We Couldn’t Do It Without Him
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." — Ephesians 2:8
"Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" — Matthew 19:26
We have walked a long road together in this series.
We started with the honest admission that forgiveness begins with a choice — and that the first answer rising up in most of us is no. We sat in the conviction of realizing that God forgives us freely and completely and still asks us to extend that same grace to others. We talked about the scope of forgiveness — everyone, everything, everywhere, every time — and we named clearly that forgiveness does not mean staying in what harms you.
And now we arrive at the post that makes all of the others possible.
Because here is the truth that holds this entire conversation together:
We cannot do any of this on our own.
Not one bit of it.
The Weight I Didn't Know I Was Carrying
For a long time, when it came to forgiveness, I carried something I didn't even realize was there.
The weight of figuring it out myself.
I knew forgiveness was something God was asking of me. I understood the theology. I had read the scriptures. I had done the work of deciding I was willing. And still — underneath all of that — was this quiet, exhausting assumption that the doing of it was on me. That I needed to find the strength somewhere inside myself to make it happen. That if I just tried hard enough, prayed long enough, journaled enough pages, I could manufacture my way to forgiveness.
And then something shifted.
The Holy Spirit downloaded something into my spirit — not loudly, not dramatically, but with the kind of quiet clarity that you know immediately is not your own thought. And it was this:
Just like love. Just like faith. Just like everything else God asks of you — you cannot do this without Him.
And I felt something release in me that I didn't even know was clenched.
Relief. Sudden, real, almost physical relief.
Not because forgiveness suddenly became easy. But because I realized I didn't have to do it alone. I didn't have to figure it out alone. I didn't have to be strong enough alone. God wasn't standing at the finish line waiting to see if I could get there by myself. He was right there at the beginning saying — let Me help you with this.
That relief was immediate. The understanding of it was gradual. And the deeper I went into that understanding the more I realized — this was another form of surrender.
I was surrendering my need to understand forgiveness on my own terms and letting God teach me what only He could teach me about it.
Why We Need God To Forgive At All
Let me take you to two scriptures that changed everything for me.
The first is Matthew 19:26. Jesus looks at His disciples and says — with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
Now the context of that passage is a conversation about how difficult it is for people to follow God's commands on their own. And Jesus's point is not that we should try harder. His point is that we were never meant to do it alone. In fact the entire reason Jesus had to come and die on the cross is because no person — not David, not Moses, not any of the great figures of Scripture — could ever fully get it right on their own. Humanity needed God to intervene. Humanity needed a Savior because we were not capable of saving ourselves.
If that is true of salvation — and it is — then why would forgiveness be any different?
The second scripture is Ephesians 2:8-9. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Read that again slowly. It is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God.
We needed God's grace just to understand that we are sinners. We needed God's intervention just to be made right with Him. We could not even see our own need without His help.
So if we needed God just to recognize our own sin — how much more do we need Him to do what He has called us to do? How much more do we need Him when He asks us to forgive the person who hurt us most deeply? How much more do we need Him when He asks us to look at ourselves with grace instead of condemnation?
The answer is — completely. Entirely. In every way.
Forgiveness is not a human achievement. It is a divine collaboration. It begins with our willingness — as we talked about in “Forgiveness Is a Choice, Not a Feeling” — but it is completed by God's power working in us. We bring the yes. He does what only He can do with it.
The Master of Forgiveness
Here is something I want you to sit with.
If you wanted to learn how to paint you would study under a master painter. If you wanted to learn how to write you would learn from someone who has spent their life with words. You go to the source. You go to the one who knows it best.
So if you want to learn the art of forgiveness — and it is an art, it takes practice and patience and returning to it again and again — there is no better teacher than the master of forgiveness Himself.
God.
From Genesis to Revelation, God has been demonstrating forgiveness. Through every act of rebellion, every broken covenant, every time humanity turned away — He kept coming. He kept loving. He kept making a way back. He chased us with His love across the entire span of human history and then He allowed His Son to die for us so that the gap between us and Him could be closed forever.
That is not the posture of someone who forgives reluctantly. That is not someone gritting their teeth and doing it anyway. That is a God whose very nature is forgiveness. Whose love is so vast and so relentless that even our worst couldn't stop it.
And that God — that same God — is the one walking with you through your forgiveness journey. He is not asking you to do something He doesn't understand. He is asking you to follow Him into something He has already mastered. He always works out the logistics when He calls us to something. And He has called us to forgiveness. So He will see it through — in you, with you, for you.
You just have to keep saying yes.
What God Taught Me About Forgiving Myself
I want to close this series with something personal. Something that took me longer to receive than almost anything else God has shown me.
Learning to forgive myself.
For a long time I had a very distorted understanding of what it meant to be a good Christian. I equated faithfulness with self-sacrifice to the point of self-neglect. I thought that putting myself last was Christlike. That minimizing my own needs and wants and pain was somehow holy.
And then God showed me something through the parable of the lost sheep.
Jesus talks about a shepherd who has a hundred sheep and loses one. And instead of staying with the ninety-nine and cutting his losses, he leaves them and goes after the one. He searches until he finds it. And when he does he doesn't scold it for wandering. He puts it on his shoulders and carries it home rejoicing.
I am that one sheep. And so are you.
When I truly let that land — when I stopped reading it as a nice story and started receiving it as something personal and specific and meant for me — something cracked open.
He values me. Not just humanity in general. Not just the collective. Me specifically. Individually. Enough to leave the ninety nine and come after just me.
And if that is true — if Jesus would have gone to the cross for just one of us and still considered it worth it — then I do not get to treat myself as though I am worthless. I do not get to neglect my heart and call it holiness. I do not get to let others treat me as though I am disposable and call it grace.
God called me His. And He is not a liar.
Which means I get to take myself seriously. My heart matters to Him. My mind matters to Him. My spirit matters to Him. These are not small things. These are things God does not take lightly — and neither should I.
Forgiving myself meant receiving what God already said about me as true. It meant agreeing with Him about my value instead of agreeing with everyone who had ever made me feel like I had none. It meant understanding that His grace toward me is not a one time event at salvation — it is ongoing, daily, as many times as I need it, for as long as I need it.
I felt loved. Held. Deeply cared for in a way I hadn't let myself receive before.
And that feeling — that settled, rooted, quietly powerful feeling of being loved by God exactly as you are — is what makes forgiving others possible. Because when you know how loved you are, when you have truly received it, you have something real to give. You are not forgiving from an empty place. You are forgiving from a place so full that it can afford to overflow.
A Note Before We Close
Before I send you off with this closing prayer, I want to say something that I think matters more than anything else I've written in this series.
I am not writing this from the other side of forgiveness. I am not someone who has it all figured out and is looking back from a place of complete resolution. I am writing this from the middle of it — still learning, still choosing, still having days where the old hurt resurfaces and I have to go back to God and say, okay, help me again.
I share that not to undermine anything in these posts — I believe every word. But I share it because I never want you to read this series and feel like forgiveness is something I mastered and you just need to catch up to. We are in this together. We are both students sitting at the feet of the same Teacher. And He is patient with both of us.
So wherever you are — whether you are just beginning to consider the idea of forgiveness or you are somewhere deep in the middle of practicing it — you are not behind. You are exactly where God can meet you. And He will.
What I Want You To Carry From This Series
We have covered so much ground together. And I want to bring it all home with this.
Forgiveness is one of the hardest things God will ever ask of you. It is not natural. It is not easy. It does not always feel fair. And you absolutely cannot do it on your own.
But you were never supposed to.
You bring the willingness. God brings the power. You bring the yes — however small, however shaky, however gritted-teeth it might be. And God takes that yes and does what only He can do with it. He teaches you. He holds you. He shifts your perspective slowly and then suddenly. He shows you the person who hurt you through different eyes. He shows you yourself through different eyes. And He walks with you through every single choosing — every time the pain resurfaces and you have to decide again.
That is not a burden. That is grace.
So wherever you are in your forgiveness journey today — whether you are at the very beginning still asking do I even want to, or somewhere in the middle still choosing day by day, or on the other side of it looking back at what God has done in you — I want you to know this:
You are not alone in it. You never were.
And the God who chased humanity with His love from the very first page of Scripture to the very last is the same God who is right here with you in this.
He is patient. He is able. And He is the best teacher forgiveness has ever had.
"Lord, I cannot do this without You. I don't fully know how. But I am willing to let You show me. Take my yes and do what only You can do with it. Teach me to forgive the way You forgive. Help me to receive Your love deeply enough that I have something real to give. And remind me, as many times as I need it, that You called me Yours. And that changes everything."
Until next time — and always, Abi 🤎
This concludes the Forgiveness Series. Thank you for walking through this with me. If these posts have stirred something in you, I'd love to hear from you. You can find me at AbigailBadu.com and on Instagram. You are not alone — and healing is always worth it.
If you or someone you know needs support, please reach out:
National Domestic Violence Hotline — Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) | Text START to 88788 | thehotline.org
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline — Call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) | online.rainn.org
Love is Respect — Call 1-866-331-9474 | Text LOVEIS to 22522 | loveisrespect.org
StrongHearts Native Helpline — Call or Text 1-844-762-8483 | strongheartshelpline.org
If you are in immediate danger, please call 911.
Getting safe is not a lack of faith. It is wisdom. And you deserve both. 🤍
