Once you have lived long enough to experience the pitfalls of human behaviour, you would have encountered feelings of bitterness and unforgiveness at some stage in your life. Bitterness and unforgiveness are synonymous in nature with each other and qualify as emotionally cruel feelings of ill will, resentment, vengeance, unhappiness, and anger when you are unable to forgive someone.
Once these spiritual diseases take root in you, they accumulate, spread and poison every vessel of virtue within your inner man.
When we are in a state of unforgiveness, we literally arrest our offenders and create a prison in our hearts for their emotional residence. While creating a prison for our offenders, we are usually ignorant of the self-made spiritual prison we are actually creating for ourselves.
As a believer, when we sin, we experience guilt; however, when others sin against us we feel bitterness. This is the conundrum the Devil utilizes to trap even the saintliest of all saints. The Devil knows that any root of bitterness defiles us and causes our flesh to seek recompense and retribution. When no form of vengeance can be attained, we justify our right to be bitter. We convince ourselves that the offender’s sin is graver than ours and give ourselves the right to determine if they are deserving of our forgiveness. We hinge our forgiveness on the person’s repentance and sometimes even on their suffering.
While we may have good reason to tarry in our bitterness, we do not realize that unforgiveness cuts our spiritual system off from God. When someone experiences sudden cardiac arrest, it’s a signal that there’s a problem with their heart’s electrical system. This signal stops their heart from beating. This is the same with our spiritual hearts.
Unforgiveness and bitterness are spiritual root diseases that cause our hearts to fibrillate under increased pressure and block the flow of God’s Grace and his shed blood from pumping to our hearts.
How do you know if you are under spiritual cardiac arrest? How do you begin to measure if you are indeed bitter or in a state of unforgiveness? One sure sign is that bitterness remembers details. Bitter people tend to mull over and over about the same bad things. Bitter people concentrate on how right they were and how wrong the other person was. Bitter people keep a record of wrongs done against them. Bitter people even harbour resentment against God for allowing life to go against their plans and their will.
The standard of forgiveness we hold for others is the same standard God will measure us upon for our sins. Can you imagine how our lives would be if God judged us by the same criteria we set out for others? God held no grudges and lavished us with his saving grace and forgiveness long before we could even think about repenting. Look at how many times we have willfully disregarded God’s Word without an ounce of repentance. Yet, in His goodness, God still extends the armour of his unconditional forgiveness to us. We must in turn offer that which we have been offered – forgiveness without condition. Do not forego your forgiveness from God because of your inability to let go. No offense is worth carrying you to the pit of hell and no person is worthy of weighing down your precious soul. We need to allow God to carry the weight of our offenses and the weight of our offender(s).
Vengeance is not our responsibility. God has instructed us to always leave room for his wrath to avenge us and while passing the baton to God may not seem fair in the short run, remember God is securing our soul’s place in the race of eternity. There is only one solution for bitterness and unforgiveness – To confess it and to get rid of it! To do this, one must bring the realization of their unforgiveness and bitterness back to their own heart and recognize it as their problem.
Do not focus on the sins of the offender for God will judge them, however, do not ignore the fact that God will also one day judge you. Forgiveness is the only intensive care treatment required for a bitter soul. It removes the walls between you and God and opens up the doorway for God to come in and bless you. In order to be restored, you must have the courage to release the weight of your offender(s). Trust God today to free you from any self-made prisons in your heart! There is no point you can prove in bondage!
SCRIPTURE:
Ephesians 1:7-8 “In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”
QUOTE:
“Unforgiveness is the poison you drink every day, hoping that the other person will die” – Debbie Ford
PRAYER: Dear Lord, we thank you for the grace of your forgiveness. Help us to forgive those who trespass against us and uproot every trace of bitterness in our lives today. Amen!
