Roots of Bitterness - 5

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us..., fixing our eyes on Jesus, .... For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. (Hebrews 12:1-4)

With so much attention drawn to Jesus and His life in this passage it seems unavoidable that this reference to resistance to the point of shedding blood has some connection with the torture and death of Jesus. But I am still trying to comprehend just how I am to correctly correlate that to my own life.

Is Paul really saying that it is our destiny as a Christian to repeat the shedding of blood like Jesus endured? And just what is meant by the word “sin” that is he talking about here that we are supposed to be resisting – if the assumption is drawn from these words that that is what we are supposed to be doing at all? How does this relate to the words of Jesus, But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:39-42) How much difference is there between resisting an evil person and resisting sin? External vs. internal?

It looks to me like there is a lot of attention here directing us as to where to focus our attention. Even though we are living in the context of this great cloud of witnesses we are not told to focus on them, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. Then almost immediately again we are told to consider Him... so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. That seems to be the main thrust of the background for this verse about resisting and shedding blood. It seems to me that understanding our focus properly will shed light on the real intent of these words. They must be viewed in context of the intent of the verses before and after.

I have to be careful to not get carried away in trying to figure this out with my head more than my heart. It is so easy to get on a roll here and forget that my heart is not keeping up and may be starting to see something very different than the logical assumptions that naturally result from intellectual analysis. I need to stop and allow my spirit to listen both to my heart and for promptings that may be coming from God's Spirit. I must avoid the tyranny of the urgent. I am on no schedule to cover so much in a certain amount of time. I am here to hear, to interact with God's Spirit and to grow in knowledge of Him and His ways. I must always keep that in priority above my pursuit of “answers”.

I sense that maybe the application of this verse may very well be duel and may potentially seem to be contradictory. I believe that we often get our thinking into a small box unnecessarily sometimes by insisting on coming up with only one interpretation for a prophecy or text when God's word is much more versatile than we care to allow.

Following my original hunch that this may be highlighting a contrast between the legalism that he has been addressing throughout the book up to this point and a family-style connection within the body of Christ that he has been introducing, I think this is reinforced by the next verse drawing attention to our true position from God's viewpoint. We are to see ourselves as sons and daughters of God, not independent humans trying to impress or appease a King from a slavish mentality. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you. (Hebrews 12:5 NIV)

These key words remind me to focus very much on Jesus and remember that I am a son of God in favor with Him. This is the paradigm that I need to properly relate to experiences that seem painful or unexplainable. That is one of the messages that I am getting in the following verses.

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children-- "My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts." Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5-11 NRSV)

As I read this passage in various versions I cannot avoid my discomfort with the conflict between what I have been learning about the character of God over the past few years and this picture of a God who punishes and chastises. I know there are many who would be quick to point out that everything I have been learning is bogus because this text discounts it all. But I simply do not buy that line, not because I want to twist this passage to fit my preconceived ideas but because I believe that I must better understand the bigger picture and strive to understand how certain passages like this that on the surface seem contradictory may actually enhance the beauty and truth about God when properly explained.

I realize that most of my discomfort with this passage is due to the distorted experiences of discipline and punishment embedded in my mind, like many others, through the abuses of these concepts while I was growing up. When parents and authority figures justify their infliction of pain on a child, especially when done with any degree of anger, excusing their abuse as discipline or punishment when in fact it is really their own baggage and unresolved pain being passed on to another generation, it becomes very hard if not impossible for that child to have a proper concept of what constitutes legitimate discipline.

These children grow up believing that God, like their earthly abusers, has a lot of unresolved anger that He occasionally vents upon His children just like the angry parent that unknowingly misrepresented God earlier in their life. That person forms a very fear-bonded concept of God in their heart and belief system that poisons their experience and prevents them from being able to really believe the rumors about God's love for them that may come around. What they have experienced in abusive situations far outweighs any theological riff-raff about a loving God who is humble and gentle and loving. In their heart they are always waiting for that God to unexpectedly lash out at them if He happens to get offended by some mistake or misstep by His children.

Those are the feelings that stir around inside of me uncomfortably when I read this passage and at that point I have to listen more to my left brain logic that has assembled some counteractive knowledge over the recent years to sustain a better view of God than parts of my heart feel like believing. I do want to know what God has to say to me in this passage, but I also want to be careful not to allow a myriad of false assumptions to influence the real meaning of this text. What may seem to be obvious due to my own background may in fact be quite misleading due to false pictures of God from my own early experiences and those around me. I must be careful to bring to bear on every passage the overarching truths about God that are needed as filters to interpret other areas that seem to present an opposite view.

I have been led for a number of years now by the Spirit of God to begin to see Him as being a consistent God of love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. That is not to say He excuses or overlooks sin as some would assume or accuse me of believing whenever this assertion is put forward. But I have come to believe that God's mercy is so strong and His love is so passionate that if we were exposed to its full intensity with the lies we presently still have about Him in our hearts that it would destroy us. In light of this revelation about the danger of exposure to the intensity of God, I believe that I might be able to better understand these references to discipline and chastening. I need to consider these words in the context of the truth about God as He has already been showing me over the past few years, not from a context of twisted, human uses of these terms.

My whole reason for immersing myself in this chapter is to uncover the truth about bitterness and the roots that create it. This section about discipline and punishment is a major source of bitterness that I suspect is still affecting my life in ways I am not even aware of. Therefore it is important for me to hear clearly whatever it is that God wants to reveal to my mind and heart about this issue. I want Him to uproot all the roots, even the little tendrils connected to any of those roots, to that they will never spring up again and spread their deadly poison.

I want to have a clearer picture of God as a Father whom I can trust implicitly without fear. That is going to have to be a major shift of perception of fatherhood for my heart that has known mostly fear, apprehension and resentment toward one labeled as father. Yes, my father did the best he knew how and I want to be quick to honor and admire him for that. I too, followed in the same path of mistaken ideas about fatherhood and produced similar results in my own children. But somewhere this pattern of messed up lives and screwed up perceptions has to come to an end and the real truth, the glory of the real Father must come into view and transform and heal all of us and our brokenness.

God, show me the truths that I need to see in this passage. Bring me the healing truth for my heart that You want me to see here. Address my fears and false ideas about discipline and punishment and chastening. I don't want to just paste together a plausible-sounding explanation of these verses, I want to know the real truth about You and discover a much more powerful, transcendent and uplifting picture of what a real Father is from this passage. I want to see things as I have never seen them before. I want to see the consistency of Your character and Your word as I meditate on this chapter. Reveal the roots that continue to poison my life and relationships and deal with them in healing and restoration to wholeness. I suspect that it might involve some discipline and chastening to the extent that I mistakenly resist Your grace. But continue the work You started in me and made more plain 37 years ago this morning. I commit myself to rest in the peace of being Your son and all that that implies for our relationship.

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Roots of Bitterness - 4

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; (Hebrews 12:3-4)

I am struggling with this phrase, not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. I am praying for insight and wisdom from God because I don't think I am capable of just figuring out an acceptable explanation for this.

I now remember that I am in Hebrews and that this book talks quite a bit about the shedding of blood and the whole Old Testament system in contrast to the real system that God is trying to reveal to us. So I look back a few pages to see what I can find to shed light on this verse.

After saying above, "SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them" (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, "BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:8-10)

And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22)

It is not real clear to me yet but it seems that this verse may have something to do with shifting my thinking away from viewing my life through the paradigm of Law and seeing life through the paradigm of being in Christ and in relationship with God. Now that I think of it that way it would make sense that possibly all bitterness is rooted in having the paradigm of Law and legal perceptions rather than God-based relationships with a proper perspective of reality and my value in God's eyes.

If Jesus had for a moment based His perception of His own value on legal thinking, the hostility by sinners against Him would have exploited instantly the weakening effects of that faulty logic and would have created an opportunity for bitterness that would have taken Him down. As I am learning elsewhere, the whole system of Law, of sacrifices and blood and appeasement, etc. that humans insist on believing in in relation to God is basically erroneous and man-made – or at least man-appeasing. But because we cannot think outside of that box, God sent His Son into our system to go through our requirements and satisfy our demand for the shedding of blood according to our perception of justice under the artificial concept of law from our perspective – He did all of this, not to satisfy God's thirst for satiating blood but for our thirst to see someone pay for sin.

But He did not do all that He did for us just to leave us to continue wallowing around in our misconceptions about law and justice and reality. He did all of that to draw us away from that self-destructive mode of thinking and into a whole new paradigm of reality where love and mercy and wholeness and joy make up the atmosphere in which to think and to live and to reason. He did all that to unlock our hearts by satisfying the demands of our view of justice so that we could then move beyond our messed up perception of reality and allow Him to reveal to us the real truth about Himself and His love for us.

How does this fit into an understanding of this verse, You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. I think there might be a number of ways to apply these words, but I am not satisfied with many of them. I think there is a great deal more to be seen here than what we typically have drawn from it. It seems to be saying something about shifting our focus from striving against sin to considering Him instead. If our life focus is all about striving against sin we will be stuck in the legal mode of thinking and that will inevitably result in conclusions that include the need for someone to shed blood, even if it is ourselves.

I know this sounds like a twisting of a text that has long been used to prove the very opposite point. I am not saying that I am completely right or wrong here, but I have to consider this and listen to the Spirit closely on this to see if maybe our preconceptions and assumptions held for so many years may have at least blocked our perception of something much deeper if not outright misled us. Because the usual take that we have on this verse in my opinion has always resulted in greater human effort to resist sin on our part even to the point of shedding our own blood – as if the shedding of the blood of the Son of God was not enough for us. Something is seriously faulty about that kind of reasoning.

The following verses very clearly build on these past two and I do not yet know how it all fits together. I want the Spirit to continue to teach me what I need to know and see here because I want to be free of the roots of bitterness that have poisoned my life, my family and my church for far too long.

Next time I will take a closer look at the next phase and apparently Paul's choice of direction to go to answer the questions raised in these verses. He says, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM. (Hebrews 12:5)

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Flogging God's Sons

O.K. I am running into a problem here. I just got done going over Romans 12:2 that says I should not be squeezed into the world's mold and now I read in Hebrews 12:6 that God whips His legitimate sons as part of their training. That sure sounds like the use of force to me when I have come to firmly believe that God does not use force to get His way. What is going on here? This is another good case of asking God to explain Himself.

I do notice that the word for whipping or flogging only occurs once in this passage and all the other references to discipline have much more to do with training than with imposition of punishment. That is some consolation but it still leaves a big question in my mind.

Whatever all this means it is obvious in later verses that its full intention is so that we may share in His holiness and it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness. This is the context in which this issue must be resolved.

But is flogging ever an effective means of bringing a person into a state of sharing God's holiness? I can't accept that this condones all the legalistic, sadistic religious abuse and distorted notions about God perpetrated for centuries by advocates of force and false systems of authority. But it certainly makes it too easy to do just that. What is going on here?

There is another option that seems to make more sense. It is the same issue as our struggle to understand the God of the Old Testament and all the apparent contradictions we think are there in our picture of God. Much is attributed to God that is in fact a natural result of consequences that we bring onto ourselves by throwing off the protection of God. If these floggings come under the same category as the apparent punishments of the Old Testament then this would make a lot more sense.

Roots of Bitterness - 3

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised. (Hebrews 11:37-39)

If I put myself right now into the place of some of these people described here I am afraid that I would be very tempted to feel bitter. Not that that would be even possible after I was dead, but nevertheless I would be tempted to think that God had not kept His promises of protection and had left me in the cruel hands of my enemies to torture me and try to cause me the most pain possible. What kind of a God would allow me to suffer all that in the name of bearing a witness for Him. Obviously I have a lot of things for my heart to learn about a deeper connection with God before I am ready to gladly allow those kinds of things to happen to me for the name of my Savior.

Yet something in their lives and their inner picture of God resulted in gaining approval through their faith. Even though they did not receive what was promised, which is grounds for a great deal of bitterness by most of us, they gained the approval of God which, it seems, was more important to them than receiving the promises of God immediately. In their choices they showed themselves to be somehow more worthy (whatever that means) than I seem to be right now.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

A cloud of witnesses, huh? While I know that is not disembodied spirits of those just described, I am also aware that there are plenty of other ways my life is being watched much more than I ever think about. And it also involves the fact that these people just described are not witnesses of my life but their stories are witnesses to me about their life and more importantly about how God relates to people like us.

The idea of witnesses means more than just people looking at me. Witnesses are also people who witness to me. It works both ways. We are surrounded in this Great War and the runup to the Great Trial of the universe with everyone who are all called as witnesses to everyone else as to what they will testify about the truthfulness and integrity of God. No one can escape being a witness. The only decision anyone has is whether they will be a faithful and true witness about the character of God or whether they will bear false witness against what He has revealed about Himself.

If I allow a root of bitterness to poison my witness it becomes – it has become – an encumbrance to me. It also becomes a source that causes sin to bear fruit in my life that easily entangles me and prevents me from being able to run freely. It also wears me out emotionally and physically and spiritually so that I do not have any endurance and causes me to be distracted by all sorts of things to keep my mind off what is supposed to consume my attention to attract me out of myself. Whatever is causing me to feel bitter – and it may be a number of roots – is creating all of these problems described in this verse.

I am encouraged by the solution put forward in this text for my problem of bitterness. First of all, I realize that to be saved I have to have faith. The problem has always been that I can't get faith by trying to get it. But this verse tells me that I need to keep fixing my eyes on Jesus who is the source and the completer of my faith. I just studied in Romans 12:3 that God has given everyone a measure of faith. So here I learn that if I want that faith to become active and effective and to thrive, I have to fix my attention relentlessly on the source of that faith if I want it to be very useful. It also shows me how Jesus Himself handled similar circumstances to what the people described in the last chapter endured. He too set His attention relentlessly on what He considered the most important inspiration to keep Him on track when everything and everyone around Him were working to discourage and derail His faith. He set His heart on joy that was before Him.

I know that joy means intense desire to be with someone closely, emotionally, in every respect. It means sharing hearts without barriers no matter what one is experiencing. It means being valued and cherishing each other. This desire that Jesus focused on to draw us, to draw me, into intimate closeness to His heart and even physically to His body was the driving force that overrode every other emotion or fear that threatened to distract Him. So what does this mean for my life?

Well, first of all I see a connection in this meaning of joy back to a previous verse. Because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:40) That reinforces the true meaning of joy as needing to be together. Their joy was impossible to perfect without being joined together with both Jesus and with us, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)

Bitterness is a poison that will always prevent that unity from becoming reality. It distorts my view of the truth about God and keeps me distracted from focusing enough on Jesus to be transformed. I definitely want to get free of all my roots of bitterness and live in the freedom and joy that are found in the true body of Christ. But how do I get there from here?

This text says that Jesus despised the shame. I have wondered nearly all my life what that really means and I still don't understand it very well. It almost sounds like the notion of shaming the shame – fighting fire with fire. Is that what it means? I suspect there is a great deal more here but I need some insight on this one. But whatever it means it enabled Him to sit down at the right hand of the throne of God. That sounds like a pretty good (and safe) place to take up residence.

I know He did not get there and could have never gotten there if He had allowed any amount of bitterness to take root in His heart. He certainly had a great deal of bitterness poured down His throat in more ways than one. But however He accomplished it, He did not allow all the bitterness of the whole world heaped on Him both externally and internally to ever form any roots into His soul. His heart was sealed against it with the love that was willing to endure instead of indulge in self-pity.

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:3)

This seems to be another angle to the first imperative to fixing our eyes on Jesus. In this case I am supposed to analyze the responses of Jesus to situations that tend to cause me bitterness and see an alternative way to respond. In this way I can make myself available to be mentored. Hostility will always cause my heart to become weary and lock up and lose touch with others if I do not know how to endure the way Jesus somehow endured. Everyone around me are sinners just like He experienced when here on earth so there obviously is a great deal for me to learn about how to live from His example without becoming infected with a root of bitterness from hostilities directed at me.

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Roots of Bitterness - 2

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15)

I feel compelled to spend some time in Hebrews unpacking this issue of bitterness before I continue in Romans. It is coming more into focus in my heart and I feel that I need to deal with it instead of stubbornly trying to keep on course in the passages where I have been studying for the past few months. I do want to return and finish the book of Romans without leaving it dangling, but right now I need to address this personal problem while I am under conviction.

I'm not sure the best way to go about this but I trust the Holy Spirit to guide me as He is the one who is bringing it to my attention anyway, Right now I think I will start at Hebrews 11:39 and work my way forward for it looks to me like nearly every verse contains important ingredients for understanding and clues to awaken the deeper issues buried out of sight in my heart and memories that need to be exposed and dealt with. I don't want this to be just an intellectual exercise, but that approach may be useful as a starter to allow my heart exposure to convictions as I expose my mind and heart to the Word.

This is coming right off the famous chapter ticking off a number of examples of faith from throughout history. Immediately on the heels of this expose´ of what faith can look like I read this:

And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40)

I feel like following a format something like this as I work through the following verses – I want to look for two things: what might be a potential for making a person bitter and what does this passage present as a healing solution for bitterness. I am dealing with something that is primarily at the heart level which may make it very difficult to translate with my head at times, but I feel the need to do it anyway. In the process I want to remain very respectful of listening to my feelings and emotions and not allowing my expositions to get in the way whenever I need time for uninterrupted heart processing. This is new to me somewhat and I trust God to guide me through this exploration and healing journey.

As I read these two verses what is described here would seem to me like a potential source of bitterness if I were one of these “heroes” of faith just described in verses 36-38 who did not receive what was promised. I know the typical intellectual response to this as the “right” answer theologically, but the heart has little use for those sorts of pat answers. To put it in a succinct way, I would feel very cheated if these words described my life. The following ideas come to mind from my heart: cheated, lied to, confused, disappointed.... Why would God set things up this way? What does this mean, God had provided something better for us...? Something seems terribly unfair about that – they don't receive what was promised because people down the road are provided something better? My own heart says that if I was one of these mistreated, faithful people and found out about this arrangement that it might be a very big potential for feeling bitter.

How much does that resonate in my own heart? Well, right now it is feeling like about a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-10. Let me go on.

...so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. That really riles my sense of independence and fairness too. I know that I have been learning a lot about the importance of community, accountability etc. but I have not been learning very much of it experientially. I am still quite independent in my own spirit and rather private in my spiritual and emotional life. I am quite selective as to who I will allow very far into my heart (nearly no one that I can think of actually) because I have felt deeply hurt or betrayed from the times I have attempted it in the past.

Again, I am not following religiously correct answers here but simply recognizing the first emotions that surface from the heart for the sake of honesty. In fact, to protect the vulnerability that my heart is feeling right now I am seriously considering not making this public until my heart gives me permission. And that would likely be after it has received some healing and resolution and relief from this problem. Of course, knowing myself I am just as likely to have a sudden urge to put it all out there prematurely in some sort of emotional attempt to make a breakthrough of some sort. Maybe my heart doesn't understand the way things work in the real world because that is the sort of thing that often gets me into the most pain.

I feel like I am lurching very clumsily in my attempts to discover the true reality of life instead of the counterfeit reality that I have always lived under in society. My fear of pain is often the element that grabs the steering wheel and lurches me off the road into the ditch every time I see an oncoming truck threatening to crash into me. Right now I feel like I am once again timidly trying to pick up speed once again and make some forward progress in things of the heart. How do I move forward from here? How do I get further down the road without having another big smash-up? The parable from which this illustration comes was written by Morris Vendon many years ago but seems extremely relevant right now. Maybe I should go back and review it.

Do I sense the presence of bitterness here yet? I believe so. But I am reminded that exposing the bitterness itself, as helpful as that is, is not the solution in itself but is simply a means of getting on the path in the right direction. Bitterness is the symptom that is produced by roots somewhere much deeper and almost always out of sight. If I want the bitterness to leave my life and my spirit I cannot stay focused exclusively on the bitterness but must have Jesus take me deeper to the source and root which continues to produce it. I'm not sure how or when that will take place, but I hope that this process of examination and attempted openness will help initiate it. If God is not intimately involved in this process of exploration and examination I will possibly be even more inoculated against an effective cure and it will take even more painful cutting and prying to get to the root and source of my problems.

This may all seem like I am getting side-tracked, but I don't think so. The heart does not know how to express itself in tidy, succinct phrases condensed into few words and I am trying to allow my heart to be expressed here. That may likely look messy in the writing but hopefully it will lead to more thorough healing when it comes.

The last phrase from this text is telling me that for anyone to reach the place described as being perfect, which really also means being mature, they will only get there in bonded relationships with others, never alone. Somehow, God has arranged things in such a way that even those who are not now alive are to be part of this bonded relationship, whatever that means. Right now I suppose, we can feel connected to those we read about in the Bible through identification with their feelings, mistakes, hopes, dreams and failures. We can certainly learn a great deal from their lives and greatly improve our own abilities to make better choices so as to avoid the painful consequences that they experienced many times. By their example we can become mature quicker because we have more to build on and benefit from than they had.

The exciting thing about this arrangement is that when we all get together in the future when everyone is alive at the same time, we will be able to personally meet these very same people that we have already partially bonded to with our hearts and the bonds will become mutual and intensely strong and deep. That interlacing of hearts in mutual compassion, love, shared pain and healing will become the impregnable fabric that will at last be the security blanket preventing sin from ever arising again throughout eternity. That is why God has set things up the way I see described in these two verses. He is building in the insurance needed, the permanent inoculation to prevent another outbreak of this terrible disease of sin from ever recurring again.

Next time I will move into the next verse to see more sources of bitterness and more medicine for healing. I can already see there is plenty to think about there. ...the sin which doth so easily beset us.

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Roots of Bitterness - 1

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15)

I have been coming to realize more clearly over the past few years that one of the deepest entrenched strongholds in my heart is bitterness. I got to thinking recently about this text and it suddenly occurred to me that the bitterness itself is not so much the real issue as is the root that causes the bitterness. This is seen quite clearly when participating in the Theophostic ministry experience. In that model the symptoms in our life that attract so much attention from many religious people zealous to clean up their lives and the lives of those around them are pretty much ignored except as a means to lead one back to the root that is causing that symptom. And when one finally arrives at the root after giving Jesus permission to take them there, it is always found to be a lie deeply embedded in a memory that has distorted their perception of themselves or God and creates a trigger point that can be tripped by others thereby causing the predictable symptoms to display.

These lie-based beliefs are always heart-rooted lies found in the right brain, not intellectual lies that are much more easily uprooted. It is lies in the heart that are untouchable by the intellect that cause most of our problems to be so elusive to resolution. The spirit of bitterness is a particularly pernicious element that is very poisonous not only to the person holding onto it but to everyone that is touched by their spirit. That is the experience that I vaguely realize is a description of my life.

But like all other symptoms, bitterness cannot just be commanded away or successfully suppressed by an act of the intellectual will. Bitterness is so subtle but pervasive it can act like a quiet fog that seeps into every corner of the mind and life imperceptibly. It is often not evident as being that spirit because it can be mixed into other motives and feelings like small amounts of a deadly poison mixed with healthy juice or Kool-aid. But the insidious effects are all the more dangerous because of its unnoticability. I have seen this sometimes in my own life. I am often baffled as to why new friends seem to soon turn rather cool toward me. I suspect that part of the reason is the effects of the bitterness in my spirit that creates other issues that tend to repel people who at first may be attracted to some of the more positive characteristics that God is cultivating in me.

But for me to focus on attempts to eliminate bitterness from my heart or from my external expressions will be frustrating and produce very little lasting results. I believe that bitterness may simply be an outworking of something legitimate trying to be expressed from my heart that has been perverted and tragically distorted through the lens of a lie on its pathway outward. It is like a beam of clear light shining from the heart Jesus gave me that passes through a broken or warped piece of glass and the image projected on the outside or through my spirit becomes one that is more reflective of Satan's spirit than of God's Spirit. But trying to manipulate the image back into something that looks better is to attempt what God never intended for us to do. It might have worked for the Hubble telescope, but it does not work effectively in the lives of our spirits. This verse does not tell us to eliminate bitterness by focusing on that symptom itself but to deal with the root so that the bitterness will not have its inevitable poisonous effects.

So how do I find the root of bitterness in my life? As I perused quickly through this whole chapter I saw quite a number of clues as to different things that would create a spirit of bitterness. There is a wealth of information in this chapter that I need to explore and allow God to heal inside of me so that this poisonous fruit will no longer grow in my life.

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