The Tyranny of Unforgiveness
Unforgiveness, of course, is also quite powerful. Consider the many conflicts across the globe, and how they revolve around old hurts and grievances, ancient injustices, and bad blood between peoples that stretches all the way back to Ishmael and Isaac. How many families and how many marriages across time immemorial have been sundered by the inability and unwillingness to—I know it’s an old cliché, but it’s a great one—let go and let God? The choice to hold on to hurts and remember every wrong is both a wound and a sin that keeps on wounding.
Unforgiveness forces open spiritual wounds which then, inevitably, become infected with bitterness, the infection exacerbating and enlarging the original wound. Remember this image: If you have unforgiveness in your heart then you have spiritual stitches and staples permanently pulling your hurt open, a constant invitation to bitterness and spite and rage and the demons that inevitably feed on such festering sores.
That said, this is so important because everyone has hurts they need to forgive. People tend to struggle most with forgiving the hurts others have caused and/or with forgiving themselves for their many failures and flaws. Depending on your personality type and background, some of you will find this chapter’s homework easy while others will prefer a root canal. In all my years of counseling, speaking generally, I’ve found there are 3 basic types of personalities as it relates to the act of forgiveness.
Are you the kind of person with a strong sense of right and wrong who naturally remembers even the slightest slights? Have you been hurt deeply by others or simply by life itself, and therefore you maintain a negative, begrudging outlook on life? The more you have suffered in life the more you have to forgive! The greater the offense and the level of damage done, the more difficult it is to forgive. If this describes you, welcome to your favorite chapter in the book (Ha!). Keeping your heart in a state of forgiveness will be your greatest struggle because you will be tempted to slide back into bitterness and holding grudges and thus reopen the door to demonic influence.
Are you hardest on yourself? Are you driven and performance oriented? Did you have to earn your parent’s love and approval? And by default, God’s approval? Have you had some spectacular failures in life and let others down? Do you feel incapable of ever succeeding in life? If you are honest, do you have a works’ based salvation as opposed to grace? Your greatest struggle will be in forgiving yourself and remaining in the place of continually extending grace to yourself. You must learn the fundamental truth that good deeds flow out of love and relationship, never vice versa. Grace must always come before works otherwise you end up with futile legalism and inevitably bitterness and anger because you can never earn God’s love, no matter how hard you try.
Then again you may be naturally easygoing, unflappable, and slow to anger. Slights and offenses roll off you like water off an oily duck—that’s how readily you are willing to forgive. Your kind of personality typically struggles more with codependence and boundaries than with unforgiveness. Be careful, however, that your naturally calm demeanor isn’t just a front for denial. Burying and ignoring your hurts and grudges is not remotely the same thing as placing them under the blood of Christ!
In our next post we’ll dive deeper into why forgiveness is so important.
Your Brother in the Battle,
Timothy
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Excerpt taken from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 3: Spiritual Warfare
Copyright ©2023 Timothy Davis