The Healing Power of Forgiveness
If you've been the victim of trauma or cruelty of any kind and you're struggling to heal, this episode reveals the pathway to healing. Mark Sowersby is a sexual and physical abuse survivor and he's a pastor and author of Forgiving the Nightmare and co-author of Letters to the Weary.
You can find Forgiving the Nightmare here: https://amzn.to/3E2Bf2X
You can find Letters to the Weary here: https://amzn.to/3WjCxgj
To learn more about Forgiving the Nightmare Ministry or see the film, visit: https://forgivingthenightmare.com/
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Transcript - The Healing Power of Forgiveness
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Today we are tackling a very difficult topic. We're going to be talking about forgiveness.
Forgiveness is something that can be an uncomfortable subject for most of us. It not only can
affect our health, but it can also affect our spiritual walk, and sometimes it can
interfere with our ability to be able to hear God clearly. So it's really important for us to be
able to understand what forgiveness means and the freedom that it can bring. And I've brought a
guest on our program to talk about this, and he will be with us in just a moment, so don't go
anywhere. Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire
fathers everywhere, to take great pride in their role, and a challenge society to understand
how important fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.
Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero. Greetings everyone. Thank you so much for joining me.
I brought a guest on. His name is Mark Sowersby. Mark is a pastor and also the author of a book
on forgiveness, and we're going to be talking about that book later on in the program.
Mark, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge. Oh, thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be with you. Well, let's not waste a minute. Let's jump right into your story.
How does your story begin? Well, our story, our topic today is about forgiveness.
And in my story, there was an offense and abuse and a sorrow. And that's what I'm going to share
with you right now. I'm going to share with you what it's like for me when I grew up in a,
in a home full of abuse. You know, it's a subject that many men don't want to talk about. We,
we kind of run from it. We kind of hope it goes away. We, we get busy with other stuff, but, you know,
when I was seven years old, my mother would marry a man 20 years, her younger, and he would come into
our home and he would groom me. He would abuse me. He would molest my body. He would stab me and burn
me, summon the other men for their own sexual pleasures. And this was the atmosphere that I lived in
from the time I was seven to 14 years old. So that was my trauma. That was my nightmare and the pain
that went with that, the sorrow that went with that, the ugliness that went with that that trapped me
for many, many years. I'll just share this as much as I can remember that first night when he came
installed my innocence for me. I can remember the crackle of the threshold and the weight of his body,
the smell of his breath. And as much as that hurt his evil and ugly as that was, he left me with even a
deeper wound when he finished his abuse. He, he told me it was my fault. He told
