I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it's like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

When you make a decision to forgive it's a decision that you have to make intellectually.

There is, however, a far more common ailment among us—and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, and murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous.

Contention in our families drives the Spirit of the Lord away. It also drives many of our family members away. Contention ranges from a hostile spoken word to worldwide conflicts.

Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptations to pervert it into injustice" (Exclusion and Embrace, 123).

No area of human life is so full of difficulties and heartaches as relationships. If you listed everything that upset you during the past week, I suspect most had to do with other people. People can be selfless and kind, but they can also be difficult, stubborn, ego-driven, thoughtless, mean, selfish, manipulative. But the problem is not just other people; it's also ourselves.

No church is perfect, but don't let that discourage you. Someone has said that if you ever find one that is, it will stop being perfect the minute you join!

When someone hurts us, our natural instinct is to strike back—but when we do, we not only destroy any possibility of reconciliation, but we also allow anger and hate to control us.

If you have been harboring anger or bitterness or jealousy in your heart toward someone—a parent, an ex-spouse, a boss—hand it over to Christ, and ask Him to help you let it go.

More friction and tensions are caused in a family by tone of voice than for any other one reason.

Many times it takes just one member of a family to initiate the action to bring a family back together again.

There is something wrong when a brother or sister becomes alienated from the rest of their family, so there is something wrong when Christians refuse to have anything to do with their fellow Christians. God wants us to live this Christian life together.