“Ways To Overcome Spirit Of Bitterness And Resentment”
By Pastor Peter Kayongo
I greet you all my dear sisters and brothers in Jesus’s name!! Today we are embarking on a topic which I believe is goner help someone here and out there going a season of Bitterness and Resentment as well.
Scripture starts by saying, Romans 12:18 says, "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." So as believers,how can we do that? How can we prevent bitterness from moving into our hearts? How can we deal with our feelings instead of letting them grow into bitterness?
1.First and foremost, Know that God requires forgiveness.
God knew it would not always be possible to live at peace with some people. That's why the scripture in Romans I have just shared with you above says, "If it is possible …" But God does require that we forgive others (Ephesians 4:32).
This is where I would say,the rubber meets the road. Brethren,Our lack of forgiveness is why we choose to hold onto bitterness, letting it ripen into full grown resentment. While it looks like we are unable to forgive, sometimes we need to face that we are unwilling in some way or the other.
In the parable of the man who was forgiven a great debt (Matthew 18:24-35), we see the forgiven man immediately demands payment from someone who owes him a fraction of what he himself owed. Though he was shown mercy and grace, he was unwilling to extend it even in a small way.
2.Secondly,Understand that we are to forgive because we are forgiven as well.
You can discern a person is trapped when their first response is, "You don't understand what they did to me."
Yes i believe with you my dear sister or brother,We may not understand, but Jesus Christ does for your information. Remember,He lived a perfect life, but was beaten, mocked, spit on, and hung on a wooden cross to die a cruel death. Yet, John 3:16 says that he loved the world(you and me)enough to go through this.
Sometimes we mistakenly think he died only for us, but when he died, he died for the world—including whoever offended you. We are told to forgive others just as Christ forgave us. Do they deserve it? No. Do we deserve it? Again, no. But still, he hung on that cursed tree because of his love for each one of us here and out there.
Whenever we have an unforgiving spirit, our eyes are not on him; they are fixed on ourselves.
3.Third,Pray for those you can't forgive.
God already knows what's going on inside of you. He knows your thoughts and he knows how the other person hurt you. He was there. As believers,We don't have the capability in ourselves to forgive others. But God can empower us to forgive those who have hurt us (Philippians 4:13).
Now,With a blank piece of paper before you my dear sister or brother reading this message, ask God to bring to mind anyone you need to forgive. If he gives you a name or two or ten, start praying for those on your list. Pray every day until you feel God melt that resentment you've been holding onto.
Are you reading this message because you feel bitter and resentful and want to be freed from those feelings? You are just in the right place! Nobody desires to experience unfair treatment or the emotions of anger and disappointment as a result. I would say It’s the unfortunate side effect of living in a broken world. Consequently, the Bible speaks on the topic of bitterness and resentment – warning to get rid of it.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12:14-15
When we’ve experienced the pain of a hurtful event, it’s easier said than done to simply- “get rid of bitterness” .
Our emotions become tangled up and we react to hurt feelings. While it is challenging to do the work of healing from bitterness, we have the ability to do so. Get to know this brethren,God does not call us to do anything he has not equipped us to do.
As I conclude on with this message, I want to give you three things to think about. I will frame this along the lines of the scripture in Mathew I already shared with you. In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus gives us the longest explanation of forgiveness that we have in the entire bible. And he does so by telling a story. He tells us about a servant that had a massive, massive debt. And he was forgiven that massive debt by the king instead of being tossed into debtor’s prison. After having been forgiven this massive debt, he goes to a fellow servant who owes him just a little bit of money. When the other servant, who owes him just a little bit of money, asks the now-forgiven servant to please extend him mercy, the first already-forgiven servant refuses and begins to choke him and demand he pay what he owes. When the king, who had forgiven the first servant, found out about this he called him back and asked, “How could you not have mercy on your fellow servant after I forgave you?” The king then commanded that he be thrown into prison until he is able to pay the last penalty. Jesus ends this account by saying, “So also will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” What Jesus makes clear here is that he is giving us an analogy. The analogy is that all of us are guilty of sin just as the servant who owed a massive debt is guilty. Every single one of us are guilty of a massive sin that we could never pay for, that we could never earn forgiveness for. But our King, the God of heaven and earth, through his son Jesus Christ has extended forgiveness to us as a unilateral act of mercy and of grace. And so the command is that as we exist in a cosmos full of forgiving grace for our own sin, we need to be able to extend forgiving grace to those who have sinned against us.
With that parable and analogy setting the stage, if you find yourself that you are stuck in a pattern of bitterness, the first thing you need to do is think about your sin. If someone has asked us to forgive them, even for a heinous sin that they committed against us, we need to forgive and we need to release our bitterness my dear friends. One of the ways we do this is by thinking about our own sin. The problem with the unforgiving servant in the parable in Matthew 18 is that he obsessed over the debt that he was owed, and not over the debt he had been forgiven.
Dear friends,The call to let go of bitterness and to forgive is the call to be humble and to reflect upon your own sin, understanding that you will never have to forgive someone more than you have been forgiven by God himself.
This gets to the second point we need to think about as believers. There is a practical strategy for thinking about Jesus in Matthew 18. We are not just thinking about our own sin and the bad things we have done. We are thinking about the grace of Jesus in extending forgiveness to us in spite of our sin. Every single offense we have ever committed, even in the last two minutes (we probably haven’t been loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength) has been in the face of God and his son Jesus Christ. And God is rightly angry with us over that sin. But he overcomes his anger with grace and mercy, and he extends that to us in Jesus. So it is not enough dear friends,to think only about our sin if we are to let go of bitterness. We have to think about the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. And when we have meditated on and soaked in the grace that he has extended to us we will, if grace is operating at all, want to extend grace to others. In sum, if we want to overcome bitterness, we need to think about our own sin. But we also need to think about the grace of Jesus in covering our sin.
A third thing we can do is listed in 2 Corinthians 10:5. We Christians we are commanded to take every thought captive to obey Christ. That is to say we are not supposed to let wild sinful thoughts roam through our minds. We have the opportunity to take our thoughts to obey Christ. And one of the things we can do to take our thoughts captive is to begin to force ourselves to think good things about the person who has wronged us.
I will discuss two things about this: First of all, it is very rarely the case that the person who has sinned against us is defined exclusively by the bad things they’ve done. For most of you reading this message, I believe you’re going to be struggling with bitterness towards a spouse, or a parent, or a child, or someone you know. And if you are like most people in the world, the things that have troubled you about the person who sinned against you are not the only traits they possess. There are good things about them. Maybe they’re a great dad, husband, wife, or employee. When overcoming bitterness, you need to begin to think about those things first and foremost.
As an encouragement,try to make a list of awesome things about the person you are bitter towards and begin to think about those things. Maybe you are in a rare situation where you don’t know anything about the person who has wronged you, but they have sinned against you in an awful way. In that case, the good thing that we can think about them is probably something like knowing they are made in the image of God, knowing that they have sinned against God, and knowing that they need the grace of Jesus in the same way that you did. And so you can begin to pray for that person. Pray that they would come to know the grace of Jesus. This is nothing more or less than the words of Jesus Christ himself when he tells us we are to love our enemies and pray for those who have wronged us. By doing so we will begin, by God’s grace, to experience softening in our hearts towards that person.
This brings us to the second point about thinking good things about the person who has sinned against us. I do not want to be confusing when I write you need to “force yourself to think good things about the person”. We cannot do this on our own steam. We live the Christian life by the grace of Jesus. And so as we pray we want to ask the Lord, “Lord, would you forgive me for clinging to bitterness with this person? And would you give me your grace to think good things about this person and to be able to extend forgiveness?”, if indeed they have sought it. This is one of the most complicated problems that people can experience, and there is a lot to say about it. I want to encourage those that are struggling with this to think about your sin, think about Jesus, and think good things about the other person as you seek to take thoughts captive to obey Christ.
The last thing to remember is that this takes time. Very few people have a switch they can flip from being bitter, angry, and upset one moment to letting it go by an act of the will in the next. For most of us, this is going to take time. And you need to understand that the long journey is a blessing. Even if you are initially only committed to leaving your bitterness and moving towards forgiveness, that is a good start. It is important to find somebody to walk with you on your journey towards forgiveness as you walk away from bitterness. Find someone to pray with you who would be willing to meet with you and possibly mediate reconciliation with the person who sinned against you (if that is a wise and good choice.) Know that ultimately, at the end of the day, Jesus Christ by his grace will conquer all of your bitterness one way or another.
Be blessed!!
Peter Kayongo
+256772425596 or +256702206492
By Pastor Peter Kayongo
I greet you all my dear sisters and brothers in Jesus’s name!! Today we are embarking on a topic which I believe is goner help someone here and out there going a season of Bitterness and Resentment as well.
Scripture starts by saying, Romans 12:18 says, "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." So as believers,how can we do that? How can we prevent bitterness from moving into our hearts? How can we deal with our feelings instead of letting them grow into bitterness?
1.First and foremost, Know that God requires forgiveness.
God knew it would not always be possible to live at peace with some people. That's why the scripture in Romans I have just shared with you above says, "If it is possible …" But God does require that we forgive others (Ephesians 4:32).
This is where I would say,the rubber meets the road. Brethren,Our lack of forgiveness is why we choose to hold onto bitterness, letting it ripen into full grown resentment. While it looks like we are unable to forgive, sometimes we need to face that we are unwilling in some way or the other.
In the parable of the man who was forgiven a great debt (Matthew 18:24-35), we see the forgiven man immediately demands payment from someone who owes him a fraction of what he himself owed. Though he was shown mercy and grace, he was unwilling to extend it even in a small way.
2.Secondly,Understand that we are to forgive because we are forgiven as well.
You can discern a person is trapped when their first response is, "You don't understand what they did to me."
Yes i believe with you my dear sister or brother,We may not understand, but Jesus Christ does for your information. Remember,He lived a perfect life, but was beaten, mocked, spit on, and hung on a wooden cross to die a cruel death. Yet, John 3:16 says that he loved the world(you and me)enough to go through this.
Sometimes we mistakenly think he died only for us, but when he died, he died for the world—including whoever offended you. We are told to forgive others just as Christ forgave us. Do they deserve it? No. Do we deserve it? Again, no. But still, he hung on that cursed tree because of his love for each one of us here and out there.
Whenever we have an unforgiving spirit, our eyes are not on him; they are fixed on ourselves.
3.Third,Pray for those you can't forgive.
God already knows what's going on inside of you. He knows your thoughts and he knows how the other person hurt you. He was there. As believers,We don't have the capability in ourselves to forgive others. But God can empower us to forgive those who have hurt us (Philippians 4:13).
Now,With a blank piece of paper before you my dear sister or brother reading this message, ask God to bring to mind anyone you need to forgive. If he gives you a name or two or ten, start praying for those on your list. Pray every day until you feel God melt that resentment you've been holding onto.
Are you reading this message because you feel bitter and resentful and want to be freed from those feelings? You are just in the right place! Nobody desires to experience unfair treatment or the emotions of anger and disappointment as a result. I would say It’s the unfortunate side effect of living in a broken world. Consequently, the Bible speaks on the topic of bitterness and resentment – warning to get rid of it.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12:14-15
When we’ve experienced the pain of a hurtful event, it’s easier said than done to simply- “get rid of bitterness” .
Our emotions become tangled up and we react to hurt feelings. While it is challenging to do the work of healing from bitterness, we have the ability to do so. Get to know this brethren,God does not call us to do anything he has not equipped us to do.
As I conclude on with this message, I want to give you three things to think about. I will frame this along the lines of the scripture in Mathew I already shared with you. In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus gives us the longest explanation of forgiveness that we have in the entire bible. And he does so by telling a story. He tells us about a servant that had a massive, massive debt. And he was forgiven that massive debt by the king instead of being tossed into debtor’s prison. After having been forgiven this massive debt, he goes to a fellow servant who owes him just a little bit of money. When the other servant, who owes him just a little bit of money, asks the now-forgiven servant to please extend him mercy, the first already-forgiven servant refuses and begins to choke him and demand he pay what he owes. When the king, who had forgiven the first servant, found out about this he called him back and asked, “How could you not have mercy on your fellow servant after I forgave you?” The king then commanded that he be thrown into prison until he is able to pay the last penalty. Jesus ends this account by saying, “So also will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” What Jesus makes clear here is that he is giving us an analogy. The analogy is that all of us are guilty of sin just as the servant who owed a massive debt is guilty. Every single one of us are guilty of a massive sin that we could never pay for, that we could never earn forgiveness for. But our King, the God of heaven and earth, through his son Jesus Christ has extended forgiveness to us as a unilateral act of mercy and of grace. And so the command is that as we exist in a cosmos full of forgiving grace for our own sin, we need to be able to extend forgiving grace to those who have sinned against us.
With that parable and analogy setting the stage, if you find yourself that you are stuck in a pattern of bitterness, the first thing you need to do is think about your sin. If someone has asked us to forgive them, even for a heinous sin that they committed against us, we need to forgive and we need to release our bitterness my dear friends. One of the ways we do this is by thinking about our own sin. The problem with the unforgiving servant in the parable in Matthew 18 is that he obsessed over the debt that he was owed, and not over the debt he had been forgiven.
Dear friends,The call to let go of bitterness and to forgive is the call to be humble and to reflect upon your own sin, understanding that you will never have to forgive someone more than you have been forgiven by God himself.
This gets to the second point we need to think about as believers. There is a practical strategy for thinking about Jesus in Matthew 18. We are not just thinking about our own sin and the bad things we have done. We are thinking about the grace of Jesus in extending forgiveness to us in spite of our sin. Every single offense we have ever committed, even in the last two minutes (we probably haven’t been loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength) has been in the face of God and his son Jesus Christ. And God is rightly angry with us over that sin. But he overcomes his anger with grace and mercy, and he extends that to us in Jesus. So it is not enough dear friends,to think only about our sin if we are to let go of bitterness. We have to think about the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. And when we have meditated on and soaked in the grace that he has extended to us we will, if grace is operating at all, want to extend grace to others. In sum, if we want to overcome bitterness, we need to think about our own sin. But we also need to think about the grace of Jesus in covering our sin.
A third thing we can do is listed in 2 Corinthians 10:5. We Christians we are commanded to take every thought captive to obey Christ. That is to say we are not supposed to let wild sinful thoughts roam through our minds. We have the opportunity to take our thoughts to obey Christ. And one of the things we can do to take our thoughts captive is to begin to force ourselves to think good things about the person who has wronged us.
I will discuss two things about this: First of all, it is very rarely the case that the person who has sinned against us is defined exclusively by the bad things they’ve done. For most of you reading this message, I believe you’re going to be struggling with bitterness towards a spouse, or a parent, or a child, or someone you know. And if you are like most people in the world, the things that have troubled you about the person who sinned against you are not the only traits they possess. There are good things about them. Maybe they’re a great dad, husband, wife, or employee. When overcoming bitterness, you need to begin to think about those things first and foremost.
As an encouragement,try to make a list of awesome things about the person you are bitter towards and begin to think about those things. Maybe you are in a rare situation where you don’t know anything about the person who has wronged you, but they have sinned against you in an awful way. In that case, the good thing that we can think about them is probably something like knowing they are made in the image of God, knowing that they have sinned against God, and knowing that they need the grace of Jesus in the same way that you did. And so you can begin to pray for that person. Pray that they would come to know the grace of Jesus. This is nothing more or less than the words of Jesus Christ himself when he tells us we are to love our enemies and pray for those who have wronged us. By doing so we will begin, by God’s grace, to experience softening in our hearts towards that person.
This brings us to the second point about thinking good things about the person who has sinned against us. I do not want to be confusing when I write you need to “force yourself to think good things about the person”. We cannot do this on our own steam. We live the Christian life by the grace of Jesus. And so as we pray we want to ask the Lord, “Lord, would you forgive me for clinging to bitterness with this person? And would you give me your grace to think good things about this person and to be able to extend forgiveness?”, if indeed they have sought it. This is one of the most complicated problems that people can experience, and there is a lot to say about it. I want to encourage those that are struggling with this to think about your sin, think about Jesus, and think good things about the other person as you seek to take thoughts captive to obey Christ.
The last thing to remember is that this takes time. Very few people have a switch they can flip from being bitter, angry, and upset one moment to letting it go by an act of the will in the next. For most of us, this is going to take time. And you need to understand that the long journey is a blessing. Even if you are initially only committed to leaving your bitterness and moving towards forgiveness, that is a good start. It is important to find somebody to walk with you on your journey towards forgiveness as you walk away from bitterness. Find someone to pray with you who would be willing to meet with you and possibly mediate reconciliation with the person who sinned against you (if that is a wise and good choice.) Know that ultimately, at the end of the day, Jesus Christ by his grace will conquer all of your bitterness one way or another.
Be blessed!!
Peter Kayongo
+256772425596 or +256702206492