The Hidden Burden: How Unforgiveness Shapes Our Lives, Health, and Relationships
Unforgiveness carries a weight that extends far beyond the initial wound, creating ripple effects that can fundamentally alter the trajectory of our lives. When we hold onto hurt, resentment, and anger, these emotions don’t simply fade into the background they actively shape our thoughts, relationships, and overall well-being in profound and often destructive ways.
The impact of unforgiveness manifests across multiple dimensions of human experience. Physically, harboring resentment has been linked to increased stress hormones, elevated blood pressure, compromised immune function, and chronic pain. The body, it seems, keeps score of our emotional grudges in ways that can manifest as tangible health problems over time.
Psychologically, unforgiveness creates a prison of the mind where past hurts continue to inflict fresh wounds. It consumes mental energy that could be directed toward growth and healing, instead channeling it into cycles of rumination and bitterness. This mental occupation often leads to depression, anxiety, and a diminished capacity for joy and connection.
Perhaps most significantly, unforgiveness poisons our relationships not just with those who have wronged us, but with everyone in our orbit. It builds walls where bridges could exist, creating patterns of defensiveness and mistrust that can isolate us from the very connections that might help us heal. The inability to forgive often becomes a lens through which we view the world, coloring new experiences with the pain of old wounds and preventing us from fully engaging with life’s possibilities.
Understanding these impacts is crucial because forgiveness isn’t just about being kind to others, it’s about freeing ourselves from chains we often don’t realize we’re wearing. Are you struggling with this? If so, you are in the right place.
Freedom is possible, but it requires both divine intervention and our active participation in the healing process.
A Biblical Perspective:
It is not hard to see where God stands on this issue. We tell people when they say they do not feel like forgiving that it is not an emotion but a decision. It is an act of their will. Therefore, if we want to be forgiven, we must forgive.
The reason a person must forgive is because it ties them in bondage to the one, they have not forgiven. In addition, it gives the devil and his demons legal ground to keep them in bondage.
This is the first legal ground we take back from the enemy when taking someone through deliverance, to make sure they forgive those that have hurt them in any way.
If they are not willing to do this, we cancel the appointment until such time that they can forgive. This is necessary because the person receiving ministry will be in more bondage after we pray for them than before we prayed for them. (Luke 11:25-26).
A Key to Deliverance:
Forgiveness is unconditional, and God requires it.
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matt. 6:14-15.
Luke 6:37 says, “forgive and ye shall be forgiven.”
But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. Mark 11:26.
Webster’s Dictionary definition of forgiveness:
1. To grant pardon for or remission of something.
2. To cease to blame or feel resentment against.
3. To show forgiveness. Syn. Absolve, excuse or exonerate.
The NIV Study Bible definition of forgiveness:
1. Pardon and release from penalty for wrongdoing.
2. God’s delivery from sin’s wages (Romans 6:23).
3. The Christian act of freeing from guilt and blame those by whom one has suffered wrong: (Matt. 6:14, Col 2:7, Col 3:13).
FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is hard to give because it hurts to extend it to undeserving and hard-hearted ones. To release a wrong doer instead of exacting a just penalty requires that we reach out in love, rejecting the temptation to hold bitterness and resentment. This is contrary to our natural inclinations, thus the old adage, To err is human, to forgive divine.
Forgiveness is not forgetting the wrong done; some hurts are so deep that this would be impossible. We can forget the anger and hurt we felt, but the act is branded in our minds. Forgiveness takes place when the victim accepts the loss and/or injury done him and deliberately cancels the debt owed him by the offending person. This is an act of your will and God will honor it.
Anger must be dealt with openly and honestly, not denied or ignored. Either it must be vented in retaliation, or the injured party must accept his own anger, bear the burden of it, and confess it in prayer to release himself and to set the other party free.
Revenge always hurts the revenger far more than the one at whom it is leveled.
In other words, our pattern must be the grievous and substitutionary death of Christ. He willingly received all the hurt and evil of the entire human race in His own body on the cross (I Peter 2:21-24) to pay the debt for our sin. He now offers what He has wrought as a free gift to undeserving and guilty persons so they can be free (Rom. 6:23; John 10:28-30).
As nothing else will, forgiveness takes us into the mysteries of grace where God forgives unconditionally on the basis of the substitutionary payment by another (Mark 11:25-26).
One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit’s work in a life is the quality of meekness. It is a quality which is nurtured and abetted by practicing forgiveness.
This highly prized quality will cause us to be able to accept God’s dealings with us as good, without disputing or resisting them. Meekness will also cause us to be able to bear one another’s burden’s cheerfully and for Jesus’ sake, enabling us to enter into the mystery of Christ’s sufferings.
Because unforgiveness, and the resentment and bitterness it generates is so deadly, it is not optional, but necessary that it be dealt with. Cancer and arthritis spirits definitely root into this fertile ground. To be bitter and unforgiving costs far more than it is worth.
Husbands forgive your wives. Wives forgive your husbands. Children forgive your parents. In Jesus’ Name, I forgive my wife or husband and my parents. Amen.
So simply put, a person’s demons cannot be cast out if he has unforgiveness in his heart.
The opposite of unforgiveness is forgiveness.
This is the crucifixion of the flesh until you come to your senses, forgive your fellowman and then ask God to forgive you! The consequence of unforgiveness is the most important lesson that God has taught us about deliverance.
Cancer and arthritis can come in through the sin of unforgiveness. If you know a Christian with these diseases, see if they have unforgiveness. They cannot be healed if the demons have a right to be there.
Simple Steps to deliverance:
Pattern for being delivered and healed: forgive others, ask God for forgiveness, and forgive self. Cast out unforgiveness and bitterness. Cast out cancer and arthritis. Anoint with oil and pray for healing.
Love your Enemies
A closer look at scripture, MATTHEW 5:44, But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
Forgive your enemies; there are no excuses!
Whites forgive blacks; blacks forgive whites.
Love your enemies. We do not have to love Satan! Love in a social or moral sense: beloved. Enemy is an adversary: foe.
Bless them that curse you. Speak well of thank or invoke a benediction upon. Curse is to execrate to doom.
Do good to them that hate you. Do good honestly: full well. Hate is to detest especially to persecute.
Pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. Pray earnestly for: supplicate. Despitefully is to insult, slander and falsely accuse. Persecute is to pursue: to suffer.
How can Healing and Deliverance Help?
Our website’s goal is to empower you, inform you and provide you steps for self-deliverance, to free you from emotional, mental and physical disorders or generational curses.
Deliverance refers to the act of being rescued, freed, or liberated from something harmful, oppressive, or undesirable. The concept appears across various contexts with both secular and spiritual dimensions.
In its most general sense, deliverance means rescue or salvation from danger, suffering, or difficulty. This could involve being delivered from physical threats, emotional trauma, addiction, or challenging life circumstances. It implies a transition from bondage or captivity to freedom and safety.
In religious and spiritual contexts, deliverance takes on deeper significance. Within Christianity, it often refers to being freed from spiritual bondage, sin, demonic influence, or the consequences of wrongdoing through divine intervention. Many faith traditions include practices of deliverance ministry, where individuals seek spiritual freedom from what they believe to be supernatural oppression or generational curses.
The concept also appears in therapeutic and psychological frameworks, where deliverance might describe the process of breaking free from destructive patterns, traumatic memories, or limiting beliefs that keep someone trapped in cycles of pain or dysfunction.
Key aspects of deliverance typically include:
The recognition of a problem or form of bondage that requires external help to overcome. Divine intervention or process that facilitates freedom. A resulting state of liberation that allows for healing, growth, and renewed life.
Deliverance suggests that some forms of bondage are too powerful to break through willpower alone, requiring spiritual help and intervention to achieve lasting liberation.
Interested in learning more?
If you are interested in learning more and being freed from the numerous bondages such as sicknesses, depression, worry, fears, addictions, perversions, financial stress, guilt, mental illness, family conflicts, and many other ungodly bondages, then click on the below link to our healing and deliverance website. Once there, you will find lessons, prayers and other resources to help you. It’s important you take the time and go through the lessons in order.
Are you ready to take the first step in seeking deliverance today? Start with Lesson 1.