Unforgiveness is painful and soul consuming. When we hold unto our anger, we are punishing ourselves. Amy Killingsworth shares with us the robust concept of forgiveness which is amnesty and its significance into improving the quality of our lives. She dives deeper into parables and asks for heaven’s perspective when we are faced into a difficult situation. Furthermore, she talks about insights on letting go and what we can do to actually feel free and healed. These secrets of self-healing and freedom are essential in reigning our amazing lives. 

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Mastering The Art Of Amnesty For Healing With Amy Killingsworth 

This episode is all about amnesty. It is a robust concept of forgiveness. You could say it’s radical forgiveness. Forgiveness could be the thing that removes the block between you and your heart’s desires. Let’s dive in and remember that God wants you healed so you can wholeheartedly live your purpose and love your life.  

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This episode is pillar number three, amnesty. Amnesty is forgiveness. That begs the question, why didn’t I call it forgiveness? Number one, these are all alliterations so they all end in TY. This one could be no different. Also, amnesty is a little bit more of a robust concept than forgiveness. To show that, I want to share a definition. Amnesty is defined as granting a general pardon. It’s forgetting or overlooking an offense or classes of offenses. Amnesty is forgiveness and it’s how we empty out the toxic tank, heal emotionally and become blameless. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you might want to go back and check out the prior episodes because I’m beginning to unpack this process for you.  

When you forgive, you are making a decision to unblock yourself. You're making a decision for your dreams and your goals. Click To Tweet

Rise to Reign is a life-healing strategy. It has seven principles or pillars applied to seven categories. In the last several episodes, we identified that the major problem that we face is blame. The way that you get out of blame is through forgiveness or offering amnesty. I also shared that your higher self, true and authentic identity is that of the king or the queen depending on if you’re male or female. The sovereign king or queen is able to offer amnesty. You can think of it in a political sense. It’s the sovereign that offers amnesty and it is your ticket to being blameless. We covered in great detail the blessings and benefits of being blameless and why you would want to do that. Go back and read those if you haven’t.  

Amnesty

Amnesty or forgiveness is discipline. Discipline is doing what doesn’t come naturally. I use the Rise to Reign process with my coaching clients and in my coaching programs. Inevitably, when we cover sovereignty, most people are like, “I want to take radical responsibility.” When we cover identity, it’s like, “I want to be the queen.” When we get to amnesty, that’s when we start hitting a lot of resistance because we start hearing things like, “You don’t know what they did to me. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I can’t just let this go. It’s too painful. It’s too impactful.” This is where we start to dig in and do the work. Up until now, we’ve been building concepts and a foundation of understanding. This is where we put it into practice. Radical forgiveness, which is my definition for amnesty is the decision to let it go. Why would you want to do that? More importantly is, how do you do that?  

I want you to understand that it’s not a result of having a feeling of, “I forgive you. I’m over this so I’m going to let it go now.” You have to make the decision to forgive even before you feel like forgiving. It’s not a product of wanting to forgive necessarily. It’s a decision based on being willing so that you can get the benefits and blessings. Holding on to offenses and hurt is what’s blocking your dreams and desires. I want you to start seeing it in that framework. We have some desire and goal. We want something to happen in our life, but if you feel blocked, frustrated, helpless and you can’t move forward, I guarantee you that the core issue is forgiveness.  

It takes the prisoner, princess or prince and the slave a while to catch on. Just because you still feel hurt doesn’t mean that you’ve not forgiven. It’s a decision of your mind and you make that decision because it’s your way out of the prison of blame. Blame is a prison. It enslaves you and causes you to be in this place of being stuck and blocked. When you forgive, you are making a decision to unblock yourself. You are making a decision for yourself, dreams and goals because forgiveness is not about the other person. It’s not for the other person. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the other person.  

Forgiveness is enlightened self-interest because you want to do the inner work and get past what is blocking you and holding you back on to your purpose. I believe that every single one of us is created intentionally on purpose for a purpose. When we’re not pursuing that or we’re active or maybe not operating in it fully, we have a sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Sometimes we have a sense of anxiety or depression because we’re not where we fit. We’re not in the place that we’re supposed to be and doing the thing we’re supposed to be doing.  

 

Most of us have this driving desire to find out, “What’s my purpose? Why am I here?” That’s part of the human condition. This issue of holding on to offenses will block you. It is the thing that keeps you blocked and stuck. A couple of episodes ago, we talked about the benefits of being blameless. In order to be blameless, you have to forgive. Forgiveness is how you become blameless because it is a decision to let go of blame and to not engage in blame. It’s a discipline, and discipline is doing what doesn’t come naturally. If you want to start working out and get stronger, it’s hard at first. If you want to make a change in your life or change how you show up or make anything better, you’re going to go through resistance. Forgiveness is no different, but you have to make a decision based on the fact that you want the reward, the benefit and the result of having forgiven. Remember, it’s not about the other person, it’s about you. It’s about what’s going on inside of you and clearing the channel so that you can have all of the goodness that you want and desire to come rushing into your life.  

The other thing where amnesty is concerned is holding on to a fence, blaming others, and projecting our shame is the major problem in relationships. Those are individual relationships, inside families, neighborhood, community, church, political party, city, government, tribes, races, religions, genders, all of the dissension and the division. Even the wars and genocide that we see have to do with this idea of holding on to an offense, blaming others, and projecting our shame away onto something or someone else.  

There’s a story in the Bible. It’s a parable that Jesus told that illustrates this point better than I could possibly do. It’s in Matthew 18:23-35. Starting in verse 23, “Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.” Right away, we see Rise to Reign language here. We have the king, the sovereign and the slaves. The relationship is that the slaves owe the king. What does the king decide to do? He began his accounting and one of the slaves owed him 10,000 talents. They brought that slave in, but the slave couldn’t pay so his master ordered him to be sold with his wife, children and everything that he possessed so the payment could be made. This slave fell on his knees and begged the king saying, “Have patience with me and I will repay everything that I owe.” The king’s heart was moved with compassion. He released and forgave him, and canceled all of his debt.  

That same slave on the same day goes out and he found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii. He sees him and began choking him, demanding, “Pay me what you owe me.” His fellow slave fell on his knees and begged him earnestly, “Have patience with me and I will repay you,” but he was unwilling. He went and had him thrown into prison until he paid back the debt. This idea of unforgiveness is, “Pay me what you owe me.” That is the feeling of blame, offense and unforgiveness. It’s “Pay me what you owe me. Pay me back what I lost.”  

You’re wanting to receive recompense and made whole. There’s nothing wrong with that desire. The desire for justice, recompense and to be restored is completely natural. There’s nothing wrong with it, But the person that wronged you and your mind is not able to pay you back, generally. Maybe they don’t want to or they don’t care. Regardless of your happiness, kingdom or queendom, righteousness, peace and joy cannot be contingent or dependent on the choices, decisions and abilities of another.  

This slave who can’t get paid back by his slave friend has his slave friend thrown into prison until he can pay back the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved. They went and reported to their master with clarity and in detail everything that had taken place. His master called him and said, “You wicked and contemptible slave. I forgave all of that great debt of yours because you begged me to. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave who owed you little by comparison as I had mercy on you?” In his wrath, the master turned him over to the torturers until he paid all that he owed. “My Heavenly Father will do the same to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from the heart.”  

Forgiveness doesn't have anything to do with the other person. It’s for yourself. Click To Tweet

We see this idea of prison. When you’re near demanding repayment and you’re refusing to forgive, there’s prison and torture involved. It’s really true. If you are in emotional pain of any kind, forgiveness is necessary. If you are in any kind of emotional pain, you need to receive and give forgiveness away. That’s the concept of amnesty. What it is at its heart is enlightened self-interest. It is the way out of the prison. Remember, one of the identities is a prisoner. When we Rise to Reign, we’re rising up through those different identities. There’s the prisoner, slave, prince and princess, your true self, your original design, who you were made to be which is the king or the queen.  

When we rise up through that, we have to let go of what ties us down. That’s the concept of rising. It’s that the forces pulling you up are greater than the forces holding you down. You have to throw off the weight. Imagine a hot air balloon and it needs to rise up. You have to fire up the heat and fill the balloon but you also have to throw off the sandbags. This is what the process of forgiveness is. The process of amnesty is taking that weight and throwing it off so you can rise into your rightful place of influence, purpose, original design and operate in the world, walk in authority and the sovereignty as a sovereign person that you were created for. 

Amnesty waives the right to use what happened against another person or yourself. When we don’t forgive completely, we tend to reserve the right to hold it against somebody. In our minds, we feel like that’s punishing or somehow hurting the other person. Probably, they don’t even know you’re mad a lot of the time. They’ve forgotten or didn’t even know they hurt your feelings and you’re holding this big grudge and carrying around this thing. It’s raiding your birthright for the perverse pleasure of holding on to this stinking rotten unforgiveness. It’s also ceasing to use what happened as an excuse for why your dreams or goals didn’t materialize.  

I personally have dealt with this in my own life. I’ve tried it both ways and I can promise you, forgiveness is the way to go. When I was graduating high school, I wanted to go to college to study drama and theater. My dad wouldn’t have it. He was a businessman and was convinced that I couldn’t make a living as an actress so he was trying to do the best that he could for me. He loved me and was trying to take care of me but he forced me in a way to study business. I failed in all of my business classes because that was not what I was made out to be. I struggled and changed my major a bunch of times. I finally limped out of school after many years with a Psychology degree. I finally ended up going into my guidance counselor’s office and being like, “I have this many credits. How can I end the pain? How do I get out of college?”  

It was easy because I wasn’t studying something that I was passionate about. I was studying something that somebody else had a vision for me in. For years and years, I blamed my dad for me not having my dream of becoming an actress because he exerted that influence. It might have been right or wrong, but that’s not how I parent my children. It’s also not the reason why my dreams and goals didn’t materialize. I’ve had multiple opportunities to do something different as an adult. I was an adult then. I was eighteen years old. I could have told him to go pound sand and I’m going to do what I want to do.  

This idea of taking radical responsibility as a sovereign person, letting other people off the hook and stopping using them as an excuse. If I had taken that energy that I was using to blame him, be mad at him and put it into pursuing acting, I would probably have a better result. It also releases that person from any obligation to you. We see that in the parable of the servants. It’s trying to get paid back. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be paid back or made whole, but the idea here is to look to God to restore you and He will. When you forgive from your heart, God will get you back what you lost and then some. He gets it back to you with interest. It might not come through that person but it will come back to you with interest when you follow the process.  

 

These are precepts and laws that are set forth in the universe and they work. If you violate them, they work against you but if you work with them, they work for you. The law of forgiveness stays if you forgive from your heart, you will be restored and made whole but you have to learn to trust God to do that for you. It also releases you to be successful, happy and free. It’s the key to all of your heart’s desires. What it does is removes the blocks. What you want is already there, but if you’re not experiencing it or it does not manifest in your life, there’s a block somewhere. This is such a critical pillar because this is where the block is. 

When you feel blocked and stuck, forgiveness and amnesty are the answers. We forgive people, situations, institutions like maybe the church or a school. We also need to forgive God. I want to be super clear that I don’t believe that God needs our forgiveness because I believe God is perfect and incapable of wrongdoing. However, if we’re blaming God for something we need to forgive because forgiveness is emotional hygiene inside of us. It has nothing to do with the other person or the other parties.  

We brush our teeth to clean our teeth and forgiveness is the same idea. It’s washing out and cleaning out the internal environment. If you feel heavy, sad and grief, forgiveness is the answer. This is how you clean out the toxic tank. It’s how you release those wounds and heal so you can have, be and do everything that is in your heart to do. God doesn’t need our forgiveness but sometimes we need to forgive God like, “Why did you let my loved one die? Why did you let me be abused in that way?” In another episode, we’ll talk about how and why stuff happens in our life and a framework of looking at that. For now, if you’re holding something or blaming God for something, you need to forgive God, not because he needs forgiveness but because you need to do your internal hygiene.  

Sometimes we need to forgive ourselves. A lot of times, we think that whereas we wouldn’t treat this person that way or we wouldn’t talk this way about a person, but we feel just fine bullying ourselves and carrying around resentment towards ourselves. We have no problem blaming ourselves. Blame is just as toxic, whether it’s directed outward or inward. It might even be more toxic. We need to forgive ourselves and our memories sometimes. If you have traumatic memories, you can go through a process of forgiving that memory as it comes up. We also need to forgive the past. Sometimes it’s just a category.  

Forgiveness is like anything else. You have to receive it before you can give it away. In the parable of the servant who wouldn’t forgive, you’ll notice that the first step was he received forgiveness from the king. He had it but refused to give it away. That’s the cycle. We receive forgiveness and we give it away. If you haven’t received forgiveness, then you don’t have it to give away so you need forgiveness from above to be able to give it away to somebody else.  

Amnesty is a decision to let it go. I’m not going to break out into the Elsa song, but I love that song because I play it in my mind sometimes when I’m tempted to pick up an offense. I remember what it would cost me. If you have a journal, a vision board or you have written down a vision that you want to see happen in a relationship, finances or business, it is and you’re like, “I have this goal, dream and vision in my hand.” You have to put that down to pick up an offense because you can’t hold both. There’s no room in your hands for both.  

Your dreams, goals, plans, the things that you hold the most dear that you want more than anything else are in your hands only if the offense is not. You have to put that down to pick up your calling, promises, purpose and the things that you want and that you hold most dear. Sometimes I get that vision and I’m like, “I picked up an offense,” because I feel that negative charge and I’m like, “I picked that up.” It’s like a hot potato, drop it. Let it go because I want to pick back up my promises, dreams, visions and what I want to have happened. I know from personal experience that when I’m carrying around offense, I can’t hold the vision for my life. You can only have one.  

If you are in any kind of emotional pain, you need to receive forgiveness and you need to give forgiveness away. Click To Tweet

Is it worth it that petty resentment that feels perversely good for a moment because you feel you’re punishing someone else? Is it worth it to not have your dreams come true? It’s important to know that Jesus said to forgive and not forget. He didn’t say, “To forget.” He said, “To forgive.” I know that that’s a statement that a lot of people say, “Forgive and forget.” You can’t forget. It’s impossible because your subconscious mind records every single experience that you’ve ever had. That’s useful because you need to learn. My dad used to say, “When people show you who they are, believe them. It’s important to use wisdom and discernment on who you let have access to your life.”  

Restoration 

Forgiveness might be a get out of jail free card, but it’s to gets out of jail and go away not. It’s not getting out of jail and live in my house. It’s not a restoration. Forgiveness or amnesty and restoration are two different things. It might be the first step toward restoration and that also can be a beautiful thing when forgiveness happens and relationships are restored, but there are necessary things for restoration. Restoration does require action on the other part. It requires repentance, action and participation. Forgiveness doesn’t. You don’t need anything at all from that other party. In fact, you are releasing them and completely letting them go and cutting the ties that are sucking the life out of you when you forgive someone. Amnesty is not restoration and not the re-establishment of trust. When you forgive someone and they have betrayed you, if you’re going to trust them again, they still need to go through a process to re-establish trust with you. That’s making a different decision over and over again. Sometimes that’s warranted and sometimes they need a one-way ticket right out of your life.  

Amnesty does not take away the need for boundaries. I’m probably going to do an entire series on boundaries because it’s super important. A boundary is telling somebody about you. For example, “I won’t talk to you if you’re going to raise your voice and say curse words at me.” That’s a boundary. When you are forgiving, it doesn’t mean that you get rid of your boundaries. You can still act wisely based on someone’s prior actions without holding a grudge so you can forgive and maintain your boundaries. You shouldn’t let your boundaries down to forgive but you do let go of the grudge. You let go of the negative emotional charge.  

There’s a fine line between a boundary and a punishment. What’s the difference between a boundary and a punishment? A boundary is telling about you and punishment is like silent treatment. In the example I used before, “I won’t talk to you if you’re going to curse, yell and raise your voice.” A punishment is, “I’m not going to talk to you and leave you to wonder why I’m not talking to you.” There’s a fine line between the two and the difference is what’s in your heart. Are you trying to hurt that person? Are you trying to get that person to feel bad for how they hurt you? Are you communicating a need or limit that you have that’s important?  

How do I know if I need to forgive? When you feel a negative emotional charge around a person or thoughts of a situation, you know you have an active wound and not a scar. It’s possible to get to a place even with great trauma, betrayal, horrible pain and suffering. It is possible to get to a place where you think back about that situation, person, happening or institution. You think back about it and you remember it, but there’s no negative emotional charge. When you feel the negative emotional charge is when you know that you have more forgiveness work to do. Amnesty is a process. It is not a one-time thing. How many of you know, if you go through a serious betrayal, you can be like, “I forgive that person or that situation.” Two days later you’re thinking about it and your blood is boiling. It’s okay. It’s another layer in the process. It doesn’t mean that the forgiveness didn’t work or didn’t take. It means that there’s more forgiveness to do.  

I’m going to share with you something that I call the Forgiveness Framework. The Forgiveness Framework is a prayer. It’s a structured way of praying. There are three steps in the Forgiveness Framework. The first step is to acknowledge the true feeling. To do this, you need to search your heart and body for what it is that you’re feeling because you need to confess and acknowledge what you’re feeling. A lot of times, anger is a smokescreen for fear or sadness. What you want to do is get down into the root feeling instead of being like, “I’m still mad.” Sit with, explore it for a moment and see what’s behind that anger.  

I was working through some forgiveness in a situation and I was feeling a lot of anger. I knew that I needed to go through forgiveness with this situation again. I was like, “I feel angry.” I sat with that for a minute. I was like, “Is that all there is? Is that all that I feel?” Soon, I was like, “I feel afraid that I deserve this, that I’m always going to be dealing with the effects of this issue, and that I’m not worthy of something better than this.” This wasn’t the first time that I was doing forgiveness work around this situation and all of this started coming out. You can journal it and speak it out but you want to acknowledge the feeling. “I feel hurt, sad, grief, betrayed, angry, afraid or whatever it is. I acknowledge that I feel this.” That’s step number one.  

Step number two is when you express your willingness. Remember, amnesty and forgiveness aren’t based on desire. It’s based on willingness to do this in faith and to trust that I need to let this go for my own self-interest. It’s the willingness to do what you’re supposed to do in order to heal what you need to do. It’s not necessarily what you feel like doing or want to do. Step number one and two is, “I feel sad but I’m willing not to feel sad and I’m willing to forgive.”  

Step number three is a powerful part. It’s where you ask for heaven’s perspective. You ask the Holy Spirit to show you this in a different way and to give you heaven’s perspective on this person or this issue. Show me this from a healed perspective and from heaven’s perspective. Show me this through your eyes. Show me this person or situation. You sit, wait and see what the spirit reveals to you. It’s powerful. A lot of times, when I make that request, I’ll be shown the vision for my future. It helps me take my eyes on the hurt and the pain that I experienced, on to what I’m going to be able to receive and experience after forgiveness and what is going to be restored to me. When you make that mindset shift, you automatically feel better because you’ve released those feelings. You’ve acknowledged them. In essence, you’ve released them and you’ve asked for the healed perspective. The Forgiveness Framework is acknowledgment, willingness, releasing and asking for heaven’s perspective. 

 

There’s a fourth step that is powerful as well. I usually take that anger, hurt or whatever it was that I acknowledge and give it over to Jesus. In my vision and mind, I picture myself picking it up like a burden, whatever it looks or feels like. Sometimes it’s gooey, heavy and dark. I don’t want it anymore. I picture myself handing it to Him, Him taking it inside of himself and transmuting it into nothing because it’s what He came to do. That’s what He wants to do for you too. That’s the Forgiveness Framework.  

I promise you that this is worth it. It’s simple but it’s not easy like many things in life that are super powerful. This is powerful and it is the process by which we become blameless. It’s the process of how we get out of the prison of blame. It’s being willing to forgive every little thing that upsets us. Remember, the kingdom or queendom is righteousness, peace and joy. What do you forgive? Everything that’s not that. When something brushes up against your righteousness, peace and joy, get rid of it. You get rid of it through the process of forgiveness, acknowledge, become willing and release it. That’s it for this episode. Remember that God wants you healed so you can wholeheartedly live your purpose and love your life. I’ll see you next time. 

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