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Key Bible Verse: For God is pleased with you when … you patiently endure unfair treatment (1 Peter 3:19). Bonus Reading: Romans 3:3–4

When our boys were little, we found 22 crazy things to do with a beach ball. Often we'd see how far beneath the water we could hold that ball. In the process, we learned a scientific principle: the farther down you push it, the higher it goes when you let go!

Each of us has emotional beach balls pushed down inside us. We may seldom think of them. But bad feelings aren't erased just because they're ignored or denied. What isn't forgiven will somewhere, sometime, surface in seemingly unrelated ctions—and "defile" many.

The source of the hurt may be verbal or physical abuse, unfair treatment, devastating neglect, or shattered dreams. Whatever the cause, the resulting cancer of bitterness inflicts little damage on the "grudgee"—but it is poison to the grudger. You don't really hold a grudge. A grudge holds you.

The pursuit of personal peace demands the eviction of those bitter feelings that continually stir up trouble. For yesterday's wounds simply don't stay in yesterday. They creep into today, and tomorrow, with their poison.

—Ron Hutchcraft in Living Peacefully in a Stressful World

My Response: Something I haven't admitted that I'm upset about is _____. It needs to be forgiven.

Thought to Apply: If you are suffering from a bad man's injustice, forgive him lest there be two bad men.
—Augustine of Hippo (church leader, 4th century)

Adapted from: Living Peacefully in a Stressful World (Discover, 2000) by permission.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

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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