How Can You Relinquish the Desire for Revenge?

Is revenge-seeking detrimental to your health and well-being? Think about this: Being possessed with revenge, a person has to be obsessed with anger, resentment, and hatred. Clutching desperately to these emotions, it’s impossible to love God while desiring to harm or destroy another person.

Hatred and vengeance produce separation and alienation from God and others. Think of attending worship service or Bible study absorbed with thoughts of revenge. It’s impossible to focus on what you’re hearing in ways that draw you closer to the heart of God. Hatred and revenge are like rust or acid that eats away at whatever it touches.

2 Peter 2:13 teaches that those who harm others will be the recipient of harm, including God’s judgment. There is a better way, and that is to turn over the need for revenge to God who is able to redeem that person. God’s desire is to redeem rather than punish. That’s what he will do for you.

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For you, O Lord, are good, and ready to forgive [our sins, sending them away, completely letting them go forever and ever], and abundant in lovingkindness and overflowing in mercy to all those who call upon you.

~Psalm 86:5 Amplified Bible 

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Is Forgiveness Possible?

There are those who would argue that forgiveness is too difficult and furthermore you can never again trust someone who deliberately has caused pain and suffering. Evidence indicates, however, the one who forgives lives a healthier and happier life by letting go of anger and bitterness that reside in the heart and mind. Anger turned inward creates other health issues.

TV news featured a story about a businessman who one day didn't come home from work. He abandoned his wife, three children and a promising career. Twenty years later his oldest son made a concerted effort to find his father and finally found him in another state where he wasn’t lost, but deliberately hiding.

His father had chosen to be homeless and loved living on the street void of responsibility. After hours of conversation, this young man realized who his father had become. This was when forgiveness began to take place. While anger and bitterness dissolved, sadness remained because the loss of his father was permanent. Forgiveness is a step toward healing.  

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O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.

~Psalm 86:5 New Living Translation

I want you to know, my very dear friends, that it is on account of this resurrected Jesus that the forgiveness of your sins can be promised. He accomplishes, in those who believe, everything that the Law of Moses could never make good on. But everyone who believes in this raised-up Jesus is declared good and right and whole before God.

~Acts 13:38-39 The Message

A Clear Path to a New Beginning

Jacob was not a man who made bad mistakes, but deliberately chose behaviors that set a course for his life. We’re aware of those who choose unethical, sinful and criminal activities and claim they were bad mistakes. The murderer of an elderly woman claimed that he never meant to cause pain and suffering, but the jury did not buy his “mistake” plea. 

          While Jacob was not a murderer, he did commit cold-hearted sins against his brother and father. The old cliché of “payday someday” caught up with him, causing him to flee for his life because Esau threatened to kill him. He was running to a safe place to hide, but in a strange, lonely place he had a dream that changed his life.

          In this dream God outlined a plan for Jacob that reflects God’s grace and mercy. God did not mention conditions for his willingness to bless Jacob. Have you been a recipient of such grace and mercy, including a clear pathway for a new beginning you never could have imagined? The impossible is possible with God.