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| The Poison Root of Bitterness |
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Have you ever been wronged? Have you ever been hurt? Have you ever been abandoned? Have you ever been betrayed? How did that make you feel? I bet that you can already begin to taste that bitter emotion welling up inside of you.
"Your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray to God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity." Acts 8:21-23
"Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without w hich no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled;" Hebres 12:14-15.
Bitterness can be described as a harsh, disagreeable taste. (For example try: drinking orange juice right after you brush your teeth.) When we say someone is bitter it means they have become angry, resentful, hostile, ugly and hateful. Bitterness is poison to your heart, your attitude, and your life. I like to say bitterness is when the pain talks. Remember Job's wife? Do you recall her response to the grief of losing her children all in one day? Her infamous words, "Why don't you just curse God and die?" Many have judged her harshly for speaking such words but I don't condemn her, for it was the pain that was talking. If you have ever experienced heavy grief you will say, "I can't believe I said those things, thought those things, and felt that way." That is the pain talking. Bitterness can be described as an unpleasant attitude that makes the one infected with it, angry,mean, hateful, ugly and ungrateful.
Bitterness can be caused by:
A traumatic experience you encountered through no fault of your own.
A traumatic experience that was forced upon you unwillingly by another.
It can be caused by disappointment and shattered hopes and dreams.
It can be casued by unforgiveness. Refusing to let go of an offense.
It can be caused by rejection. When you are rejected by someone who you love and who was supposed to love you.
The spirit of bitterness comes to us at our weakest, lowest, most vulnerable moment and speaks to us....Do you know what it says? Things like: "You were wronged!" "You were mistreated!" "You were thrown away carelessly!" People thought they could get away with it treating you so poorly!" NOT ANY MORE!
Bitterness says to you..."This will not happen again! You deserve better! People can't be trusted! You are justified in feeling the way you do! You have a right to be angry! You have a right to hate that person! You have a right to feel cheated and betrayed! FROM NOW ON you need to look out for yourself. You may fool me once, but your Momma didn't raise no fool!"
When that spirit of bitterness comes to you and you entertain it and let it into your spirit, right then, at that moment it happens! You've been poisoned! And that spirit begins to take root!
4:30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 4:32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. The Bible gives us two illustrations of bitterness. First it is describes as a poison in Acts 8 "you have been poisioned by bitterness". A poison is a chemical that will cause injury, harm or death. (It obviously is not good for you) The second illustration is that bitterness is described as a "root." The life of a plant is in it's root system...if you have a bad root then you will have bad fruit.
Bitterness prevents you from having good relationships with others!
Bitterness destroyed the relationship between Jacob and Easau.
Bitterness affected how Joseph's brothers treated him!
Bitterness even came between Saul and his son Jonathan over David.
Bitterness poison's our relationships. When we can't let go of the past, the hurts, the trauma and phsycologically speaking we try to exact revenge upon the other person by being bitter at the same time trying to protect ourselves. The problem is that our relationships become scewed. When you are bitter no one will like you. No one will want to be around you. Becasue all of your negative energy is dumped on those around you. You become a walking toxic waste dump contaminating everyone and everything around you with your bitter, hostile, and jaded outlook. You will find that the only people that like to be around you is other bitter people. As they say, "Misery loves company" and that is esspecially true of bitter people.
Bitterness will keep you from enjoying life. Bitterness will make you look at life through a selfish pair of glasses.
Bitterness will turn your perspective inward nstead of outward! When you are bitter you can't be happy. You can't be grateful. Youu can't be optomistic and hopeful. When you are bitter you can't be compassionate, because you are only focused on your self. When you are bitter you become a taker instead of a giver. A bitter person becomes a complainer insead of a praiser. Bitterness will make someone a whiner instead of a doer. Bitterness will cause a person to become an excuse maker instead of an overcomer.
Bitterness is the direct opposite of the Spirit filled life. The Spirit filled life is described in Galatians 5:22-23. 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 5:23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
But the fruit of bitterness is hatred, sadness, depression, anxiety, hostility, anger, selfishness, ugliness, and a lack of self control.
Bitterness will prevent you from having fellowship with God.
Bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit. Eph 4:30-31.
Bitterness hinders your prayer life. Ps 66:18
Bitterness hinders your worship. Mt 5:23-24
Bitterness prevents your annointing from flowing in greater measure. II Tim 2:20-21.
Ultimately we blame God for our pain. We say something like, "If God is good and wants to bless me why won't He bless me? Why does He make it so painful?
There is purpose for your pain. Perhaps this would be better explored later, but we all need to understand that God is trying to make us like Jesus. He wants us to be mature and complete lacking nothing. Christians are perfected by tribulation, trouble.persecutions, sufferings and the like. If Christ was made perfect through suffering (Heb 2:10) what would make us any different? For our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 2 Cor 4:17. God wants to bless us. Instead of becoming bitter from our bad experiences, we can become better. We can grow from it, learn from it, and help others through it. Those bound up in bitterness can't receive what God has for them, because they are not willing to give their hurts and wounds to Jesus. Instead we try to hold on to it and by doing so bitterness takes root in our hearts and poisons our very lives. Bitterness is bad for all of us. If we choose not to forgive, and to hold onto offenses we will never experience the power of the love and grace of God in our lives. Let me encourage you right now, to release that pain to God and allow the mercy, grace and peace of the Holy Spirit to flow into your life and minister to you right now. Don't you want to be free again? Free to love, free to be happy and enjoy your life and the people around you? Let it go, right now and receive comfort of the Holy Spirit in your life.
I hope this helps. Remember God loves you with an everlasting love.
Love in Christ,
Brother Todd |
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| like always, brother todd, you hit the nail on the head...........i love the way you teach.....you bring things to my attention that i haven't even considered.........i had the privelege of hearing you teach on this subject and you open doors that i wasn't even aware of was closed..........you made me stop and take a look inside my heart....and through God's help was able to release the bitterness that was inside of my heart.......thank you so much for doing God's work..........luv ya lots |
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| I was bitter and angry for so long...thank you Jesus, He delivered me from it...since being out of that vicious cycle, God has been using writings like this to really speak to me..because if you fall in a trap once..its very likely you will fall again..without Gods grace..so blogs and words like this help keeps me sharp and aware of those awful traps and pits...thank you for posting this! |
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| Excellent teaching bro... There was a season in my life when I could have chosen to be bitter... (or entertained self pity), but the spirit of the Lord was gracious enough to give me a parable which blessed me and may bless others: http://www.enterrest.com/Grampus.htm |
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Tickle me: I am gald to encourage you. It is important to realize that bitterness is a poison that will destroy you. To learn this early in life will spare you much grief. Good for you!
HolySpiritwithin: Thanks for the compliment and thatnks for the link. I will check it out. I have seen many of your comments around, God bless you, I know you love the Lord. |
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