Bitterness is a poison

Bitterness is a poison! Unfortunately it runs ramped and is fueled by pride. By the way Pride is the root of all evil and sin in my book. I have recently been down and out and dealing with a lot of pride type issues. I just haven’t been myself lately and couldn’t quite put my finger on the pulse of what was actually going on.

As always when I get down and out I find myself wanting to go walking in the woods. I have done this type of self therapy off and on for years. Any time my cosmic waves were not in line, which seems like daily, I would find myself wanting to go off into the wilderness to think, and pray and get right with God. Usually during these adventures which are what they usually end up being, I would find myself near water. Of course living in the Ozarks this is not too difficult to do. Not too long ago while studying the bible, I had a revelation. God wants us to get away from the hustle bustle of our everyday lives. Throughout the bible God sent people into the wilderness, when they were gone, God would talk to them and reveal to them things that were important. Jesus went into the Wilderness for 40 days, when he came back he started his ministry. The wilderness is a special place in my heart that I do not take lightly. I am not saying that God will not talk to you unless you go out into the wilderness where all the bugs and snakes are, I am sure God will talk to you on the concrete floors of inner city wherever. I think the main point is to remove yourself from your comfortable surroundings and remove distractions. I have found when I do this; I can hear God more clearly. He is always there and always guiding, I just do not always hear, I am too busy doing and not busy listening. That is why I have found it such an important time for me to go get lost in the wilderness. I remove all distractions and get busy with God.

So here lately, I have been very busy with ministry, doing ministry stuff that I have not been getting busy with God. I have been busy trying to do God stuff without God in the mix. When this happens, the gateway for demonic stuff floods in. This is why I have been in a funk lately. The flood gates have been open, and I have not looked for God to shut the gates. My biggest sin that has crept in lately is bitterness. I have always been the one who works my tail off to get things done, and feel like I am just getting buy as well as meeting my family’s needs. Lately I have witnessed others getting things done with little visible work. This of course frustrates the fire out of me, and makes me want to cry out why Lord, why do I do the things I do to get a little when I see others doing little and get a lot. Of course this is selfishness and bitterness. Yea go ahead and throw pride into the mix as well. To be filling like this I am defiantly not walking with the Lord nor is that Honoring God.

So I decided I was going to study bitterness, it was consuming me and I needed it to stop. After spending a couple of days in quite time I was able to piece it together. Once I knew why I was bitter, I needed to understand bitterness better and needed to know how to get over it. In Hebrews I learned that love keeps no record of wrong but bitterness will only dwell from within and fester up and magnify itself until it controls our thoughts and starts controlling our actions. In Hebrews we are told that bitterness is a dangerous root and further more it is poisonous. It is like a disease, like a cancer that can spread throughout the body. One bitter person can take down an entire room full of happy people. It is part of the demonic effects the disease has on humans. In my studies I came across 5 qualities of a bitter person. 1. A bitter person tends to justify their bitterness. 2. They tend to be overly critical of self and or of others. 3. They secretly hope for miss-fortunes of others and when miss-fortunes happen they celebrate them. 4. If one person of a group of people offend, the bitter person can write off the entire group of people that person belongs to. Lets say you are Republican and you do not like the way Bush ran things. So you become bitter and you tend to want to write off the entire Republican Party. Another example would be for a woman to be hurt by one man and to say all men are evil because of the one. 5. Bitter people tend to struggle to see bitterness in the mirror. Lucky for myself, I was able to detect the bitterness that I was dealing with and was able to ask myself the questions needed to fix the problem “With whom and or what am I bitter about? Once I found out the underlying bitterness, I am able to get down to work on resolving my issues. So how do I fix my bitterness? I looked to Ephesians 4:31 there I was told what to do: 31”Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice”. And when you read on to verse 32”Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”. I am told to forgive the same way Christ forgave us. So sure that sounds easy, to sum it up with two words we can kill the root of bitterness “With Forgiveness” So the question to really ask is, are we carrying around empty baggage that we needed to get rid of long ago. Once the incident happened we need to let it go. If an abuser lays a hand on me, at that moment even though I do not want to I need to forgive him. If I do not release the incident to God, I will allow him to continue to lay a hand on me and continue to violate me in my mind. Out of that grows resentment that turns into hatred that turns into sin that makes us as bad as the one who sins against us.

To remove bitterness is a process, that has to take time. Even if you don’t want to do it, to start, try saying I forgive during your prayer time. Continue to do this over and over. Build on your forgiveness just as we are commanded to do in the bible. To totally end our bitterness we need a deep spiritual cleansing of God. And if that is not enough I then pulled out Mathew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive others 1 their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 6:15 But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.” That pretty much summed it up for me, “if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.” I do not want to go down that way. One last quote from the bible on bitterness comes from Proverbs 14:10 “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” This last one was for me, I was suffering from bitterness from within, no one else shared my bitterness, it is mine only mine, I am to blame and only I can fix with Gods help. Welcome to the road to healing wellness. The long journey that is settled between myself and God. I am so glad that God is slow to anger. I would be in a lot of trouble.