Most people do not realize it, but unforgiveness can do a number on your health and eventually kill you graveyard dead. You could not pay me to hold unforgiveness in my heart against another person. There is no amount of money that can entice me to do that. I learned long ago to forgive and forget. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and He will repay.

I have had any number of wrongs done to me over the years. I’ve been talked about, lied on, written about in books and criticized on radio and TV broadcasts. I’ve been called everything but a child of God, but I have better sense than to let these attacks get me to a point where I stop loving and stop forgiving. I cannot have a better track record than Jesus, and they talked about Jesus, lied to Him, and eventually crucified Him. But He loved them still.

Unforgiveness will stop your faith in its tracks. If you’re standing for healing but have unforgiveness in your heart, you’re wasting your time confessing the Word. You might as well be a babbling brook or a clanging cymbal. You’re just making noise. It might be pleasant noise, but it’s just noise all the same. God cannot forgive you if you don’t forgive others. He cannot heal you if you don’t forgive.

Mark 11: 22-26 is a passage that proves my point:

So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

If you’ve been standing against symptoms for a long time, I suggest you check yourself out.  Are you holding something against someone else?  A lot of the things people harbor within themselves can allow attacks from the enemy to come in. I don’t understand it, but I have known people to be angry with another person and hold that anger for 10, 15, 20 years. How in the world can you justify holding anger that long?

As far as I can tell, the Bible doesn’t give you any more than 24 hours to hold on to your anger. Look at Ephesians 4:26:

“Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath.”

If you don’t let the sun go down on your wrath, you will not hold that anger but a few hours. When you hold onto unforgiveness you open a door and give license to Satan to put something on you.  And Satan will walk through that door and take advantage of the situation. “Hello, high blood pressure. Hello, heart attack. Hello, cancer. Welcome inside.”

Critical for your well-being is if your Father can’t forgive you, neither can He heal you. That’s just the way He has designed the system to work. The Father God wants to bless you, but you won’t let Him if you’re harboring something against someone else. You’re tying His hands.

Holding something against another person can take you out of here long before you are ready to go. That is, long before you’re 70 years old, which is the least amount of time a Christian should live. When you do not forgive, you’re inviting an attack of sickness and disease. You can pray all you want and confess all you want, but if you’re harboring unforgiveness, it won’t do you any good. It’s like being on a treadmill–exerting a lot of effort, but going nowhere.

That’s exactly the way it can be with your faith. You can be saying all the right things, but you will go nowhere faith-wise. You’re just like on a treadmill if you’ve got unforgiveness in your heart. In the meantime, sickness and disease can be gaining on you, taking their toll on your health.

As the children of God, we are commanded to operate in the Fruit of the Spirit. Colossians 3:12-13 says it like this:

“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.”

by Dr. Frederick K.C. Price