The past couple of days I have had some bitterness in my heart. That’s not who I am. And it’s really been a rather irritating ailment. But I’m having trouble shaking it and it’s started to affect outward parts of my day.
Not okay.
And as I sat down this morning to think about the Sunday reflection and devotion I wanted to share; I kept coming back to forgiveness and trust.
“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7, NLT)
Bitterness though.
It’s a nasty creature. It makes you angry. It makes you irritable. It makes you impatient and it makes you resentful. It makes you want to control. And it can even make you want to cause hurt.
And it’s painful because you know that all of the above are irrational—if you would just let it go. Because bitterness? It’s a one-person problem. Bitterness isn’t caused by a fight where an apology is going to fix things. Bitterness doesn’t have a magical solution that any one person can fix. It’s a you problem.
Instead it’s caused separately when something has fermented and sat, and sat. You exacerbate the issue on your own. And you hold onto it white knuckled, because all of the symptoms of bitterness that I already listed? The motive of those is to focus on the negative and just make it worse. To soak in the bad emotions.
When instead, since this only lives with you — if you would just hand it up to God — and ask for grace. Ask for patience and understand. Ask for peace. Then it can start to break down. Then you can start to have healing.
Focus more on Jesus, less on your problems. Less desire to control, more desire to follow in faith. And God is going to restore your positive heart.
actually on the line 