Life’s Too Short To. . .Carry A Grudge
Life’s Too Short To… prt. 3
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
4/10/05
Describe the scene in the movie Rainman – “squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck.”
He writes this stuff in a journal, folks! Few of us keep an actual journal of offenses – we’re pretty content just to hold them all up here (head), or in here (heart).
Are you a grudge-carrier? Is there someone in your life who has hurt you whom you have not yet forgiven? Jesus spoke a lot about forgiveness. Let me tell you, in His own words, why Christ talked a lot about forgiveness.
John 10:10 (MSG)
10 A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
Why did Jesus come? To give us real life – eternal life – a life that is different than any life we could otherwise know. Everything Jesus taught us is designed to help us begin to understand and enter in to this kind of life. So before we continue addressing the idea of grudge-carrying, let’s be sure we understand what Jesus is saying here. Once we fully understand that, we will have no problem seeing why Jesus said we must forgive.
“I came so they (meaning you and me!) can have real and eternal life – more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” Wow, that’s pretty groovy. Real life? Eternal life? More and better life that goes beyond our wildest imaginings? I’ll take it. But what is it? How can you have more life than we already have now? I mean, I’m already alive, right? So are you. So what does it mean when Jesus says he came to give us more life, and eternal life?
We think it’s all about the eternal part. We think that just means that it never stops – it goes on forever. I believe that’s part of what it means, but that we can’t stop there – it’s a limited understanding of what Jesus was really trying to say. What Jesus is talking about is a different KIND of life. Let me illustrate:
Check out this plant. This is a potted plant I had Sue bring in for me this morning. Not plastic, it’s real. Would you say this plant is alive? What makes it alive?
{Don’t linger on these illustrations – keep things moving}
[It “breathes,” processes food, gives off waste, responds to sunlight, etc.]
So we’re in agreement that this plant is alive? Excellent!
[Yell out] Joe! Dr. Joe, could you come in here now please?
[Joe comes in with his dog]
This is Calla Rose. Would we agree that Calla Rose is alive? What makes her alive?
[breathes, processes food, gives off waste, interacts with human beings, responds to her name]
[Have Joe give the dog an order or play with it. Then hold up plant.]
Can this plant do the things Calla Rose can do? What if I throw a ball and tell the plant to fetch – will it respond? Of course not. Is it alive? Of course it is, but it has a different KIND of life, doesn’t it? A plant is dead to the world of play.
Now what if I say to Calla Rose, "You know, I’m having trouble figuring out whether I should refinance my home - can you give me a hand?" How much help should I expect? None, right? Dogs are dead to the world of mathematics and abstract reasoning. What if I take Calla Rose to the Louve and show her the Mona Lisa? Will she appreciate what she’s seeing? No, because dogs are dead to the world of aesthetic beauty.
Put simply, human beings enjoy a different KIND of life than animals and plants. We are all alive, but we are not all alive in the same way, we do not all have the same KIND of life. You might say dogs have MORE life than plants, and human beings have MORE life than dogs, in a certain manner of thinking. Human beings are open and alive to more experiences than plants and animals.
Now I want to use a text I used last week, but let’s fill it in a little bit this time. Paul is describing the Christian life and says:
Romans 6:19-23 (MSG)
19 I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
20 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter.
21 But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
22 But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way!
23 Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.
Do you see the picture there? Spiritually there are different kinds, different levels, of life. Sin is that which closes us up, locks us away from the expansive (“more,” “abundant,” “eternal,” “real”) life that is available to us through Jesus. Life in God is expansive - life in sin is restrictive. Life in God is characterized by delight and surprise - life in sin is characterized by dullness and predictability. Life in God is characterized by wholeness, healing, and being put-together - life in sin is characterized by brokenness, woundedness, and being torn apart. Life in God offers more life, more openness, more joy, more blessing, more delight and surprise - life in sin is slavery that drains life away from us, leaves us clinging harder and harder to the shreds of life we once had when we trusted a little more, took more risks, and were less cynical and jaded and more open to the mystery and wonder in life. Life in Christ is real and eternal - life in sin is false and temporary.
Folks, could the picture be any clearer? Let’s look again at what Jesus said:
John 10:10 (MSG)
10 A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
That’s what Christ offers you. Not life without risk, not life without limits, but life that is real, eternal, whole, put-together, full of delight and surprise. Do you see what I’m saying? Jesus is telling us about a different KIND of life, and one we cannot know any other way except through Him. Remember Christ’s words:
John 14:6 (NIV)
6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
So through Jesus we can have access to a certain KIND of life that we can never experience without him.
And so we return to grudge-carrying, and the reason Jesus spoke so often of forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness, by definition, closes us off to a certain kind of life, to the freshness of God’s grace. It creates a stagnant environment in our souls that breeds – well, let’s see what it breeds:
Ephesians 4:31 (NIV)
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
To carry a grudge is to nurse a root of bitterness. Bitterness (which comes from lack of forgiveness) will always simmer inside and produce rage and anger, which often lead to brawling (fighting) and slander (dismantling the reputation of others), and eventually to malice (the intentional wish to do harm to others).
Have you been there? I have. In a sermon a year and a half ago I told of my struggle with bitterness toward a person who dealt me one of the most painful blows of my life. His words hurt so bad I almost felt like it took my breath away. I struggled with incredible depths of emotion in the weeks and months after that, but I knew I needed to forgive. Over and over I’d sit down to write a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. And most of them turned out something like this:
"Dear so and so:
We are brothers in Christ. I need to forgive you and we need to embrace each other spiritually and let bygones be bygones. And it truly is my desire to forgive you for the things you said in so and so’s office last October. Those nasty, unfair things you said. I can’t quite imagine the nerve it must have taken you to say those awful things to me. No one has talked to me that way since I was in Jr. high school. Who are you to talk to me that way? I never knew an adult human being could be so vicious and vile and cruel and heartless. You disgust me. I hope you die a slow death and rot in hell. Love, your brother in Christ – Dave Flowers"
I’m serious, many of the letters contained those sentiments, and even most of those words – except for the “love, your brother in Christ” part. Is any one of us immune from the burning hatred we can feel when we nurse a grudge? I’m certainly not. Do you see the progression there? Do you see in this note how I gradually get back into my grievances with this person, then mull them over and over and eventually – at the end of the letter – wish him the worst possible kind of harm? (By the way I did eventually write the APPROPRIATE kind of letter to this person and he and I experienced what I still believe is miraculous reconciliation.)
That will always be what bitterness produces if we nurse a grudge. There simply is no other end to that road. We will either forgive, or we will be consumed by pettiness and hatred and a desire for revenge. We will either make a choice to live in the expansiveness of God’s healing and love for us, or we will allow bitterness toward someone to rot us from the inside out, until we implode upon ourselves and wind up a big lump of human spiritual carnage. Bitterness is the demon seed, we might say – it’s the evil baby that we nurse in its youth that will eventually grow up to throttle us with its bare hands as it squeezes our spirits ever tighter, closing us off from breathing the fresh air of God’s goodness and blessing.
Make two fists right now, please. Squeeze your fists as hard as you can. Tighter. Tighter. Don’t let go until I tell you to. Just hold it there for a while. Are you getting tired? Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Just a little tighter. Okay, now let go.
First did you notice the pain in your fingers when you finally let go? The fists were causing you pain, but it also hurt to STOP making the fists. When we carry a grudge, the grudge squeezes us to death, but the longer we carry that grudge we also find that it’s more and more painful to let go of it.
Second, did you notice that at every second it took more and more strength to keep squeezing? You had to focus more energy and attention on it every second in order to keep it up. Carrying a grudge will consume more and more of your life and energy and leave less left over for everything else.
Third, some of you may even have noticed a certain numbness from blood not circulating well through the fingers. Carrying a grudge can produce an insensitivity to the person you are mad at, but also to God and to others around you, as more and more of your energy is used up in the nursing of that grudge.
Do you see how this kind of life – the grudge-keeping life, is simply at odds with the expansive, whole, free life God has designed for you? You can’t simultaneously keep those fists closed and receive anything else. There’s no room for anything else, and if you nurse a grudge, there is no room left in your heart for love, especially for love like God’s, that promises to come in and break down all that hatred and dismantle those bitter emotions and bring what we sometimes want the least when we are carrying a grudge – forgiveness and freedom.
Not everyone in this room today is a Christian – not everyone has confronted their own sin and asked God to forgive them and be the leader of their life. If you have not taken that step, I want to welcome you to Wildwind this morning. Thank you for coming. You didn’t have to. No one forced you to come. [Okay guys, maybe your wife forced you to come.] Anyway, what I wanted to show you this morning is not just for Christians, because my goal has been to show how if we obey what Christ taught us, it will always lead to our being more open to receive this eternal, expansive, healed and whole life God desires for us to have, and if we do NOT obey Jesus and live the way he taught us to live, it will always lead to our being closed off, becoming smaller, more closed-off in a spiritual sense, and thus in the sense of all that truly defines us as human beings. This is true not only for non-believers but for Christians too – it’s why it’s so important that after we receive Jesus as the forgiver and leader of our lives, we continue to learn to follow Him faithfully, so that we can keep our lives free of everything that will prevent Christ from showing us all the richness and fullness of this God-centered life.
If you would say this morning that you are a Jesus-follower, I simply would ask you, are you nursing a grudge? Are you carrying around anger, or hurt, or bitterness, or all of the above, toward another person? Or maybe even toward yourself? Because life’s too short, and it will get you nowhere but further from where you said you wanted to go when you asked Jesus into your life. If you are not a Jesus-follower, I ask you if you can understand what I was talking about. Do you see how lack of forgiveness, grudge-carrying, will keep us from being able to ever receive the life God has for us? No matter where you are, how will you respond to this? Who is that person in your life maybe you need to forgive? Let me close with four quick forgiveness tips.
First, Don’t wait for a good reason to forgive. You forgive not because the other person is asking your forgiveness, but because the grudge is suffocating you spiritually – it is keeping you from receiving God’s love.
Second, Don’t wait until the other person deserves it.
Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)
32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
“Just as,” in other words, forgive each other in the same way that God forgave you. How did God forgive us?
Romans 5:8 (NIV)
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
In other words, we didn’t deserve it. The essence of forgiveness, folks, is that you forgive because it’s about you and your need to be right with God, to be free to allow his light to shine into your life, and you will never be free to be open to that until the choking bitterness is gone. Forgiving as God forgave us means forgiving without regard for whether the other party deserves it. I sure am glad God has made a habit of consistently not giving me what I deserve, aren’t you? I’d be in trouble.
Third, Don’t wait for the other person to approach you first. That’s a wordly way of looking at forgiveness – I’ll forgive when a person asks my forgiveness. Jesus himself said in Matthew 5,
Matthew 5:23-24 (NLT)
23 "So if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you,
24 leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
Do you see that? Your having grudge-free and harmonious relationships with other people is more important to God than your being here right now. And in Matthew 6:
Matthew 6:14-15 (NLT)
14 "If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Forgiveness simply is not an option. I was sharing this passage with someone once and they said, “I don’t like that – that means God’s forgiveness is conditional. I thought God accepts and loves us unconditionally.” But it’s not that there’s a quid pro-quo. God’s not just saying, “I’ll tell you what, here’s the deal. No forgivy you of others, no forgivy I of you.” It’s way deeper than that. Jesus is telling us that our forgiveness of others is what creates the conditions in our heart whereby we can receive and accept what God has for us – his love and forgiveness.
I’m saying this to Christ-followers right now: If you’re sitting here in church this morning and you have a strained relationship with someone, Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 make it clear that if you have a strained relationship in your life right now, your spiritual duty at this moment is probably not at Wildwind but at Starbucks over a cup of coffee with that individual. That’s the REAL spiritual activity for you at this time – the place where God is REALLY to be found. Don’t like to hear that? Read it for yourself and tell me if there’s any other way to think of it. If you are attending church, he says, and become aware that there is a strained relationship in your life, make reconciliation the number one priority in your life at that instant – then come to church to worship after you have done everything in your power to heal that relationship, including not waiting for that person to approach you first.
Fourth and last, stop making excuses for carrying a grudge. There will always be excuses out there, but Jesus told us to forgive as he forgave us. If anyone ever had reason NOT to forgive it was Jesus, and he forgave anyway.
So I hope you will consider forgiving someone this week that maybe you have struggled to forgive in the past. It’s hard. I have struggled with it big-time and wanted to be sure to tell you that, because I understand it’s not easy. But it’s what your soul needs. Some of you will find that you can just kind of quietly let go of some things that have been on your heart – let them go inside and be done with it. If you are at odds with a person and that person knows it, perhaps a conversation is in order. A letter, a phone call, a cup of coffee.
Christians here this morning, the book you claim to follow is clear – life in a state of bitterness is not an option if you are to live in God’s will for your life, even if you have become comfortable in your unforgiveness. Seekers and skeptics here this morning, I urge you also to pursue reconciliation as part of your own journey toward God. Let’s pray:
Father, some of us here today have been the recipients of your amazing grace and love and forgiveness. Help us forgive our debtors as you have forgiven us our debts. Do not allow us to have peace in our hearts while there is bitterness, malice, anger, or unforgiveness in them but make our hearts restless until we have been reconciled to the one with whom we are angry. Help skeptics and seekers here this morning realize the fullness of life you have for them and be willing to make forgiveness a part of their journey so that they can be more open to what you have for them.
I realize that oftentimes true spiritual forgiveness is a supernatural act that only You can bring about in our hearts. So I approach you as God over all things – all powerful – a good God who desires good things for us. Please create in us the desire, the willingness, and the ability to forgive. In the coming seconds, bring to our minds a picture of the face of the person or people we need to forgive, then give us a heart of obedience.
[pause to let people think]
God, I know I need to forgive the person I have seen in my mind’s eye this morning. I know you have said that unless we forgive our fellow human beings we will not be in a position to receive your forgiveness of us, and how desperately we all need that. Holy Spirit, free me from the bitterness I have held in my heart for so long. I release my death-grip on this person in my life and place them in Your hands. I ask that you would bless this person and help them experience your love the way you have allowed me to experience it. I know you love them as much as you love me, and I have no right to hate those you love. As I grant forgiveness to this person, I pray you would forgive me for having harbored bitterness toward him/her all this time. I receive your forgiveness and your love for me, as I extend my love and forgiveness to this person in my life. Create in me a clean heart and a clean conscience, that I will be able to honestly say there is no one in this world toward whom I harbor ill will.
If you need to, make some calls this week. Have some conversations. Aspire to love the way Jesus loved. Stop making excuses for carrying a grudge – lay it down so you can pick up all that God has for you. And trust me, you’ll need both hands free for that.
