We all want to enjoy or lives. We do – but sometimes, we carry things around in our hearts, that rob us of that joy. Like unforgiveness. We blame other people, but the reality is, it’s up to us to deal with unforgiveness.

We've all been in a place where we've been hurt by someone. Maybe it was just being ignored or excluded from something or perhaps someone went out of their way to stab us in the back or maybe, maybe it was something really big like being abused as a child by someone we trusted or being betrayed by our spouse or going through a divorce. I don't know anyone who has a shortage of those things in their lives. I know many, many pastors who've poured their hearts and lives out for the people in their Churches, who have been hurt by those same people sometimes with devastating effect.

And when those things happen our innate sense of justice tells us deep down that this is wrong and it shouldn't have happened and that person has to pay, they owe me. I have to have justice. You've experienced that feeling about rage just as I have. The problem is sometimes we hang on to it for so long it saps us of our joy and our freedom and life itself.

Now last week on the program we talked about Gods joy, the joy of the Lord, this wondrous gift from God. Not some fleeting happiness hit but a deep abiding sense of joy, something that as you look around at the lives of other people, seems to be in incredibly short supply in this world. I want to continue this week to look at one of the things that robs us of that joy. Jesus made it abundantly clear that He wants us to experience His joy. He said:

I am coming to You now Father but I pray these things while I am still in this world so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

The 'they' being His disciples and also He was praying specifically for you and me. Now He prayed that just before He was crucified. If you like you can read that prayer in the 17th chapter of John’s gospel and the important thing about joy in our relationship with Him is not so much that it makes us feel good, (it does and it's a wonderful and indescribable joy) but that the joy of God, the joy of the Lord is our strength. Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 10 says exactly that:

Don't weep; don't cry because the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Now think about it, in a relationship between say a husband and a wife, if the two are really enjoying one another how much easier is it to serve each other and to sacrifice with each other and to remain faithful and to, to put up with each other and all those things we know we should do in a marriage?

On the other hand if the husband and the wife aren't enjoying one another, well it becomes a hard grind. When the relationship is joyless then we do the things we ought to do based on the promise that we made, we have to grit our teeth and fall back on the marriage covenant.

Now that covenant, that promise that we make to each other as husband and wife when we get married is a really important promise and sadly, in today’s world, it's too easily trashed. But which way would you rather it be, a marriage full of joy where serving one another just, just flows out of that joy or a hard grind that always has to fall back on the marriage covenant. It's a bit of a no-brainer to me.

Now let’s just stick with a marriage relationship for a moment because it serves to illustrate one of the ways that the devil robs us of our joy. In every marriage husband and wife do things that hurt one another, it just goes with the territory. I know some days I'm so busy and focused on what I'm doing here at work, I forget just to put my arms around Jacqui, my wife, and just let her know how much I love her and how much I appreciate her and sometimes that's okay, most times it is, she understands but sometimes it hurts her, I didn't mean that but it just happened.

And sometimes she'll do something or say something that hurts me and sometimes we, as husband and wife, have to talk about those things and it's important to set them right and it's important to change our behaviour but other times you just let them go by. They're small, they don't matter, you love your wife, you love your husband and you just let it go through but here's what happens in a marriage.

Unless these things are dealt with resentment builds up; niggles away and niggles away and niggles away and then bang! The thing blows up. Now there's two ways of dealing with those relationship issues in a marriage. The first one is when the one who's in the wrong, accepts they're in the wrong and apologises and we forgive them, that's easy isn't it? But secondly sometimes this so called person in the wrong doesn't accept that they've done something wrong, they don't even see the problem. Or maybe they didn't really do anything wrong in the first place, it was just us but we still have to let go and forgive them.

Now the second one happens all the time, let me give you an example. There are some shows on TV I really like watching, I don't watch a lot of TV but I love to come home from work and watch the news for a half an hour. It's how I unwind, it's how I relax and most days Jacqui's happy with that, she understands my need but some days she'd just really like to sit down and for us to talk and she'd like to share what happened in her day. We do that too but can you see how conflict can arise here?

Now let me tell you, we've worked this out so that both of our needs are met but, but can you see how if we hadn't, resentment could creep in over something as little as this. And there's a word for this resentment, it's called "unforgiveness" and we carry that unforgiveness round in our hearts and it robs us of the joy of the Lord.

See the two don't co-exist in our hearts. Unforgiveness and Gods joy won't live together in our hearts. Why? Because God is in the forgiveness business and so He takes away His joy to encourage us to forgive. Listen to what Jesus says about this in the Lords Prayer, it says:

Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of those who sin against us.

And again just a little bit later in Matthew chapter 6, verse 14 Jesus says:

For if you forgive those who sin against you then your heavenly Father will also forgive you but if don't forgive them their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sin.

And the joy of the Lord only happens when we're in close relationship with Him. If we're a distance off, if there's something that's come between Him and us we don't experience His joy. And so if I'm not forgiving you for the things that you've done against me, Jesus said and this is hard to swallow but Jesus said it, if I don't forgive you Gods not going to forgive me and if God isn't forgiving me for things then I'm not going to experience His joy because He wants me to forgive you.

The devil loves unforgiveness, it's the easiest way for him to rob us of our joy and the longer we hold onto unforgiveness, the worse it becomes. And because the joy of the Lord is our strength, we lose our strength in Christ, we become a target. Unforgiveness is the foothold of the devil and sometimes when we're struggling and we don't experience the joy of the Lord it's because we are carrying unforgiveness around in our hearts. The answer is to forgive, to let it go in our hearts, to let go of our right for restitution or revenge, to humble ourselves before the Lord and then the joy of the Lord returns.