The Nature of Bitterness
You are acting as if you should be God!
In Why Churches Die: Diagnosing Lethal Poisons in the Body of Christ Mac Brunson and Ergun Caner write the following. I have taken the liberty to pull out several different paragraphs in the same section. The purpose in doing that was to help you have less to read only. We must get victory over bitterness or it is going to destroy us. As the title of the book says it is a lethal poison that kills churches.
Bitterness is a bile so toxic that it can consume anyone who becomes afflicted by it. It obsesses your thoughts and devours your energy until you are emptied of any other motivation. It is poisonous and it is toxic, and it comes in two forms: bitterness from jealousy and bitterness from vengeance.
Bitterness that springs from vengeance also comes from a deep place in a hardened heart. Christians who develop this type of bitterness seek unfulfilled justice, as in the case of Joab. Sins and crimes that go unpunished seem unfair to this person, and their mounting anger toward the one who seemingly “got away with it” ravages their heart.
The Christian who is consumed by this type of bitterness questions the goodness of God as well. “If you are God, then why did you allow this to happen?” The perpetrator begins to incinerate the heart of the person who has been wronged. The irony is, though the person who has been wronged is already a victim, he becomes a victim again by becoming a prisoner of the past transgression.
Get Rid of Bitterness Quickly
There is only one antidote to bitterness. The resolution is entirely in the hands of the victim. One must learn to both forgive and forget, and to do it quickly.
The devastating effect of bitterness is that it can consume the person who is afflicted with it. The person who seeks justice or is eaten up by jealousy does no harm to the person toward whom his anger is directed, except for affecting their relationship. It can stunt the Christian’s growth, however, and will not allow him to enjoy God or his salvation.
When you do not learn to forgive people for the wrongs they have done to you, you become a victim a second time. You become ensnarled in a cycle of hatred, poison, and bitterness that has no end and has no solution. This is why Jesus told the offended person to go to the one who has wronged him (Matt. 18:15). Notice how Paul compares jealousy with all the other sins of the flesh, commanding the churches of Galatia to avoid resentment at all costs:
One Last Admonition
We must hasten to add one last piece of advice. Perhaps the most difficult type of bitterness to conquer and the most insidious poison is this: learning to forgive those who do not believe they need forgiveness.
Think about it for a moment. In seeking vengeance, we often want the perpetrator to understand how much he has hurt us. He has wronged us and has had a horrible impact on our lives, and we wonder why God has not intervened and fixed the situation.
Here is the difficult answer: forgive them anyway.
You have to release your hatred and desire for vengeance to God. Otherwise, your desire is (as difficult as this is to read and consider) to be God. That is why the Bible is replete with God’s sayings, “Vengeance is mine.” Retribution and judgment are in his divine and sovereign purview. As long as you continue harboring those feelings, you are intimating that God does not know what is best for you. You are acting as if you should be God!
Release these feelings to God. Allow him to handle the situation, and trust that his justice is far greater than yours. We know this is much more easily written than lived out, but it is the only solution. Forgiving is one thing. Forgiving those who don’t want forgiveness is entirely another. It is the most difficult thing you can ever learn, but it will release your will to God and remove the poison of bitterness from your heart.
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