Faith Love ForgivenessChikamu

A Supernatural Forgiveness

Be gentle and ready to forgive; never hold grudges. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Colossians 3:13 TLB

Louis “Louie” Zamperini lived out an incredible story of forgiveness. In high school, Louie was a phenomenal runner, earning a spot on the 1936 US Olympic Team in Berlin running in the 5,000 meter race. He finished eighth in the race, but because of his performance during the final lap, he was awarded a new lap record. He was set to run again in the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo, but when World War II started, Louie began training to be a bombardier in the United States Army Air Corps.

Louie served as a bombardier on B-24 Liberators in the Pacific. On one of his search-and-rescue missions, his plane crashed into the ocean. Louie and a few of his surviving comrades began fighting for their lives, drifting on a life raft at sea. Most died of starvation and injuries from the crash. After forty-seven days on the open water, Louie, barely alive, was captured by the Japanese navy.

Louie became a prisoner of war (POW) in the Japanese war camps where he was tortured and deprived of food, water, and medical care. He was brutally beaten, interrogated, and routinely humiliated. And because Louie was an Olympian, he was transferred, to be under the watch of The Bird—the nickname of Sergeant Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The Bird became Louie’s personal torturer until the war ended, two years after his plane crashed into the sea.

When Louie returned home, his healing journey was slow and hard. During that journey he met and married Cynthia Applewhite. Although in love, he fell into alcoholism while fighting the deep wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder, which had never been treated. His marriage was failing, yet Cynthia convinced Louie to attend a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. While listening to Billy Graham preach, he accepted Jesus into his life.

Everything changed that night for Louie. He stopped drinking and restored his marriage. Then he did something even more remarkable—something not natural but supernatural. He began the process of forgiving those who had captured and brutally tortured him every single day for two years . . . including the one called The Bird.

Louie’s life was forever changed when Jesus entered his heart—broken as it was—and made him new.

We are never more like Christ than when we choose to forgive someone who has wronged us. Forgiveness isn’t a natural thing for us to do—it is a supernatural process that we do with God’s help. And the good news is, He designed us to need Him. As we see in Louie’s story, forgiveness is not dependent on a certain response from the offender. It is dependent on Jesus freeing us to be who He created us to be, fully and completely—free from the bonds of anger, resentfulness, bitterness, judgment, retaliation, and revenge. With Jesus as his Savior, Louie could be at peace.

When we don’t know how to begin to forgive, we can trust that Jesus does. We have a Savior who is gentle and kind, and He knows every detail of our past and every thought in our mind. Jesus will guide us in every step through forgiveness. God changes the heart. He alone brings peace that we cannot understand.

We are never more like Christ than when we choose to forgive someone who has wronged us.

SUSAN GOSS