Posted: Apr 21, 08 2:22am
Job 3:20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul.
Bitterness of soul, through spiritual grievances, makes life itself bitter. In contrast, Jesus came that we might have life, and that abundantly.
How does one then extract a root of bitterness? The answer is one doesn't, especially if it has been lodged there since childhood. It is not likely to be a sliver that is removed easily with needle, or tweezers, or a simple squeeze.
Our Scripture today talks about the Light and Life given to that one. If someone can say that they have never had struggles with forgiveness or that it comes about so easily to do so to not give it a passing glance, then I would suggest either amnesia of a sorts, or you have awakened from a comatose state and will no longer sweat the past.
Bitter roots go very deep even though we never intended them to have such a stronghold on us. It simply begins with an adamant, "I am insulted, I am grieved, I am harmed, or I don't deserve this" train of thought. And you would be right and justified with that line of thinking. Life can be extremely cruel for some and for others extremely susceptible to sensitivity.
I can only speak of my past experience in removing a bitter root and how I was set free to live an abundant life as a perk.
There were two men in my life that were repetitive offenders. The offences is not as important as to why I could never see remorse or changed behavior which simply infuriated me even more. I wanted justice to no avail. I had the thought process going on like an old LP caught in a record groove playing the same old over and over.
One day the Holy Spirit broke through to me. On my own willpower, strength and might, I could not forgive or forget. That is all I heard Him gently whisper. I realized that I am human, and flawed, and incapable of being God who puts our sins away from us as far as east is to west. That's all there was to it, the truth that I could not do this. With that type of pure honesty before God, the Holy Spirit was then offered the chance by me to do something supernatural within me, and I loosed what I had bound on this earth and let Him forgive through me.
The difference was He does what I cannot. He caused a weight of self-inflicted punishment and ugliness to fall like chains from my soul. I was the one that was held captive by not extending forgiveness. By asking the Holy Spirit to wrought that instead within me, I was able to forgive, not because a right was wronged, but because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. (1Jn 4:4b)
God was the only One that could extract such a deep root that had been nourished and tended to as a cherished plant by me. When I allowed Him to be a master Gardener and great Physician, God wrought the cure, lest I have any room to boast that forgiveness was humanly possible by my own merit in these cases. Once I understood the process, a war truly against principalities and powers ceased, and God won as He always does!
If you have a root of bitterness, no matter how long standing, ask the Lord today to extract it from you, and place it on the Calvary-Cross of which He hung alone.
Simple T asking, "Got Roots?"
