Bear No Grudges, Have No Regrets

“I bear no grudges and have no regrets.”

— Michael Malthouse

CONTENTION is all I have for such a quote from a worldly man, but that is not to say he, the football coach, hasn’t worked to this very point: no grudges, no regrets. There would certainly be no regrets. There is a pride for which stubbornness is its own reward (yet not much of a reward on the scale of rewards). But grudges? Grudges were made for such unregenerate people, which is not to say that, in him, no grudge might be found. It is possible. But probably no grudge connected to no regret — as if to say, “These people who’ve done the dirty don’t deserve that extension of my vitriolic energy.”

We are not so ‘strong’ as to be disaffected.

The believer — it might be said — is the only one capable of understanding the motive, not to bear a grudge. It is central to the gospel with which they believe. Yet, there are still so many believers who refuse the learning of the initial lesson that the Lord is providing them. We cannot forge ahead on our spiritual journey — being capable of bearing no grudge — unless we allow the Spirit and our circumstance to speak to us in terms of “Let it go!”

We are not asked to forgive, we are commanded to.

***

Bear no grudge,

It does you no good,

Bear no grudge,

Even though you think you should.

Make nothing of enmity,

Relax those flexing arms.

Let go of all that enmity,

That makes waste of all your charms.

Bearing no grudges,

Is having no regrets,

Bearing no grudges,

Is how a person forgets.

***

It is easy to say we bear no grudge, yet it is supremely harder to manifest the promise of such ongoing benevolence.

God blesses by the softening of our heart the situations of surrender that caused us to harden our heart.

But to harden the heart is to cut ourselves off from the blessings that are planned to be ours.

God knows we can do better. Our families and friends know we can do better. It is all up to us. We must let go through prayer, through faith, through reminders, through seeking a way forward beyond the fear. We must allow God to be God.

We must do these things of a self’s surrender to give our souls the chance to heal.

Let us allow ourselves to be blessed of the Lord. The only way this happens is if we do what he has commanded us to do — to bear no grudge, which leads to bearing no regret.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.