Forty Days to Forgiveness

This book was designed to take 40 days to complete. It is broken into 7 chapters with a total of 40 sections, each with a reading portion and one or more journal exercises. However, finishing in 40 consecutive days is not necessary. In fact, it is ill-advised. Changing one’s habits and one’s mindset takes time. If we look at the Bible for guidance, 40 is a number that recurs in situations where change was required: sometimes 40 days and sometimes 40 years. For example, at the time of the flood, rain fell 40 days and 40 nights; after fleeing from Egypt to save his life, Moses spent 40 years in the desert of Midian; the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the wilderness; the Philistines cruelly reigned over Israel for 40 years; and Jesus was led into the wilderness to overcome Satan’s temptations for 40 days. None of these passages explain its significance, yet the Bible clearly associates 40 with times of trouble, hardship, and change. I encourage you to think of this book as going on a journey. While it’s good to have a destination in mind, in the end it’s the journey that matters.

Very probably, you picked up this book because you, too, are in a time of hardship due to the enduring emotional upheaval caused by an offense or offenses committed against you. Like Noah, you are experiencing a flood of troubles, and you are looking for a way to escape the storm. Like Jonah in the belly of a great fish, you are in the dark place of the soul and sometimes see no way out. This book is designed to lead you through the deep waters of recovery to the complete emotional freedom that forgiveness brings.

Unfortunately, most of us have only a cursory understanding of forgiveness. We mistake it for a phrase—"I forgive you”—that we expect people who have been harmed to say. Or we think of forgiveness as a request—"please forgive me”—made by those who harmed us in order to appease their consciences or regain our goodwill. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that the transgression you have experienced has contributed to emotions that disrupt your sense of peace and balance. Those emotions cannot be removed by words or phrases. You cannot undo the harm that has been done to you. You cannot “un-experience” a transgression.

Fortunately, however, those emotions can be reprogrammed with time and an intentional process. God will help you make the time; this book provides the process. I pray that God will bless you on this journey, regardless of whether it is a literal or a figurative 40 days to forgiveness and recovery.

With numerous books already on the market, why is another book on forgiveness needed? In my experience in three divergent fields—organizational leadership development, marriage and family counseling, and palliative care chaplain—I have repeatedly seen unforgiveness at the center of interpersonal conflicts and a pervasive dissatisfaction with life. Unforgiveness is often the cause of illness, broken relationships, mental health challenges, and shattered lives. Whether at work or in family settings, tremendous negative energy is generated by grudges, vendettas, and bitterness.

From my professional experiences, from my own struggles to overcome mistreatment in the workplace, and from the pain and anger of being sexually abused as a child, I developed an intense interest in learning what forgiveness truly is and how it can help us achieve a life of fulfillment and peace. In all the professional roles I have had and still have, I have helped people establish goals for themselves and then navigate their way toward those goals with new ways of thinking and new behaviors.

When I was working on my doctoral degree, I had to set a goal for what research I would do that would contribute to the growth of our knowledge in family therapy. I asked myself what contribution I wanted to make to God’s kingdom on earth in my remaining years. In all my studies and all my research, I learned one important truth. At the heart of all conflict and the heart of broken marriages is the same issue: self-centeredness. As disciples of Christ, we seek to emulate His behavior and thinking while He walked the earth. When you add up all of His work, messages, and behavior, the core message is love. Love is a state of mind and heart that seeks to put the interests of others before our own. The most difficult time to love others is when they have trespassed against us in some way; that is, we have reason to hold unforgiveness toward others. In the end, I decided I would channel my energy toward helping people learn a Christ-centered approach to forgiving others.

In my research for 40 Days to Forgiveness, I discovered three different types of forgiveness: divine forgiveness - how God forgives us and how we forgive God; self-forgiveness - how we overcome the regrets and failures of our own lives; and relational forgiveness - how we manage to forgive others. This book addresses only the latter, relational forgiveness. Secondly, in reviewing the multitude of books and articles on forgiveness, I found four different approaches to the topic: (1) descriptions of what forgiveness is and how it functions from the behavioral sciences; (2) how to forgive another person from a secular, non-biblical perspective; (3) the spiritual and/or Christian components of forgiveness; and (4) forgiveness from a philosophical perspective. As far as I could discover at the time I wrote 40 Days to Forgiveness, no other resource presents what this book does: a step-by-step, Christ-centered approach to forgiving another in order to achieve a life of peace and spiritual balance for oneself and, in some cases, for others.