Somewhere in the mix of all this someone introduced me to Pastor Adrian Rodgers and the Love Worth Finding Ministry. I don’t think they had good intent when they did it, but God always uses the weapons of the enemy for good. I used a Bible Concordance, a Bible Dictionary, and my Bible and lots of prayer to seek answers to the many questions I had. I didn’t use the internet much, because I didn’t want to be influenced by someone that might not have God’s Word correctly interpreted. I was tired of that in my life. I wanted to walk the road with Jesus, and only Jesus. I wanted Jesus to be a truth revealer.
But I loved listening to the messages suggested because they were clearly given and simply stated. I decided to search the sermons to find answers. This pastor had a love of people and family. As I struggled with the definition of bitterness, I decided to see if by chance there was a a message about bitterness.
If you want to skip the message, I will do my best to explain bitterness. Bitterness is devastating to ourselves and our relationships. Bitterness is our ow shackling and imprisonment. It divides marriages, splits churches, and ruins businesses. Bitterness is even devastating to our health.
Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Colossians 3:19
This verse is a command to husband’s but I think it’s a command to us all in a way. We all need to love one another and not be bitter. Clearly, the opposite of bitterness is love. There’s no love in a heart filled with bitterness.
Bitterness has been described as a plant. The root of bitterness is the seed of hurt. This seed can be real or imagined. How can hurt be imagined? If you presume an action or words were meant to hurt, but they were misunderstood. These seeds can be intentional hurt or unintentional hurt. An unintentional hurt would be someone saying that color is ugly, when you thought it was pretty. They didn’t know you thought it was pretty and expressed it was ugly. They weren’t trying to hurt you, but it hurt to hear them say the color was ugly. The soil that bitterness grows in is anger, resentment, and revenge.
Bitterness is not easy to get over.
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Hebrews 12:15
It takes the grace of God to get over bitterness. A bitter person harbors a grudge or grudges and rather than dealing with it, they nurture it just like a plant. As bitterness takes root, they know it’s not right, so they begin look for other things to satisfy that they are right in holding that grudge. Most often we become critical of others who have hurt us because we want to justify (I like to call it just a lie) that anger, resentment, and revenge.
Bitterness causes devastation. The root to bitterness is underground and you can’t see it. You can see the fruit of it, but not the root. There are five key characteristics of a bitter person:
1. Sensitive and Touchy – Paranoid.
2. Shows little to no gratitude for anything. They’re not humbly grateful, rather horribly hateful.
3. Speak empty Flattery or Harsh Criticism.
4. Holes their grudge for a very long time until they receive their pound of flesh.
5. Mood Swings
The fruit of bitterness shows up in your body and spirit.
1. Physical devastation: the mind makes the body sick
2. Emotional Problems: “The man I hate follows me everywhere I go.” You become a slave to the very person you hate.
3. Spiritual Devastation: harboring hostility is the opposite of holiness. A lack of holiness brings a lack of peace. There is no peace to the wicked.
So what’s the solution?
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: 27 Neither give place to the devil. 28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. 29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. 30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Ephesians 4:26-32
This passages starts with: do not let the sun go down on your wrath. In other words do not go to bed angry! Why? We continue reading that when we do, it gives a place to the devil. In other words, we leave the door open and invite him in. When bitterness takes hold, the devil moves in.
In Ephesians 4:31, there’s a list to a chain. Reaction that begins when bitterness sprouts.
Bitterness: we get wounded and rather than dealing with it, we harbor it.
Wrath: the word used here describes a slow burn. You all know what I’m, talking about. Something starts to burn inside you. You mind is burning with thoughts about the person and you can’t stop thinking about it.
Anger: Wrath is that smoldering coal inside you and someone opens a door and an explosion takes place.
Clamor: is best described as vocal anger. It’s described as a clang of brass. You just want to yell to be heard. You no ,longer care about the other person. You’re in a full fledged verbal argument. This is a lot of the times we’re things you shouldn’t said get said. Anger is fueling your actions and words.
Evil speaking: clamoring brings about the resentment you feel. You begin to get very mean in your actions and words.
Malice: Your resentment turns into a full on hate and you seek to purposely hurt someone. You want revenge and your pound of flesh from that person. This is also where people physically and verbally abuse other people.
Is there any hope?
Gods is our only hope! It’s the grace of God that eradicates bitterness.
1. Ask God to reveal it.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24
Search me. Try me. Reveal wickedness. This is apart of my daily prayer. I honestly didn’t know I had bitterness in me. I even had bitterness against Gods because he wasn’t fixing things like I wanted him to. Remember, we can Eve get bitter with Gods when we think he has dealt unfairly with us, when he’s actually done the exact opposite.
2. Let Grace remove it
Bitterness is dealt with by forgiveness that is received and given. Grace is the desire to do the will of God. You’ll never be able to deal with unforgiveness and bitterness outside the grace of God. Gid is our ultimate example of forgiveness.
Justice: is God giving me what I deserve.
Mercy: is God not giving me what I deserve.
Grace: is God giving me what I don’t deserve.
I stood looking at that heap of faces and memories. I had never thought about bitterness or unforgivness as a prison. The preacher was right, in all I did, those memories and faces were there with me constantly tormenting me. The more they tormented, the more I hate them.
Forgiveness…. I was understanding God is our example, but I needed to know more!
It Starts Small 
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