your soul.

That’s the journey we are all on. And so you were talking about healing the child within from the book by Dr. Charles Whitfield. So I’m just going to repeat the quote and let you speak to this it says an ungrieved loss remains forever alive in our unconscious, which has no sense of time. And I just want to add to that, that on this podcast, I’ve said so many times that this is one of the most important things because we have to pay attention to our souls and we have to grieve.

The losses we’ve experienced.

Kia: Oh, yeah. I love that book by the way. It’s not a Christian resource, but man, oh man, it’s so good. And another thing that Dr. Whitfield says in that book is he says the degree of the loss will determine the amount of [00:19:00] time that it takes to heal. I think that’s so poignant because.

Often in society, we’re encouraged to quickly grieve. Yes. You still grieving over that? You still crying? Come on. We got things to do. We need to pick up the kids. We got to sit in the carpool line. We need to go to Sam’s Club or Costco. We don’t have time for this. Why are you still crying? And even when we go to church, the expectation is that we’re going to be joyous and we’re Praying and praising God because he’s so good all the time.

God is good. You know, we’re, we’re happy. And so society as a whole culture as a whole church, we just don’t have time for people to be grieving because we want you to be happy and I get that. I get joy. But I think God gives us the space and the time to [00:20:00] grieve. I love that the word of God says Jesus wept,

when Lazarus died.

It, there is no reason for that to be in there. Except. To show us to illustrate that God has emotions. Yeah, God gave us emotions. He also utilize the emotions that he had when he was the word made flesh. You know, he didn’t walk around as a stoic individual, unmoved and unbothered. No, he cried. He got angry.

He, he rejoiced, he had all of these different emotions and so I just want to encourage the listener to grieve. If you feel sad, I have been studying and recently gave a message on Joseph.

And there are so many times in the story of Joseph, his story is between Genesis 37 and 50, where we see that the word of God said, Then Joseph wept , at different junctures when he [00:21:00] sees his brothers or when he revealed himself to them. He weeps it’s like five or six times in the Bible when he sees his father, he weeps.

When he sees Benjamin, he weeps. When his father dies, he weeps.

Right,

Kia: because there are experiences that he had that are weep worthy, , and no one in his life, even when Pharaoh and the Egyptians heard about it, they weren’t saying to Joseph, this is not okay for a man of your stature.

You should not be weeping, right? They were moved. They were like, oh, your father and your brother are alive. They’re here. You know, they were moved. So I think that God is giving us license. And then the other piece of that is in Dr. Whitfield’s book, he goes on to list out and enumerate types of losses.

And so I [00:22:00] would just say to, to you and to your listeners, sometimes we don’t acknowledge that the things that happen in our lives are actually losses. . And he lists them out and he says, , a geographical move a divorce , the loss of a child, the loss of an important person, maybe the loss of a job, , and certainly the loss of a parent.

And, and I saw this This summer, I was at a conference and I was sitting with a friend of mine and, and the friend said, Oh, she wrote a book. She’s talking about me. She said, Oh, she wrote a book. And so the lady at the table said, what is your book about? I said, overcoming father wounds, exchanging your pain for God’s perfect love.

And she said, well, I don’t have a father wound. I mean, my father abandoned us, but I don’t have a father wound. My friend says , Oh, that’s a wound. And you should have seen the stunned look on this woman’s face. Wow. It was probably in [00:23:00] her mid to late thirties.

Never had she ever entertained the possibility that the absence of her father was a wound in her life. Isn’t that something?

Kelly: That is something, Kia. And I want to just piggyback on what you said that identifying the losses was A huge part of my healing process. I happened to pick up a book one day and it was entitled when your dreams die.

And I was just on the first 3 pages. This woman is listing her losses and I started sobbing. I did not realize how deep and how huge the impact of all the losses were in our family’s life it And that was the one of the big steps toward healing. I was feeling depressed. I was feeling overwhelmed I was feeling alone and misunderstood and isolated But when god met me in that place and [00:24:00] showed me

Daughter. Take heart. You can be made whole again. That’s The message that God communicated to me when he helped me grieve all of those losses,

Kia: And Kelly, God is so patient. He’s so patient. He will allow us to live happily. Oblivious to loss, oblivious to pain, oblivious to grief until we’re ready.

Yeah, , when, and he only he knows only he ultimately knows when we’re ready. , and for that particular woman, she purchased my book and she found me later on at this conference. She wanted me to sign it and she proceeds to tell me a little bit about her life. And she was like, you know, I don’t know if it’ll impact me.

I have been a little [00:25:00] annoyed when my husband engages with my daughter. It’s bothered me a little bit when she goes to him and she doesn’t come to me. And I said this to her. I know it was the Holy Spirit that helped me because I’m not that bright. And I said to her, is it possible that you’re not really bothered by your daughter choosing your husband over you, but you’re more so bothered that she’s experiencing something that you never got to experience.

And

in that moment, the tears began to pour down this woman’s face. Yeah. And I was like, Oh my goodness. You know, that was the sovereignty of God. She was ready. I’ve seen it., I was speaking someplace else talking about the father wound and a 70 plus year old woman came [00:26:00] up to me and said, I’ve never heard this before.

Kelly: Wow. No

Kia: one ever said this to me. No, I, I never realized that the absence of my father could impact my male relationships.

Maybe that’s why my first marriage failed. Maybe that’s why, and she goes on to list all these things out and next thing I know, I have this woman, 70 year old woman buried in my shoulders, sobbing.

Sobbing, right? You know, Kelly, God is sovereign. We can position ourselves to hear truth by reading books, by listening to podcast, by, by going to church. Sometimes the minister may say something about it and it. It jolts us, it triggers us, it reminds us, hey, there’s pain there. But God and His sovereignty [00:27:00] know when we are ready.

Yeah, it takes courage to address pain. It takes strength to not go the other direction, bury our head in our bed and cover ourselves with a pillow and a blanket and never come out. It takes courage. But I am convinced that on the other side of going through The dark places you mentioned Psalms 23.

Yay, though. I walk through the valley, not around the valley, not over the valley, not bypass the valley. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow. It’s the shadow of death. It is not death. It is the shadow of death. I will fear no evil. Why? Because god is with me.

God is with us. God [00:28:00] is leading us. He is initiating the journey and say, hey, come on, that pain, that thing that happened to you when you were 3, that thing that your father did that your mother did that your husband did that thing that we haven’t talked about.

I think you’re ready. Yeah. And it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be painful,

but I’m going to be.

Kelly: Amen. And I just want to say too, on top of what you just shared, that once you get to the other side, it’s so worth it. When we’re staring at the pain, it seems too much. It seems like this big, huge wall we cannot get through.

We cannot overcome. And we think I don’t have time to fall apart. I can’t deal with this. It’s going to hurt too much. But once you get on the other side, you’re looking back going, Oh my goodness. I’m so glad I did this. It was worth it. Jesus is worth it. You are worth it. And I just want to [00:29:00] say to we’re never too old to experience healing.

Thank you. Thank you for the story of that woman who was 70 in her 70s and I have seen that too as i’ve spoken about grief Women have come up to me who have lost a child and they’ve finally been able to lament They’ve finally been able to do with The songs give us license to do, tell God the truth about their pain.

And then God sets them free and brain starts to bring that healing. Amen.

Kia: I’m off. I’m all for it. I’m all for it. Yes.

Kelly: All right. In your book, Kia, you write, God doesn’t replace earthly fathers. That box is too limiting. What he offers is far greater. A relationship with himself as our perfect, sovereign, all knowing, all powerful, and unchanging heavenly father.

And you describe in your book that it was hard for you to learn to trust God as your father, to use that [00:30:00] word. But then God, in his kindness, gives you gave you a very tangible expression of his care when you received a threat from a parent at your school. Can you share how God helped you trust him?

Kia: Sure.

You know, prior to having that experience, I discovered this quote in the Washington Times that says it’s common for people to perceive that God is like their father or the fatherly figures in their lives. Absolutely. And so I didn’t realize that that was the case for me. I grew up in the church literally the granddaughter of a Baptist pastor in the church several times a week.

And so believing in God, that really wasn’t a challenge for me. I knew God existed and even believing stories that you know, you hear growing up, Noah, and Adam and even and Cain and Abel or Joshua, Moses, all those things were not [00:31:00] challenging for me, but trusting God was and still is. I’m going to be completely honest.

You know, it’s tough because, like I mentioned. Before about perceiving that God is like your father. If your father was absent, you could perceive that God is absent in some areas of your life. Or if your father was passive or dismissive or dominant, or you know, a dictator, if he was abusive, you could pass on these Character traits to your heavenly father, God, and not really be able to relate to him.

In fact, I’ve heard some people say that I’ve heard people say, oh, I can get with Jesus, but not God, the father, . And then I’ve heard some people , refer to God, the father as, you know, daddy or ABBA as it says in the word of God.

But that was tough for me. [00:32:00] And I remember a couple of instances when I was teaching, I was an elementary school teacher for 15 years and. I that last year was quite interesting. You know, I, I had taken some children on a trip and 1 of the children’s parents didn’t come back. And so we ended up having to get the police involved, having to go to their home.

And I didn’t realize that that 1 of the parents, the father had just gotten out of jail and so he didn’t appreciate. Me bringing the police to his home and that happened on a weekend that Monday, he came to the school looking for me and he threatened me and I’ve Kelly. I worked in underserved communities.

My entire career. I was never afraid I would go into the neighborhoods. I would pick up the [00:33:00] kids. I would talk to the parents. I really was unbothered by the neighborhood. But when that happened, I was frightened. I, I was so frightened for my life. I was looking over my shoulder.

I was afraid to park in the parking lot, . I just felt a chill that I had not known before. And , one of my colleagues there from that point when that happened to the end of the school year, saved me a parking space at the front of the school.

If I was afraid he was there to say, I got you, you’re going to be all right. And I took that as the Lord’s protection, sometimes he uses people to be his hands and his feet and I really saw that as God’s protection , for me during that time.

It was helpful because I was still wrestling with this idea of God is father, because if God is going to be a heavenly father, exactly what does that look like? God, if I can’t see you and I cannot hear you, [00:34:00] then how are you going to function in such an intimate way? In my life that was just an ongoing battle that I had back and forth with God because it just didn’t make sense in my logical mind.

But when that happened, and there’s another situation where I, I needed a large sum of money for my same school, you know, and God provided that money, I began to see him in that way. But let me just say, I need to write a sequel to the book because because this trust conversation it continues. The Lord asked me probably at the earlier this year.

Do you trust me? And I was thinking to myself, what are you talking about? Of course, I trust you. my mind is speaking for you. I wrote a book. Of course, people don’t do that. If they don’t trust you, you know, but he brought to my mind people. Like, do you trust me with them? And it’s kind of like, I don’t know, and I’m [00:35:00] saying that to say that I don’t think.

Saying, I trust God and putting a period at the end of that sentence is how it goes. Absolutely. I think it’s that we learn to trust God in a specific area, then we’re given a new challenge. Yeah. Well, now let’s try to trust God here. And maybe we master that or we stay In the kiddie pool for a couple of years, and then God gives us a new challenge.

And so I. Feel as though I am learning. I am learning to trust God as my father. I am better off than I was when I first started this journey and I’m more aware of my tendency. Oh, what God showed me about myself was that my idea of, of [00:36:00] trust, Was really rooted in what I could control. And the moment that I couldn’t control the situation anymore, the trust that I said I had in God went out the window because now I’m all anxious and dealing with anxiety because I can’t control it so that I can say I have trust in God, but my trust in God wasn’t really trusting God.

It was really control. It was rooted in what I could control. And so once. We get beyond what Kia can control, then we see, does she really trust God? Do you really trust God? Cause now you can’t control this.

Kelly: Yeah. I think that’s one of the huge ways that God works in our lives is he rescues us from being control freaks all the time.

He’s always highlighting places where we’re, you’re trying to manipulate that person. You’re trying to manipulate the outcome. You’re only trusting, you’re only hoping in a particular outcome rather than hoping in me. It’s always a [00:37:00] continual process. And I’m really glad you highlighted the fact that the healing journey is ongoing.

Though deep wounds have been healed, but learning to walk in the truth, we’re still affected by it. So we have to learn to walk in the truth. And I deal with that with identity issues, you know, believing that I really am a treasured and valued wildly loved child of God. And I don’t have to fight for myself because God is fighting for me and I’m not disappointing him.

I’m not a disappointment to him. And so I just appreciate so much that you, talked about this is an ongoing thing, but God’s word is true.

Kia: It’s true. It is true. And everything else is a lie. Well, not everything else, but I’m saying, y’all know what I mean? If you are believing

Kelly: we know what you mean, girl, , God’s word is always true.

He is God and there is no other. And his word is unchanging and we can trust him and his word. We’re just about at the end of our time, . I wonder if you [00:38:00] could just say a word about forgiveness. You had to forgive your dad for some things. Can you just talk to us about that.

Kia: Sure. , the challenge with forgiveness is the who and the what, you know, it’s who did it. If someone we don’t know, does something to us, it’ll probably roll off our back in about an hour or two, depending on if we’re a hothead or not, but. If it’s someone that we have expectations towards, someone that we have an understanding of how they should behave, like a father or a mother or, a relative, a close friend, then that is when forgiveness becomes difficult.

And what I had to understand is what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not dismissing. It’s not denying. It’s not masking. It’s not faking. It’s not even [00:39:00] reconciling with the person. Because for some of us, that may not be wise. That may not be but what forgiveness is, is relinquishing our right to be to hold the other person responsible for the wrong that they did do to us.

That statement is saying a couple of things. It’s saying that this is our right. This is a choice. I can choose to do it or not to do it. It’s also saying that they did actually do something to us. Some of us try to say we’re forgiving by not even acknowledging what was done because it’s too painful for us, it’s too painful for the family, it causes a ruckus at Thanksgiving, all of the things.

But no, we are saying they actually did something. There was a cost to that. It has cost me something it has impacted my life in some way, or I’m still dealing with the ramifications of their behavior. And it’s saying that I’m going to choose to relinquish it. Now that [00:40:00] is an act of our will, right? Our soul consists of our mind, our will and our emotion that we have.

In our will, we’re saying, okay, I’m going to choose to relinquish my right to hold this person responsible for the wrong that they did do to me. For believers, the impetus to do that is what Christ has already done for us. He has already died for us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So people have asked me, can you forgive your father if you’re not a believer?

I don’t know how to do it. I do not know how to do it. And the reason I say that is because the only thing that is strong enough for me to willingly choose to forgive somebody that intentionally or unintentionally hurt me, that’s the sacrificial death of Christ Jesus. In my book, I don’t have any other factor, that motivating factor, that’s strong enough.

I don’t see it. But if you do, you can contact me. You [00:41:00] can’t email me. You can DM me on Facebook and Instagram. But we do that because of the sacrifice that Christ Jesus made. That’s a, that’s our choice. But then Lisa Terkeurst says, forgiveness is both 2 parts. It’s practical and and it’s supernatural.

So even though we have chosen to do this, our mind is still fully operational. It’s going to remind us multiple times. This is what that person did to you. I can’t believe you’re going to forgive them. They’re getting away with it. they’re getting the opportunity to just be bad. And , then you get the short end of the stick.

This is not fair. It’s not right. It doesn’t make sense to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s what our mind is doing. This is where we. require the Holy Spirit and we rely on the supernatural aspect of forgiveness and we say Holy Spirit, I have chosen to forgive this person. Will you help my mind and my heart to follow suit?

And that is a prayer that we’ve, we may pray one [00:42:00] time, 10, 000 times. Say, please help me, Holy Spirit. I’m struggling. I’m struggling. I just saw that person and I felt the rage shoot through the roof. God, will you help me? I’m my palms are sweaty. I’m thinking of all these words that I could say to them, but I want to forgive them.

I’m choosing to forgive them. This is a this is a wrestle. It’s a wrestle.

Yeah,

Kia: I’m telling you it happened to me recently. I had someone that I needed to forgive and they did not apologize and I definitely want to say this because I know some of us out there where we’re frozen waiting on this apology that really may not ever come.

Mhm. Right. And especially if the person is deceased, it’s not coming. And I was just, I, I wrote the forgiveness letter, which is in my, in my book, there’s a forgiveness letter template. I put the person in the empty chair, which is also a counseling technique where you read the forgiveness letter to the person in the empty chair.

I did all these things. I had a funeral. I mean, I [00:43:00] imagined a funeral. I did every possible strategy that I knew to do. And when I talked to my husband, he said. I think you’re still dealing with unforgiveness. And I was like, how can that still be? How can I, how can this be? You don’t know what I’ve done, , leave me alone.

And I was thinking about Joseph again, And the Holy spirit said, I was, as I was driving to pick up my children from school and get in the carpool line, he said, Joseph never got an apology. And I said, what is that true Holy Spirit? What are you saying? Is this true?

I’ve read the account of Joseph so many times. So I, I thumbed back through, through my Bible to the chapter where he revealed himself to them. And he said, I am Joseph. And immediately he said, is my father? Okay. And he started saying all these other things and giving out all these orders of things that he wanted them to [00:44:00] do.

And, and it said that the brothers were frozen with fear.

They were afraid they never said anything. It did go on to say later on the chapter. I don’t know if it’s I don’t know if it’s 42 where it is that this happened that he talked with them, but it never said they apologized.

Kelly: Yeah.

Kia: So then I thumb through my Bible again and go all the way to Genesis chapter 50.

Where Jacob dies and now the brothers are afraid again. Oh, daddy’s not here. Joseph is gonna kill us You know Or he’s gonna he’s finally gonna take his revenge out on us because Jacob isn’t here to keep him from doing it So they go and tell him a lie. They tell him a lie that you know This is what your father said before he died that you’re to take care of us and you’re not to harm them and you’re to Forgive them they lied He never got a real genuine apology, a real expression of remorse, a real expression that we are [00:45:00] actually sorry for the 13 years that you lost of your life.

We’re sorry for that. He never got that. And yet, even though he never got that, he was able to forgive them. He was able to take care of them. Care of them. Yeah, he took care, not just them, but their kids, the kids, word of God, there was like 70. What on earth? You know, and when I heard that, it gave me a sense of peace.

It gave me a sense of resolve. Like, Kia Stevens, you can do this. And Joseph is a foreshadowing of our Savior.

Kelly: Yeah,

Kia: because our Savior never got an apology, though. He is deserved deserving of one. He never got one either. We can do this. We can relinquish our right [00:46:00] to hold another person responsible for the wrong that they did do to us, whether they say, I’m sorry, or not.

Kelly: kia that is so powerful. Yes. Amen. I’ve never thought about the fact that they didn’t apologize. Although I was so grieved by the relationship. It’s obvious the relationship was never restored because at the end they were still afraid he was going to get hurt. Kill them. They still didn’t have reconciliation there.

Joseph didn’t get to experience that. Wow. That is huge. And I love that you just talked about it’s only the power of God that enabled us to forgive And the other point is that his blood is powerful enough to cover the harm that was done to us.

Amen. We can trust him to heal those areas. Kia, my friend, thank you so much for sharing your heart and your wisdom with us today. This has been [00:47:00] a blessing, and I know my listeners have been deeply impacted, and I just want to challenge our listeners to take some time after you listen to this podcast, or even while you, maybe you go back and listen again.

Just to ask the Lord to reveal to you losses you’ve experienced that you haven’t grieved and bring them to him, lean into that pain and ask him to guide your healing process. Ask him to show you what he wants you to know about his love for you in those places.

God bless you. My listeners. God bless you. Kia, have a wonderful day.

Kia: Thank you so much.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great. If you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend or leaving a review, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall. org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the unshakable whole [00:48:00] podcast.