When someone else achieves something, we can end up feeling resentful. Maybe we wanted that success for ourselves, or maybe we feel threatened and insecure because someone’s done something better than us. But that’s not how God wants us to react. The Bible tells us to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’ (Romans 12:15 NIV). We need to be celebrating people’s success, not resenting them because of it. And that includes celebrating the successes of those who’ve hurt us or the people we really don’t get on with. That can be pretty challenging. When we’re feeling hurt, betrayed or disappointed, it can be tempting to want that person to fail. There’s something in watching them fail that seems to make us feel better about the situation. But that’s not how we’re called to live. In Proverbs it says: Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall; don’t be happy when they stumble. And in Romans it goes as far as to say ‘bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse’ (12:14 NIV). We shouldn’t be wishing failure on those who’ve hurt us, instead we should be praying that they’d be blessed. When we’re hurting, that can seem unfair. We can wonder why we should pray for blessing on someone who’s hurt us. But God knows the whole situation, He sees everything, even the behind-the-scenes parts, so we can hand everything over to Him. We shouldn’t be wanting others to fail, or refusing to celebrate their success, but instead setting ourselves free from bitterness and resentment by forgiving people and asking God to bless them.

What Now?

Is there someone who you struggle to get on with? Ask God to bless that person today.