Don't get mad, get even and poison yourself and those you love.

We are both fragile and resilient, easily hurt but able to function with multiple wounds. It never ceases to amaze me how people who have smoked for years can live to a ripe old age with their soot filled and blackened lungs. Of course others die from lung cancer, but many don't. If quality of life is not an issue for you, you can fill your body with all kinds of poison, and still continue to function at some level.

As with the physical, so with the spiritual. We can allow the corrosive effects of the poison of sin (ours and others), and yet still, at some level continue to function. I don't say its living! The particular issue I want to deal with today is the issue of unforgiveness. There is nothing more corrosive to the spirit than this. I first encountered the poison of bitterness in another in a bar as a young man. The person I was talking to was obsessed with what his former wife had done years before. Frankly I could not wait to get away from him. Since then I have seen others who are bitter even decades after the perpetration of the pain that wounded them. When this happens those who are the focus of the unforgiveness are blamed for everything that goes wrong. “He/she fooled me up so badly, I am just not able to deal with life”. When we allow this to happen, we have in effect surrendered responsibility for our lives into the hands of the one(s) who hurt us. When we do this, as I said last day, the perpetrator has in some sense won. Actually it is the devil who has you tied up. He is manipulating you through your bitterness, and when he says jump, you jump. They say that time heals all wounds, but time will not heal bitterness or anger that is nursed.

By saying what I am saying here, I do not in any way want to diminish the pain and agony that you or others have endured at the hands of others. What I do need to say though, and this may be difficult to hear, is that it is not what was done to you that keeps you stuck, it is your reaction to it. I don't pretend that this is easy, but in order to become unstuck we need in effect to become a better person than the perpetrator. These things are part of becoming an overcomer. We will never be filled with joy and hope and pace and love while we are filled with negative things. Letting go of negative things is a process, it may have to start with being willing to be willing even if we are not yet willing. We may need to work hard at this, it is not something that we can easily achieve in a day. We need help, I have needed His help. However when the Son shall set you free you will be free indeed. There are some outstanding examples of this out there.

One of my heroes is a lady called Corrie Ten Boon. She and her family hid Jews in Nazi occupied Holland during the last World war. There is an excellent book/movie telling her story. Its called “The hiding place” (see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=038cuYe3Nis), but I digress. They were eventually caught, and her father and her sister died in interment in the German death camps. Corrie miraculously escaped. After the war, she was called to go into post war Germany preaching that God forgives. The real test came for Corrie, when she saw in the audience, one of the crueler former guards from the concentration camp where she and her sister had been interned, and where because of the harsh conditions and treatment, her sister had died. This man came up to her afterwards and said to her “It is good to know that God forgives, but I want to know that you forgive me.”

Corrie relates her struggle. She tells that what immediately went through her mind, was a facility back in Holland for former inmates of the death camps. What she knew, is that those who could forgive were healed, but those who could not forgive were not. It was, she recalls, as simple and as horrible as that. So she knew that she had to forgive this man. As an act of the will she thrust her had forward and said to him “I forgive you”. Corrie tells that when she did this, the Love of God for this man filled her, and she not only chose to forgive but also through this act of obedience her emotions fell in line. Corrie had more to forgive than I ever have. How about you?

It starts with the choice. We may even need to go as far back as being willing to be willing to be willing. But know and understand well, that bitterness poisons the bitter one the most, and then those next who the bitter one loves. The Scripture warns us about this in Hebrews 12:15. “Beware”, we are told, “lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled”. We need God's grace, His empowering strength and mercy, to do what without Him we cannot do, and to be what He calls us to be. It starts, like it did with Corrie, with a decision to be obedient to His Word. In the words of a hymn that I loved as a new Christian “Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey”. It's true.