Are you a prisoner to a certain event that happened? A memory that keeps drawing you back so you keep revisiting that painful place over and over? And when you do, it reopens the wound and the pain, hurt, and anger comes fresh all over again?

Do you replay it over and over and alter your words? Wishing you had said this instead of that? Or done things differently so you would inflict hurt and take away their victory? If this happens, it’s an unhealed place, maybe a place still bound up with unforgiveness. It could be a place where bitterness and resentment have taken residency.

This unhealed plaxce creates a crossroad, where we have a choise. To forgive and walk the path to freedom, or keep traveling down the path of pain. 

We can also have perceived offense and pain. Believing everything is happening is a direct attack and being done TO us, when in reality it’s not about us at all.  We honestly believe they just have to make a choice to do the right thing, apologize and all will be well. But the longer they don’t, we become more and more offended and hurt, becoming angrier as time goes on. 

You can even become offended at God. Maybe He didn’t prevent something from happening and you got hurt and feel rejected. We hear many stories of how Standers pray for the ONE thing to not happen, God allowed it, now they no longer trust Him. Or, they become offended that God won’t release them from Standing and they feel in order to do their own thing, they must become a disobedient rebellious child, and that just makes them so angry.

Our actions always reveal a heart issue. If you always go backward and revisit painful places, actions, words from the past, places that offended and hurt you, pray and seek God about why you can’t forgive.  All these things will keep you bound and revisiting the past over and over. Unforgiveness keeps us tied to the offense. It keeps us linked in a way that prevents us from breaking free and being able to heal.

Healing from an offense is very, very important. Unhealed offenses are like a bag of potatoes left accidentally in a cupboard, shoved to the back, forgotten. (Yup. I’m speaking from experience here.) My nose and anyone’s nose who came in contact with our home was offended. The whole house seemed to be “ruined” and unpleasant to be around no matter how much I cleaned because of the “slight” smell that showed up from time to time.

It doesn’t matter how much good you do. How much you try and help, pray, love, be right. That rot from unforgiveness will drift past your nose and those who come in contact with you. That unforgiveness will show up and offend others. It will come out in your view, your perspective, your character, and your personality. It will alter your perception and viewpoint, and if you are a parent, it will become part of your beliefs that you pass on and teach your children.

If you feel your spouse is choosing other people, another lifestyle, or themselves over you and your children, and you are bitter about it, no matter how hard you try and hide that from your child, they will feel it. They will believe they are not loved by the parent. What YOU believe can become their beliefs.

Unhealed places will INFLUENCE your choices and decision making! 

Bitter people don’t always smell the rot of the unhealed place. They are blind to what they are feeling and putting out into the atmosphere. They get comfortable with being angry, hurt and miserable all the time and will delight in telling you just what made them this way. They feel justifed in their hurt and pain. 

Not all unforgiveness produces the rotten smell of bitterness. Bitterness comes when a person has made a heart choice to withhold forgiveness. They have come to the crossroads of choice many times and made their decision. They are not going to let them off the hook and let go of the offense that has been done to them. It’s theirs, they earned the right to be angry, hurt and are entitled to be bitter. A lot of these choices are made from fear. Fear of being vulnerable again, hurt again. Choosing to be bitter is a much safer feeling than the terror of ever opening themselves up to being devastated again.

God loves you too much to allow you to stay this way. He has provided you a different way, and He won’t allow you to remain bound to something He set you free from. First, He must get you to fully trust Him so you believe in His love. As it is this perfect love that will cast out, overcome and demolish the fear that prevents you from forgiving and being vulnerable.

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 1 John 4:18 NLT

We know and understand that God is love, and the cross was the ultimate display of that love, the cross is our crossroads, provides us with a way out of the offense. But we have to choose LOVE above fear, love above entitlement, love above the hurt and anger. We have to choose GOD above it all. 

but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:12

If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 1 John 4:20

It starts with a choice. Choose to trust God, to be bigger than your fears, bigger than the what if’s. Trust Him to get you through the possibility of any pain and vulnerability that letting go of the offense may bring. Let His love be your choice. And make the leap! Release, forgive and let the healing of your heart begin.

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger

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