Bill Johnson - Why You Need to Let Go of Regret, Bitterness, and Jealousy
There is no freedom where there is jealousy; there is no freedom where there is bitterness. Bitterness, jealousy, and regret are all addictions to the past. They all have a similar effect on the soul. The enemy fears your freedom. Chris and Kathy have been such a huge part of our lives; that is just the statement of the century. We actually lived together for a season in Weaverville while their home was being built, and it was such a privilege. When Benny and I moved to Weaverville, Chris and Kathy were not in the leadership of the church at all. Chris was recovering from a nervous breakdown.
There were a bunch of other leaders, the Dairyberries, who are here. Why don’t you wave your hand, Bill and Judy? Chris probably wouldn’t be alive without these two; they really had such a profound impact on all of us, but I know especially on Chris. They weren’t a part of the leadership team by any means, but Chris just had this passion to learn and a passion to serve. He would stop by the house constantly on the way home from work, asking if there was something he could do. I finally decided I had to make stuff up; I had to look for some odd job to give this guy to do because he pesters me in a right way, you know, in a godly way, just to serve. That hunger to learn and to serve has marked their lives to this day, and I am so thankful. I just can’t imagine life without these two; they’ve had such an impact on me and my kids.
At work in Weaverville, if I was having a rough time, I would just schedule lunch with Chris because it was almost guaranteed he was having a rougher time. We would sit down for lunch at the Mustard Seed, and he would tell me what was going on in the gas station that day or the auto shop, and we would laugh and laugh. I would go back to the office thinking, «Man, I’ve got it good.» This happened over 17 years. I remember coming to lunch one day and thinking I had just heard the ultimate story. If you can imagine, he owns a gas station, and there is a car parked against the wall that had been there for several days, waiting to be repaired. It had been dropped off two or three days prior and stayed there without issue. He happened to have a customer with his car there who didn’t really like Chris, but Chris was the best at what he does; nobody else in the area could fix it, so he brought the car to Chris. They were standing there talking about the job that needed to be done when they looked over, and this car that had been there for three days just started backing out of the stall.
The customer said to Chris, «I don’t think anyone is driving that.» Chris, of course, was like, «It’s been here for days.» One of his guys was moving it, and they looked, and he said, «I don’t think anybody’s in that car.» They watched as the car backed down the driveway, nobody in it, and then turned left and went up the highway. Then it turned left again, came back up the driveway, and ran into this customer’s car. The customer said, «Had I not seen it for myself, I never would have believed you.» I went to lunch just for the laughter relief because certainly he had experienced something worse than I did, and it was fun. We are really indebted, and we want to say thanks all week long to you, honor you guys, and thank you so much. Twenty years is wonderful. Bless them again, would you? Thank you! Yes, so thankful for you.
I’ve got about an hour-long message that I’m going to do in 36 minutes, so listen fast because I can’t go an hour. Grab your Bibles, open to the Book of Matthew, the 20th chapter, and I’m going to abbreviate some things. Honestly, I talked a couple of weeks ago about the subject of bitterness—a nice Christmas message—and Merry Christmas, by the way. I’ll reiterate that phrase now and then just to remind you that I know what season it is. I spoke on the subject of bitterness a couple of weeks ago as the defiling factor in Hebrews. There is this warning about bitterness, and Jesus taught and said basically this: «You are forgiven as you forgive,» so you set the standard for how you are forgiven in your life. The issue of bitterness is so destructive in a person’s life. I have been wrestling with this as a theme for a season and have felt this would be the right time, even though it’s awkward because of the holidays. So just warn all your friends, «Don’t come back during Christmas.» I’m kidding. I want to do the second half today and talk to you a bit about jealousy. Jealousy, in many ways, is the mother of bitterness, and learning to deal with these issues of the heart is paramount.
Bitterness is so destructive. Someone once said, «Bitterness is like drinking poison, hoping it will have an effect on the other person.» The opposite happens; it destroys the internal world of an individual. What I’ve noticed through pastoral care for the last 45 years is that there are three areas that seem to invite and accelerate demonic activity in a person’s life: sexual perversion, any repeated activity. Do you understand that sins start as sin of the flesh and then move into a spiritual sin where they become demonically inspired? It’s true that even witchcraft is mentioned as a sin of the flesh in Galatians 5. Witchcraft, you would think, starts off absolutely demonic; it doesn’t. Manipulation and control are the essence of witchcraft, and many parents use manipulation and control to raise kids without realizing they’re partnering with the spirit of witchcraft.
Politicians do it all the time, and so do pastors and leaders. The issue of manipulation and control is the seedbed for the spirit of witchcraft that eventually becomes this demonically controlling and empowered activity in a person’s life. The same thing happens with sexual sin. I have watched through the years as people have come under this demonic activity in their lives through repeated sexual sin. The second area would be drug abuse, but especially hallucinogenics, which open a person up to the spirit world where they become a pawn in the demonic realm. The third area is bitterness. The two most terrifying people I have ever known— and as a pastor, you work with many people, sometimes from the streets, especially in Weaverville— were both consumed and tormented by the spirit of bitterness. They had other issues in their lives, but they were so possessed and tormented by bitterness that it was frightening. They both ended up in prison for life for murder because bitterness is murder in diapers—it is undeveloped murder. That’s what it is, and the enemy’s attempt is always to get you to destroy somebody else and destroy yourself in the process.
So, Merry Christmas! I just want to interject that now and then to let you know I know what season it is. Now let’s move on to the story. I really want to come back to this when I can take a good period of time— it might be a Sunday night where I can take an actual full hour. I’m going to take a story in Matthew 20 and abbreviate it for you and read the conclusion. This is the story: it’s about a landowner and servants. He hires people from the city square. He would go down to the city square and find people who needed jobs and help on his ranch or farm. It was a twelve-hour workday, so he hired these folks for a denarius. He went back down— I forget after how long, maybe after three hours— so there were nine hours left in the workday. He found more people who needed work, so he took them back to the ranch. He continued this until the eleventh hour of the day when there was only one hour left to work. He went back down to the city square and found people still in need of work. At the end of the day, he paid them, and they lined up for pay.
If you remember the verse, «The last shall be first, and the first shall be last,» this is actually one of the contexts in which that phrase was used. So, what he did was bring those who were hired at the end of the day—who had only worked for an hour—and paid them a denarius. Everyone else in line thought, «This is awesome! The landowner, the boss is being generous; he’s giving them a denarius, let’s just call it $100.» They thought, «This is awesome; now we’re going to get more!» When he got down the line and paid the people who had worked for twelve hours $100, the same as everyone else, they were angry about it. They were upset because they were paid the same as the guy who only worked one hour.
Listen to this concluding verse in verse 15 of Matthew 20: «Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?» Catch that last phrase: Is your eye evil because I am good? Here’s the bottom line: each of us is in this story, either as the favored one or as the friend of the favored one. The roles will change; there will be moments when the spotlight is on you, and you get what you know you do not deserve. You will be honored and blessed in a way that you never could have worked for— it’s called grace. There will be other times when your friend gets the very thing you prayed for, the very thing you fasted for.
I don’t know why it works this way, but it seems that the person who has three cars is always the one who drives into the grocery store as the millionth customer and wins a fourth car, while the person who needs a car doesn’t have one and isn’t the millionth customer. Don’t make me explain that; I don’t understand it, but I just know resource attracts resource, and favor attracts favor. There are moments in our lives when we are the ones who are chosen and we are the ones giving the $100 for one hour of work instead of twelve. Everyone in this room has those moments; it’s called grace—it’s the way the kingdom works. But the kingdom also works in such a way that the guy next to you gets the very thing you prayed for. Here’s the question: Is your eye evil because he is good?
Let’s put it another way: because of the corruption in your own heart, do you see the goodness of God displayed on another person in a wrong way? Has it distorted your perception of divine favor somewhere else? The real lesson, the real invitation from the Lord, is for us to learn to celebrate the breakthroughs, the favor that is shown to another person. Proverbs says that if I don’t know how to handle another person’s possessions, I cannot be entrusted with my own. Let’s just take this as the possession of favor: If I cannot celebrate the favor placed upon Dan, if I can’t rejoice in that grace that rests on him—where he is this amazing, highly favored individual—then I am not qualified. I don’t know if «qualified» is the right word, but I will use it: I am not qualified to have the same measure of favor on my life. Why? Because I will pervert and distort it. If I cannot use somebody else’s possessions well, I cannot be entrusted with my own. In a practical sense, it’s like with rental cars. People who rent cars generally treat them much worse than their own personal cars. This behavior restricts the measure and level of personal promotion because we have chosen to abuse what is not ours, therefore restricting ourselves from future promotion.
So another person’s favor is to be celebrated, and there are times when the Lord will place someone in your life, and they will receive the very thing you have longed for, prayed for. Maybe you have fasted and prayed for it; you’ve had prophecies about it; you’ve cried out to God and done all this stuff for maybe years, and then they come in. You’ve been praying for 20 years for this, and they come in and get it six months later. There is a test, and the test is to see how I can manage my heart when someone else receives easily what I’ve labored for. That’s the story here: Is your eye evil because he is good? What happens is that when things are not right in our hearts, we distort the circumstances of another person’s life, twisting them for our favor so we can win the argument.
Jealousy causes us to read others' motives, potentially bringing accusation into our hearts. Perhaps never out loud, but jealousy is reasonable. I remember wanting to pray for someone, and I could sense something in them. I asked, «Do you need to forgive anyone?» The response was, «You don’t realize what they did to me.» In other words, they had a reason; my reasoning says this is a legitimate response to what was done to me. That reasoning is carnal reasoning; it is unrenewed. Biblical reasoning works from the cross toward a situation; biblical reasoning works from the redemptive work of Jesus toward any broken situation that you and I are involved in. Jealousy enables a person to twist a perspective in their heart, allowing them to read wrong motives into other people’s hearts.
The way you walk in forgiveness is to stay away from thinking you know someone else’s motives; it is forbidden territory—no trespassing. I do not have the right to say, «Well, they did this because…» I don’t have that right because the Bible says I can’t even know my own heart. What’s scary is that there are people who profess Christ but don’t read this word. This word is a knife that cuts and exposes. How does a person live with ample discernment to recognize when we are going into that forbidden territory and trying to figure out the motives of another person? The Scripture says I don’t even know my own heart; how can I know yours? Well, the Lord didn’t show me because He’s a better steward than that; He’s not going to reveal the heart of a person to another and make them bitter.
Look at this passage in James. In James chapter 3, there’s a very sobering portion of Scripture. By the way, Merry Christmas to all of you, and our Bethel TV audience around the world, we’re glad you’re watching. James chapter 3, verse 13: «Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts—this is self-promotion—do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.» Here’s what you’ve got to see: bitterness and jealousy are wisdom. That’s what it says! This wisdom is not from above. That’s why those who are steeped in bitterness and jealousy consider themselves to be right, discerning accurately. Bitterness and jealousy masquerade as the need for justice. For that reason, they are biblically called wisdom. It’s just wisdom that comes from the demonic realm. The battleground for each of us is the mind; it’s our thought world.
Perhaps a day—maybe in the next year sometime—we can take two or three weeks just to work on this one theme, this one idea. If you can imagine, 2 Corinthians 10 talks about pulling down strongholds. Strongholds exist in thought patterns; it’s a real abstract picture and idea, but the concept is real and biblical. Imagine an old castle built from large stones, where the king and his family could hide out if there was an assault. The soldiers could regroup there, recover their strength, and replenish themselves; it was a place of safety; a stronghold. So imagine this castle is built from large stones, and these stones are the illegitimate thoughts and concepts that the enemy raises up against our identity, our destiny, etc. Every one of these stones creates a fortress in our thinking, a way of wrong thinking where the demonic hides.
You say, «Well, Christians can’t be influenced by demons.» That’s just not true; it’s not true. That’s why Paul had such a strong warning in Ephesians 4: «Don’t give place to the devil.» In other words, you could. Don’t do it. When you realize you’ve been under delusion about bitterness or resentment, jealousy, it means that repentance is needed; it means very specific confession of sin. This isn’t just, «Oh God, forgive me, I had a bad attitude,» or «God, I just have it like this.» You must deal with the lies, and the best antidote for lies is truth.
Find what God says about a person. This is an awkward story, and I don’t know if it will make sense to you. It happened to me several years ago; I was going through a Christian magazine, and it was conference after conference. What I learned to do is if I know something about someone or question someone’s integrity, I don’t sit there and become bitter and accusative; I just turn the page quickly. That’s how I avoid the issue. I say, «Yeah, I don’t need to have an opinion about this person.» But I realized that while I was succeeding in resisting the spirit of accusation, I was not succeeding in feeling God’s heart for them. The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. I was choosing indifference as the solution. So I went back through the magazine and turned the pages, stared at the pictures of people until I could feel God’s heart for them.
Then I turned the page again and looked at the picture and said, «Oh God, this person is so highly favored for a reason. I know they paid a price that I’ll never know about, but you favored them because of that.» I turned the page, and something began to activate within me. What you don’t want to do is embrace that nonsense of knowing somebody’s heart; it’s a huge trap. Once you succeed there, you have to move into a place where you give people the benefit of the doubt. This is a really big part of life for me. I see this happen; I hear this happen. The more we travel, the more we rub shoulders with amazing people all over the planet. But occasionally, we run into a rascal or two. I know it’s hard to believe, but it actually happens; there are at least two rascals out there. Chris knows one; I know the other. To give people the benefit of the doubt, my dad had this saying that’s honestly one of the most important phrases I have ever heard in my life. He would tell us, «If you wash another person’s feet, you’ll find out why they walk the way they do.» I spent time with some folks that are real rascals, and I would wash their feet, and I would discover what kind of life they had—they never had anyone stand with them. I would find out all this stuff by just spiritually serving that person.
Now, I want to emphasize how critical it is to put the heart of forgiveness into an actionable behavior. Behavior has to be measurable through action. There’s a passage I quote often: «If I say I love God, whom I can’t see, and I hate my brother, whom I can see, I’m a liar.» Why? Because I don’t have the right to claim an invisible reality that cannot be demonstrated in my behavior in the natural; it has to be verifiable by how I treat the people around me. We have this issue of jealousy and bitterness that creates an atmosphere for bitterness to take hold of a person’s life. This issue of jealousy is called, according to scripture, bitter envy, and it’s reasonable from the demonic realm. So, if it makes sense to you, guess where you’re thinking from? You’re seeing the situation through the enemy’s eyes.
That’s why this has to matter. We come before God, drop to our knees, and say, «God, I see this.» I’m convinced I’m right— and I know I’m not because it’s contrary to your word. We come clean with the Lord, and we stay there. It may be a repeated situation. I remember a situation I had years ago where my goodness, I must have forgiven the person a hundred times a day, literally a hundred times a day. I was being bombarded continuously. I wasn’t able to function normally; I had so many arrows shot at me. I was being bombarded in my mind, my emotions. I’d declare, «No! I’ve forgiven this person! I refuse to think evil of that person! I will not accuse them before the Lord. They are a servant of the Lord; they are not my servant! I bless them!» Then I would work to serve that individual, putting the forgiveness into some action. If you didn’t win the car you needed, and your friend who has three cars now has four, buy him a tank of gas—do something. Put it into practical action because we all need fruit that gives evidence of what is happening inside of us.
We need fruit; yes, of course you can fake it, but fake it until you get it. Do the right thing until it becomes your nature. Jealousy kills people, and I’m saying this to you today because I have sensed we are in another wave of promotions. Promotions are wonderful, but they never happen to everybody at once. One of you is going to be the guy who worked for an hour and gets wages for twelve hours, and you will have to deal with the fact that everyone around you, if they operate in ungodly wisdom, is trying to discern what you did to have that kind of favor. You never have to apologize or explain the Lord’s blessing when you have favor. Live with the favor; don’t be apologetic. I’ve gotten into a car of a friend of mine before; it was a beautiful car. He picked me up at the hotel, and as soon as I sat down, I began to apologize for having such a nice car. I know how awkward he felt; I have felt the same. People say, «You don’t deserve that.» No, it’s true, I don’t, but I also don’t deserve a lesser car. Actually, I don’t deserve one at all. I don’t deserve a bicycle. If I got what I deserved, I’d be walking everywhere you know. That’s the bottom line: everything you do have is by grace.
So, the point is, he felt this need to apologize and explain—"Well, the church took an offering; they bought me this car.» I was thankful for him, but I felt bad for him at the same time while he was walking through the motions of what I had walked through before. You never have to apologize for the blessing of the Lord. In this season of promotion, some of you will be the one with the wages of a day’s work for one hour, while others of you will see it happen to your friend. You will be the one who works so hard for minimum, and it will be your assignment to learn how to move into a place where jealousy has no voice in your heart, no voice in your head. Truth is what dismantles the blocks that create strongholds where the enemy functions. It’s revelation truth.
There are times when you know Philippians 4 talks about thinking on these things—things that are knowable, right, truthful, and faithful, and all these things on this list in Philippians 4:8—he says think on these things. I’ve had times when my mind is bombarded about a certain individual who has done me wrong. I go to that verse and say, «All right, whatever is true, God! What is there that is absolutely true about that person that I am evidently missing?» I will look for things; I’ll ask God, and I will pray for things, «God, show me what it is that you’ve done.»
Same thing, looking to feel the favor of God on that individual. A few years ago, I was at a conference— a big conference— I was on the front row, one of the speakers, and there was this gal right on the other side of the barrier doing all kinds of unusual things. Thankfully, I’ve been through this about a thousand other times, so I knew not to be accusatory in my mind. I succeeded; I did not sin! I just want you to know I did not have a bad attitude—that’s important— but it was annoying. Then Heidi came over, and she stood next to me. Heidi Baker was there; she said, «Isn’t this wonderful?» I said, «Yes, it is!» She mentioned, «Yes, she was a prostitute for over 30 years and is now free.» Suddenly, all that noise, which seemed so awkward, seemed so reasonable: «Yes, she’s free! That’s right! You can have the microphone! Demonstrate what liberty looks like to the rest of us!»
The Christmas verse—Merry Christmas by the way— that’s been on my mind for about a week or so is in Romans 8, which says that all creation groans and travails for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. Why would they be interceding for that? Because they’ve already seen it. Creation itself cooperated to point to the Messiah, Jesus. The star in the sky revealed the nature and source of this one who was sent from heaven, but now today, creation itself groans, praises for, if you will, the revelation of the children of God.
The context is freedom, and there’s no freedom where there is jealousy; there’s no freedom where there is bitterness. Do you know what bitterness, jealousy, and regret all are? They are addictions to the past. They all have a similar effect on a person’s soul—their emotional condition, mental condition. And I’ll tell you what the enemy fears, and I don’t think I can say this strongly enough: he fears your freedom! In our freedom, there is such a creative expression of what God wants to do on the earth. We reveal Him through our liberty, through our freedom.
There is a strong biblical basis for this concept of freedom. The artisans are the ones that God raised up in the last days with creative expression to war against the four beasts, the horns that war against the saints. The whole point was God’s solution for restriction, bondage, resentment, bitterness—all this stuff—was a people who were free. And the result of their freedom was that they creatively represented Him in the earth to where all of creation itself steps into liberty because the people of God are free!
The people of God are free when we deal with the issues of jealousy, bitterness, regret— all these things that link us to things that are already under the blood. We’ve been invited; we’ve been commanded to step into this liberty because creation itself longs for the accurate representation of who He is through our freedom. The greatest freedom that anyone could ever experience is the freedom that a person receives when they surrender their life to the only one who has the right to run my life, and that’s Jesus the Christ, the King, the Lord, the Master. He has the right to run it, and He chooses to co-labor with us. He forgives us, becomes the loving expression of a father, and becomes the one who tutors, mentors, cares for, and brings us into layer after layer of liberty and freedom.
This liberty and freedom are available for everyone watching on Bethel TV, everyone in this room, anyone in any overflow room. That freedom is available! I want to ask one question: is there anyone here today who would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave this building until I know that I’ve been forgiven by God Himself, that I’ve been brought into His family, that I can finally be a true disciple, a follower of Jesus.» If there’s anyone in the room in that condition, you’d say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave until I know that’s settled,» put your hand up in the air right over here. Yes, anyone else? Raise your hand high. Is there another one over here? Wonderful! Welcome, welcome, welcome! It’s beautiful, beautiful! Anyone else—just wave it, if I don’t see it. Sometimes it’s hard to see. Alright, this is wonderful. We celebrate this; it’s the greatest miracle of all—that a person can be changed in a moment, forgiven of sin, and given the actual nature of Christ; filled with the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead— that’s about to happen in these people’s lives.
I want to ask you to stand, and I want to ask the ministry team to quickly come to the front. We’re going to pray together. I want to ask these two to raise their hands. If you would, do me a favor and come right over here to the people in front of this banner; right here to my left, come down. They will serve you; they will minister to you, they will pray with you. Now, I want you to hold your hands in front of you— this kind of represents we’re holding on to our lives. Hold it before the Lord. I want to pray. Father, I ask that you would give an unusual anointing and grace to this church family to not be bound by yesterday, to be free from every trace of jealousy, every trace of resentment, every trace of regret— that true liberty would be demonstrated in the life of this family. I ask this in Jesus' name. In Jesus' mighty name, amen.