Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week (22 page)

God will not allow one of His children to be constantly taken advantage of. If you’re in a situation where somebody is doing you wrong or has done you wrong, don’t be depressed, don’t give up and think life is over. Keep believing because your payday is coming.

If your husband packed up and ran off with another woman, you don’t have to be ashamed. Don’t believe those voices telling you that you’re not good enough or you’re not attractive enough. Those are all lies. There’s nothing wrong with you, there’s something wrong with him. You don’t have a problem, he does.

If he hurt you, he will hurt the next woman, too. Keep your head held high, knowing that God will bring justice into your life. He will settle that case.

It will help you to forgive if you’ll realize that the people who hurt you have problems. Hurting people hurt others. When somebody lashes out at you or treats you unfairly, they’ve got unresolved issues of their own. There’s no excuse for hurting you, but they are part of a chain that needs to be broken. Somebody hurt them, so in turn they hurt you. Take a merciful
approach and say, “God, I know what they did was wrong. They hurt me and it was not fair, but God, I’m not looking for revenge. I ask you, God, to heal them and give them what they need.”

When you can pray for your enemies and even bless those who do you wrong, as the Scripture says, God will settle your accounts (Matthew 5:44; 18:21–35). Les was raised in a very abusive environment. His father was an alcoholic and he would come home in these violent rages. Les was afraid his dad would hurt his mom or him. He was afraid for his life.

There was no peace in his home. He lived constantly on edge. One night his dad came home drunk and started abusing his mother, not only verbally but also physically. Les was fourteen years old. He stepped up and told his dad to leave his mom alone. They fought and in the end his dad threw him out of the house.

“I don’t want to ever see your face again,” his father told him. “If you ever set foot in this house again, it will be the last time you ever do it.”

Les was devastated, so despondent he considered ending his life. He was standing on a bridge in the middle of the night about to jump when something unexpected stopped him. Les had never been to church. Religion was not part of his life. But suddenly he heard a voice say, “Don’t do it. I’ll be your Father. I’ll be your Protector. I’ll take care of you.”

At that moment he felt as though warm oil was pouring all over him. It was like something he had never felt before. That was his heavenly Father showing up to bring about justice. The psalmist said, “Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child]” (Psalm 27:10
AMP
).

Les was on his own from that day forward. He was filled with all these hurts and pain, so much rejection. But he made a decision at the very beginning that he would no longer hate his father. He forgave him and went on with his life.

He became a minister. Les had reached out to his father through the years, but the father wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Then, one Sunday morning twenty-two years later, Les was standing in the pulpit and out of the blue in walked his father. It was the first time Les had seen his dad since that night when he was fourteen years old.

At the end of the service, his dad walked down to the altar with tears
running down his face. He asked his son for forgiveness and also gave his life to the Lord.

God is a God of justice. I don’t know how long it will take, but God has promised He’ll make the wrongs right. He’ll restore what the enemy has stolen. It doesn’t matter how badly someone has hurt you. It doesn’t matter how wrong they were. If you’ll let it go, God will settle your accounts. God will pay you back.

At the end of that service, this dad and son sat down and talked. The father told his son things Les had never known before. The father said his own father was an alcoholic. He’d fought with his own mother growing up. The father’s childhood home was so unstable that by the time his dad was six years old, he had already lived with four families.

There was no excuse for his father’s behavior, but what I want you to see is that hurting people hurt others. Les’s father had all that anger and abuse on the inside, and he made the mistake of carrying it around. He didn’t realize he was passing it on to the next generation.

When Jesus rose from the dead and came back to talk with His disciples, He said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23
NKJV
). When you retain a sin, you hold on to it. God was saying that when you hold on to the wrongs people have done to you, then the poison contaminates
you
. When you don’t forgive, it’s easy to become what you hate.

Sharon hated her father because he ran around on her mother. Sharon didn’t have a good childhood. She always resented the fact that her father wasn’t faithful and he wasn’t there for her growing up. She couldn’t stand to be around him.

But do you know that when Sharon grew up she ran around on her husband and broke up her own home? She was not there for her own children. She became exactly what she hated in her father.

That’s why it’s so important to forgive and let things go. The bitterness, the sin you retain, can produce the same results that hurt you. If you were raised in an abusive environment, if you come from a family filled with
anger and dysfunction, instead of becoming bitter and angry, why don’t you be the one to put an end to the negative cycle?

You can be the one to make a difference. Are you holding on to anger and unforgiveness and passing poison down to the next generation? Or are you willing to let it go so your family can rise to a new level?

I realize it can be very hard to forgive, especially when someone has hurt you, but God will never ask you to do something without giving you the ability to do it.

Forgiveness is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t snap your fingers and make a hurt go away. That’s not realistic. But if you’ll continue to have the desire to forgive and ask God to help you, then little by little those negative feelings will fade. One day they won’t affect you at all.

The Lord’s Prayer is found in Matthew 6. In verse 12 Jesus says, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (
NKJV
). When God talks about debts, He’s not just talking about monetary debts. He’s talking about the times when people hurt you, the times when people do you wrong. God refers to that as a debt because when you are mistreated, you may feel you are owed something.

Human nature says, “I was wronged. Now I want justice. You mistreated me. Now you’ve got to pay me back.” But the mistake many people make is in trying to collect a debt that only God can pay. The father can’t give his daughter’s innocence back to her. Your parents can’t pay you back for not having a loving childhood. Your spouse can’t pay you back for the pain he caused by being unfaithful. Only God can truly pay you back.

If you want to be restored and whole, get on God’s payroll. He knows how to make things right. He knows how to bring justice. He’ll give you what you deserve. Leave it up to Him. Quit expecting people to make it up to you. They can’t give you what they don’t have.

Jesus told a parable about a man who owed ten thousand talents (see
Matthew 18:23–35). And the Scripture says, “He could not pay” (18:25
AMP
). It doesn’t say that he didn’t want to, but that he could not. He didn’t have the means to pay. If you’re always looking for people to pay you back for the wrongs they’ve done, you will lead a life of frustration.

I’ve seen more than one person go through a bitter divorce, start a new relationship, and then make the mistake of trying to make the new person pay for what the previous spouse did. They’re always trying to collect a debt, and it ends up ruining the relationship. Don’t punish the person you’re married to now for something that happened years ago in another relationship. They can’t pay you back. Get on God’s payroll.

I spoke with a man who was wronged and lost his business. It happened years ago, but he’s still mad at the world. He’s been with three different companies. He can’t keep a job. He is bitter, and he thinks he’s owed something. He’s waiting to be paid back.

What’s the problem? He’s on the wrong payroll.

Your attitude should be,
God, You know what I’ve been through; You’ve seen every wrong, every hurt, every tear; and God, I will not be bitter, trying to get people to give me what they don’t have. God, I’m leaving it up to You. I know You promised You would settle my cases. You said You would pay me back double for every injustice. So I’m letting all my family, my friends, my co-workers, my neighbors off the hook, and I’m putting my trust, my confidence, my hope in You.

When you get on God’s payroll, He’ll make sure you are well compensated. If you would let people off the hook and stop thinking they owe you something, your life would go to a new level. They may have done wrong, and it may have been their fault, but it’s not their fault that they can’t pay you back.

If you spend your life trying to get from them what only God can give, it will ruin that relationship, and the sad thing is, you’ll take that same problem into the next and the next and the next.

Sometimes when I’m looking over the bills I’ll see these big red letters that read “Paid in Full.” Somebody has stamped it with one of those big rubber
stamps. See your accounts, your hurts, as paid in full. Instead of trying to collect from those who hurt you and thinking they owe you, get that big red stamp out and mark the account as paid in full.

When you see the person who did you wrong, stamp the account paid in full in your imagination. It’s very freeing to say, “Nobody owes me anything. They may have hurt me, they may have done me wrong, they may have stolen my childhood, they may have cheated me out of money, but I’m not looking for people to pay me back. I’m on God’s payroll. The good news is, God never misses a payment.”

Mark your accounts paid in full. Let it go. God will settle your cases. Forgive so you can be free. Forgive so God can pay you back double.

Many airlines now charge you for baggage. It’s the same way in life. You can carry around baggage, but it will cost you. You can carry unforgiveness, but it will cost you the day-to-day happiness and joy you desire. You can carry bitterness, but it will cost you peace. You can haul that bag of “They Owe Me Something” around with you, but it’s not free. If you do it long enough, there will be a very heavy price. It will keep you from your destiny.

You may say those who have hurt you don’t deserve to be forgiven. Maybe not, but you do. If you don’t forgive them, your Father in heaven can’t forgive you. Why don’t you let go of the baggage? Why don’t you mark some accounts paid in full?

You have to forgive so that you can be free to live each day with happiness in your heart. If you will let go of the hurts and pains and get on God’s payroll, God will settle your case. He will make your wrongs right. He will bring justice into your life. You will get what you deserve, and God will pay you back with double the joy, double the peace, double the favor, and double the victory.

T
he people of Israel were headed toward the Promised Land, but they “became very discouraged on the way” (Numbers 21:4
NKJV
). What’s interesting is God was leading them, so it’s not like they were actually lost. Yet, since they were so easily discouraged, they felt lost.

Little by little, they were worn down. They were good people who loved the Lord. They had seen great victories in the past. Deep down they knew they were headed toward the Promised Land, but over time they lost their passion for life.

Finally they said, “Forget it. Let’s just go back to Egypt. It will not work.”

What happened? They didn’t pass the discouragement test. No matter how successful you are or how many victories you’ve had in the past, sooner or later there will be an opportunity to give up your happiness and become discouraged.

I see too many people who’ve allowed life to wear them down. They once were joyful. They walked with a spring in their steps. They greeted each day with excitement. But over time, they’ve allowed their happiness to give way to heaviness. Just like a dark cloud, it follows them everywhere they go. Unless they learn how to pass the discouragement test, it will keep them from God’s best.

You may face problems and setbacks, but remember, God is still leading the way. He has given us the strength to be where we are with a good
attitude. When that discouraging spirit comes knocking on the door, you don’t have to answer. Just say, “No, thanks. I’m keeping my joy. I know God is in control of my life. He will allow me to go where I’m supposed to be.”