Thursday: ILove You, but IDon’t Like Certain Things
WEEK 33
THURSDAY
I LOVE YOU, BUT I DON’T LIKE CERTAIN THINGS
2 Corinthians 6:4-10
We are studying how to master resentments. Don’t fight them. That brings them into the focus of attention, and whatever is in the focus of attention becomes power. “Whatever gets your attention gets you.” And don’t suppress them. That only makes them work in the subconscious as uneasiness and conflict.
Suppressing resentments is like canning spoiled fruit; you try to preserve what can only putrefy.
Someone has defined a resentment or grudge as the “taking of stinging nettles into your bare breast, hoping this will make the other fellow scratch.” You punish yourself hoping this will punish the other.
A daughter told how her mother literally “blew her top.” Her mother and father hated each other. The father was to retire soon. The mother, resenting the fact that he would then be at home all the time, became more and more resentful. She had a cerebral hemorrhage and died, killed by her own resentments. The death of some people through resentments is not so overt; it is covert. When we take resentments into our bosoms, we take death—slow or sudden. When Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road, he did not try to conquer him by threats of punishment. He asked, “Saul, why are you harassing me?” (Acts 9:4). There was no syllable of resentment or threat of punishment.
That simple, plaintive question broke down the resistance of Paul, who replied: “Who are you, Lord?” Note that he used the word “Lord,” for this absence of threatening showed him a new type of power. It set the pattern of the kind of reaction that this new faith would show, the reaction of love to everything and everybody. That laid the foundation for Paul’s emphasis. Christianity was after the pattern of Christ.
A man told me he had held resentments against a man for twenty years. He took a cue from Abundant Living, went to the man, and said, “I love you, but I don’t like certain things about you. I’m sorry I’ve had these resentments.” The resentments were dissolved, and the two men became fast friends.
O Lord, I thank you that your love and my resentments cannot live in the same heart. I let the resentments go, for I want you more than anything else. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Every minute I hold anger or resentments, I miss sixty seconds of happiness.