Let's Put Away Resentment

Resentment.  I know that everyone has to deal with it.  But doesn’t it sometimes seem as wives and mothers that we are just swimming in it?  Why doesn’t my husband ever have to scrub the bathtub?  Why can’t the kids just feed themselves a nutritious meal for once?  Why don’t others put in as much time and effort volunteering for our community as I do?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes the resentment is so deep, I actually start drowning in it.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006 (page 14))

The bible uses many words to help describe resentment.  Pride, anger, and bitterness are just a few.  If you want to get really fancy you can even use wrath or vexation.  Recently, I have been so vexed by the fact that no one else in my family can take out the recycling, I am about to just go dump it into their beds.

So what does a Godly woman do about resentment?  You might feel like moping around the house trying to get someone to pay extra attention to you.  You may flat out yell at your children because SERIOUSLY?  Can they put their dirty clothes in the hamper already?  Or if you are like me, you may make a snide, underhanded remark about how your husband never does anything around the house, as he is walking out the door for a 10 hour work day.  (Hey baby…..I know that isn’t true and I am sorry.)  Obviously, none of these scenarios are very God-like.

Ephesians 4:31 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with malice.”  I purposely bolded the words “be put away from you”, because these are some words we all should concentrate on when surrounding yourself in a sea of resentment.

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As sinners, we dive right into the resentment sea thinking that our time, our motivations, and our accomplishments, are better or more important compared to everyone else.  Then, we quickly feel the effects of this self-centered mind set of resentment through, anger, jealousy, bitterness, and disappointment.   Job 5:2 warns us that when we are in a constant state of anger and jealousy, we will suffer.  “Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple.”

As women of God we must put resentment far far away from us.  First we need to confess our sin of resentment and ask the Lord to forgive us.  We must then ask Him to constantly show us when the bitterness and anger that accompanies resentment, is present in our lives.  We all know that love is patient and kind from 1 Corinthians 13, but do you remember that love is also “not irritable or resentful”?  We need to ask God to put resentment away from us, and replace it with His love.

I encourage you to place the happiness sucking, relationship destroying, suffocating sea of resentment, into the hands of God.  He is big enough, He is strong enough, and he will always be there to guide you if you fall back in.

(Image Source: Diviant Art by XPI August 23, 2011)

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