Do not keep silent,
O God of my praise! For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have opened against me; they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. In return for my love they are my accusers, but I give myself to prayer. thus they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
- Psalm 109:1-5
King David, who wrote the above Psalm,experienced a lot of this kind of thing. Most, if not all of us have experienced this as well, but no one has gone through this to the extent and in the manner that Christ has. Gone through what? That unjust attack. The slander. Those folks who, for whatever reason, talk bad about you, belittle you, bully you, criticize you, etc., even though you haven't done anything to them. Usually we don't stay around people who do that to us or keep them in our lives long.
Unless we're stuck. School, work,and unfortunately home can become places of stress and anxiety if someone is putting us down, attacking us verbally, and taking our kindness as weakness to be used against us. Our natural inclination when in this situation is to cut the bully out of our life. But when we can't, the natural instinct is to get even. Even if we can't get even because we are too weak or afraid to rise up against the person, we fantasize about retaliating and let the fires of anger rage within.
It's the way we are wired. We like people who like us. We don't like people who don't like us. We are kind to and care about people who are kind to and care about us, and we hate the people who are mean to us, unkind to us, use and abuse us, even when part of us loves them too. And we either retaliate against their mistreatment or push down the anger until it eats us up inside or we explode. What we don't naturally do is the key to freedom from the anger and resentment that is born of having our love and kindness taken advantage of and getting abuse and hate in return.
The key is verse four. In return for my love they are my accusers, But I give myself to prayer. It's not the natural response, but prayer is the best response to the pain of being treated wrongly and unfairly. First, the God of all comfort has great arms to run to when we are hurting. There is no better refuge from the pain of being mistreated than the heart of God, who came and allowed Himself to be mistreated to the point of death, even though He didn't do anything wrong at all, for us. Jesus understands what it feels like when we are in this situation. We can turn to Him for comfort and refuge.
But more than just a place to run for protection and comfort, prayer is the key to freeing ourselves from the poison of anger and resentment that hurts us more than the person it is directed towards. That junk that ruins our peace and has us going through our day focused on our enemies and the pain they've caused us. We have inadvertently given our enemy complete control over our life, as our thoughts, imaginations, actions and reactions are all about them and what they did to us, even if we aren't around them anymore and they haven't thought about us in years. We become puppets on the strings of fear and anger, fear we will be used and hurt again and anger over what happened. But when we follow the instruction in Matthew to pray for those who mistreat us and bless those that curse us, we can find freedom from the puppet strings.
When we pray a blessing on those we have cause to curse, and ask God to help, heal and forgive those who mistreat us, it breaks the cycle of fear and anger and resentment and retaliation. It purges us of the poison that makes us puppets. It cuts our strings. We come, through prayer and grace, to a place where we can see that they were wrong because they are spiritually sick and need help. They hurt us, but God can heal us and them. They were wrong, but we don't need justice. We can extend the mercy that we have been given when we were wrong and ask God to forgive them and draw them to Himself. We can ask God to give them the blessings that we desire for ourselves.
When we pray for those we resent on a regular basis, even if we don't completely mean what we pray at first, we find the resentment being released as our obedience allows the Spirit of Love to begin to change our hearts toward that person and we are set free. Our resentment is no longer the Puppet Master in our life. God cuts our strings and gives us life and freedom. But we can not have that freedom and life while being bound by the anger and fear that being misused and abused causes. Even justified anger controls us and refuses takes us to a place of joy, peace and love.
Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.
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