Proverbs 31 Ministries President Lysa TerKeurst defines biblical forgiveness in Friday’s Convocation

In sharing the story of forgiveness and reconciliation within her own marriage during Friday morning’s Liberty University Convocation, Lysa TerKeurst, president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, outlined the way God calls believers to lean into His guidance to confront and repair broken relationships.

TerKeurst joined Liberty’s Senior Vice President for Spiritual Development David Nasser in a livestream conversation. Before they began, Nasser encouraged the students watching to reach out to hall leadership or the LU Shepherd office if they needed someone to confide in after the event.

TerKeurst is a New York Times bestselling author. She has been awarded the Champions of Faith Author Award and her work has appeared in multiple publications such as Focus on the Family. As one of the leading voices in the Christian community, she has been a guest on the Today Show and a featured keynote speaker at more than 40 events across the U.S., including the Women of Joy Conferences and the Catalyst Leadership Conference. Through Proverbs 31 Ministries, she provides multiple resources for women, including devotionals, Bible studies, and podcasts.

On Friday, she offered students her personal story of walking through biblical forgiveness after her marriage was tested when her husband, Art, had an affair in 2016. After celebrating their 20th anniversary and having raised five children, three of whom were to be married that year, TerKeurst said that she and her husband had done everything they could to build a healthy relationship.

“We really did the good Christian checklist of all the things you think you should do to ensure that you protect your marriage and provide a way for connection and love to carry you through,” TerKeurst said. “If the enemy can isolate you, he can influence you, and I think isolation can happen not just to a couple, but to the individuals inside a couple, and I think that’s what happened to my husband.”

The couple maintained their privacy about the affair for 18 months to avoid affecting their children’s weddings, but her husband’s redemption story through God began immediately.

“Redemption with God is possible between us and God, but sometimes reconciliation is not, and sometimes God chooses to rescue people out of relationships and sometimes God restores and helps people restore and reconcile within relationships,” TerKeurst said. “My journey was long and hard, and I had to make the decision that I was going to pursue a redemption story with God, no matter if my marriage stayed together or not.”

Through this period, TerKeurst said that she had her own idea of how God would resolve the situation, but God’s hand worked in a different manner and the couple remained married after Art worked through the arduous redemption process.

“Looking back on it now, four-and-a-half years removed from the situation, God did work a miracle and Art did eventually choose to surrender to the Lord,” she said. “God did it in His way and in His time, and it gives me so much more confidence that we cannot reduce God down to the best human box. Our God is bigger, and His ways are higher.”

As someone in the public eye of the Christian community, TerKeurst said she had to find the balance in vulnerability and privacy in speaking out about what happened.

“Satan loves to capture people and wrap them up in shame, and the only way I’ve ever found to escape the teeth sinking into you like the bite of shame is to turn it back and let God use it for good,” she said. “Repentance is crucial because that’s us saying, ‘I’m acknowledging what I did, therefore I can learn all the lessons I need to learn so that I don’t keep repeating the same mistake.’”

Biblical forgiveness varies from the mainstream definition, TerKeurst explained, as it is a command from God. However, reconciliation also requires work on the part of the one who committed the wrongdoing.

“Reconciliation is dependent on whether or not that other person is willing to reconcile or willing to do the hard and humble work,” TerKeurst said. “I want to say to someone today who is in a lot of pain because of how hurt they’ve been from other people, ‘You deserve to stop suffering today because of what other people have done to you. There has been enough hurt, and you cannot wait for the other person to make choices that they may or may not ever be willing to make.’”

TerKeurst noted that 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says God will not place challenges in our lives that we cannot handle, is a verse often cited to those who are facing hardship, and she made a distinction that corrects the verse’s frequent misinterpretation.

“We all know that God will allow things into our lives that are more than we can handle, but it’s not an act of cruelty,” she said. “Those are the times that (God) says, ‘I don’t want you to rely more on your own strength, I want you to learn to rely on My strength.’”