CR spoke with Pastor Jim Lowe about the journey to freedom

Jim Lowe

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." - C.S. Lewis

Those following the Oscar Pistorius trial would have heard Reva Steenkamp's mother reveal in March that she forgives Oscar Pistorius for killing her daughter. She said, "It's important to forgive him for me because I don't want to live with bitterness in my life. It would become my whole being. I don't want that. He made a mistake, an enormous mistake, and I've lost the most precious thing in my life, my beautiful daughter, but still I can forgive. I can forgive."

Heather Bellamy spoke with Jim Lowe, the Pastor at Burslem Elim in Stoke-on-Trent about his journey towards forgiveness, whether reconciliation is always right and how hard the process of forgiving is.

Heather: How do you go about forgiving someone when they've done something bad? Whether as bad as killing someone, or not so bad, but either way they've hurt you or even devastated your life. How do you go about it?

Jim: This has been one of my biggest challenges for the last few years - wrestling with the issue of forgiveness in my life.

The big reason I needed to forgive, was the awareness that Jesus forgave me. When I looked at the Bible I kept reading about how I'd been forgiven by God and by Jesus and it really challenged me. I struggled with it quite a lot: how do I forgive when sometimes you don't feel like forgiving and the hurt goes really deep. The way I found it easier to forgive was to ask God to help me. That sounds really simple and a bit clichéd - exactly what you might hear from a Minister - but I found that when I took my issues of forgiveness to God and I said, "You know, I need to forgive this person but I'm finding it really tough, can you help me forgive?" - that's when I found that God helped me to forgive and gave me the grace and the understanding to be able to do it.

Heather: Can you unpack a bit more how he helped you?

Jim: Yes. My family had a lot of breakups: a lot of things went on in the family in the past and a lot of bitterness crept in. The family were divided in different rights and wrongs and it was really hard to forgive. I remember when I was younger I thought I hate this: people you almost hated because of what happened and issues that went on. I found it really tough to forgive and I remember saying, "God, it's great you're telling me to forgive, but I can't forgive. I just can't do it."

I remember one day I was really challenged that I needed to forgive and I said, "God, I can only forgive if you help me". So what I did was I said to him, "Right, these are the people I need to forgive. These are the circumstances. Can you help me?" And I remember it took me about seven, eight years, but over that period I realised that God was starting to do something in my life. It's a really subtle thing. Maybe it's me maturing as well, I'm not sure of the combination, but I found I started forgiving people and I'd forgiven them without even realising it.

What had happened was that the hurts that were there, gradually over time, God healed the wounds and the healing was absolutely incredible, so much so that when I came around to building up relationships again, instead of feeling that bitterness and hurt towards them, I felt such a love towards the people who I once thought I could never forgive. I know myself and I know humanly I couldn't love in the same way that I love them if it wasn't for God working through the situations. He has done it so much so, that when you're talking about the memories of hurt, they're almost completely gone and I'd struggle now to remember why I was hurt.

That's why forgiveness is really important, because if we go to God with it, I think God can do more than we can ever imagine in our lives.

Heather: It's really interesting to hear that, because for people at the beginning of the journey, to hear that God might want them to forgive someone who has done something really awful, it might just sound really mean. You know: Am I supposed to let this person off? Am I supposed to forget? But actually what you're saying is that in that process to forgive, God actually does care about you because he heals your heart.

Jim: Yes I think so. The big bit too is when I look in my Bible, we're created like God, and we're created in the image of God. And when I read the Bible I see that God is a God of justice, so there's an element of justice in our lives. We want justice to be done because that is who God is - he's a God of justice - and the incredible bit is when I look at my Bible I see we've got a God of justice, but I also see I've got a God who's forgiven me in my sins. So if I want justice then I want justice on myself as well - and really I don't want justice for all the things that I've done wrong and God to take to me to get punished for what I've done wrong, because God's forgiven me and that means I can get into Heaven and get a free life: I get a Get Out Of Jail Free card. So if God's prepared to forgive me and prepared to forgive what I've done then I need to return that to other people.

God's showing me great justice and it was Luke 7 when we had the sinful woman coming to Jesus and pouring oil on his feet and washing his feet and the Pharisee turns round and says, "Who is this Jesus that he lets a sinful woman touch him?" and Jesus tells that parable of the two men and he says, "Two men were loaned money. One owed 500, another one owed 50," and he said, "The man who they owed the money to let them off the hook, let them off free." He said, "Which one of them would be more grateful?" And the Pharisee had to say, well, it's the man who had more wrong that's actually forgiven. I have to challenge myself, because even if I don't perceive myself to have done as bad a thing as the person I need to forgive, God's still forgiven them as well as forgiving me. So I've got to follow God's example and I've got to follow what Jesus says and forgive them and that's really tough. But if I want justice it's easy to say that - but I want justice on other people and not on myself and that's the hard bit.

Heather: There's a quote that's quite famous from Abraham Lincoln, he says: "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" So is that where you think forgiveness will eventually lead us: that we manage to make our enemies our friends?

Jim: I think so, but not all the time. I know talking to people, being in a local church, you find out horrific stories of people and what has happened to them in the past. So I think there's an element of forgiving sometimes and also protecting your heart against not allowing people to hurt you again, if that makes sense; but I think God can sometimes bring restoration.

I'm really challenged by stories such as Joyce Meyer, when she forgives her Dad who sexually abused her, so much so that she led him to Christ and baptised him and moved him closer. I know I talk about forgiveness, but that is extreme forgiveness. So I think it can happen when I look at models like that and people who've done amazing things - but I think God knows what you can handle and God knows what you can understand and some people are going to be hurt and maybe the relationships won't be restored, but I think God does want restored relationships and especially when he's forgiven you.

When we had the Watoto Children's Choir over a couple of years ago, I was challenged by one young lad who saw his Mum getting killed by his Dad in front of him and at the end of this story this kid was saying he found Jesus afterwards in a children's home and he and his adopted mother went to visit his Dad in prison and they led his Dad to Christ and he showed his Dad forgiveness. I was really stunned by that: it brought a tear to my eye because I thought, "Such forgiveness". So I think God can bring that forgiveness, but sometimes it's not easy.

Heather: And I guess I'm hearing that it's a process too. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a long road that you go on.

Jim: It's a journey: I think if you sprint it, I think that's when problems can happen later. Sometimes it's that gentle pace, but sometimes forgiveness will happen quickly. It's working along that journey and it's working to that process and it's knowing that you want to forgive as well and knowing you want to get there.