It takes God to do that!
No matter where you may be today or what you may be going through, God can turn your situation around and use it to further His Kingdom and bring blessings to you and to many others.
Compassion or Pity?
Now the doings (practices) of the flesh are clear (obvious): they are immorality, impurity, indecency,
Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger (ill temper), selfishness, divisions (dissensions), party spirit (factions, sects with peculiar opinions, heresies),
Envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. … Galatians 5:19-21
In the Bible the word “pity” always means compassion, which moves a person to action on behalf of someone else.
Pity or compassion is never used in the Scriptures to refer to feeling sorry for ourselves because of what we are going through. In fact, in that sense, self-pity is viewed as one of the sins of the flesh listed here in Galatians 5:19-21.
When the Lord first revealed that fact to me, I looked it up to be sure I had heard it correctly. But I couldn't find it there so I tried another translation. When I still couldn't find it, the Lord spoke to me and said, “It's called idolatry.”
That's true. When we turn inward upon ourselves and begin to weep in pity for ourselves, what are we doing? We are idolizing ourselves. We are making ourselves the center of everything and feeling sorry for ourselves because everything in God's creation is not going the way we want it to.
Real pity or compassion moves us to action on behalf of someone else, but self-pity or idolatry drags us down into depression and hopelessness.
Do you recall what Paul and Silas did when they found themselves imprisoned in chains in the Philippian jail for trying to do good to others? Instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they began to sing and praise and rejoice in the Lord. As a result, they brought the jailer to repentance and salvation.
When faced with trials and problems, we have a choice. We can feel sorry for ourselves or we can lift our heads and look to the Lord to lead us out to victory, just as He did for Paul and Silas.
The choice is ours.
Get on With Life
David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted and went in and lay all night [repeatedly] on the floor.
His older house servants arose [in the night] and went to him to raise him up from the floor, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them.
And on the seventh day the child died. David's servants feared to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, While the child was yet alive, we spoke to him and he would not listen to our voices; will he then harm himself if we tell him the child is dead?
But when David saw that his servants whispered, he perceived that the child was dead. So he said to them, Is the child dead? And they said, He is.
Then David arose from the floor, washed, anointed himself, changed his apparel, and went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he came to his own house, and when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate.
Then his servants said to him, What is this that you have done? You fasted and wept while the child was alive, but when the child was dead, you arose and ate food.
David said, While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live?
But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. 2 Samuel 12:16-23
What was David saying here in this passage? He was saying: “When my child was sick, I did everything I could to save him. Now that he is dead, there is nothing more I can do. Why should I sit around mourning over something I cannot change? It is much better for me if I get up and get on with my life.”
That is what the Lord is encouraging us to do today. He is telling us to stop mourning over what has happened in the past and to make a decision that we are going to live today and every day for the rest of our lives. He is telling us not to ruin the time we have left grieving over what has been lost.
Now, obviously when experiencing the loss of a loved one there is a normal period of grieving that must be gone through — but if that grief period is allowed to go on too long it becomes destructive.
Make a vow right now that from this moment on you are not going to waste any more of your valuable time feeling sorry for yourself and wallowing in self-pity over things you cannot change. Instead pledge that you are going to live each day to the fullest, looking forward to what God has in store for you as you follow Him — one step at a time.
4
Emotions and the Process of Forgiveness
There are two things that cause us to get all knotted up inside. The first is the negative things done to us by others. The second is the negative things we have done to ourselves and others. We have a hard time getting over what others have done to us, and we find it difficult to forget what we have done to ourselves and others.
We have been examining how our emotions function because anything that destroys our confidence in ourselves or in others will affect not only us personally but also our relationships with other people.
In this chapter we are going to consider what we can expect from our emotions once we begin to learn to operate in forgiveness: of ourselves, of others, and of God.
Be Quick To Forgive
Let all bitterness and indignation and wrath (passion, rage, bad temper) and resentment (anger, animosity) and quarreling (brawling, clamor, contention) and slander (evil-speaking, abusive or blasphemous language) be banished from you, with all malice (spite, ill will, or baseness of any kind).
And become useful and helpful and kind to one another, tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one another [readily and freely], as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:31,32
The Bible teaches us to forgive “readily and freely.” We are to be quick to forgive.
According to 1 Peter 5:5 we are to clothe ourselves with the character of Jesus Christ, meaning that we are to be longsuffering, patient, not easily offended, slow to anger, quick to forgive, and filled with mercy.
My definition of the word “mercy” is the ability to look beyond what is done to discover the reason why it was done. Many times people do things even they don't understand themselves, but there is always a reason why people behave as they do.
The same is true of us as believers. We are to be merciful and forgiving, just as God in Christ forgives us our wrongdoing — even when we don't understand why we do what we do.
Forgive To Keep Satan From Taking Advantage
If you forgive anyone anything, I too forgive that one; and what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sakes in the presence [and with the approval] of Christ (the Messiah),
To keep Satan from getting the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his wiles and intentions. 2 Corinthians 2:10, 11
The Bible teaches that we are to forgive in order to keep Satan from getting the advantage over us. So when we forgive others, not only are we doing them a favor, we are doing ourselves an even greater favor.
The reason we are doing ourselves such a favor is because unforgiveness produces in us a root of bitterness that poisons our entire system.
Forgiveness and the Root of Bitterness
Exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God's grace (His unmerited favor and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it. Hebrews 12:15
When we are filled with unforgiveness, we are filled with resentment and bitterness.
The word bitterness is used to refer to something that is pungent or sharp to the taste.1
We remember that when the Children of Israel were about to be led out of Egypt, they were told by the Lord on the eve of their departure t
o prepare a Passover meal which included bitter herbs. Why? God wanted them to eat those bitter herbs as a reminder of the bitterness they had experienced in bondage.
Bitterness always belongs to bondage!
It is said that the bitter herbs the Israelites ate were probably akin to horseradish. If you have ever taken a big bite of horseradish, you know it can cause quite a physical reaction. Bitterness causes precisely the same type of reaction in us spiritually. Not only does it cause us discomfort, but it also causes discomfort to the Holy Spirit Who abides within us.
We have seen that we are to be a sweet-smelling fragrance to those who come in contact with us. But when we are filled with bitterness, the aroma we give off is not sweet but bitter.
How does bitterness get started? According to the Bible, it grows from a root. The King James Version of this verse speaks of a root of bitterness. A root of bitterness always produces the fruit of bitterness.
What is the seed from which that root sprouts? Unforgiveness.
Bitterness results from the many minor offenses we just won't let go of, the things we rehearse over and over inside of us until they become blown all out of proportion and grow to monumental size.
Besides all the little things we allow to get out of hand, there are the major offenses people commit or have committed against us. The longer we allow them to grow and fester, the more powerful they become, and the more they infect our entire being: our personality, our attitude and behavior, our perspective, and our relationships — especially our relationship with God.
Let It Go!
And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. …
And if your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a bondsman (a slave not eligible for redemption),
But as a hired servant and as a temporary resident he shall be with you; he shall serve you till the Year of Jubilee,
And then he shall depart from you, he and his children with him, and shall go back to his own family and return to the possession of his fathers. Leviticus 25:10,39-41
To keep Satan from getting the advantage over you, forgive! Do yourself a favor and let the offense go! Forgive to keep yourself from being poisoned — and imprisoned.
According to Webster, the word forgive means “to excuse for a fault or offense: pardon.”2
When a person is found guilty of a crime and sentenced to serve a prison term, we say that he owes a debt to society. But if he is pardoned, he is allowed to go his way freely with no restraints upon him. Such a pardon cannot be earned, it must be granted by a higher authority.
When someone has offended us, you and I tend to think that person owes us.
For example, a young woman once came through the prayer line in one of our meetings and told me she had just caught her husband cheating on her. Her reponse was, “He owes me!”
When someone has hurt us, we react just as if that individual had stolen something from us or wounded us physically. We feel that person owes us something. That's why Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer, … Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors (Matt. 6:12).
In Leviticus 25 we read about the Year of Jubilee in which all debts were forgiven and all debtors were pardoned and set free.
When we are in Christ, every day can be the Year of Jubilee. We can say to those who are in debt to us by their mistreatment of us, “I forgive you and release you from your debt. You are free to go. I leave you in God's hands to let Him deal with you, because as long as I am trying to deal with you, He won't.”
According to the Bible, we are not to hold people in perpetual debt, just as we ourselves are not to be indebted to anyone else: Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another … (Rom. 13:8). We need to learn to pardon people, to cancel their debts to us.
Can you imagine the joy of a person who learns that he has been pardoned from a ten- or twenty-year prison sentence? That's the good news of the Cross. Because Jesus paid our debt for us, God can say to us, “You don't owe Me anything anymore!”
There is a song that conveys that thought with the words, “I owed a debt I could not pay; He paid a debt He did not owe.”
Our trouble is either we are still trying to pay our debt to the Lord, or else we are still trying to collect our debts from others. Just as God canceled our debt and forgave us of it, so we are to cancel the debts of others and forgive them what they owe us.
Let It Drop!
And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop. Mark 11:25
According to the dictionary, forgive also means “to renounce anger or resentment against, to absolve from payment of (e.g., a debt).”3 I like the phrase used by The Amplified Bible in this verse, “Let it drop.”
How many times have you had a problem with someone and think you have settled it between you, but the other person keeps bringing it back up?
My husband and I have had those kinds of experiences with each other many times in our shared life.
I believe most men are more willing and able to let things go than women. The popular stereotype of the nagging wife is not entirely inaccurate. I know, because I used to be one of them.
Dave and I would have a disagreement or problem between us and he would say, “Oh, let's just forget about it.” But I would keep dragging it up again and again. I can remember him saying to me in desperation, “Joyce, can't we just drop it?”
That's what Jesus is telling us to do here in this verse. Drop it, leave it, let it go, stop talking about it.
But the question is, how do we do that?
Receive the Holy Spirit
Then Jesus said to them again, Peace to you! [Just] as the Father has sent Me forth, so I am sending you.
And having said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive (admit) the Holy Spirit!
[Now having received the Holy Spirit, and being led and directed by Him] if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of anyone, they are retained. John 20:21-23
The number one rule in forgiving sins is to receive the Holy Spirit Who provides the strength and ability to forgive.
None of us can do that on our own.
I believe when Jesus breathed on the disciples and they received the Holy Spirit, they were born again at that moment. The very next thing He said to them was whatever sins they forgave were forgiven and whatever sins they retained were retained.
The forgiving of sins seems to be the first power conferred upon people when they become born again. If that is so, then the forgiving of sins is our first duty as believers. But though we have the power to forgive sins, it is not always easy to forgive sins.
Whenever someone does something to me I need to forgive, I pray, “Holy Spirit, breathe on me and give me the strength to forgive this person.” I do that because my emotions are screaming and yelling, “You have hurt me — and that's not fair!”
At that point I have to remember what we have already learned about letting go and allowing the God of justice to “even the score” and work out everything in the end. I have to remind myself that my job is to pray, His job is to pay.
When someone does something hurtful to you, go to the Lord and receive from Him the strength to place your will on the altar and say, “Lord, I forgive this person. I loose him; I let him go.”
Once you have done that, you have to let it drop. It does no good to go through all that then go to lunch with friends or associates and rehash the whole thing. Why? Because Satan will use it as an opportunity to nullify your decision to forgive and rob you of your peace and blessing.
Satan Will Bait You!
Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow
to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry. James 1:19
It is very important to understand that Satan will bait you — even through the mouth of other Christians.
Do you know what they will say to you at lunch?
“So how are you and so-and-so getting along? I heard you two were having a little problem.”
See the tempting bait?
Since you are trying to forget it, you may respond, “Oh, no harm was intended.”
But if you are not careful, the others will continue to bait you with questions, drawing you into a conversation about a subject you have determined to drop.
I know how gossip works because in my earlier years I could not walk away from a juicy story. Someone would say something to me about somebody else, and my ears would practically stand out on my head. I would get all excited, “Oh, I'm about to learn a secret!” That's the kind of thing that poisons us.
Now whenever anyone begins to talk about someone else or another ministry, I try to turn the conversation in a totally different direction. I pass it off by saying something like, “Well, I just pray that God will help that person and ministry to work through their problems and learn something from this experience that will make them more powerful than ever.”
When someone comes to you to bait you into talking about some problem in your church or ministry, you need to try to turn the conversation by saying, “Oh yes, that's right, we did have a little problem for a while. But as far as I am concerned, everything is going to work out fine.”