The Power of Forgiveness

James Love Story

James Love is a fresh, young artist, a singer/songwriter with an incredible story of hope. We had the honor and privilege of interviewing him shortly after the 10-year anniversary of the day he nearly lost his life in an assault. His story of forgiveness and redemption is much more than a compilation of nice words. He shares his authentic relationship with the Father. And there’s a richness in the statements he makes in recalling the struggles he’s faced over the years since the incident that nearly took his life. We invite you to see what he has to say about his decade-long journey, and we hope you’ll be encouraged when you hear this intimate story of how God made real beauty from the ashes in the aftermath of the darkest day of his life.

God is good, all the time. But if we don’t know Him, chances are we also don’t know that He’s the good, good Father most people in the church sing about. James Love grew up in the church; he was in and out of it during high school years, but he didn’t really know God. He just knew of Him and wasn’t really excited about Him.

After high school, James went to William Jessup University where he was very active. He played soccer and he had big dreams he planned to follow. He wanted to fly planes. He wanted to be a firefighter. He wanted to be a missionary overseas. He wanted to travel the world. He just wanted to do everything; he was a big-time thrill-seeker. God had a plan too.

With everything going for James, or so it seemed, the worst happened. On December 5, 2008, three men nearly beat him to death with a 4x4 in an open lot; he barely survived that day. He didn’t know it back then, but this is what jumpstarted his journey in discovering who God really is, though it didn’t start out pretty and it didn’t happen overnight.

James says, “There are so many things that happen neurologically, mentally—even spiritually or physically—from injuries. I was so filled with anger and rage. Naturally, when you have a head injury, you become very angry and you experience an exaggeration of every emotion. And, depression is very, very intense. Also, dealing with continual neck pain…I had a lot of rage fits where I would just break stuff or just yell and scream or just throw my skateboard as far as I could. I was very angry at where I was in life. I felt like God had stolen so much of not only my dreams (the plans that I had made, the hopes that I had built), but [I felt] like He had also stolen my identity. So I retaliated. (Naturally, I think we all do that.) I would just yell at Him when no one was home and just curse Him. I felt such guilt when I did it, but it’s just like when you’re venting to a friend or something. You have to let it out.”

The doctors told James that he was going to be better in a year, but he says that it was after that year marker that everything started to get really hard. Even after strictly limited activity, so much therapy laying on ice and visiting the chiropractor so much that it nearly became his second home, the doctors completely shifted their stance. They began to tell him that he likely wouldn’t get any better, that he had to learn how to live that way. He says, “When you’re being told you’re never going to see a change, it’s like your hope is gone. The minute I was told [that I wasn’t] going to have [healing and that I was] going to have to live with this, it was just [devastating]. . .having those things [that I’d dreamed of doing] written off was like losing my identity. Funny enough, I’d gone from such an active lifestyle of just being crazy and being able to do everything and anything to being able to do almost nothing. That’s when I picked up the guitar and realized this was something I can do.”

“After that year mark,” James says, “when they said ‘You’re not going to get better and you’re just going to need to figure out how to live with this,’ I spiraled out of control. Suicide was on my mind like every minute of every day for months. It became so heavy that it was like, Well, maybe everyone’s better off without me. And I think that’s the thought that gets everybody, or thinking I’m never going to change.” Since the assault, James says, “I’ve been in pain every single day from then on—that’s thousands and thousands of days. And it was also so many times of walking through being so angry at God and feeling like He had abandoned me. At one point, I didn’t want to have anything to do with Him. [I would think] God is the one who screwed me over, He’s the one who did this to me.”

James walked through so many things. He dealt with so much shame; he was addicted to shameful things. “For years,” he says, “I was like, Oh my goodness, I don’t know how to be free. I hate this; I hate myself. When you start committing shameful acts, you turn that on yourself and you start to hate yourself. You start to loathe yourself. And it seems like an impossible pit to get out of.” So overwhelmed with thoughts of negativity and suicide, he finally reached his breaking point. He woke up one morning and realized he couldn’t do one more day. Barely coping with all the pain, he felt like he wasn’t even living; he was just existing. And not having figured out the meaning of his life, he began to write his final letter to his family and loved ones.

But as James wrote his heart out, he heard a distinct voice that interrupted him. He heard God say, “Hey, give me one more chance; you need to look at Me.” That simple, loving intervention was all it took. At first, James almost brushed it off with thoughts like “Why would I do that? God’s the one who let this happen to me.” But, he was at his lowest of lows, and eventually he figured that he had nothing left to lose. Reluctantly, he gave God a chance. He says that he opened up a Bible to a verse he’d never heard of before that moment. He read Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” And in that moment, he realized there was something more, that he wasn’t alone anymore.

James realized after a while that he had to walk through it. He says, “I had to walk through just knowing that God—He was fighting for me. I had to see that, that God wasn’t only my Savior, but He was also as near as a friend. That was a key part: transitioning into seeing that after I’d come from that place of suicide.”

Choosing life, however, didn’t make the physical pain go away. But he discovered that getting to know and being close to God was all he ever needed. “Over years of struggling,” says James, “(the small moments of just facing pain over and over and over again)—feeling like God, am I ever going to see the end of this?—it developed in me a dependence on His strength. So many years, just minutes, of pushing forward and trusting Him and saying God, you’ve got a hold on me. God, you’ve gotta be my strength—that developed in me a dependence on Him. And I think that that helped—that brought me courage. I was really learning how to let Him be my strength, learning how to let Him be close to me.”

With passion in his voice, James says, “Experiencing the joy of ever-moving forward and deeper into who He is and knowing He’s so close and that’s all I ever need, that’s actually all I ever wanted. To know that you’re forever, indefinitely, for eternity, moving forward into deeper joy and deeper love with Him—there’s nothing more thrilling or exciting than that. So when we face fears, it’s scary. But it doesn’t compare to His might and His power. I just feel like it’s a miracle in my life and it’s a grace.”

James continues to say, “The reason I’m able to face any of those things has nothing to do with my strength. I’m a very weak man, but I know and trust that God—His strength—is perfected in me. Until we become weak, we can never have strength enough to face anything because we can’t do anything on our own. We’re nothing without Him. He is the very blood in our veins, the life in our lungs.”

God transformed the way James thought and he saw things differently than he ever had before. He’d gone from hating Him and wanting nothing to do with Him because he was so disgusted by “Christians” and the way they were treating each other (and the way they were treating him) that he equated God with that. But he learned that God’s so different than he thought.

Redemption

James sees things so differently now and believes “as long as we’re alive. . .it’s wrong to say that our hearts won’t ever change. And if we believe it, there is always hope in God, if we have faith enough to say ‘God, everything in me sees that nothing’s going to change, and I’m a lost cause.’ But I think that’s the exact place where we finally lose all sense of pride and we’re finally letting go of trying to save ourselves…and letting go of any inclination that we can change or be what we think we should be and just say, ‘God, You make me—You make me what You want. You do what You do in my life, no matter what that means.’”

From James’ place of newfound freedom through real redemption, he reminds us of what really matters—no matter what we end up facing, God is always with us. “I think when we just live with Him, and we embrace Him, [we] start having courage. When you know Him and you are standing next to Him and you know He’s in you, you’re not scared of anything else.” With a twist in life like James’, only God could author a story where he would come out on the other side not poisoned by unforgiveness. It’s through his powerful testimony that we all can be reminded of how incredibly important it is to forgive. And if God could set James completely free, so could He for you and me.