Good morning everyone and welcome back to another morning with the masters where we devote

ourselves to the Lord daily with you. Good morning you guys. We are picking up with a

four of our freedom from sin devotional in the Bible app. There's a link to that in the description

of this podcast if you guys want to follow along with us and as always I'm going to read the

scripture and then Tori's going to read the Devo. Let's do it. The scripture is Ephesians chapter

four verse 32 and it says this. Instead be kind to each other. Tenderhearted forgiving one another

just as God through Christ has forgiven you. The devotional's titled retaliating with sin

that starts with a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. That old law about an eye for an eye

leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing. Revenge appeals to our flesh.

We want to retaliate when someone's done something to hurt or offend us. We want to get back at them

and show them what it feels like. So we say or do something to them hoping we can experience

some relief. Take a married couple for example. One spouse does something to hurt the other. It could

be something like hurtful words during a fight or it could be marital unfaithfulness. The other

spouse has a choice in how they respond. They either show grace and forgive or they say the words

or break the trust because it was done to them. Rarely do people feel better when they handle

their own revenge. All it does is stir up an insatiable appetite for more revenge. When we allow

someone else's sin against us to determine if we will sin back. We've given them power of our

choices and retaliating with more sin hurts the heart of God first. The toxic cycle goes like this.

Someone hurts us. We hurt them back with our sin. We sin against God. And then maybe the person

is hurt. There's no guarantee that our retaliation will hurt the person we intended to hurt but it

will always go against our God. We think that stooping to the level of the person who's hurt us

is actually going to bring us comfort but it never does. And to make the entire situation worse,

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