Unforgiveness

Jesus On The Throne.

Any time you nurse unforgiveness, harbor a grudge, swim in resentments or negative condemning thoughts about someone you displace Jesus as the source or your Salvation and Joy. You are saying to Jesus essentially -your death on the cross is not enough for me. Whatever that person did to me is interfering with my advancement, redemption or joy. It displaces Jesus from the author and source of our provision, our sustenance, our grace, our blessing, our Joy. It says something I am not getting from someone else is minimizing my life in a way Jesus cannot deliver me or save me from-and that the person's negative effect is greater than God's goodness or the power of his love. And that misunderstands how deep, how wide, how amazing, how eternal is the powerful Love of God.
The devil cannot attack you unless God lets him. The devil had to ask God's permission to attack Job. God had something that Job needed to learn. He was self exaulted in his own self-righteousness so God brought him low- really really low. So low he sat on the ground with the dogs licking his sores and his wife wondering why he didn't just curse God and die. It didn't turn around until Job learned to get over himself and pray for his friends.

I know someone who makes a living literally going around the country trash-mouthing her mother calling her essentially a hippy- whore to score the point that she is now chaste and better than her mother after having found Jesus and seen the light past the wayward ways of her slutty mother-a divorcee. She even wrote a book about it. While Jesus I am sure is happy she found him and is a born again virgin, telling the world that her mother (the vessel whom Jesus chose to bring her to earth) is a hippy-free-love-whore is a violation of the Big Top Ten Commandment to Honor one's Father and Mother. It's the one commandment that comes with the blessing and promise "so that it will be well with you and you will have a long life." God has now silenced her, at least for a time, while she deals with thyroid removal surgery, thyroid cancer and something that sounds ugly like iodine treatments and a lifetime of synthetic thyroid medications. Perhaps he silenced her for time enough to reflect and repent and ask forgiveness of her mother without whom she wouldn't be here to begin with. It can be true that the Devil doesn't attack, unless God gives permission - usually for a reason. You can pray with me for her for the healing of her relationship with her mother as well as her cancer.

Then look at where the devil has attacked you. Where were you vulnerable and what was God trying to tell you? Did he attack you in your finances? Were you too self-reliant on your own financial strength that took you away from your reliance on God? Were you attacked in your relationships? Was that because you put them ahead of your relationship with God.

God is a Jealous God. He wants you to know that his Love is all you need. If his Love is all you need, you don't need to trash-mouth anyone else, harm any one else, or exault yourself above any one else. God is really all you need-and he is found in the most interesting places and people.