Sheryl Brady - Harboring Hurt

I want to minister on the subject of «harboring hurt.» I want to talk to you about that today. For those of you who were with us last Sunday, I spoke on the topic of «cultivating courage.» One of the statements I made last week was that one thing I knew for sure about 2021 was that as we faced it, we would have to do so with courage. I taught from the life of a man named Job. When Job lost everything in his life within a 24-hour period, including his health and his family, he said in chapter 1, verse 21, of the New Living Translation, «I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord.» Now, the King James Version says, «Blessed be the name of the Lord.» Job was saying to us, «Listen, it was the Lord who gave it to me, and it was the Lord’s. When He gave it to me, it was also the Lord’s when He took it away.» He was basically saying, «I refuse to be bitter over what I have lost.» I think Job must have understood that grief is good, but bitterness is bad. I said grief is good, but bitterness is bad. He must have realized that pain wouldn’t necessarily kill you, but bitterness would. I think he understood that sorrow and grief may harm you, but resentment has the ability to destroy you. Job must have known that resentment has a way of prolonging your pain; it does not relieve it. All it does is reinforce it, and it actually takes your pain and makes it worse. I’ve often said, and people have looked at me strangely, that grief is really a gift from God. I say that because it can help us transition through life as we start facing changes. God gives us the ability to grieve, and we need to settle the issue once and for all that we are going to experience pain and suffer loss from time to time, but we cannot allow a season of grief to become a lifestyle of grief. That’s really good, and I’ll say it again: we cannot allow a season of grief. God only intended it as a season. The Bible says there is a time to mourn; there is a season for everything. So there may be a season for grief, but God said, «I don’t want you to live there long enough to turn that season of grief into a lifestyle of grief,» because ultimately, that can destroy us. We have to understand that, yes, losses are going to come, but losses might deepen us—they do not define us. I think I should say that one more time: losses might deepen us, but they do not define us. They do not define who we are. You are not the divorce you went through; you are not the failure you experienced; you are not the disability you have; you are not the disappointment you encountered; you are not your difficulties. So I say losses might deepen us a little, but they do not have the power to define us unless we give them that power. They are a part of our maturity, but they are not part of our identity. I said they are part of maturing us, but they are not part of our identity. It’s just something that happened to me, but it is not me. That’s why I often say you can make a mistake and not be a mistake. There has to come a season in your life where you say, «Okay, I went through that, but that is not who I am,» so I’ve got to let it go. I have to let it go from my heart, my mind, and my spirit, and I’m going to set my face like flint toward what God has next for me. Job’s wife didn’t understand that. She looked at him and said, «You need to just curse God and die.» In other words, what she was saying was that he ought to be resentful and bitter. She believed he shouldn’t be where he was, shouldn’t have lost what he lost, and shouldn’t be facing what he faced. Job, however, refused to become bitter. I must tell you, he experienced a massive loss in a 24-hour period, but Job said, «I am not going to become bitter.» He said in Hebrews—we can reference Hebrews 2, which says, «Watch out that no bitterness takes root, that there be no root of bitterness among you.» Pain is inevitable; we are going to face that, but misery is optional, and bitterness makes us miserable. I said pain is inevitable, but misery is optional, and bitterness is what makes us miserable. Our nation is filled with people suffering from bitterness. They are hurting and have endured pain for so long that they have allowed bitterness to take root in their lives. If you saw what I saw this week, if you looked…