The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.
Exodus 14: 14 (ESV)
Scripture: Psalm 94: 1-23
This devotion is the second in the four-part When We’ve Been Wronged series. We sometimes feel that, if we don’t retaliate in a situation, we are doing what God is asking. This devotion looks at holding a grudge and how that isn’t what God is asking us to do, either.
Cliff Notes
- At times, our desire for revenge is for karma to happen.
- We bear grudges, believing that we are letting God take care of the vengeance.
- Grudges can grow out of the actions of others causing us to doubt ourselves.
- We have to take ourselves out of the equation and focus on God.
To read devotions in the When We’ve Been Wronged series, click the button below.
We are looking at the story of Joseph and his brothers. All of his brothers were expecting Joseph to extract his revenge now that Jacob was dead.
Everyone, except Joseph. He’d gotten over it years ago. Joseph didn’t strike out at his brothers in the years after the Israelites moved to Egypt or after Jacob died.
It looks like Joseph let God dish out the vengeance. He did nothing to make the brothers pay. He left it in God’s hands.
We know he did say, “’But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. Now therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (Gen. 50: 20-21 NKJV).
Don’t you think Joseph’s life was so much richer than his brothers’ lives? He has spent years focusing on the positive, not rehashing the negative.
I wonder if the brothers envied his happiness now as they had growing up. Those brothers were probably miserable.
Fast Forward Umpteen Thousand Years
Vengeance is mine says the Lord (Deut. 32: 35; Lev. 19: 18; Ps. 94: 1-2 NKJV). We read that, and most of the time, we think that we are OK here.
We really don’t plan to cause bodily harm to people. We may in our heads wish some kind of punishment come to them, but we don’t follow through to make that happen. We may think of a lot of bad things that we wish would happen to them, but we don’t do those things to them.
Karma – the law of cause-and-effect. That is generally what we wish on them. We want them to see how much they needed us. We want them to regret what they did because it didn’t work out as planned. It is in the consequences of their actions that we want bad things to happen to them.
So, there are times, we don’t really act. However, sometimes our inactions are rooted in a mindset of revenge. We could be saying we are sitting back and letting God do it, but we brought the popcorn and the soda to the show.
We do like Jonah did. Remember, he ran away instead of going to preach to Nineveh. After he was fish food for three days, he did make it to Nineveh. The people of Nineveh repented, and God relented from sending the destruction that He had planned for them.
But look at Jonah. “So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city” (Jnh. 4: 5 NKJV). No, he wasn’t picking up the sword to fight the battle. But he sure was waiting for the show to start!
Grudgeville
But isn’t that holding a grudge? Let’s look at what a grudge is. What we feel is animosity, a strong dislike that, if we are not careful, can turn into a hatred. That is because it becomes deep-seated.
We are not talking about a “give me a week and I’ll get over it” kind of thing. We are talking about an active dislike that we don’t really need to pull out and brush off every so often to make sure we fan the flames of the hatred. It is usually already there.
We are talking about the grudge having taken up residency in the hurt and the anger. Yep, we probably use pride as a bellow.
Still, we feel that holding a grudge is vengeance light. Want and desire is a lot better than following through with actions. In our minds that is what is the difference between grudges and vengeance.
We may feel justified because the grudge is based on actions of the others. They did this to us! We wouldn’t feel this way if they hadn’t missed treated us.
So, it is their fault. We have no choice in the matter – or so we would like to think.
It Is All a Matter of Choices
We do have a choice. No, we can’t choose their actions. However, we can choose how we react to their actions. We have control over ourselves.
The root cause of the grudge, in some cases, may be that their actions have caused us to doubt ourselves. We maybe thought we were stronger so that we wouldn’t be hurt by something like this. We think we are better judges of character than to be associating with someone who would treat us like this.
So, we judge ourselves and come up lacking. We are biting on ourselves because we have fallen short of our expectations of ourselves.
Then again, even on good days, we don’t often love ourselves. We see our faults, our failures, and things we lack. The grudge forms because of our pride.
Letting God
So, we sit back and let God do His job. “The LORD will take revenge and punish them; the time will come when they will fall; the day of their doom is near” (Deut. 32: 35 GNT). But we are still trying to call the shots in some way.
We try to decide what the punishment will be. We try to control timing, preferably now.
How Will God Take His Vengeance?
Remember in the last devotion, we talked about God will fight our enemies for us, but it would not necessarily happen on our timetables. God will decide when and how He will take His vengeance.
It isn’t about us. It isn’t about how hurt we are or how much damage has been done to us and our self-esteem.
God taking His vengeance is about God and His plan for our lives. It is about someone messing with one of His own.
We have to take ourselves all the way out of it. We have to focus on God and what He is calling us to do. We have to learn what He wants us to learn.
We have to focus on God and on ourselves. We need to focus on our relationship to God and what he would have us do. We need to work His plan and forget about the actions are of others.
God. Life is hard. We may think we are doing a good job of letting you exact the vengeance, but we do buy the ticket and bring the snacks to see You accomplish that. That is not what You want us to do. Help us always to remain Christ-like. Amen.
What do you think? Do we think a grudge is vengeance light? Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
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