Good Monday morning (3.28.11),

Here is a quote from Max Lucado that caused me to pause many times this past week as I examined myself, my actions and my motivations. Lately we have had several guest speakers visit New Life. I’m fascinated and grateful at the way their messages have meshed and melded; fascinated because they do not know each other, and grateful because it proves God really does have something to say to us and He will repeat Himself until we get it!

The message God has been repeating over and over: Be a light! Cast off anything and everything that hinders our witness or our walk or prevents us from receiving all of His provisions -- those strengths and wisdoms through which He guides us moment by moment.

This quote from one of my daily readings adds one more layer of revelation to the vast arsenal God is releasing so we can do what He is encouraging, demanding, us to do and be.

“Bitterness is its own prison.

The sides are slippery with resentment. A floor of muddy anger stills the feet. The stench of betrayal fills the air and stings the eyes. A cloud of self-pity blocks the view of the tiny exit above.

Step in and look at the prisoners. Victims are chained to the walls. Victims of betrayal. Victims of abuse.

The dungeon, deep and dark, is beckoning you to enter…You can, you know. You’ve experienced enough hurt…You can choose, like many, to chain yourself to your hurt…Or you can choose, like some, to put away your hurts before they become hates..

How does God deal with your bitter heart? He reminds you that what you have is more important than what you don’t have. You still have your relationship with God. No one can take that.” Max Lucado (Grace for the Moment)

In our Wednesday night class we studied how to be, and stay, full of God. One of the primary issues we discussed was the need to be thankful. If we continue to remind ourselves of all the things God has done for us, of all that we have, then it will be difficult for us to meditate on what we don’t have.

If we constantly remind ourselves of what God has done for us, then we won’t be so focused on what others have not done for us…or worse yet, what they have done to us.

The essential thing to remember about bitterness is that it grows out of a root of unforgiveness. No Christian should have to worry about bitterness growing in their heart’s garden, like a great big prickly nettle, because the Bible clearly tells us we must forgive.

How many times do we forgive a hurt, a trespass, a deep wound, a betrayal? Seventy times seven, Jesus said, and the implication was that if you get that far just keep on counting. Oh, this doesn’t go over so well in a society that idolizes revenge.

We Americans like our revenge served up with a little John Wayne or Bruce Willis. We like to get even. We yearn to settle the score. If we can’t do it ourselves, then we want our heroes on the silver screen to do it for us. Just look at our popular movies and consider how many of them depend on a plot of revenge and payback.

But God calls us to something different. He calls us to be different. Why? Because He wants us to be like Him, and when He hung battered and bloody on a wooden cross He forgave.

Instead of revenge He gave mercy. Instead of pay back, He paid out. Instead of uncovering our faults, our sins, our weaknesses, He covered them with His blood and blotted them out of His memory.

No wonder unforgiveness is so deadly. It sends a deep root into the soil of our heart and grows a thick thorny thicket of bitterness that chokes out life. It strangles mercy and love. It blocks all light.

God calls us to love Him with everything in us: with our whole heart and mind and soul. But if we are harboring bitterness, an outgrowth of unforgiveness, then part of us is not available for God.

If I choose to disobey God by refusing to forgive, by withholding the same mercy extended to myself, then I have given darkness a place to live inside me. This is exactly the opposite of what He has been telling us week after week: which is to walk in the light as He is in the light. To set my light on a hill, to witness to the lost and hurting.

Bitterness is my enemy. Bitterness hijacks my peace. Bitterness puts me in a prison of my own making. I will not give it any place…I will yank it out by the roots by choosing to forgive even the smallest slight at the moment it happens. This is my only real choice.

“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop, in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your own failings and shortcomings and let them drop.” Mark 11:25, Amplified

Laurie Gross