There will be times in our lives when we come in contact with people who will disturb, agitate, or upset us when they say or do something we consider harmful, hurtful, or lacking in honesty and truthfulness. If we stay in this place of fretting, it will rob our hearts of the Spirit’s peace, joy, and positive outlook and will replace them with worry, anger, distress, and a tendency towards pessimism. The more we fret, the more we will gravitate toward feeling unkind, spiteful, full of ill feelings, or wanting to payback with evil. That is why the Lord cautions us over and over not to fret or be resentful toward those who have been offensive to us.
When our hearts are fretful and full of anger and worry, we have three choices as to what we can do with these uncomfortable feelings: (1) we can allow them to stay and reside in our hearts, stunting our spiritual growth and making our physical bodies’ sick; (2) we can put them on other people and abuse and damage them; or (3) we can put them on Jesus, who has the ability to take them and free us from their destructive nature.
If we choose to put our anger on Jesus, processing through the unpleasant emotions and letting go of them- our hearts will again find freedom, peace, and joy. Letting go of negative emotions enables us to forgive offensive people for what they do and who they are. It doesn’t mean we are necessarily going to be best friends with them, but we will be able to release them to God and let Him have them. We may need to process and pray out our feelings many times and forgive many times; but sooner or later the negative will lose its power and we will discover freedom in our heart, soul, and mind.
This process of working out emotions, letting go and forgiving will keep us from falling prey to fretting. This is a spiritual and emotional life skill that we will use over and over again-sometimes on the same people-to come back to a place of settled spiritual and emotional rest.
“Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious of those who work unrighteousness [that which is not upright or in right standing with God]. Cease from anger and forsake wrath; fret not yourself-it tends only to evildoing” (Psalm 37:1, 8)
