How the power of Christ turned hatred into Love.

Jacob DeShazer watched as his fellow WWII soldiers were executed and starved in a Japanese prison, and developed a deep hated for the Japanese.  Remembering his childhood teaching about Jesus urging forgiveness, he returned to Japan after the war to preach the love of Jesus, and converted the Japanese pilot who led the raid on Pearl Harbor.

“Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.”     Proverbs 22:6  

This verse from the Bible was taken at face value by the DeShazer household in a small Oregon town in the 1930’s where the children, including young Jacob DeShazer were exposed to the Bible, family prayers and regular church going. However, after leaving home young Jacob began to go his own way, largely forgetting the teachings of his youth. Several years after leaving high school he joined the Army Air Corps, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant. In his autobiography, he recalls being incensed at the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor without warning.

Following Pearl Harbor he volunteered with 23 others, led by General Jimmy Dolittle for a special mission. The mission was unprecedented. Sixteen B-25 bombers were to take off from the deck of the carrier USS Hornet, (something never done before) which would take them within striking distance of Tokyo for a bombing run. The raid would result in relatively little damage. But so soon after Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Philippines, and with the seemly unstoppable Japanese advance around the Asian rim, it was thought that this might provide some degree of moral boost at home and send a message to the enemy that the U.S was ready to strike back.

(Read the rest at WTNESS.ORG)

    

“For the love of Christ controls us…”   2 Corinthians 5:14

John T Spencer

Young mother feels personally forgiven by Jesus after cheating on her husband

It started out with me being pregnant with my daughter. Before my daughter, I ended up having 8 miscarriages. So I never really got my hopes up about the one that was about to come to me. Before I knew it and the doctor gave me the clear, I was due in June of 2010. I ended up having a healthy baby girl. After I had her, I was diagnose to a disease that most women get right after having a baby. It was called post pardem(sp) disorder. I had really crazy thoughts about hurting myself, and wanting to even hurt the precious little baby girl that my lord has blessed me with. I had really evil thoughts. And I'm still married (and still am to the father of the baby). At this point I had really bad depression, and more evil thoughts kept coming across from me. I didn't want to tell anyone I was sick, or even if they knew I was acting different. So at one point I did mention to my husband that I couldn't be trusted alone with my daughter, and then he knew something was up. I went and got help from the doctor and that's when I found out what I had. After that I started to secluded myself from my husband and my daughter. LIke I didn't even want to be around them. I didn't even want to be around my own family because I felt like a completely stranger to myself. Like their was another person created inside me. So I started to talk to my husband's best friend completely out of the blue while I'm still fighting this disease. I ended up meeting him for a lunch. And we slowly started to talk more and more. And then things led to one thing and another. And I ended up having a six month affair, because I created this fantasy of a whole another life with this man, like I said I felt like I wasn't even in my body. Like another personality was created. I was hardly home, and then one day, I started to go get help, and get on medication. Because my husband wanted me to. So once the meds started working, I started to find myself feeling a little better, like I wanted to be around my family again. Like I was finding the old me.

Then I realized what I was doing was wrong, and I ended the affair with the man and...


(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

-    Rachel T    9/12/2012

God’s Words inspire an ex married couple to turn their hate into friendship

My mother and father had a horribly messy divorce in 1985. Like so many others of their generation, the marriage was one of convenience, based far more on an exchange of services (e.g. housekeeping for a paycheck)  Never in my memory did they have what you could define as a happy or loving relationship.  There were many confrontations over the years, some of them violent.

Christmas day, 1984 was a fight for the record books.  My wife Pat and I arrived at my parents’ house mid-afternoon.  Usually Dad didn’t drink until the afternoon, which is one of reasons he got away with his drinking for so many years.  Uncharacteristically on this day, he was fully “in the bag” by 3pm.  He and my brother got into an argument over something that was truly silly:  whether my 18 yr old, college freshman brother, would eat his vegetables.  That was enough to set my mother off, and the fight that ensued was ugly and violent to the point that we felt that we had to get my mother out of the house for her own safety...  

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Deacon Dan Fedder

From Pain to Healing thanks to God's Forgiveness

The following story was written by Tracy, from Connecticut in the United States.  It was forwarded by Mike Stack, a pro-life organizer and a friend of mine. His wife works at the same hospital as my wife, and his daughter babysat our children when they were young.

Within a year of my parents' divorce, when I was sixteen, I left home to avoid the mounting responsibilities of being the oldest of five children. Against my mother's protests, I moved in with a man I met, who gave me a diamond ring and promised marriage as soon as I finished high school.
Before Christmas that year, I found out I was pregnant. My boyfriend demanded that I get an abortion. It was easier to be pushed into abortion than to fight for my baby, not knowing how I would be able to manage on my own.     

I was pregnant at sixteen.

He went to work and told me to "take care of it". The clinic was filled with other women, some somber, some laughing - all of us going in pregnant and coming out alone. The pain of the procedure was worse than I thought possible. I was crying the whole time. For over an hour afterward I was throwing up, repulsed by what I had just done. I told my boyfriend everything in graphic detail. He cried and told me if he had known how horrible it was, he would have never made me do it...




(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Felt forgiven after having an abortion

I had an abortion because I was so ashamed of the [promiscuous] life I had been living and couldn't face the judgment I believed would come from my friends and family [when they discovered I was pregnant]. I grew up in church and had been living away from God and my faith. I was so lost.
During my abortion, I felt only the physical pain. I was really good at pushing the emotion pain away. I lived that way for thirteen years. I thought I had done a good job of moving past my abortion until one day when I knew that God was working on my heart to open up to someone about my story.

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Deb
Indiana, United States

Man forgives murderer of sister, 4 children

In July 2011,  Tabasha Paige-Craido, 30, and her four children were killed.  The murder was allegedly committed by her estranged husband, Jordan Adam Craido, who allegedly started their house on fire to cover up the deed.

Jesse Adams, brother of murdered woman, telling the news media he forgives
the murderer because God forgave him what he did.  His wife is next to him.
Photo credit: Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian

Tabasha's brother Jesse Adams was quoted as saying, "We want Jordan to know that he's been forgiven. We want the community to heal and those who knew her to heal."
Adams spoke to reporters while clutching a leather-bound Bible. He said that the road to forgiveness was hard after losing a sister, a niece and three nephews.
"But at the end of the day, I got to remember what God did for me," Adams said. "He forgave when I didn't deserve it. So I'm going to forgive."

Community Bible Church Pastor Pete Slusher said he was moved by Adams' determination to offer forgiveness to the man suspected of causing such heartbreak.
Slusher had breakfast with Adams and heard him say 'I just want to forgive the guy.'  Slusher commented from his personal experience, "That's actually quite unusual."
Adams told reporters he was trying to forgive because of the Bible passage Ephesians 4:31, which he quoted:
"Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving."

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/07/brother_says_medford_mother_--_who_died_of_stab_wounds_--_lived_for_her_children_husband_still_in_tr.html.  Article written by Kimberly A.C. Wilson, The Oregonian

My commentary:  Jesse Adams didn't discuss what he was forgiven for in his own life.  But my guess is that this was no minor offense, and that the feeling of forgiveness he believed was offered by God was not a result of simply reading words on a page.  I'll venture that he felt a very real presence of a living being who offered the unusual love of forgiveness.  That is, God.  And he knew that it was important for him to show his appreciation by offering the same to another.

Woman forgives her brother's murderer

 

This story told to me by Jim Baier of St. Columban Church in Birmingham, Mi.

A few years ago, a woman stood up in the pews at St. Columban Church during the public prayer time.  She told this story (as recalled by Jim and then, in this blog, by me).

She said that her brother, a gay man, was shot and killed by somebody who was later apprehended, found guilty and sentenced to jail.  For three years, she felt stressfully angry at the murderer for taking away her brother; for taking anybody's life.   The anger consumed her. She thought about it every day, and it became an obsession that started to run down her life.

Then she decided to consider the Christ-inspired practice of forgiveness. After some work, she was able to visit the murderer in jail, face him, and forgive him.
She said that it was an act that freed her from the anger that had become chains for her, and that had started to take away the living from her life.  Subsequently, she found that her spirits lightened and she was able to feel happiness again, and was able to enjoy a much more normal life.
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But the positive effect of her act of forgiveness did not stop there.  Jim was speaking about it years later in a Men's Fellowship meeting as an inspiration to him to be more convinced to forgive. He said that all of us finds ourselves, and he too finds himself in situations where he is angry at somebody, and very justifiably so, given the nature of the offense.  But by remembering the woman's story, he can see more clearly that anger can, if we hold on to it, become like a part time job that consumes energy and time, and reduces our ability to tend to other things in life.  He said that her example made it easier to forgive as well.

Now Jim has passed it on to us.

How does Jesus Talk to Us?

One friend of mine shared this story of how he believes Jesus communicated forgiveness to him... quite artistic!  

I won't share my friend's name, because he shared this in private.  
 
One day, when he was a young man, Carl (not his real name) had engaged in an activity which he knew would separate him from God.  We won't go into that.  Doesn't really matter.  Only that he felt very very ashamed and disappointed in himself. 

He went someplace to be alone, and began praying to the Lord for forgiveness.  After about 10 minutes of heartfelt prayer, he had a mental image, very clear, of a single drop of blood falling gently through the clouds and hitting Carl on the forehead.  The instant the blood hit him, he felt completely forgiven.  He said it was dramatic.  He felt clean all over.

Carl is a Catholic.  So out of curiousity I asked him whether he had ever felt the same feeling after Confession to a priest.  He said no, he had never felt that same feeling; he felt like it was a rote exercise.

By contrast, I've never had a blood drop image happen to me, but I have had a dramatically personal feeling of forgiveness after Confession.  I wonder why the difference.  My speculation is that it's not the circumstance.  It's the strong feeling inside us to admit our wrong to our Lord that brings the feeling of being forgiven.
...or...  greater than that....
that brings a real forgiveness communicated to us from Jesus to our hearts, so that we begin to believe.