Phil and Starla Goad and the Power of Forgiveness

Her husband had betrayed her.  Committed adultery with one of her good friends.

But God had touched his heart and brought him to repentance. He confessed his sin to her and even to their church. She loved him and wanted to stay married.

She struggled, however, with forgiveness.

This week’s new episode on my YouTube channel features an interview with Phil and Starla Goad, who survived a crisis in their marriage due to Phil’s infidelity. When I asked Phil, “What was the most courageous thing you’ve ever done,” he said it was confessing his sin to his wife. God was working in his heart, but that still left Starla hurt and angry.

“He jumped in the pit, but he pulled me in with him,” Starla said during the interview. “I’m in the pit of anger, bitterness, just struggling, and deeply hurt. ... So we had to figure out, ‘How are we going to get out of this pit?’”

For Starla, forgiveness was the lifeline. She was very aware of Ephesians 4:32, which tells us, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Surprisingly, she found that Phil was easier to forgive “because he was so repentant. He was so brought low and I loved him so much. I wanted to do whatever it was that could help him get out from under that sadness and sorrow.”

But she found it more difficult to forgive the other person involved. Every day, “I would ask God to help me forgive this person.” She claimed the promise of 1 Peter 5:10: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace ... will himself restore confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

This went on for a couple years until God gave her the opportunity she needed to be able to move on. Starla and Phil attended an event, and suddenly there was the woman, at the door checking names. She asked Starla if they could speak at the end of the evening. “And so after it was over she, in tears, asked me if I would forgive her.” The woman said to Starla, “You did not deserve this.”

Starla recognized that God had orchestrated these events to give both women the opportunity they needed. She told the woman she forgave her as God had forgiven her, “and I cannot tell you the load that was lifted off of me. ... I felt completely free that I was not in bondage to that unforgiveness anymore.”

That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Lewis Smedes: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” That’s what Starla learned when she forgave the “other woman.”

Another of my favorite quotations is from Ruth Bell Graham (Billy Graham’s wife) who said, “A good marriage is the union of two forgivers.” Every married couple that builds a lasting relationship learns the truth of those words. And though there are some hurts that are extremely difficult to forgive, we are still commanded by God to move beyond the circumstances and forgive as Christ forgave us.

That doesn’t mean letting the other person off the hook; forgiving a person doesn’t mean you must immediately trust them. It’s likely that several boundaries will need to be established to prevent the sinful behavior from happening again. An intervention by a pastor, counselor, or mature friend may be required to make the sting of pain from the sin felt so sharply that the offending spouse will finally realize that the behavior has to change.

Ultimately, though, anyone who says, “I cannot forgive you,” really means, “I choose not to forgive you.” That just leads to bitterness. But the result of obeying God and forgiving is not bondage, but freedom.

There’s much more in my interview with Phil and Starla Goad, available to view now on my YouTube channel. The Goads have become good friends over the years, and I’ve been amazed to see how God has used them to reach others with the love of Christ. They have a great story of redemption and how God has not only healed them from this mistake, but He is using their story to bring hope to many who find themselves trapped in the “pit.”