Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
8 18 2023
Fostering vs Festering – Love fosters Love
Festering: If you say that a situation, problem, or feeling is festering, you disapprove that it is being allowed to grow more unpleasant or full of anger because it is not being properly recognized or dealt with. If a wound festers, it becomes infected, making it worse.
Someone said the wounds of life stem primarily from some form of rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and/or injustice.
Fostering them grows a root of bitterness.
Fostering nurturing relationships will also quickly define us. We live in fertile soil and it is up to us to take every thought captive to protect our filters and the harvest of our lives. 2 Cor 10-5
Fostering the right seeds of love, acceptance, and forgiveness is critical to everyone’s mental emotional, psychological, and spiritual state of mind.
Col 3:13 says clearly “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also MUST forgive”
Allowing judgmental and self-righteous attitudes … and they may be authentic assessments, take us down a slippery slope.
Allowing the hurt of words and actions to become a constant torment are powerful and destructive seeds, left unforgiven will fester and decay and change you into a facsimile of the event that wounded you.
I was faced with an unpleasant exchange at a family gathering recently. It was clearly a misunderstanding on one side but was identified as hurtfully intended on the other. Honestly, it was infuriating and I should have handled it better.
But the truth is, what do we win when we drive our point home? When we want THEM to declare or admit they were wrong so WE can let these venomous feelings lose their rage. And what are we left with? … A release that we were right and they were wrong? That they we not justified in their expression of the event.
And our thinking is that…with that admission of misunderstanding or wrong, I can release this inner wound, my attitudes and perceptions of you, and everything will ok.
So what is it exactly that we have won? Interestingly when we are the guilty party we ask for forgiveness and whether they accept it or not we just walk away but they are left to deal with the wounds that will require their forgiveness
and perhaps a permanent scar.
Matt 7:1 says “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”.
Luke 17:3 says “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord”.
Isn’t holding onto these unforgiving feelings even though they may seem completely justified, and don’t we justify really well, a form of vengeance?
That certainly isn’t a remedy for us, is it? And when we look at the residue of venom that we have allowed to remain in us, that will filter to other innocents in our lives because we have allowed this wound
to harbor unforgiveness and take up residency.
What good can possibly come from that type of justification…more harm, and a growing, festering wound. Or do I dare call it cancer? Because it is.
If we could only see into the heart of the other. If we could only discern the wounds they carry and the load they are under, we would or could possibly understand the exchange better. If we could but walk a mile in their shoes we may not condone, or even receive it well, but we can forgive and have so much more patience.
How much grace must we receive to be more forgiving, more loving, and more tolerant? And the greatest of these … is Love!
Andy Grammer – “Don’t Give Up On Me”
