To get out of the gloomy pit of despair, bitterness, hostility, jealousy, and the accompanying aches, pains, and misery, you must take personal responsibility for your own character, no matter what someone else does–or did. If a person is miserable, it is his or her choice. Our woe is not the result of our background, or the people around us, or our environment, but of a choice, either deliberate or vague, to continue in the direction that we have been heading.
Spiritual maturity brings peace, as the psalmist indicated: “Mark the blameless [mature] man, and observe the upright; for the future of that man is peace” (Psalm 37:37).
The Benefit of Acknowledging Sin
There is a reason why so many people are unhappy, why there is so much conflict between individuals. Isaiah pinpointed the trouble long ago: “We have turned, everyone, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).
You like your own ideas, plans, aspirations, and longings. So does everyone else. Thus when a person encounters resistance to his wishes, or faces demands that are not to his or her liking, they tend to rebel, to attack, to run, or to defend themselves. Our natural reaction is to be resentful, bitter, stubborn and full of fight. It is easy for us to think that our own desires are the reasonable ones. We will find a way to make a selfish drive seem selfless, deceiving even ourselves.