I like the way Ephesians 2:1-6 is stated in the Message version:
“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.”
For me, bitterness and resentment is being mired in quick sand, or in stale stagnant water that smells horrible. It’s drinking poison each day as I rehearse the hurt, polluting my mind with unhealthy thinking. But setting my mind on His kingdom, His righteousness, (Philippians 4:8) whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things, I’m getting rid of the poison and pollution. Recognizing the hurt, calling it out in protest is healthy step in growth, it’s moving on. Without calling it out, we are stuck.
Pain is the only protest in the human constitution that something is wrong. It is the only thing that raises its voice against existing abuses. If you jump to silence pain, you will fail to find the wound. Pain is the Martin Luther of the human framework; it plasters the wall of the city with the announcement that something is wrong.” - Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores
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