Forgiveness sounds powerful from a pulpit. It becomes something entirely different when the person who wounded you is standing right in front of you.
For Christian author and speaker Lisa Bevere, that person was her father.
In a clip on Instagram from a Live Action Women’s event, Bevere shared a deeply personal testimony about rejection, father wounds and the moment she chose to release a debt that could never be repaid.
“The father I had did not want anything to do with me,” Bevere said.
Yet when she became a mother, Bevere wanted something different for her own children. She wanted her father involved in the lives of her four boys. So she loaded them into a van for a four-hour trip to see him.
But when they arrived, her father wasn’t waiting with open arms. He had left a note.
“Sorry, I don’t want to see you. I’ve made other plans,” Bevere recalled the message saying.
“I, for the very first time, felt fatherless,” she said.
Years passed. Eventually, her father developed alcohol-related dementia. During one visit, Bevere said he could no longer clearly understand who she was and behaved so inappropriately that her husband told her she should never visit him alone again.
But Bevere’s oldest son still carried hope.
“I’ve always believed that when grandfather sees the man I have grown up to be, that he will become a Christian,” she recalled him saying.
So they went.
During the visit, Bevere showed her father a photograph and realized there was a brief moment when he seemed to understand who was standing before him.
That’s when Bevere prayed internally, asking the Holy Spirit what she should say.
The answer stunned her.
“Tell him he was a good dad.”
Bevere resisted. How could she say that after everything that had happened?
Then came the understanding: “He was as good as he knew how to be.”
Bevere grabbed her father’s hands, looked him in the eyes and said the words: “Dad, you were a good dad.”
The response was immediate.
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Her father began shaking and weeping, kissing the backs of her hands. Then Bevere’s oldest son stepped behind his grandfather, placed his hands on his shoulders and spoke words that cut directly through generations of hurt.
“We cancel his debt,” he said. “He owes us nothing. We forgive him.”
He then prayed for his grandfather to come out of “a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light.”
Bevere said her father, who could barely form sentences, wept and repeatedly said, “Thank you.”
About a year later, he died.
Three months after his death, Bevere said a woman approached her at a conference and identified herself as her father’s social worker during the final year of his life.
“I drove three hours to tell you about your father,” Bevere recalled her saying.
According to Bevere, the woman told her that during that final year, her father “was an angel” and would repeatedly kiss the backs of her hands.
For Bevere, the lesson reaches far beyond one broken father-daughter relationship.
“One of the most supernatural things you can do is to forgive somebody that you don’t think deserves it,” she said.
Forgiveness does not rewrite evil as good. It does not pretend wounds never happened. But it does surrender the perceived right to keep collecting on a debt another person may never be able to repay.
And Bevere’s final warning cuts directly to the heart of spiritual warfare:
“Before I put a sword in your hand, I want to make sure there’s none in your heart.”
Then she gave a question every believer must wrestle with:
“Who is it you are afraid to love?”
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the newly released book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
