Bitterness Ties You To Your Victimizer

The reason that God takes such a strong stand against bitterness and unforgiveness is because when you refuse to forgive, you are turned over to torment - and He after all, is a God of peace and refuge.

Bitterness ties you to your victimizer in the realm of your memories and emotions. As long as you refuse to eradicate the poison of bitterness in your heart, the individual who sought to destroy you has the power to repeat the crime repeatedly in your soul.  Every time you remember it, you will relive it. That is why forgiveness is such a selfish thing.  It is not about the victimizer being set free - it is about you and me being set free.

To sever controlling ties from a past victimizer, deal with your bitterness by confronting it for what it is. Then, you must take all steps necessary to root out the bitterness in your conversation, your thinking, your perceptions of what occurred, your rehearsing of what occurred, and your attitude about whether it has taken something irreplaceable from your life.

The Power of Forgiveness

There is no way that you can be done with the emotional tie you have to an individual who has abused you or victimized you until you forgive them from your heart. It is the only way that you will be able to take away that individual's ability to control you at an emotional level. Is it easy?  Not at all.  I have found that forgiveness is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do in life.  Why?  Because at a certain level it means that I have to surrender my right to vindication.  When you have been hurt by someone who held your trust in whatever manner, that is really tough to do.

I have found that true forgiveness for me means turning to Jesus to help me.  Not only does He know the secrets of my heart in terms of what it will take to really release the memory of an injustice, but He knows how to lead me over those troubled waters. I have found that when I try to do it myself, it is the most delusional thing I attempt to do.  Just the trying defeats the purpose. But Jesus...He knows, He understands, He is my helper, and He is my deliverer. It is in Him that I live, move and have my being.  He is well able to lead you and me beside still waters.

Tombstones

In life, we have a tendency to place a tombstone on the places where we bury things. The problem is, they are, by definition, reminders.  They mark the places of grief, loss, and remorse. Tombstones connect us through sensual elements like smell and sound to places and people from our painful past. Not only that, but they are monuments.

Where have you erected a tombstone in your heart and soul?  While it is important to be done with the places of our most private pain (cemeteries) forever, it is equally important that we not leave markers behind for future visitation. To take steps to sever soul ties forever, you must be willing to leave no markers on graves.

Emotional Ties

Unhealthy emotional ties are just as destructive as unhealthy soul ties.  I want to give you an example of an emotional tie that Bishop T.D. Jakes warned of a couple of years ago.  He talked about the kind of emotional ties that occur when people who are married have close friendship ties with members of the opposite sex. Bishop Jakes explained that this can be particularly destructive when this emotional tie results because you have conflict going on in a marriage and one of the spouses begins to look outside of the marriage for emotional support and even stability. This is what makes emotional ties so deadly - the subtlety.

I have seldom seen close friendship ties outside of the marriage relationship remain healthy. Why? Because the nature of a close friendship breeds intimacy and fellowship. It is actually more probable that boundaries will be violated with respect to the sharing of secrets, the intimidate details of vulnerability, and the familiarity that goes along with exposing one's heart to another. 

When people assure me that there is no way that their close friend - who is not their spouse - could ever be anything more than a friend, I get a little afraid for them.  Why?  Because I know that I am looking and listening to a person who will not be on their guard for inappropriateness. When you know that the enemy is always looking for a way to get in to deceive and to destroy, you stay on your guard.  When, however, you think it cannot happen, that is when it usually does.