What is bitterness? The dictionary defines bitterness as disappointment at being treated unfairly, or resentment.
I’m sure we can all think of an individual we’ve met in our lives who shares traits that exhibit bitterness. We ourselves have probably exhibited bitterness at some point in our own lives. Have you ever stopped and wondered what happened to that person or even in our own lives that planted that seed of bitterness? Bitterness is something that can take ahold in our lives so easily. It just takes the tiniest bit before it destroys a person and even spreads to others.
Over the years, we’ve taught our children that bitterness is like yucky sticky tar. We’ve watched all kinds of documentaries showing animals stuck in tar pits. Growing up my mom took us out to California for vacation. We took at tour of the La Brea Tar Pit Museum. I remember one specific exhibit so well. It had movable cranks, and your goal was to try and pull the lever down to free the arm stuck in the tar behind the glass. There were different sized and weighted arms on the inside glass. Basically, the smaller the arm the easier it was to remove from the tar. The larger the arm the harder it was to remove, basically impossible. I remember practically putting all my weight on this lever to try and free the heaviest one. It didn’t budge, at all. I remember feeling disappointed and devastated. I see a bitterness analogy in the tar exhibit. The more tar there was the harder it was to break free from.
This morning on Shabbat, while listening to Rabbi Greg Hershberg he mentioned how the word bitterness in the Hebrew and the Greek means offspring or proliferate. Rabbi said “It’ll spread like a spiritual cancer. That I’m here to tell you, the cross is the chemo.”
If we have bitterness about something or towards someone we need to forgive. We need to let it go before it becomes a sticky tar in our life that takes over and spreads to others.
Forgiveness is hard but not impossible. We can look at Yeshua/Jesus as our example. When he hung on the cross after being falsely accused, beaten and tortured. He said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t understand what they are doing.”
If he can forgive them for all of those things while actively dying. We too can forgive and ask for forgiveness for our own wrong doings as well. We may be the cause of bitterness in someone else’s life.
Take that first step of removing that tar of bitterness. Lay it down at the feet of Yeshua/Jesus and watch him heal, restore and renew your life.
Abba Father, of the Most High, I just lift up this reader to you. Abba, you know their heart and if they’re holding onto bitterness. I ask that you move in their hearts and life. That you stir and break up any bitterness that they may have in their life. That your Holy Spirit moves and convicts them if they have done wrong and need to repent and ask for forgiveness in another’s life. They don’t need the sticky tar of bitterness in their life, and they don’t need to be the sticky tar in someone else’s life. I speak and pray healing over them through you and your power because you are Jehovah Rapha. I pray blessings over them. Just asking these things with a humble heart, in Yeshua/Jesus’s name, Amen.
“Keep pursuing shalom with everyone and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
– Hebrews 12:14
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