HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE (Matthew 18:34-35)

In their book 'HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE',lFrank Minirth and Paul Meier list six groups of people who are often the object of anger and need to be forgiven:

First, there is often much repressed anger toward our parents. We need to remember that God can cause difficult situations in the past to work for our advantage, and that for the Christian all things work together for good. We need to remember that we too will make mistakes in raising our children. We need to forgive our parents for mistakes and sins they committed in the past when they were raising us, whether they deserve our forgiveness or not.

Secondly, we need to forgive ourselves. Just as we get angry with other people, we become angry with ourselves for not doing better and making few mistakes. We are often critical with ourselves and are harder on ourselves than we are on other people. We need to forgive ourselves for past mistakes and sins. God is aware of our weaknesses. He knows we are but dust. He says that when He removes our sins, they are far from us as the east is from the west. He wants us to do the same and no longer hold our past mistakes against ourselves.

Thirdly, we need to deal with our repressed anger toward God. We do not forgive God, for God has done nothing wrong; but we may have repressed anger or bitter feelings toward Him. We may subconsciously reason in our mind somewhat as follows: After all, He is God, and He could have prevented or corrected the situation if He had chosen to. Like Job we need to confess our anger toward God, talk with Him about it, and ask Him to help us resolve it.

Fourthly, we need to deal with repressed anger toward our mate. We need to forgive him for mistakes he has made. When two individuals live together for many years, many anger-arousing situations occur, and anger can build up over a period of years and years. An individual needs to forgive in order to prevent depression.

Fifthly, we need to forgive those in authority over us. Anger often builds toward authority figures in our lives. We need to forgive them for whatever wrong we feel they may have done us. God has put them in authority over us. We need to respond to them and learn to talk with them about how we feel. Under no circumstances should we hold grudges against them.

The sixth category of those whom we need to forgive is simply classified as 'others'. There are often many other people in our lives whom we need to forgive. This group may include our peers when we were young. Various situations may have occurred then, and the repressed feelings and anger were never dealt with. The anger needs to be confessed and the person(s) forgiven.