#014 Resentment Ruins Relationships - 86 Seconds Video Devotional - Gary Wilkerson

The two ways we respond to criticism, fight or flight, we fight back at people who criticize us, or we run from them. Not too long ago, I made a list of-- Somebody suggested this. They said, "Write down everybody that you know, that you remember from the time you were 0 to 5 years old, from 5 to 10 years old, from 10 to 15 on and on till your present day. Just write a list of all those names, and then look through all those names and find people that you're still in good relationship with and ones that you've sort of cut off, ones that you've moved away from, ones that you may be offended or they offended you and you're no longer in relationship with."

Sadly, as I looked at this list, I had a lot larger group of people that I'm no longer in relationship with. Many of them, I had hurt or they had hurt me, so we just lost contact. Not big blowups but just distance. Just a lack of close relationship. That's what God intended. He wants us to have relationship. I look back over that, and I realized I had allowed small offenses, little foxes that spoil the vine. I had let little things like that ruin it.

Well, for me, my agenda now is to go back and begin to try to reconcile and to begin to restore things that were broken to build back up what the enemy tried to destroy. I want to encourage you to do that as well, to take some time to assess wherever your relationships been broken, wherever been broken in an unhealthy fashion and where can you be an agent of peace in the midst of a troubled world.