Resentment Destroys - How Should We Respond?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

That's why all those little adrenalin crises that you allow to occur in your life are shortening your life.  They're not only destroying your emotional peace and your spiritual peace, but they're shortening your life. They're killing you far faster than they're killing the other person who probably doesn't even notice your reaction. Loved ones, if that's the case with such a little incident as somebody cutting-in in front of you in traffic, what about the family feuds that have gone on for years?

What about those long, long resentments that you have nursed into roots of bitterness deep down in your heart? What about those feelings that you have against certain people? They're eating you away faster than any doctor can measure. What about the very quiet repayments of evil for evil that occur day-by-day when a salesperson treats you a little off-handedly, or somebody on the phone is arrogant or rude to you, or somebody else is sarcastic to you?

Then, what about all the secret payings back of evil for evil that exist in your attitude to other people who you think, probably wrongly, have a wrong attitude to you. And so you feel, "They have a wrong attitude to me, so it's up to me to resist that and to have that kind of attitude to them, too, so that what they give me, they get back from me."

Loved ones, all those little payings back of evil for evil begin to destroy us from the inside. And that's one very, very down-to-earth, pretty selfish reason for obeying God's word in this instance. "Repay no one evil for evil." The moment somebody does something evil against you, forget it. Forget it fast -- because if you once begin to dwell upon it, evil will begin to fill your life with its own power and its own consequences and its own destructive capabilities.