In today’s episode of Family Talk, Dr. James Dobson and Dr. R.T. Kendall discuss why forgiveness is one of the hardest yet most liberating acts we can undertake. Dr. Kendall shares seven steps to achieving what he calls total forgiveness, drawing upon his experiences and biblical narratives. Learn how not forgiving can act as a cancer to the soul, hindering spiritual growth and physical health, while true forgiveness, as exemplified by Joseph and Jesus, can lead to unimaginable peace and joy.
Hello, everyone. You’re listening to Family Talk, a radio broadcasting ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Dr. James Dobson, and thank you for joining us for this program.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh. You know, we all face moments in life when relationships become strained, whether it’s family members, coworkers, or friends who may have hurt us deeply. Sometimes the pain lingers even after someone has passed away. or is no longer a part of our lives. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus addresses this directly when he says, But let’s be honest. True forgiveness can be one of the hardest things we are called to do as Christians, especially when that wound runs deep. Today here on Family Talk, we’re bringing you a profound conversation featuring Dr. James Dobson and his good friend, Dr. R.T. Kendall. R.T. Kendall served as pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for 25 years. Dr. Kendall shares that until recently, you could hardly find a book about the practical aspects of forgiving others. There’s plenty about God forgiving us, but very little about the nitty-gritty of how we forgive each other. But through his own painful experience and deep study of Scripture, particularly the story of Joseph, Dr. Kendall discovered what he calls total forgiveness, a transformative approach that brings healing to both the forgiver and the forgiven. Now, during today’s conversation, he will draw wisdom from the biblical story of Joseph, sharing seven essential steps to achieving total forgiveness. You’ll learn why telling someone, I forgive you, isn’t always the best approach, and also how unforgiveness can affect your physical and spiritual health, and most importantly, how to find the kind of peace that comes only through truly letting go. Well, whether you’re struggling with a recent hurt or you’re carrying wounds from years past, today’s broadcast will offer practical biblical wisdom for the journey toward forgiveness. So now let’s join Dr. James Dobson for this classic edition of Family Talk.
SPEAKER 02 :
Artie, it’s very good to have you here. I’m honored to be here. This has got to be possibly the greatest honor of my life to be on this program.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I don’t fully understand that, but thank you for saying it. You are a prolific writer. You have some very strong feelings about this book that we’re going to talk about today, Total Forgiveness, don’t you?
SPEAKER 02 :
I do. I do. The concept changed my life. It was born in what was at the time the greatest trial of my life. You describe in the book what that trial was. Well, I don’t… You don’t go into the greatest detail. I can’t name people. I don’t want anybody to be able to trace it to anybody or anything like that. But an old friend by the name of Joseph Tsong from Romania was in London. Because he was from outside London and wouldn’t tell anybody, I decided to pour my heart out to him. And I wasn’t prepared for what he said. He looked at me and said, RT, you must totally forgive them. For until you totally forgive them, you will be in chains. Release them and you will be released. Nobody had ever talked to me like that in my life.
SPEAKER 03 :
And yet you have a doctorate in theology and your life has been the scripture. Yet you said in that book that the concept or the teaching in the Bible about forgiveness is one of the most fundamental truths in
SPEAKER 02 :
in the Word. Yeah, and yet it seems to have been swept under the carpet by the church for 2,000 years.
SPEAKER 03 :
I wish we had time to share those scriptures, because there are 18 or 20 that just jump out at you, and I don’t understand why ministers haven’t focused on that, considering the fact that most of the people sitting out in front of them are angry at someone over something that they haven’t forgiven.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, non-Christians are discovering the advantage of this. And the first person to benefit from total forgiveness is the person who does the forgiving. You are set free. You are released.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you have made this study of what the Bible has to say about this subject. You don’t feel that it is an option.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, there’s no choice. There’s no choice. Jesus said, if you forgive not men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you your trespasses. And it’s the chief way we grieve the Holy Spirit. And if we knew what happens when we hold a grudge, We’re hurting ourselves. We lose presence of mind, presence of God, sense of His leadership, the anointing in our lives. We are impoverished to the degree we don’t forgive.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s very easy to tell someone they ought to forgive. It is sometimes very hard to do it because the person who hurt us was frequently wrong in doing that. It’s not that you misperceived it. People do things to us that were of a bad motive or intentional in whatever aspect it was, and yet you have to forgive anyway. Let’s go back to the personal illustration you sort of gave. How did you go about forgiving when everything inside of you said this was not right? Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
You don’t go to the people and say, I forgive you. Because once we do that, it’s an unconscious desire to hurt them a little bit. Because we want them to know they’ve hurt us. So we go to them and say, I forgive you for what you’ve done. Nine out of ten people we ever have to forgive, you could put them under a lie detector. They don’t even think they’ve done anything. So you don’t go to them and say, I forgive you. It’s got to happen in your heart. And if it happens in the heart, it shows and they can feel it. And the people I had to forgive, I never went to them, but they could tell. And we actually became friends. We just never talked about it. It is freeing, isn’t it? Oh, it sets you free.
SPEAKER 03 :
It sets you free. And I can tell you as a psychologist, and you know this as a minister, that as long as you are angry and as long as you have not forgiven, it’s a cancer of the soul. that rot you from within. And it doesn’t hurt the other person that you’re angry at.
SPEAKER 02 :
It destroys you. We somehow think that if we don’t forgive them, that we’re going to get at them some way. And God says, vengeance is mine. I will recompense. But the one who won’t forgive, he’s the one that’s likely to develop high blood pressure, kidney disease, arthritis. That doesn’t mean that everyone who has these ailments That’s the reason, but it is often there is a link between the two, your physical condition and not forgiving.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mentioned the field of psychology a minute ago. There are fads that come and go. Ten, 15 years ago, one of the fads in pop psych was that you had to get rid of this anger. And so the way they went about doing this is to get you to say the meanest, harshest things you could say or think about the other person. There were what’s called encounter bats, the most stupid things to ever come along, which were kind of foamy things. And you beat up on each other as though that’s going to get rid of the anger. It didn’t work because it was not according to God’s design, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the reason I said to my friend, you know, here’s what they did. I was hoping he would say, well, get it out of your system. You ought to be angry. I wasn’t prepared. He said, you must totally forgive them. It was the greatest word anybody ever said to me. I’ve never been the same since. When you try to express it. And to ventilate it, you want to make it worse. Well, it’s like reading pornography. You think that’s going to satisfy you. You just want more. And the person who wants to get it out of their system, they’ll get more angry. There’s no way that you’re going to get rid of this until you totally forgive. Now, R.T., we’re talking to people.
SPEAKER 03 :
who are listening to us who have good reason to be angry. Some of them were sexually abused as children. Now they’re adults and they can’t forgive that uncle or that grandfather or that neighbor, maybe that stepfather. They can’t forgive them because what they did is terrible and it is still alive as much as if it happened yesterday. Many have been rejected by a spouse and that individual has run off with another lover and left them penniless and left them hurt and wounded. There are some horrible situations that you know that we’re talking about indirectly today. What do you say to them? How do they begin? If they don’t tell the other person, that they forgive them, how do they deal with these feelings that are inside?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, in my book, Total Forgiveness, I give seven steps how to forgive. Many people think they have forgiven, but there are objective tests. All right. What are they? The first, you don’t tell anybody what they did. That’s rule number one. You tell nobody what they did. Why do we tell? We tell to hurt the person. We tell to make ourselves look better. We tell so that the people that hurt us will lose credibility. And our way of punishing them and getting even is to hurt their reputation. And that won’t do. The first step is controlling the tongue, telling nobody. The only exception would be, for therapeutic reasons, tell one other person, tell your pastor, tell a counselor. That is fine. But if you’re doing it to hurt somebody, smear them, blacken their reputation, that will only cause you to be more bitter, and it doesn’t work. The other exception would be if in a court of law you need to testify. I had a lady in Westminster Chapel who was raped, and they found the rapist, and he was from a Middle Eastern country. And she said if they send him back, he will be beheaded. And I have forgiven him. What do I do? I said, you must testify. He’s a danger to society. But it wasn’t a personal grudge. But the first thing is you don’t tell what they did. The second thing is, Jim, you won’t let them be afraid of you. Never let them feel intimidated by you. You see, God isn’t that way. He forgives us. He’s not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, of power, of a sound mind. And this is why the Holy Spirit enables us to cry, Abba, Father. And God doesn’t want us to be afraid of him. And when we make a person afraid of us, we’re not being like Jesus. Jesus puts people at ease. A person walks into a room and you see someone and they freeze and you say, good. That shows there’s a grudge there, unfinished business. The third step, you won’t let them feel guilty. You see, Joseph, when he forgave his brothers, he actually said, don’t be angry with yourselves. But we punish people by sending them on a guilt trip. And this brings up a very important point. A lot of people say you don’t have to forgive them until they’re sorry. But that’s the big cop out because chances are you will never have to forgive them because most people don’t even think they’ve done anything. If you go by the old covenant, yes, it’s tit for tat, like in the Middle East today. Tit for tat. Suicide, bombing, then revengeance, and then revengeance for that. But Jesus said, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. There was not a hint of revengeance at the cross. It takes a little bit of grace to forgive them if they’re sorry. Minimal grace, but it takes a lot of grace to forgive them if they’re not sorry. And total forgiveness is when you won’t let them feel guilty.
SPEAKER 03 :
The things you’re sharing here go counter to every natural impulse in the human personality.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ve had people say to me, I have never seen a miracle. I’ve never seen a person healed from cancer or a blind person healed. I say to them, total forgiveness is a miracle that will eclipse anything you’ve ever heard of because this is right against nature. But the one who does it, the reward is incalculable and the peace and the joy. I might tell you that many years ago, I had a spiritual experience with the Lord when I was pastor of a church in Tennessee. Driving in my car one day, I had what I can only call a Damascus Road experience. The glory of the Lord filled the car. I was given such a peace. I didn’t know it was possible in this life. Now, my reason for mentioning it is… Within a year, I’d lost that. I tried every way to get it back. I started praying more and it didn’t mean no harm. I started tithing. That didn’t mean no harm. I thought of any way to get it. Do you know when I went through this crisis and I forgave those people? That joy came back, and I had forgotten what it was like. I can tell you right now, it is no small thing to do. It’s like climbing Mount Everest. Few people do it, but the reward is wonderful. Step number four, you let them save face. You know what Joseph said to his brothers? They had betrayed him 22 years before, sold him to the Ishmaelites. He said to them, it wasn’t you who did it. God did it. He intended it for good. Yeah, yeah. God meant it for good. God meant it for good. They couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe what was happening. He could have crushed them. Oh. He had the power to do it. Do you know, when he was a 17-year-old teenager, he had dreams. And a dream was that those 11 brothers would bow to him. He always knew one day that dream would be fulfilled. But he thought that when it happened, he could say, gotcha. But instead, it was a new Joseph. He was broken. He sobbed. He says, come close to me. He wouldn’t let them be afraid of him. He didn’t want them to feel guilty. And now he let them save face. It wasn’t you who did it. God did it. And they were overwhelmed. Total forgiveness is when the person who hurt you doesn’t even know it was a problem.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mm-hmm. Boy, that is tough to deal with. I’m sure you, like me, have had occasions to lash out at somebody. The last thing I wanted to do was to forgive them to the degree that they didn’t even know that I’d been hurt and not to hurt back.
SPEAKER 02 :
Total forgiveness is you don’t even let them feel guilty and don’t even let them know it was a problem. You base a lot of the book on that story of Joseph and his brothers. The basis for my objective test, Jim, is the story, Genesis 45, Joseph forgiving his brothers. It’s all there. Joseph was a type of Christ.
SPEAKER 03 :
He certainly was. Which means that when you read of him, you think of Christ. And that’s the way Jesus forgave us totally.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, number five. Number five, you protect them from their darkest secret and greatest fear. Now, Joseph has said, you didn’t do it, God did it. Now these brothers are suddenly saying, oh, I know what’s going to happen. He’s going to make us go back to Canaan and tell our father Jacob what we did. Jim, they’d rather die. They’d rather die than have to do that. Joseph knew that, and it’s so beautiful. Read it in Genesis 45. He writes the script for them. He tells them what to say. He won’t let them tell what… those brothers did. He won’t let them tell their father, and he assures them that what they did, the father will never know. And most of us have some information about another person. We could hurt them with it. Tell me what the script was. The script was, he says, you go back to Canaan, and here’s what you say to my father. Joseph is now prime minister of Egypt or words to that effect. Hurry. Don’t delay. Come and live in the land of Goshen. And there I will look after you and take care of you. Come at once. End of story. That’s all they were allowed to say. They could never tell their father. And, you know, they didn’t want to. And he wouldn’t let them.
SPEAKER 03 :
And what a story Joseph could have made them tell of how they sold him into slavery. They killed an animal and soaked his coat in blood and told him that Joseph was dead. I mean, what a horrible plot. And they could not even tell them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s the way Jesus is with us. He covers for us. And that’s what the blood of Jesus does. It washes away all sin. And God is not keen to yank that skeleton out of the closet. God totally forgives. Number six. Number six. It’s a life sentence. What I mean by that is you have to keep doing it. The husband says to the wife, I thought you forgave me. She says, well, that was yesterday. What happened was 17 years later, old Jacob died. And now the brothers are so afraid. This time, Joseph is going to go for them. And they make up a story. And they say, look, before our father died, he told us to tell you, please forgive us for what we did. He says, I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Look here. I told you 17 years ago I forgave you. I forgave you then. I forgive you now. It’s in Genesis chapter 50, which shows he still did it. It’s something you have to do. And this is the genius of Joseph and the reason God could trust him with such a lofty position. He totally forgave those brothers. And he didn’t do it just once and get them there in Egypt, and now he goes for them. No, it was something he did. And I say to anybody, you will have to keep doing this as long as you live because after you do it once, a week or two later, you say to yourself, you know, these people are going to get off the hook. They’re not going to get caught, and you get all upset. I remember that in the situation where I had to forgive, After a few weeks, it dawned on me how they had done what they did, and they’re not going to get caught, and I’d get so upset, and I’d lose that peace. And then I’d forgive them again, and I got the peace back. And then I’d remember, they’re not going to get caught, I’d lose the peace. And I had it back and forth, and I came to a decision, the peace is better. Paul said that love keeps no record of wrongs. That’s a key verse. Oh, that’s so hard. Why do we keep records? So we can prove this. Husband says to the wife, I will remember that. And he keeps his word. Do you know this teaching would heal any marriage by sundown? By sundown. If both will stop pointing the finger. It’s a choice. Total forgiveness is a choice. And by the way, don’t be surprised if the people you have to forgive are those that you’re closest to. Sometimes it’s the Christian. It’s the godly. Did you ever hear that poem? Living with the saints above, oh, that will be glory. Living with the saints below, well, that’s another story. Number seven, we just got time for it. Number seven, you pray for them. And you don’t just say, Lord, I commit them to you. No, you pray for them that God will bless them. Bless them. Let them off the hook. You know, Jesus didn’t say, I forgive you. He says, Father, you forgive them. And when you pray for them to be blessed and you do it from the heart. You’re there.
SPEAKER 03 :
You were talking, R.T., about Joseph not letting them off the hook, his brothers off the hook. I’m not going to let you off the hook. We’re not through with this conversation. And we’re out of time, but there’s so much more to talk about. Will you be with us again next time? Be delighted. I want to talk first about what forgiveness is not. Because you have listed many things that forgiveness is not what people think it is. And we’ll talk about that next time. Thank you, my friend. Appreciate you writing the book and coming to share those ideas with us. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
True freedom isn’t found in waiting for others to admit that they’ve hurt us. It comes when we choose to quietly let go, following the example of Joseph with his brothers and Christ with each of us. You’re listening to Family Talk. Our special guest today has been Dr. R.T. Kendall. And be sure to join us again next time for part two of this dynamic conversation as Dr. Kendall explains to Dr. Dobson what forgiveness is not. Now, if you missed any part of today’s program, you can visit us online at drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. You can easily share this broadcast with a friend or a loved one from our website. Keep in mind, you can also share it from your smartphone, either using our website or the official Dr. James Dobson Family Institute app. And speaking of applications for your smartphone, we have exciting news to share. You can be encouraged with Practical daily messages that prioritize God and family in every area of life with our brand new Family app from the James Dobson Family Institute. The new JDFI Multilingual app provides you with convenient access to Dr. Dobson’s biblically-based teaching, including marriage and parenting podcasts, and the popular newly remastered Dr. Dobson Minute. Now, these can be personalized to your interest. They can be saved in your library and quickly shared with those you love. Now, I mentioned that the JDFI Family app is now available as a multilingual app. It’s currently available on all Apple devices in English and Spanish. It will default to your phone’s current language setting. And then coming up later this month, we’ll be adding the Android version as well along with three additional languages that’ll all be released all throughout 2025 as we seek to reach millions of people for the Lord. For more information on how you can download the new Dr. James Dobson Multilingual Family App, go to drjamesdobson.org, or you can find it in the Apple Store right now. Of course, you’ll be able to find it in Google Play once the year wears on. Keep in mind you can also connect with us through social media for daily inspiration and updates. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube to join in our growing community of families who are standing together and standing stronger in the Lord. Please know that throughout the year we receive countless messages from listeners about how certain Family Talk programs have touched their lives. And while many have already requested our 2024 Best of Broadcasts collection, there’s still time for you to receive yours. Go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash Family Talk and we’ll be happy to send you the six CD set as our way of thanking you for your gift of any amount in support of the ministry of Family Talk. That’s drjamesdobson.org. jamesdobson.org, or you can give your gift over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, thanks for making us a part of your day. Be sure to tune in again next time when Dr. Dobson continues his conversation with Dr. R.T. Kendall on the important topic of forgiveness. You won’t want to miss it coming up right here next time on Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
