Captive Set Free By Valerie Limmer + GIVE AWAY

 

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Captive Set Free by Valerie Limmer, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Captive Set Free 

Author: Valerie Limmer 

Publisher: Green Sap Publications 

Release Date: October 18, 2022 

Genre: Non-Fiction, Christian Living

Have you been hurt? Are you hounded by turbulent feelings and looping thoughts? Do you know you need to forgive but aren't sure where to begin?

Captive Set Free is a lamppost along the path of healing, offering engaging stories and examples, explaining how forgiveness fits into our spiritual DNA, and examining mindsets that make forgiving easier or harder. In this book, you'll learn how to

 - take concrete steps to forgive; 

- be sure forgiveness has taken hold in your heart; and 

 - guard your spirit from bitterness, both now and in the future. 

If you're tired of being imprisoned by pain and toxicity and want to step into the free and abundant life Jesus has planned for His children, this book is for you.

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookDepository | IndieBound | BookBub

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About the Author

Valerie Limmer is a missionary in Japan. She is neither a therapist nor a theologian, but she has experienced severe abuse from a handful of people. In Captive Set Free, she shares the principles and techniques she's learned in her own life on her journeys towards forgiveness.

Connect with Valerie by visiting valerielimmer.com to follow her on social media or subscribe to email newsletter updates.

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Guest Post:

People can feel like they've forgiven someone, but it keeps coming back up and they might wonder if you've really forgiven the person. How do you suggest people work through that?

When I was a little girl, I realized I needed to forgive someone who had abused me. It took a while to do so, but I finally did.

A few weeks later, all the old fury, bitterness, and unforgiveness were back in my heart. 

I was so surprised!

I had battled to be godly. I thought I had forgiven this person. How could all the anger be back? Had I been wrong? Had I not forgiven after all? My torment increased with these questions.

If you struggle with these same doubts, you’re in good company. The renowned Christian theologian, C.S. Lewis struggled for many years with this exact issue. A schoolmaster who was cruel to him had “darkened [his] childhood” [1], and he agonized for many years over forgiving him. 

“Each time I thought I’d done it,” he wrote, “I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again.” [2]

Forgiving someone who’s wronged us can feel like a mammoth emotional task—especially if it’s for a deep wound, such as abuse or betrayal. Like C.S. Lewis, we might wrestle with our own emotions and inclinations, and finally come to a place where we feel we have forgiven. But then—agony upon agony!—those exact same feelings of pain and bitterness return. We wonder if we were deluding ourselves into thinking we were successful. Now we’re back in the same misery as before, or perhaps even worse, because we feel that all our struggles were for nothing.

But this is not true. 

Forgiveness is a cycle. It’s not often linear, and it’s rarely a one-time event.

Our feelings of animosity and hurt don’t simply evaporate when we decide to forgive. They may very well return. As we sift through the things that have happened, new emotions will often surface. This is not wrong or evil. It’s a part of the healing process.

Healing from a deep wound is like stripping away the layers of an onion. When we forgive the person who has wronged us, we heal a little bit. But after we’ve healed from one layer, another dimension of the wound may become more obvious. It was always there, but perhaps it was hidden by the first layer. [3]

Now we are tasked with healing along a slightly different dimension, and this comes with its own set of feelings that need to be addressed and resolved. 

Dear sister, dear brother, you are not a failure for experiencing these feelings again. You are healing! 

If we want to forgive someone completely, we must adopt attitudes of tenacious grace. As persistent as our bitterness and anger are, godly forgiveness must be twice as adamant. This requires vigilance. In some ways, it’s easier to recognize bitterness and anger for what they are when the hurt is fresh. But what about in two years? Five? Ten? Sometimes resentment creeps in so gradually that we don’t even notice it. 

Our only hope is to submit our hearts to God for cleaning. We cannot afford to become complacent. Every day—or even more frequently—we need to humble ourselves before God and ask Him to examine and cleanse us. This is the only way to remain pliable and saturated with forgiveness and humility rather than becoming brittle and bitter.

NOTES

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis ,Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950-1963, ed. Walter Hooper, (HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 2007), 4056 of 5365 in e-book.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The difficulty of these feelings can be compounded if we’re still in relationship with someone who is unrepentant and may still be wronging us. If this is the case, I would recommend that you read the book, Boundaries (by Cloud and Townsend), and (especially in the case of abuse) also seek out the wise counsel of a licensed therapist (e.g., psychologist, psychotherapist, etc.) to help you navigate this often-perilous type of situation.

Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will receive a copy of Captive Set Free and a $25 Amazon gift card!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight January 9, 2023 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on January 16, 2023. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US/CAN only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

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