Tag Archives: resentment

Life Lessons

Why do Bad things Happen to Good People? (Final Part)

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                                         Job’s Reaction.

     Job finally found his voice again… “O Lord, I know that You can do all things! I’ve listened to all these things that You can do, and I’m an utter fool! Please forgive me!” This is what the Lord delights to hear from each of His people, an utter dependence on Him….     It is only when we come to an end of ourselves that God can work for us! He will never despise or turn away from a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 34:18; 51:17). Now that Job had stopped justifying himself, he was in a position where God could work on, and for, him. But he first had to prove himself, that he had no more bitterness for his friends who at least had come to visit him in the time of trial!

    They were required to offer a sacrifice for their part in this whole affair, and Job had to pray for them when a natural reaction would be one of revenge. The whole matter was cleared up in the right way and with the right attitudes, and then God was able to bless Job to the fullest. All that he had lost was now restored to him…his health, his reputation and relationships, his wealth, and even another family that was as much joy to him as his first! His daughters were the most beautiful girls in the land!

   Before we leave the story of Job, let’s think for a moment about Mrs. Job. We tend to downgrade her for telling Job he might as well curse God and die. But she too had suffered loss in this ….she had lost her income, her wealth, her family….all were gone. Then there were those men that came and sat around saying nothing to comfort Job at all. No wonder she felt like she did!

    Would we be any different? Both she and Job must have been relatively young when all this happened, maybe in their mid thirties as they had another ten children. Before we condemn her for her hasty comment, let’s put ourselves in her shoes and imagine how we would have felt!

   It’s all in our attitude…towards God and those around us. We have to be right in both directions before God can fully bless us. We cannot be right towards God and be bitter against someone else at the same time. It doesn’t work! If we are bitter at all, we are NOT right before God. Bitterness is not becoming for a believer, no matter what the rights and wrongs are! That was the difference in the attitudes of Job and his wife. Job could say “though He slay me, yet will I praise Him!” while she said, “Curse Him and die!” What are our attitudes to our disappointments?

It wasn’t until Job was able to pray for his friends, that God was able to bless Him! This reminds us that we are told to pray for those who are mean to us, and for those who persecute us. We are not to hold any resentments or bad feelings toward ANYONE! If we do, we are to confess it as a sin, and then we know that God will forgive us, and cleanse us from this unrighteousness.    Then we are to act in a loving and friendly manner towards them, in obedience to God’s Word.                                                                                                      (Job 42:1-17)

Life Lessons

Free at Last!

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Freedom at Last!

       We can hardly believe it! No more signing in when we go to a shop! No more having to stand out in the cold in a queue while waiting to get our groceries! We don’t realize how precious our freedom is until we lose it. We could see the reason for our recent lock down, but that didn’t make it any easier to put up with the restrictions.

   As we look around, we can see that there are many restrictions that we suffer from in life, and yet we don’t stop to analyse them. How many older folk are restricted by their failing bodies! This is something that we could all face in the future, and mostly through no fault of our own. As we look around our garden at this time of the year (winter), we see that this is a force of nature, and a natural time of rest and later, rejuvenation.

   Then again, others are restricted by their bad habits which have turned into addictions. In these cases, they only have themselves to blame, not that that makes it any easier to break them! The main thing is to not slip back into old ways if we have for some reason, been able to get free of  them.

   Some people are restricted from having a good relationship with others because of a bad attitude…either theirs or yours. To hug a resentment, refusing to apologise for some wrong done, does no-one any good. As it was once said, “There’s no point in getting on your high horse, because you will only have to eventually come down!”

   People today are so easily “offended” by some chance remark, and carry it until it becomes a full blown resentment that eats them up!

   There is only one way to become free of these restrictions (apart from those of old age), and that is through our Lord Jesus Christ. He can set us free if we will only ask Him. You might say that you don’t believe that sort of thing, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Have you ever asked Him? He has done His part for us, and we have to do our part in responding positively to Him!

Random Devotional Thoughts
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   The  mandarins on our trees are just about finished, and I was peeling one of the last  the other morning. It was firm and round with a beautiful sheen to it, and  looked to be a perfect specimen. But as the skin was being peeled back. I could see a small black patch deep inside the fruit. This was going to spoil the whole thing, as each segment had a tinge of the black on it. The mandarin was unfit to eat, and I had to throw it out.

How often we are like this mandarin! We put on  good clothes to go to church and sit there listening to the sermon, but inside we may be day dreaming miles away, or perhaps we have some resentment against someone else and are secretly seething about it. Afterwards, our friends greet us by saying, “How are you?” and we reply by saying with  bright smile, “Fine, thanks!”

Everything appears to be great, but we know deep down that it isn’t. We aren’t fine at all. We are like that mandarin, and that patch of resentment inside taints every part of our life. We dodge that person when we see them in the street; we can’t say anything nice about them and perhaps start a whispering campaign about them.

For that mandarin to become edible, a lot of it had to be cut away. It hurts us when the bad stuff gets cut out, but until it does, we are useless to God and man. Jesus Christ could see right inside the hearts and minds of the priests of His day, and He told them they were hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. Don’t let’s be like this; remember that He can see right inside us too.

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Adult Testimonies

“I Wish I hadn’t Done it!”

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     CRYWOMAN                                      The old lady and her daughter sat in my study looking a little uncertain. “What can you tell me about my mother’s family?” the older lady asked, “I know a bit but not back to my grandparents or where they came from”.

It seemed a strange request, but as it happened, I had done quite a bit of research on the background of this family as we shared a common ancestor. We’ll call this lady Ellie for the sake of this story, and her mother Essie.

Ellie had been adopted by her parents  from birth, but never knew this. Living as they did in a small country district where everyone knew everyone else, it was inevitable that the other children at school knew that she was different. Ellie wasn’t even sure what being adopted meant, all she knew was that she was different to the other children, and she had to endure many taunts in the playground because of it. Not only that, she was an only child in a day where large families were the norm, and this too made her stand out as “different” to the  other children at school.

When Ellie grew up, she left the district to get work in the same city she had been born in, and here she met and married her husband. They eventually had five daughters and one son. As a young mother, she missed her real mother so much that she made up her mind to find her. She eventually tracked Essie down. She too, had married and had other children, but had never told any of them about her “disgraceful” youth. Neither her husband, nor her other children knew of the existence of Ellie.

When she knocked on their door and Essie opened it, Ellie told her who she was, and that Essie was her birth mother. Essie was so horrified at the ramifications of this spectre from the past, that she slammed the door shut in Ellie’s face, and refused to acknowledge her. All Ellie’s dreams of a tender reunion with her real mother dissolved in a moment, and the realisation that she was nothing more than an unwelcome embarrassment to her overcame her as she stumbled away down the path and back to her home. When she got there, she tore the only photo she had of Essie into small pieces, and threw them into the rubbish bin.  She felt that life indeed had dealt her a raw deal, and the seeds of bitterness and resentment grew and festered in her mind.

Many years passed by, and Ellie’s daughters grew up and married themselves. Her youngest daughter married and went off to the States to live, and her brother followed her never coming back to New Zealand. Ellie felt as though they had deserted her, and it was just one more nail in her coffin of resentment.

Her eldest daughter married and moved right away from the city, and then one of the other two girls was diagnosed as having cancer. She didn’t survive this, and once more Ellie felt bereft. Then to her horror, she heard that her eldest daughter who lived many miles away up north, had also been diagnosed with cancer. So Ellie lost this daughter also, and although the baby survived and was brought up by his father and new wife, Ellie never saw anything of him. She often thought sadly of how he was her last link with her eldest daughter.

More years passed by. One day there was a knock at Ellie’s door. She opened it to see an old lady standing there (it was Essie).

“I’ve come to see you before I die”, she quavered.

Ellie was so angry…who does she think she is, after the way she  treated me? she thought. It gave her great pleasure to slam the door in her mother’s face, and watch her go down the path.

She heard a short while later that her mother had died, and there had never been any reconciliation between them.

Now here she was sitting before me wanting to know more about her real family. I was able to fill her in on her real mother’s side, who they were and where they fitted into the jigsaw of genealogy.

I had seen this lady periodically coming to the ladies outreach meetings at our church without knowing anything of her background. She had always looked so sad and miserable. Although there were many times when the topic of God’s love and forgiveness were spoken of, she never approached anyone to ask how this might help her even though the invitation to do so was frequently given.

As she told her sad story, it impressed itself on me what a difference it would have made to her if she had only done this! As far as I knew, she never did forgive her mother, and died still in her sadness and regrets of what might have been.

I include this story here as a warning of what bitterness and resentment can do to a person when it is not dealt with promptly. It is only natural to feel these things in the face of disappointments and hurts, but never let it stay and fester. The Bible tells us that these things have roots, and we are to get rid of them before they grow…

         Watch carefully in case any person fails to show the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springs up and troubles you.    (Hebrews 12:15)