Many of us struggle with forgiveness, yet giving and receiving it are important components of wholeness. That’s why this topic was addressed during the recent World Women’s Wholeness Summit sponsored by Dr. Barbara Lowe and her husband, Pastor Tim Sauvé.
Linda Fields shares her own message of forgiveness, given at that conference, on The Linda Fields Show podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. In the midst of a difficult business situation, Fields says that for two or three years, “I spent all my energy trying to make this work. … Because I’m a can-do girl. I’m the oldest child, and if there’s a way to do it, I’ll find it.”
But what happened during that time, Fields says, is that “I started to kind of lose myself, because I was putting so much energy on trying to say yes with my whole heart. And God revealed to me over time a couple of very salient points, points that I hope people can understand for themselves because none of us can live wholeheartedly if we are carrying offense. Offense will shut us down. And there came a day where I just sat up in my bed and said, ‘God, do I have some type of huge rejection problem over my life that is causing all this to crater?’
“And it’s as though in His tenderness, The Lord said, ‘You don’t have rejection over your life. You have a single wound of rejection,'” Fields explains. “And He took me back in an instant replay to an earlier conversation when I’d … taken an arrow to the heart. And I’d walked around with this arrow in my heart, you know, for two or three years trying to just like outlast what I hope was a discrepancy at the end of that encounter. … In 15 minutes, we had the conversation, and the Lord gave me the instant replay. And in the next breath, He said, ‘And I am the repairer of the breach.’
“And I had a little open vision in my bedroom,” Fields says. “And I heard little footsteps just going down the staircase down into my heart. And the picture I saw was of excavation workers who were with all their little tools, like you might see on TV on an excavation site. … And they were bringing out all of the infection, the rubbish, the pain. And it was just the most amazing thing once the Lord invited me into this experience, and I was able to release the offense, and forgive and let it go. I had myself back.”
For more from Linda Fields and Dr. Barbara Lowe about the healing power of forgiveness, check out this podcast.