The Inheritance He Chose Not to Pass On

Some of the hardest enemies to love are not strangers. They are people we know deeply, people we may still love, and sometimes, people whose wounds became wounds of our own.

This is one of the difficult realities behind INfire’s Love Your Enemy movement. Forgiveness is not about pretending harm never happened or rushing past pain. It is about allowing Christ into what has been wounded so that pain does not continue traveling from one person—or one generation—to another.

For Joshua, that journey began much closer to home than he ever expected.

Here is his story, in his own words.

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The letter was three pages long, and I was terrified to read it.

Every page held something I had carried since childhood—anger, rejection, fear, and memories I had tried to bury. Now I was sitting across from my father, being asked to say those things out loud.

As I read, my father began to cry. Then he started telling me his story.

He told me how his own father had beaten him with sticks, poured hot water on him, withheld food, and rarely showed him affection. For the first time, I wasn’t only seeing the father who had wounded me. I was seeing the wounded boy he had once been.

It didn’t excuse what happened to me. But I began to understand something I had never seen before: pain can become an inheritance when no one interrupts it.

I knew that inheritance well.

Growing up, I often thought, “I wish I had been adopted by another family.” My childhood was marked by instability, emotional neglect, harsh words, and fear. When I was seven, I was also repeatedly sexually abused by a male cousin I trusted. I was too young to understand what was happening, but I knew enough to feel ashamed. So I kept it hidden and blamed myself.

I also learned early that mistakes could be dangerous. When I was in Grade One, my father once asked me to read the destination sign on a bus in Manila. I struggled to read it correctly. He dragged me across the street and later repeatedly slapped me at our family store.

Something settled inside me that day: “People in authority are not safe.”

I became afraid of making mistakes, and I started believing that love had to be earned. So I learned to achieve. I graduated with top honors throughout school, hoping that maybe my father would finally be proud of me. But even on some of my most important graduation days, my parents arrived late. By the time they came, I was already giving my speech.

I remember carrying this thought: “I will never be enough.”

That hunger followed me into adulthood. I searched for acceptance through achievement, relationships, pornography, and sexual behavior. During college, I entered a live-in relationship with my girlfriend, believing intimacy might fill what was missing inside me.

It didn’t.

Shortly before graduating, I attended a spiritual retreat with my classmates. On the final day, we were asked to spend thirty minutes alone with God. I climbed into a small treehouse in Batangas and sat quietly.

For once, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything or impress anyone. And in that silence, I sensed God speak to my heart: “Joshua, I have forgiven you… and I still love you.”

I had spent most of my life trying to earn love. Now I was encountering a Father who already knew everything about me—the things done to me, the things I had done, the things I was ashamed of—and loved me still.

I thought that encounter would fix everything. It didn’t.

I became a missionary. I preached, discipled students, and led ministries, but some of my deepest wounds were still there. Eventually, I fell into sexual sin again. I was devastated. I thought, “God could never use someone like me again.”

When I confessed to my senior pastor, I expected rejection. Instead, he asked me to step away from ministry and focus on restoration. My church later enrolled me in a six-month inner-healing program.

At the time, it felt like I was losing my ministry. Looking back, I see it differently. God wasn’t finished with me. He was healing me.

That healing eventually brought me back to my parents. In 2015, I finally told them about the memories I had hidden for years, including the sexual abuse.

My mother wept. Then she prayed, “Lord, if there is still any part of my son’s heart that remains, please restore it.”

Later came the three-page letter to my father. As I listened to him tell me about his own childhood, I began to see how pain had traveled through our family. My father had been wounded by his father. I had been wounded by mine.

And I began asking myself: Does it have to keep going?

This is where Love Your Enemy became very personal for me.

We often think of an enemy as someone far away—someone from another religion, another group, or another side of a conflict. But sometimes the person hardest to forgive is someone you love. Sometimes you share their name. Sometimes you can understand why they became the person who hurt you while still acknowledging that what they did was wrong.

During my healing, I sensed God tell me, “Everything your earthly father failed to give you, I will give you.”

That changed something in me.

I stopped waiting for my father to somehow repay my childhood and began asking what it would look like to love him now. I started taking him out for meals. We went shopping. We traveled together. None of this erased what happened, but I was beginning to realize that forgiveness could change what happened next.

During one of our journeys, my father and I slept beside each other. It might sound like an ordinary moment, but for the little boy inside me who had once been afraid of his father, it meant so much.

There, I sensed God whisper again: “Joshua, I am your Father. I will never leave you. I will supply everything you need.”

Today, I understand Love Your Enemy differently. Forgiveness does not mean pretending there was no wound, and it doesn’t remove accountability. For me, it meant allowing Jesus into the places where pain had taken root so that what wounded me would not become what I handed to someone else.

Romans 8 speaks of receiving the Spirit of adoption through whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” Those words are deeply personal to me now.

I used to wish I had been adopted by another family. Today, I know I have been welcomed into the family of God.

My family story isn’t perfect, and my healing journey isn’t finished. But I know this: the pain I inherited does not have to become the inheritance I pass on.

That is my hope for Love Your Enemy, too. That we would allow Jesus to meet us in the places where we have been wounded, learn to forgive without denying the truth of what happened, and stop cycles of pain before they reach another generation.

I once wished I could inherit a different family. Instead, I discovered a different Father.

And through Him, I am learning to pass on a different inheritance.