a bitter spirit

With bitterness toward a person who has inflicted hurt on me, I have to stop thinking of them entirely and focus on myself in this way:

Matthew 7:3-5 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

And in this way:

Ephesians 4:29-32 “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of thy mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and all evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

If I have a bitter spirit then I am the hypocrite and the one grieving the Holy Spirit- it’s no longer about the other person at all. I have to focus on that alone. It is not any of my business to dwell on the other person. Our sin nature makes it very easy for us to focus on the person who is in the wrong. We are then very gracious with ourselves and our own wrong doing. We justify our wrath and bitterness and sharp tongue. We hold others to a standard that we don’t hold ourselves. You do right, but I don’t really have to. In my personal experience, this is the number one cause of lack of forgiveness in my heart. It basically comes down to this attitude,”They did wrong and hurt me. So I therefore have the right to sin in return!” But we don’t actually admit that to ourselves. We just cuddle up to that bitterness like our lives depend on it and self righteously think that we’re okay with this.

It’s so wrong. We have to see how much this is a sin against God, and how much this grieves the Holy Spirit. We have to see how ugly our own deceitful heart is. And we have to get that right before we can expect anyone else to do right. We don’t have the right to demand that others always keep themselves in line. We are not the Holy Spirit. We have no control here. For us to meddle in that is sin in itself. It’s one thing to determine if something is a sin, and then to be angry over sin. Sin SHOULD make us angry. And we should separate ourselves from it. But “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath”. Fuming, venting, ranting, bitterness, gossip... those things are unholy.

These are just a few things that have helped me with recognizing bitterness in myself and then finding forgiveness:

If I am unable to control my angry tongue toward someone, then I am bitter. If my tongue easily speaks malice toward another, then I am bitter. It’s a clear sign. That compulsion to vent and get it off my chest is wrong and it’s bitter. It does not “minister grace unto the hearer”. Instead it plants a seed of bitterness into their heart. It causes discord. It causes trouble and it causes my own bitterness to grow with each word that I speak. It is an absolute delight to Satan.

If I am dwelling on my anger a lot, then I am bitter. If it’s just constantly coming up in my thoughts, even if I don’t speak of it, then I am bitter. And I have NO justification no matter how wrong the other person might be.

Bitterness will 100% destroy my relationship with the person I am bitter toward. I believe there is a time to end a relationship. Sometimes it cannot be helped because the other person has chosen to do very wrong things. I have been on both ends of that. I have been the one in the wrong and others have had to rightfully end a relationship with me, and then I have been the one wronged and ended the relationship myself. However, sometimes it’s a matter of simple hurt feelings or prideful disagreement, and that is not worth ending a relationship. 

Bitterness will distort my view of that person’s character. Oh man, how the devil loves this. One wrong doing that festers in me can suddenly make me feel like that person can do nothing right. Everything is viewed thru that lens of bitterness. They could bend over backward trying to make it right with me and I will have none of it due to bitterness. It’s just so disgusting! 

I have to replace that bitterness with good fruit. With forgiveness if I have been wronged or with humility if I am just bitter over something so stupid that forgiveness doesn’t even enter the picture. For me that looks like a lot of prayer and literally chanting scripture to myself like a straight up monk or something. If I catch myself thinking bitterly, it’s time to pray for that person. And it’s incredible how consistently praying for someone will soften my heart toward them and work forgiveness and compassion. That might mean that I’m praying every few minutes, but you know what, pray without ceasing, right? Or it’s time to recite some scripture to myself. Anything to wash out and cleanse that brain of mine. I recently memorized Eph 4:29-32, and now I’m working Psalm 1 because I desperately need those words washing over my thoughts.

It’s also holding my tongue. Allowing myself to speak bitterly is a slippery slope of discouragement. And holding our tongue is a lot easier than we think it is. You simply shut it. There is no magical solution. It’s determination that you will not speak those things to another person. “Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth. As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife. The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” 

Speak them to the Lord in prayer. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pitchers of silver.” Bitter, malicious words are not apples of gold.

Let go of what the other person should or should not do. Mind my own business. I have my own ugly heart to take care of. 

I have been really convicted about this over the past year, and have talked about it several times with my close friends. I see a lack of unity within my own heart. I’m seeing more and more how bitterness, and how meddling and strife, are the root of this. It’s all pride. Only by pride cometh contention. It’s just made me feel really sickened to see this so much in myself. It’s so deeply ingrained after 37 years of excuses for myself. I’m beginning to see more clearly what it means to grieve the Holy Spirit with these things and just how ugly that is. It feels like I will gag and choke over it sometimes. It’s discouraging when I fail over and over again in this. And discouraging when I see how utterly petty I can be when some of the things I’m bitter over are so small! Easily offended and overly sensitive.

I think that this, along with one billion other sins, will be something that I have to work on every day for the rest of my life. But I know that the closer I draw to the Lord, the more strength I will have to overcome. I try to daily remind myself that God’s forgiveness covers all things, and that if I humble myself, God will give the victory. The conviction over this has given me so much joy over the past year; even though it isn’t necessarily enjoyable. But conviction is a clear sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and that is super encouraging and hopeful for me.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” 

I love that verse so much! It holds the promise of no matter how much I fail because I’m a worthless pile, God will uphold me. It isn’t my filthy rags of righteousness but God’s holy righteousness that will see me thru each day of failure. That gets me just really hyped up and happy to think about.