Tuesday 1 Feb 2011

Tuesday Reading: Ephesians 4:31-32

Key Verse: Ephesians 4:32
32  And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.

Devotion:
Holding a grudge is a complete waste of time because the person that you are affecting the most is actually yourself and not the other people. A grudge eats at your own soul a lot more than it eats at the other person’s soul. I am not saying that it does not affect others because it does, but why go through so much for so little an outcome? Christ has always taught us that we need to love one another and He even introduced that as a new commandment to His disciples. I can only imagine what hatred and bitterness He was able to see looking into the hearts of others when He was walking amongst us... And that is based purely on what has gone through my own mind over the years!

One thing that God has taught me is that we do need to put aside the feelings of bitterness, anger and wrath that we carry round with us. The only effect they have is to wind us up ourselves rather than the perceived threat that we think they carry. There is nothing more destructive than a person with a grudge because they lose sight of what should be happening and instead launch themselves into a ‘bull in a china shop’ mode that is going to destroy anything close to them when all they may have been after was a revenge attack on one person. We as humans are all the same in that we cannot focus our anger in the same way as we think we can – anger is always a loose cannon just waiting to go off at the most inopportune moment!

My heart goes out to those people who walk around ‘angry’ all day because they know nothing else. They lose sight of the real world and instead focus everything on the anger that they are carrying round. Yes there are times when anger can actually help you to get something done, but if we carry that anger round with us then it eats us up and starts to destroy us from the inside. Ask someone who did carry round anger for a decade and they will tell how it took another decade to let go of that anger...

Points to Ponder:
Do you carry round anger?

Are you giving your burdens to Christ?