Love Like You've Never Been Hurt

Hope, Healing and the Power of an Open Heart

Jentezen Franklin, Cherise Franklin

• Publisher: Chosen Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780800798642
• eBook ISBN: 9781493413515
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The human heart was created with a great capacity to love. But along with that comes a great capacity to feel pain. There is no denying that those who love us, who are closest to us, can wound us the most profoundly. That kind of pain can be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. And it can feel even more impossible to continue loving in the face of it. Yet that is exactly what we are called to do.

Sharing his own story of personal pain, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Jentezen Franklin shows us how to find the strength, courage, and motivation to set aside the hurt, see others as God sees them, and reach out in love. Through biblical and modern-day stories, he discusses different types of relational disappointment and heartache, and answers questions such as Why should I trust again? and How can I ever really forgive?

The walls we build around our hearts to cut us off from pain are the very walls that block us from seeing hope, receiving healing, and feeling love. Here are the tools and inspiration you need to tear down those walls, work through your wounds, repair damaged relationships, and learn to love like you've never been hurt.

Chapter One
Love Matters

Our daughter glared at my wife, Cherise, and me. Her eyes blazed with anger.

If you have ever raised a teenager, you know what I am talking about. I don’t know what it is, but most kids at this age seem to lose their minds for about six years.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” my daughter shouted.

I looked at her square in the face. “We’re going to work this out.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “No way! I’m out of here.”

“Oh, no! You are not going anywhere until we sit down and talk!” I said with clenched teeth.

The second our daughter turned toward our bedroom door, I jumped into position. Fullback position. Stretching out each arm, I blocked her path.

“You can’t trap me here!” our daughter yelled.

“Oh yes, we can,” I shot back, my arms waving wildly.

My frustration mounted, but my heart broke. Arguments like this one had taken place many times, it seemed, not just with this daughter, but with others as well.

During that particular episode, we were smack in the middle of a family crisis. Each day brought another fight. Some clashes were more disruptive than others. Some aroused deep sadness. Others harsh words.

It started when our oldest daughter went off to college. Growing up, she was a model child. But during the first few weeks of school, away from home, she began to stray. She wanted to see what it was like on the other side of church life. She got involved with the wrong crowd. And she made some of the worst choices that a young girl could make.

As the situation grew more serious, my wife and I knew we had to do something.

I will never forget the day I was putting the final touches on a sermon I was about to preach in thirty minutes. Cherise flew into the room, on a mission. The look on her face said it all.

“Jentezen, I’m going to get our daughter. Are you going to choose the church and stay and preach, or are you going to choose your daughter and come with me?”

The answer was obvious. I dropped what I was doing to take care of my family.

Cherise and I did not speak much on the three-hour drive to the university. Our daughter did not know we were coming, let alone coming to pull her out of school and bring her home. We didn’t know what to expect.

Once we arrived, Cherise phoned her. My wife asked what she was doing but did not mention we were there. I waited in the car while Cherise walked into the building where our daughter was. Suddenly, my wife saw her walking toward the lobby where she stood. The minute our daughter saw Cherise, she broke down. Collapsing to her knees, she began to sob uncontrollably.

“We’re taking you home,” Cherise said, gently. “Right now.”

And with those words, the three of us drove off-campus. None of us looked back. We did not even go to our daughter’s dorm and take anything with us; we left her room as is. The stuff did not matter. We wanted our baby girl home.

Once she settled back in with us, things got even worse in some ways. We begged and pleaded with her. We argued and screamed at her. We tried to control her with money. We took away her car. We forbade her to party and hang out with friends who were bad influences. Nothing worked. She just hardened more and more.

This constant contention began to affect the atmosphere of our home. We were always having arguments, confronting lies and deceptions. This crisis sucked the life out of my wife and me. Our hearts were broken. We felt little joy. We were different people, aged and emotionally exhausted.

At times Cherise and I disagreed on how we should discipline. This brought a friction into our marriage that was overwhelming. Satan’s strategy has never changed: divide and conquer. A house divided cannot stand.

My other children were enduring life in this war zone. They noticed quickly the change that came over Cherise and me. And they did not like it. Three of our kids were teenagers at the time and had their own stuff to deal with. It seemed every day we were battling a crisis of some sort with at least one of our children.

One such moment was the incident I wrote about at the beginning of this chapter. Let’s get back to it for a moment. When I was blocking my daughter from leaving the room, I could not help but wonder, When is this all going to end?

The argument escalated. I noticed my voice getting louder and tried hard to tame my tongue. It was not easy. Our daughter tried to make another move toward the closed bedroom door, but Cherise and I were determined. We stood fast, blocking her every turn.

Exasperated, she finally yelled, “If you don’t let me do what I want to do, I’m going to—” As she hurled a desperate and emotion-filled threat to harm herself, I shot back with words of my own. Of course, there was no legitimate truth to what she said—my wife and I knew it was typical teenage theatrics—but it was a tipping point that brought the dramatic exchange to full blast. All three of us were yelling at that point. The conversation was going nowhere, but the conflict was growing.

It went on like this for a while. At some point, Cherise left the room. When she stepped out into the hallway, she practically tripped over our two youngest children. Our youngest daughter was ten, and our youngest child and only son was nine. I cannot remember which one was doing what, but one of them was praying earnestly and the other pleading the blood of Jesus over and over. It was a tender moment.

As our daughter tells it, in overhearing the heated argument, she had taken it upon herself to run spiritual interference. She grabbed her brother from whatever he was doing and said, “You need to come with me to Mom and Dad’s room quick. The devil is in the house. We’ve got to go down there and pray!”

Our son nodded and followed suit. “Hey,” he piped up, as they dashed down the stairs to the first floor, “get the Bible. We need to take a Bible with us.”

Midstride, our daughter bobbed her head in agreement and ran back up to her room. When our son saw her bolting back down the stairs with her girlie-pink Bible, his eyes went wide. “No, no, no!” he said, shaking his head. “A pink Bible’s not going to work. The devil is really in this house! You’ve got to get a black Bible!”

Cherise and I burst out laughing when our daughter told us this story. It helped to take the edge off, briefly.

But even a cute story cannot mask a desperate reality.

The constant arguments and contention in our home fragmented our once-peaceful family dynamic. Strangely, as our family struggled to tread water and stay afloat, our church grew exponentially. Amazing doors began to open for the ministry. New multimillion-dollar buildings were built. My books became New York Times bestsellers. Christian TV networks began to broadcast our weekly sermons all over the world. All of this was happening while I was going through what felt like the valley of the shadow of death in my own home.

Looking back on how Cherise and I kept functioning, I can only say it was by the grace of God. Some Sundays, before I would preach, I would get on my knees in my office and just weep. “God,” I would say, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I’m afraid. I’m broken. I’m hurting. I feel like running away and never coming back. But I do not go in my name or my own power. I go in Your name and the power of Your Spirit. I will not give up the fight for my family. Help me. I belong to You. I’m Yours.” And when I would stand up and preach, God’s grace would come and the services would be powerful.

I have discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He cannot resist when we humbly and honestly admit how desperately we need Him. When we are empty vessels, He longs to fill us with His grace, love and goodness. This is God’s law of attraction.

I remember countless Sundays during which our kids accompanied us to church but made clear it was the last place they wanted to be. Never underestimate the power of just being there. When it seems like the Word is not working, it is. If you will work the Word, the Word will work. It will not return void. Whatever bad news we would receive about our teenage girls, we would keep on interceding, keep on bringing them to church, keep on marching them into the front row. And I kept on preaching the Word.

One weekend, my wife called me. Our oldest daughter had left home. We had just returned from a trip to Orange County, California, to a note that she had left for good. It said something like, “I can’t live by these rules. I’m going to do what I want to do. I can’t keep causing you this pain.” Cherise remembers thinking that at least our daughter was courteous enough to leave a note before taking off for the last time.

My wife and I were heartbroken. We did not know where she was for about a week. Cherise went into what could only be described as a grieving process. We did everything we could to find our daughter, and we could not. We mourned for days and nights, not knowing where our child was.

Finally, after about a week, she called. She reassured us that she was okay and that she was working as a nanny for a local family. For the next few months, she came around our home only on occasion. Our contact with her was very limited. One day, she told us she had fallen in love. Months later, she got married by a justice of the peace. We found out via a text.

It was a crushing blow to a family that was once very close. Cherise felt robbed of the dream of preparing for and watching our first daughter get married. I remember, a week later, officiating the wedding of one of her friends. When I watched the bride and her father walk down the aisle, my heart broke. I was devastated. It took everything in me not to show my emotion. I would never get that opportunity to do the same with my own daughter.

The truth is, some things get broken and can never be put back exactly the same. Yet God can make all things new.

It was at this time that I first heard the phrase Love like you’ve never been hurt. People speculate as to who said it originally, but the words came alive in my heart when I heard it.

If you will be willing to love like you’ve never been hurt, God can heal every broken relationship in your life. Nehemiah 4:2 talks about the Israelites rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem from dust and burned stones. “Do they actually think they can make something of stones from a rubbish heap—and charred ones at that?”

Do not throw away the stones that have been burned. God can and will use them to rebuild your family.

Reconnecting and rebuilding the broken walls in our family has not been an easy or quick process, I admit. We still have challenges that we have to work through and get over. But we have determined to love like we’ve never been hurt. It is a choice we have to make over and over and over again.

Now, we haven’t always done it right, but Cherise and I have made this commitment to our family. We’ve been encouraged by the ancient proverb that says when you raise your children in the way that they should go, when they get older, they will not depart from it (see Proverbs 22:6).

Our oldest daughter today loves Jesus with all of her heart. She is the media director of a large church in the Atlanta area. Her husband works there also as a graphic artist. They blessed us with our first beautiful granddaughter, Amelia.

Another daughter is married and together with her husband pastors our church in Orange County and have a precious son, Luca. My third daughter went to Oral Roberts University, graduated from Vanguard University in California and is involved in ministry. My youngest daughter is in her second year of college in Los Angeles. She is a professional model and she loves Jesus supremely. Our son is a student at Liberty University and is pursuing a huge call on his life. This has been the fruit of refusing to allow hurt to dictate how we love our children.

———

As I was writing this chapter, I remembered the first sermon I ever preached. I was twenty years old. I pulled up to a little country church where I would speak in front of fifty people. As I approached the pulpit, nerves knotted my stomach.

I spoke from Philippians 3:13–14 (NKJV),

I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

I stumbled through that message nervously. But when I concluded, God had touched lives and the altars were filled.

The biggest point in that first sermon was this: “You don’t just need a good memory. Sometimes you need a good forgettery.” To move forward, you have to let go of the past. You have to release what is behind you and reach for what is before you. If you will reach for a new day, God will begin, little by little, to release you from the past.

Funny, 34 years later, I am writing this book with a heavy mandate from God to say the same thing.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness. It is all about releasing and reaching. Release the past and reach for the future. The only way to do this is to love like you’ve never been hurt. This means loving so intensely that it overrides all your natural instincts for bitterness and revenge.

You will never get ahead trying to get even. When you have been wronged, a poor memory is your best response. A good forgettery is what all of us need.

Have you ever noticed how a jeweler shows his best diamonds? He sets them against a black velvet backdrop. The contrast of the jewels against the dark background accentuates their luster.

In the same way, God does His most stunning work where things seem hopeless. Wherever there is pain, suffering and desperation, Jesus is there. There is no better place for the brilliance of Christ to shine.

I do not know what is going on in your life as you read this book. But I do know this: The pain you feel today is the pain you can heal.

I have never felt the pain of addiction. I have never felt the pain of losing a child. I have never felt the pain of divorce. I can only offer people the advice of God’s Word and prayer. But people who have been through those valleys and felt that pain are more qualified to help heal someone going through the same crisis. What is important to remember, however, is that regardless of the source of your pain, God can heal you.

It has been said that family provides us with life’s greatest joys and at times life’s deepest sorrows. When I think about how hard it is to make the family work, the challenges that come and the complications involved, it is really something else. Family members know how to tick us off. They can get on our nerves. The people we love most are the ones who potentially, through offenses, can infect us if we do not react right. But I have learned that with challenges comes opportunity. And family also provides the greatest opportunity for us to learn how to love like we’ve never been hurt.

THE BIG IDEA

The pain you feel today is the pain you can heal.

Chapter Two
Love Never Fails

Many Christians these days do not know how to make their families...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Love Matters
• 2. Love Never Fails
• 3. It Is Never Wrong to Love
• 4. Stop Keeping Score and Start Losing Count
• 5. Love Starts Here
• 6. Loving-Kindness
• 7. Fighters, Fire Starters and Peacemakers
• 8. And We Were One
• 9. Fight for Your Marriage
• 10. A Foundation That Lasts
• 11. Fight for Your Family
• 12. Love God Like You’ve Never Been Hurt
• 13. Keep Climbing
• 14. The King Has One More Move
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Ad
• Back Cover