Are You Fit for the Fight?
An 8-day Devotional to Overcoming Fear and Living Courageously.
Forgive Everyone | DEVO DAY 1
“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison hoping the other person will die.”
But it was me who was dying.
At 21 years old, I woke up in my apartment with hell in my body. A black hole took over the inside of me with no ending to the vacuum of darkness. I had partied the night before, smelling like smoke and alcohol, like so many other nights. But this morning was different.
I wanted to kill myself.
To this day, I have no recollection of how I got to this church near my college campus. Storming through the front doors in the clothes I slept in the night before, I screamed with panic and tears that wouldn’t stop, “Help me!”
Startled by my hysteria, the secretary at the front desk rushed me into an office where a man was sitting at a desk. I don’t remember what I said to him through uncontrollable tears.
He pushed play on a cassette tape and left the room. For the next 20 minutes I listened to the lyrics of a love song: a father in a relentless pursuit of his runaway son. The father found the boy wrapped in cold heavy chains and unwrapped them from the boy. I felt light come back in my body. My spirit took a breath.
But it was the next part of the story that shattered the spirit of death gripping my soul…
…The father wrapped the chains around himself.
The tears wouldn’t stop. “Why would you do that to yourself?” This was God taking my pain, sin, darkness, shame, and self-hatred upon himself. And this is when I understood what Jesus did on the cross for me.
A miraculous exchange (my sin for his purity) freed me from the claws of hell and gave me eternal life.
The pastor walked back into the room and handed me a pamphlet on my way out. In big black letters it read, “The Root of Bitterness.”
My first reaction was, “Not me, I’m not bitter.” But over the next several weeks, months and years, God would reveal to me the power of letting go of every person who has ever caused me any level of pain, including myself.
A cold and offended heart expresses itself without effort, but a warm & generous heart requires intentionality on the road of healing.
Several years ago, we purchased a retreat center in Portland, Oregon. We began to restore one of the homes on the property and discovered that the water from one of the shower heads would only trickle. And not only that but there were inches of water in the tub that would hardly drain.
I was baffled. “The family before us really lived this way?”
We called a friend who was a plumber. He removed grains of sand from the pipes leading to the shower head and used a long plastic tool to remove hair from the drain. After about an hour, we were back in business.
When I was handed that “bitterness pamphlet” that day, the pastor could see that I was clogged with pain in my heart, standing in inches of dirty water of hurt, pain, rejection, and betrayal.
It’s now very obvious to me that I was a hurt young lady who was suffering with rejection and abandonment from when I was five years old and my parents went their separate ways. I didn’t think that really affected me until there I was holding this pamphlet that exposed the build up of unforgiveness and sin. With an open heart to be healed, I devoted myself to prayer, tears, reading the word, and joining a community of believers to begin to walk out my healing.
My observation is that I have never seen a person walk in real freedom, faith, and the fruits of the spirit who is bitter. In fact, when I meet bitter and angry people, they are usually surrounded by people who have the same “bitter-vibe.”
“Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.”
INSTRUCTIONS FOR DAY 1 - 5 Steps to Forgiveness
1. TAKE INVENTORY OF YOUR HEART.
Humbly ask the Holy Spirit if there are people in your heart being held hostage to your pain. Maybe they are in the “naughty corner” of your heart or sitting in an invisible prison, sentenced to owing you an apology, a position, money, love, accolades, recognition, or help you believe you deserve. Maybe you see…
Parents?
Leaders?
Siblings?
Friends?
Co-workers?
Organizations?
Your own children?
2. LET GO.
Forgiving someone is letting go of what you subconsciously or consciously believe they owe you. The reason we can do this is because God first forgave us! We were supposed to pay up for what we have done against God, but he sent his son Jesus to pay for our sins and die a brutal death in our place.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
3. PRAY.
See Jesus on the cross, brutally torn in his flesh, nails hammered through his hands and feet. He is hanging there because he decided to pay your death sentence. This should be your death, but he has come to take your place. The punishment of your sin has landed on him, absorbed into this body. People are mocking him. But his eyes are looking at you, knowing that the greatest act of love for you is happening right now and will allow you to stand before God with a clean conscience. You owe God nothing to make penance for your sin because the punishment has been paid by Jesus. Your previous sin cannot be recalled. You stand with a clean heart before God, enabling you to come right to him in total oneness.
“Lord Jesus. I thank you for dying for my sin, taking every ounce of sin and rebellion upon yourself. I receive you as my Lord and Savior and turn from being god of my own life. You are the only way to my perfect and right relationship with God. I am fully yours. As I see the people in my life who have hurt me and betrayed me in similar ways I betrayed you, I choose to let go of what I think they owe me. I let go of expectations. I let go of the money they owe, and the love that I used to think I needed from them to be fully satisfied. I choose to receive your love for me, so graciously poured out on that cross with your purifying blood, and your resurrection power! I choose to extend full forgiveness to those who have harmed me or caused me pain. I renounce bitterness, anger, rage, sorrow, remorse, negativity, scarcity, revenge, retaliation, jealousy, and comparison from my soul. I sever it ALL from me entirely! I receive your Spirit in every part of me. I am empowered by YOU, not by any human ability! I am full of your Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.
I choose now to release every person who I have held hostage to my pain. I choose to bless them and declare them free of owing me anything from this day forward. I walk free of the consequences of their actions or neglect toward me or others.”
4. VERBALLY RELEASE THEM.
Don’t be discouraged if you see someone you love and care for deeply (like your spouse, children, or a good friend.) Often times, the deeper the love for someone, the more vulnerable we are to hurt, pain, and offense.
“_____________, I sever all unhealthy soul ties between you and myself. I give you back what is yours and I take back what is mine. I sever myself from the consequences, responsibility and control of your actions. You owe me nothing. I RELEASE YOU AND I BLESS YOU!”
(Repeat this for each person He shows you. Take your time and come back to this as often as you need to! You may need to return to this for the same person until there is no longer any residue in you from the pain associated with them.)
Now, ask Jesus to give you a tool to tear down the prison walls or destroy the “naughty corner” reserved for people who hurt you. Tear it down until you can’t see that place any longer.
Now, see Jesus in his full resurrected body. Smiling and excited, he is reaching out his hand and inviting you into your incredible future,
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
5. PROTECT YOUR HEALTH!
“There is an enormous physical burden to being hurt and disappointed,” says Karen Swartz, M.D., director of the Mood Disorders Adult Consultation Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Chronic anger puts you into a fight-or-flight mode, which results in numerous changes in heart rate, blood pressure and immune response. Those changes, then, increase the risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions. Forgiveness, however, calms stress levels, leading to improved health.
Source Link: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/forgiveness-your-health-depends-on-it
The first step to be Fit for the Fight… Humble yourself and forgive everyone, always.
There is hardly a day that will go by that won’t offer you an invitation to be offended by the actions or neglect of another person. WATCH OUT: sometimes that person that upsets you the most is YOU. Take your heart before God and repent for your sins and shortcomings and receive his forgiveness for you! Don’t wallow in self-pity!
As a movement of people fighting for righteousness on the earth, we don’t want to fight with a bitter sound! We want to fight with God’s voice that delivers truth in love. This pure voice within us will draw people to our Savior where, they too, can be saved, healed and delivered.
Listen to the Song I heard that day God rescued me! (I didn’t find this song for another 25 years after I first heard it!)
