You do not have to finish healing before you can begin forgiving. You also do not have to fake a peace you do not feel. This guide is for the person who is still hurting and wants to walk toward forgiveness honestly, at a pace God sets rather than the pace other people expect. Over about a week, it moves through four kinds of work: grieving with God, telling the truth about the wound, setting the boundaries wisdom calls for, and slowly handing the debt over to God.
You can use it alone with a notebook, or in a small group that has agreed to keep what is shared private. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone your story. Where a prompt asks you to write, the writing is yours. Where a question appears, you can answer it silently, answer it aloud, or pass.
The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields and Sheila Wise Rowe, a trained therapist and the author of Healing Racial Trauma.
Start where you actually are
Many people come to forgiveness already tired, because someone has told them to hurry. Rowe questions that pressure directly. Speaking of “this rush to forgive,” she says plainly, “I wonder about that.”
Her doubt is not doubt about the command. She is clear that “We absolutely are called to forgive.” She even grants that “forgiveness can be just an act of obedience that Lord, you say to forgive, so I’m gonna forgive.” What she questions is the clock. Her starting point is where forgiveness begins: “the initial conversation is between us and the Lord.”
That changes how you can begin this week. Forgiveness does not start with a statement to the person who hurt you, or with a report to your church that you are fine. It starts in a conversation with God, and a conversation can include the words you are afraid to say.
Before going further, take a few minutes with this first prompt. Write one sentence that tells the truth about where you are today. It might be anger. It might be numbness. It might be, I want to forgive and I cannot yet. Do not edit it into something more acceptable.
Grief that goes to God
The first days of the week are for grief. That can sound like a detour from forgiveness. Scripture treats it as part of the road.
Read Psalm 56:8 slowly: “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” This is poetry, so read it as poetry. The psalmist is not describing a literal container. He is saying that God has noticed every tear and kept a record of it. Rowe draws on this image when she says of God, “He collects our tears as in a bottle.” Her conclusion follows: if God takes our pain that seriously, “what is the rush?”
Now read John 11:32-36. Mary falls at Jesus’s feet after her brother’s death, weeping. Jesus is troubled in spirit, and then the text says simply: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). This is narrative. It describes what Jesus did rather than handing down a rule for every griever. Still, the description matters. Jesus was about to raise Lazarus, and he wept first. He did not treat Mary’s sorrow as a problem to correct. Rowe points to this same scene, noting that Jesus gave Mary and Martha space to grieve instead of telling them to move on.
A practice for the first two or three days: write a lament. The Psalms give a shape for it. Psalm 13 opens with a complaint, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). It moves to a request and only later to trust. You can follow the same order. Tell God what happened and how it feels. Ask him for what you need. If you can, name one thing you still trust about him. If you cannot reach that last part yet, stop where you are. A lament that ends in the middle is still a prayer.
Question 1. What would change in how you pray if you believed God was keeping your tears rather than waiting for them to stop?
Telling the truth about the wound
Midweek, the work shifts from feeling the wound to looking at it. Lisa Fields offers the key idea here. She describes “grief being a form of discovery.” A hurt can seem one size at first and turn out to go deeper. Sometimes, she says, the pain attaches to something older that was never dealt with. In her own experience, she noticed that a person who did not do much to her had “stepped on something that is unhealed in my life that I have to discover.”
That is why speed can cost you something. Fields puts it this way: “if you give to forgive too soon, you actually miss the discovery portion.” You might release the surface offense while the deeper wound stays buried. Her picture of the work is active, a willingness to “excavate offense to see what is the root of the offense.”
Rowe adds two things that keep this from becoming lonely or grim. First, “we’re not sitting in it alone.” Second, it is acceptable to bring God your unreadiness. She says “we can honestly go to God and say, I’m not ready.” Then she gives the request that turns that admission into a prayer: “Please help me to discover what’s really going on here.” And she adds, “And the Lord honors that.”
A practice for this part of the week: on one page, write down what was actually done to you, as specifically as you can bear. Not what it meant, not what you think of the person, just what happened. On a second page, write whether this pain feels familiar. When have you felt this particular kind of hurt before? You do not need to finish either page in one sitting. If this stirs up memories that overwhelm you, stop, and consider bringing them to a counselor rather than working through them alone. Seeking that help is not a failure of faith. Caring for your mind is part of stewarding the life God gave you.
Question 2. When you look at what happened plainly, is the wound larger, smaller, or different from what you assumed when it first happened?
Question 3. If part of this pain belongs to an older wound, what might it mean to forgive the person in front of you for their part only, and not for everything they touched?
Boundaries are not unforgiveness
Many people avoid forgiveness because they think it means going back. It does not. Forgiveness is something you can do with God even if the other person never apologizes. A restored relationship needs two people and real repair, and sometimes it should not happen at all.
Rowe is careful here. “I’m not one to just say, well, you just need to just deal with your family,” she says. Christians can pray for their families and work toward healing with them, but sometimes it does not happen, and “in some instances, it’s not even safe.”
She also gives a useful way to judge whether a person or a group can be trusted again. She does not talk about perfectly safe places. “I use safe enough,” she says, because “no place is a hundred percent safe.” Her advice is to enter slowly, “slowly entering in versus you jumping in,” and to watch how people treat one another and you. The question is “not what you hope it would be, but what actually is it?”
Read Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Rowe cites this passage when she talks about deciding where to trust. Proverbs are wise principles, not guarantees, so read it as a call to bring your decisions to God rather than a promise that every choice will turn out painless.
If the harm you are carrying is abuse, and especially if you are still in danger, forgiving never means returning to it. Tell a trusted person. If it fits your situation, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233.
Question 4. Is there a boundary you have been afraid to keep because you thought a forgiving Christian would not need one? What is the boundary actually protecting?
Releasing the debt, one evening at a time
The last part of the week is release. Scripture often pictures sin as a debt, and forgiving as giving up your claim to collect. Paul tells believers to be “forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). The standard is God’s forgiveness of us.
Releasing the claim does not mean pretending no wrong was done. Read Romans 12:19: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” The verse forbids personal revenge. It does not say the wrong does not matter. It says the reckoning belongs to God. Peter describes Jesus doing exactly this under unjust suffering: he “committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23).
That matters because forgiveness has often been misused. Lisa Fields names the problem directly: in many places “forgiveness is used to avoid accountability.” Handing your claim to God is different. You stop trying to collect, and you leave the judging to the one who sees everything. A crime can still be reported. A leader can still be held accountable. You are giving up the role of avenger, not the truth.
A practice for the last few evenings: before you sleep, write one specific thing the person owes you. An apology. Years. Your sense of safety. Then, if you are willing, pray something like this in your own words: Lord, this is what was taken. I am not able to collect it, and I am tired of trying. I am giving this claim to you, because you judge rightly. If you cannot pray it honestly yet, pray Rowe’s prayer instead and ask God to help you see what is really going on.
Rowe also gives a simple daily question for a season when new hurts keep arriving: “what do I need to let go of what’s being tapped into.” You may find yourself releasing the same debt again tomorrow. That is not proof the first release was fake. Wounds that run deep are often let go of in layers.
Question 5. What part of this debt feels easiest to release, and what part do you still want to hold? What would you need from God to loosen your grip on the second?
When waiting becomes a hiding place
There is a fair objection to all of this. Someone could keep saying “I’m still healing” for years while bitterness settles in. That risk is real.
Rowe’s answer is not a deadline. It is discernment in company. The task, she says, is “really discerning and having people speak into that and help you to discern, is this the time to do that or not?” Alongside that question sits another: “how is it that the Lord wants to take care of your pain?” For some people, she adds, the answer for now is “taking the time to work through your feelings.”
So the test is not how fast you are moving. It is whether the wound is open to God and to wise people, or closed off from them. Rowe admits that opening up is costly. Talking it through “and actually crying with someone who cares about you and loves you is scary.” But a delay that you bring to God and to trusted people is part of the road. A delay that keeps everyone out is a different thing.
Question 6. Who in your life could help you discern whether this is the time to forgive, or a time to keep grieving? What would make that person safe enough to ask?
For anyone leading or walking alongside
If you use this guide with a group, agree on privacy before anyone speaks, and say out loud that passing is always allowed. Do not ask people to describe what was done to them. The writing prompts are for private use, and the discussion can stay with the Scripture and the questions. Leave silence after a question rather than filling it.
If you are standing beside someone else’s wound, resist the urge to hurry them so the room feels better. Rowe raised this concern about a grieving mother who was pressured after her son’s killer was publicly forgiven by another family member. Her question for onlookers was whether they could “give space for this mom to just grieve.” That question applies to every friend, pastor and small group. If someone in your group discloses ongoing abuse or says they are thinking of harming themselves, set the guide aside, stay with them, and help them reach a trusted person, emergency help or, in the US, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
When the week ends, you may not feel finished. Go back to the sentence you wrote on the first day. Read it again, and write a new one beside it. The distance between them, however small, is worth noticing. Then carry one question into the next week: what is the next honest thing you can bring to God about this wound?