Does bitterness linger in your heart as you journey through life’s challenges? This episode invites you to examine the role of forgiveness in fostering emotional and spiritual well-being. A deep dive into Paul’s message in Ephesians reveals the core of an unforgiving spirit and its subtle yet impactful consequences. Engage with us as we navigate the tougher subjects of wrath, anger, and their inevitable impact on our souls and communities. The episode transitions to offer hope and clarity, as we discuss the power of forgiveness as exemplified by Jesus Christ. We unfold practical steps towards healing and reconciliation, emphasizing
00:00:00 Introduction and Importance of Forgiveness
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May 23rd. Do you struggle with holding on to resentment when others hurt you? Today, we’ll be challenged to confront an unforgiving spirit. Stay with us for more on forgiving one another.
SPEAKER 01 :
An unforgiving spirit is the primary cause of many of our health hazards, much of our unanswered prayer, many of the feelings of stress that you and I experience. An unforgiving spirit is the primary cause for lack of peace, a lack of joy, poor relationships. Underlying many of God’s people’s basic problems is this feeling or this sensitivity of an unforgiving spirit. Somehow we just can’t seem to forgive because of the way we’ve been treated. Now, in the book of Ephesians, the first three chapters, Paul deals with who we are in Christ and all the wonderful, marvelous blessings that are ours because of our relationship to Him. And in the fourth chapter, he begins that chapter by saying, therefore, on the basis of who we are, this is the way you and I should walk as believers. And he comes to the fourth chapter in the 31st verse, and listen to what he says. He says, “…let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you.” Now, you and I agree that sometimes it may appear to be hard to be forgiving toward others. But listen to what he says. He says, let all bitterness be put away from you. So the first thing I want us to discuss in this message is this. And that is the root of our unforgiving spirit. What is the root? Look in verse 31. Let all bitterness, therein lies the root cause of all unforgiveness. Now, it’s interesting. The Greek word for bitterness is pikros, from which we get our word pick, whether it is a pick with which you dig or an ice pick, whatever it might be. Something that is sharp and pricking, something that is cutting. He says bitterness has a heaviness about it, a severity about it. Bitterness includes animosity. Bitterness can involve hatred. He says, let all bitterness, this cutting spirit within you, let it all be put aside. He says, and therefore have a spirit of forgiveness, tenderhearted forgiving one another. And we talk about bitterness. He says, let it all be put aside. Because somehow it’s going to crop up in our life. Now, the evidence of bitterness in a person’s life, he describes. He says in verse 31, “…it can be wrath, that is, a violent outbreak of anger or just mere anger, clamor, which is an outcry of passion, slander, injurious speech, that is, saying something about someone else in which you intend to injure them, or malice, intention or desire to injure that person in any form or fashion.” He says, put away bitterness because it’s going to express itself. If it expresses itself outwardly, it’s going to come out in one of those ways. You can be bitter and you can hide it from the rest of the world. You can’t hide it from God and you cannot hide it from your own bodily functions. Your own bodily functions are going to give evidence that there is a root of bitterness in the human heart. He says, let it be put away from you. He says, put it behind you. Let it be put away from you. Look in verse 29. He says, “…let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, only such a word as is good for edification.” according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear. A bitter spirit oftentimes spews out, as he says, unwholesome speech. Verse 30, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. You see, God is grieved when he sees his children holding an unforgiving spirit. That is, what about it grieves the Spirit of God because he sees broken relationships? You see, God is grieved because He knows that a person who harbors an unforgiving spirit is building their own prison. And God knows the destructive effects of doing that. So He says, put it away. Don’t grieve the Spirit of God. Don’t destroy yourself. Don’t sever your relationships. There is no way, my friend, for you to be bitter and unforgiving toward one person without building a wall between you and that person. And to go a step further, it’s impossible for you to build a wall between you and one person without shutting other people out. It has a devastating effect upon relationships. People who genuinely want to love each other can’t. Listen, not that they don’t want to, they can’t. Paul says, remove it, deal with it. Now, let me go back to ask you a question. As you look 360 degrees as you turn, is there something that crops up? Or when you think about any particular person, does something crop up that deep down inside you don’t have a good feeling? It’s like it’s still there and you’d like to deal with it. You’d like to get revenge because after all, you were wrong. Now, let me ask you one of the questions that’s a little personal, but it’s true. Deep down inside… If you were wronged, and a lot of people know you were, do you sort of get a little mileage out of the fact that, after all, you were wronged? You liked us. It was a shame the way they treated you. Just terrible. It was just a shame. I don’t know how you’ve forgiven all this. Deep down inside, do you get a little mileage out of that? My friend, let me tell you something. You may think you’re getting mileage, but you’re cutting years off your life. You’re cutting time out of your happiness. You’re losing time in the moments of peace because all the while that’s going on inside of you, as much as you may be able to rationalize it, it is corroding. It is eating away. It is degenerating you on the inside. An unforgiving spirit is destructive by its very nature. And Paul said, get rid of it. An unforgiving spirit is a devastating emotion that none of us can afford. to indulge in. So the next thing I want to talk about here in this passage is the recovery. The recovery from an unforgiving spirit. You say, why would you use the word recovery when he says, put it away? Here’s the reason. Recover means to regain something that is lost. To recover, for example, from an illness means that I regain my health, which I once had, but now I’ve lost it. Recovery from an unforgiving spirit implies time, and that’s what it takes. Recovery implies healing, and that’s what it takes. Because you see, when there’s been a root of bitterness a long time in a person’s life, you can deal with it. But sometimes it takes time for the healing process inside of you to take place. Now, when we talk about recovery, What is it that should motivate us in this whole matter of a forgiving spirit and recovering from an unforgiving spirit that’s so devastating to us? Listen to what he said. He said, put away this bitterness. Then he said, be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you. Now, what should motivate us to want to have a forgiving spirit, to exchange this old unforgiving spirit with a root of bitterness, to replace all that with a tenderhearted, loving acceptance of other people just the way they are? You see, to forgive someone says, I’m willing to bear the loss. I’m willing to suffer the humiliation, the hurt. I’m willing to pay the price. That’s what a forgiver is able to do. What motivated them to treat you the way they did? What did they perceive about you that caused them to act the way they did toward you? But whatever motivated them, they hurt you. Can you accept the fact that they may have had a preconceived idea about you that was totally wrong? That they acted on the basis of what they thought was true when it really wasn’t true? Can you be understanding in your attitude toward them? What should motivate us to forgive other people? Well, number one, the call of our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive others. Listen to what he says. He began the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. The Bible says, as he began them, one of them said, Blessed are you. are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, receive mercy. That is to be forgiving. Those who are forgiving, he says, shall be forgiven. When he gave us the pattern prayer in the sixth chapter, remember what he said? Having given us the prayer, Father, which art in heaven, he ends by saying, For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Remember how we explained what that means? That unless you are willing to release those over whom you’re holding a grip of unforgiveness, until you release them and free them emotionally, your heavenly Father is not going to free you. It doesn’t mean that you have not been forgiven. That does not mean what it appears to say. God’s not going to withhold forgiveness because on the cross 2,000 years ago, He paid the price for all your forgiveness. And the moment you received Him as your Savior, you were forgiven of all your sin, past, present, and future. But the consequences we still bear. And the capacity to enjoy that forgiveness and to experience it depends upon our attitude. Whenever you hear Jesus talking about forgiveness, here’s what He says. He says, your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven you. Always forgiving. Not only was He always forgiving, but He demonstrated in His own life at the cross when He said, Father, forgive them. They don’t understand what they’re doing. Even in His dying moments, what was He doing? He was forgiving. So what does it take to motivate us to be forgiving? Not only the call of Christ to forgive, the characteristics of Christ Himself as a forgiving one, but one of the greatest motivations to our being forgiving toward others is this, that by our very nature, by our very character, It is characteristic of a believer to forgive. Now, let me show you why. When you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, the Bible says that Jesus came to abide in you, so that the life you and I live in is an expression of the life of Christ. Do you have the capacity to forgive when you’ve been deeply hurt and grossly rejected? Yes, you do, because you see, Christ within you is able to release through you forgiveness toward anyone. You have God You have Christ alive within you. Did He ever meet anyone He would not forgive? He’s living within you. Then you and I should not ever be able to meet anyone we’re not able and willing and ready to forgive. We are capable of forgiving anyone and everyone if we’re willing by faith to allow Christ to express that forgiveness to us. And through us toward the other person. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy always. I’m not saying you won’t struggle with it. There is oftentimes a deep struggle in forgiveness. But you can if you will to do so. Let me ask you a question. Who is it in your life? Who is it in your past that somewhere back there they wronged you? They hurt you deeply. They rejected you. They cheated you out of a sum of money. They defamed your character. They ruined you in your vocation. They caused a lot of folks to misunderstand you. They just wiped out your reputation. Let me ask you a question. Are you still holding them in bondage? Then, my friend, it’s costing you a great deal more than it’s costing them. How do you start this healing process of forgiveness? So if you just jot these down, the first word is repentance. That means I assume responsibility for my unforgiving spirit. I have a change of mind. I have a change of mind toward that person recognizing and being willing to at least be understanding I forgive. I release that person. First of all, I repent of my sin of an unforgiving spirit. I have a change of mind. Secondly, I release them. I no longer hold over them their debt that I feel they owe me. I release them. Then, not only do I release that person, but something else must happen. So, jot those two words down. First of all, repentance. Something that must happen in my thinking. Secondly, release. Thirdly, recognition. Jot that word down because here is the whole key to making it stick. Unless it will drift, I choose to recognize that that person’s wrong. toward me has exposed within me an area of weakness. My unforgiving spirit and my bitterness, my resentment and my hostility, and my desire for vengeance, and my desire to get even is an area of weakness in my life. And God has used their wronging me to expose an area of weakness in my life that needs to be dealt with. So, not only must I repent, not only must I release them, but I must refocus my thinking toward that person to understand they aren’t just a tool of the devil. God has also used them as a tool to help me understand an area of weakness, and therefore I see them in a whole different perspective. And then there’s a fourth thing, and that is the word remember. Remember continuously how often God forgives you. Remember how many times you’ve come to Him and He’s never said no. No, not this time. I’ve forgiven you enough. No, no, no. Every single time you’ve ever been to him asking for forgiveness. He’s always said to you, you are forgiven. And what He meant was before you ever asked, you’d already been forgiven. You were forgiven 2,000 years ago at the cross because, you see, before you were ever saved and before you were ever born, God knew you. He knew how many times you’d sinned. He knew when you’d receive Him as your Savior. He knew how often you’d sin after that. He knew the bitterness that would crop up in your life. He knew the unforgiving spirit that you’d have to deal with. He says you’re forgiven. And what He’s waiting for you to do is to deal with your forgiveness toward the other person, that unforgiving spirit, so you can experience once again and enjoy once again God’s loving forgiveness toward you. Today we’ve dealt with a basic problem, and you’ve already said yes, and I know exactly who I have an unforgiving spirit toward. Let me ask you this. Have you ever trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior? But let me ask you something before that. Is it possible that something has happened in your life that you’re bitter toward God? Do you have an unforgiving spirit toward God because maybe He took a loved one? Something happened in your life. You have a physical deformity, a great loss financially. Could it be that you’re bitter toward God? Could it be that you have an unforgiving spirit toward Him? Could it be that you’re holding God accountable for what’s happening and you’re waiting for Him to do something before you’re willing to receive Him as your Savior? Lord, listen to me. If you’re willing to ask Him to forgive you of your sin, the Lord Jesus Christ will come into your life. He’ll change all that anxiety, frustration, bitterness and resentment, hostility and hatred. He’ll change all that nervousness on the inside of you, that stress and that tension. God will free you of that. But until you receive Him, your forgiveness toward others, my friend, won’t work. But what about many of you who are believers? You’ve nourished it, cherished it, hidden it away, and kept it. And today you say, I do have an unforgiving spirit. Are you willing to change your mind about it? Are you willing to repent of the sin of unforgiveness? Are you willing to release that other person? Are you willing for God to refocus your whole attitude toward that person and see them as a tool of God? Oh, I know it was bitter. I know it was painful. I know you suffered. I know it was sticky. I know it was absolutely disastrous at the time and terrible hurt that filled your life. But let me ask you, could it possibly be that God loves you so much that He’s willing to trust you in intense suffering and in order to deal with an area of your life that you probably would never have dealt with. And now He wants to free you, liberate you to become the total person God wants you to be. Here’s what you’ll discover. You’ll say, thank you, God. Thank you for the hurt. Thank you for the suffering. Thank you that it cut. Thank you that I wept. Thank you, dear God, for all the sleepless hours. and the hurt, and the rejection that I felt, because now I’m beginning to understand what it means to be freed and liberated in Christ Jesus. It is yours for the asking, but let me warn you. If you hold on to an unforgiving spirit, you’ll go to your grave having wasted, having been cheated of, having missed, having been deprived of. the best things in life, friends that you’re allowed to get on the inside, intimate relationships, loving relationship with the Father, and an inner peace and joy that will never be there until you wipe your hands of an unforgiving spirit.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to Forgiving One Another. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our 24-7 online station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
