When you hurt the worst, go to your secret prayer closet and weep out all your bitterness. Jesus lamented over Jerusalem and wept at the funeral of a friend. Peter carried with him the hurt of denying the very Son of God, and he wept bitterly! Those bitter tears worked a sweet miracle in him, and he came back to shake the kingdom of Satan.

God’s purpose for every one of his children is that we surrender to the reign and rulership of the Holy Spirit. “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24-25, NKJV). In other words, “If he lives in you, let him direct you!”

In the book of Daniel, three Hebrew men went into the fire with their bodies already dead to the world. “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18, ESV). They were able to offer their bodies joyfully as living sacrifices, and Jesus literally met them in their crisis.

Paul wrote to the church, “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19, NKJV). He is saying, “Suffer the wrong. Lay it down and move on. Get a life in the Spirit.”

However, if we refuse to forgive the hurts done to us, we have to face these consequences:

• • We’ll become guiltier than the person who inflicted our wound.

Scripture gives us a sobering reminder of what God truly desires from us. “So Samuel said: ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22, NKJV).

Every victory we win over the flesh and the devil will soon be followed by an even greater temptation and attack. Satan simply will not give up in his war against us. If we defeat him once, he’ll redouble his forces and come right back at us. Suddenly, we’ll find ourselves back in a spiritual war we thought we’d already won.

Multitudes have declared that they follow Christ; yet the majority of these people, including many who are in ministry, have forsaken Jesus as their source of power. Why?

You see, something happens when we cross the line into the Holiest of Holies. The moment we enter our Lord’s presence, we realize all flesh must die. This includes all desire for spiritual excitement, talk of great revivals, focus on deliverance and seeking out some new work or movement. This is the moment many believers realize how costly it would be to give up relying on their own flesh.

Many Christians quote one particular passage of Paul’s writings with a misunderstanding of what he was writing about. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4, NKJV). Most of us think of strongholds or bondages such as sexual trespasses, drug addictions, alcoholism or other outward sins we put at the top of the ‘worst-sins’ list. However, Paul is referring here to something much worse than our human measuring of sins.

The greatest danger we all face is not being able to see Jesus in our troubles. Instead, we see ghosts. In Matthew 14, Jesus ordered his disciples into a boat that was headed for a storm. The Bible says he made them go before him in this boat he must’ve known was headed for troubled waters. It would be tossed about like a bobbing cork, and where was Jesus? He was up in the mountains overlooking the sea. He was praying and seeking his Father in solitude, then in the darkest hours of the night, he walked out on the lake to meet the disciples.

When Adam sinned, he tried to hide from God. When Jonah refused to preach to Nineveh, his fear drove him into the ocean, trying to flee the presence of the Lord. After Peter denied Christ, he left to weep bitterly.

Adam, Jonah, and Peter ran away from God, not because they lost their love for him but rather because they feared that the Lord was too angry to have mercy on them.