Staying a P.O.W.
Theme for this Week: Banishing Bitterness
Charles Swindoll
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: "I can see that you are full of bitterness and held captive by sin" (Acts 8:23). Bonus Reading:Matthew 18:21-35
During my hitch in the Marine Corps, my wife and I rented an apartment from a man crippled by a World War II injury. Captured at Wake Island and confined for years in China, he was left partially paralyzed when an enemy soldier struck him with a rifle butt, and now lived in constant pain.
But even more lamentable, our crippled landlord had become a bitter man. Although 13 years removed from the war, owning with his wife a lovely dwelling, and having a comfortable income, he was in the grip of bitterness.
His bitterness was revealed by intense prejudice, an acrid tongue, and an everyone's-out-to-get-me attitude. There's no torment like the inner torment of an unforgiving spirit that refuses to be healed, to forget. I'm convinced that he was far more miserable by 1957 than he'd been in 1944. In a very real sense, he was still in prison.
For your sake, let me urge you to "put away all bitterness" now. There's no reason to stay in P.O.W. camp a minute longer. The escape route is clearly marked. It leads to the crosswhere the only One who had a right to be bitter wasn't.
Charles Swindoll in Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns
My Response: A grudge I've harbored that I'll give up before it consumes me is
Thought to Apply: To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.
Source unknown
Adapted from: Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns (Zondervan, 1994).
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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Dear God, help me to accept that wrongs I've suffered are Your problem, while resentments are my problem—and a sin.
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