The nerve endings on our fingertips permit us know when we are touching something hot. Nerves are God’s protective blessing to keep us from damaging our bodies. In the area of our emotions He has given us feelings to protect us from damage. Often our negative feelings are misunderstood. Instead of seeing feelings of irritation, frustration, and anger as God’s "early warning" signs, we mistakenly perceive them as indicators of our weakness. Yet our Father allows sources of irritation and anger to come into our lives in order that we might fully appropriate His grace and power to respond righteously.

AVOIDING PERSONAL IDOLATRY

How often we must remind ourselves that our Father cherishes our loving dependence on Him! The Bible tells us that He is jealous for His relationship with each of His children. When we fail to abide trustingly in the warmth of this relationship, we expose ourselves to a whole array of idols that bring personal havoc to our lives.

Idolatry develops when we seek to operate independently of our Father. When we perceive that we have rights not given to us by the Father, we create idols for ourselves. Because of His love for us He will expose the idols in our lives in order that we may recognize them, repent, and cast them aside.

Idolatry may encompass wrong attitudes toward others, particularly if we are motivated by the following:

1. Focusing on our own rights at the cost of other people.
2. Holding wrong expectations about others.
3. Using people for personal ambitions.

When we are motivated by any of these wrongful focuses, the Lord will permit us to be irritated or even hurt by other people. Our Father uses our feelings of irritation, frustration, or hurt as early warning devices, a means of showing us that we are exercising an attitude contrary to His will. He is permitting us to repent and to seek the empowerment of His grace to ‘pass over’ the other person’s offense. Remember that love covers over a multitude of wrongs.

THE ATTITUDE OF FORGIVENESS

God wants our best and has a purpose for permitting the irritation or wrong done to us. His purpose for each of us who have put our trust in His Son is to develop the character of Jesus in our lives.

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:5-8).

Whenever you are faced by God’s early warning feelings, examine yourself for any "blindspots" in your life. Throughout your life your Father will continue to use painful events to enable you to develop the character of His Son. When you miss the grace afforded you, He will cause other events to confront you until He sees the character of Jesus in that area of your life.

One of the most distinguishing qualities of our trust in Jesus is a forgiving nature. The presence of the Holy Spirit in us enables us to appropriate the grace to lovingly forgive: "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13)/

DEALING WITH BITTERNESS

When we fail to see our frustration and hurt through God’s intents and purposes, these feelings will decay into bitterness. Bitterness ensues when we miss the grace the Spirit offers us to forgive: "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many" (Hebrews 12:15).

Bitterness is like leaven. It will work its way into other relationships to defile them. Often a person plagued by bitterness will use gossip, sharing detrimental information about some person with those not part of the problem or the solution. Or, they will slander by telling only part of the truth with the design to hurt. How careful we must be to not partake of the bitterness of others!

PASSOVER: REMOVING THE CHAMETZ

"For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel" (Exodus 12:15)

Consider the relationship of forgiveness and bitterness from Israel’s past. To prepare for Passover, the Hebrews were commanded to remove all the leaven – that is, the chametz – from the land. Chametz means bitter or sour and is analogous to bitterness. During the Passover the Jewish people ate matzah, unleavened bread. The Hebrew word matzah means sweet. Without the yeast of chametz, matzah is sweet.

As we pass over the wrongs done to us by others, our forgiveness produces the sweetness of love. Paul tells us that "love holds no record of wrongs." Just as the Israelites depended upon God’s grace so that the destroying angel would pass over their homes, we must trust in His grace today to empower us to pass over the wrongs of others. A trusting dependency on our Father’s power to heal our emotions and transform us into the image of Jesus by choosing to forgive strengthens our fellowship with Him.

Still today before Passover observant Jewish households remove all leaven from their homes. (This is where the idea for "Spring housecleaning" comes from!) After the entire house has been scrubbed and all utensils have been boiled, the father hides ten pieces of leavened bread in the house so that the children may search for them. When they discover a piece, however, they may not touch it. They call their father who gently removes the leaven with a feather, brushing it onto a wooden spoon, later to be burned. This is a perfect metaphor of how our heavenly Father deals with bitterness and/or sin in our lives. We cannot touch it, but when we discover it, he gently helps us remove it and casts it into the fire.

Taste the sweetness of a life in which no bitter leaven of unforgiveness contaminates your intimacy with your Father! Learn a Passover lesson; remove the chametz (bitterness) from your life taste the matzah (sweetness) of Messiah’s forgiveness, and see for yourself that "the Lord is good!" (Psalm 34:8).