Pastor Brian preached a message on bitterness last Sunday and I again felt conviction’s sharp pinch on my hoarding heart. I knew he’d eventually come to the subject as we’ve been working through all kinds of emotional perceptions. I’ve been fearfully ready to be hit with what scripture has to say about it and as expected I fought the tears that proved that I’m the bitterest gal in the barn. I’m thankful for God’s merciful forgiveness but must continue to fight against the pleasurably comfortable place that my soul so loves to dwell.
I consider it no secret that I’m non confrontational. I don’t like to expose other people’s sin and I never want to be the friend who is always commenting on the imperfections of others and so I so easily overcompensate by avoiding the necessary means of communicating my perceptions, as done in a relationship that is healthy. Instead I practice a seemingly justified harboring of hateful thoughts toward the human who hurt my feelings.
Before God graciously softened my heart to His truth, exposing the reality of sin in my life that I may repent and run to Him I was an incredibly bitter young lady. I kept people at a distance and was convinced that avoiding friendships was better than acquiring some good ones. Since then I care not to sin against God (I still fail, but fight hard) and have hoped to be joyful more so than hateful. But pursuing relationships with people is still the hardest. While I’m forgiven for my failures I’m also forgetful and have recently reveled in the familiar feeling of the bitterness.
When people sin against me I choose to not grow in relationship with them but feel as though I should run far from that growth. I don’t like to hurt. I don’t like that I sin against others but I forget that I’m imperfect when others sin against me. So I willingly open the door when sin is knockin’ and hurt right back. Because two wrongs make a right, right? Ha, I can hear my mother saying, “Corianne Marie, two wrongs do not make a right!” Crap.
God has been good to remind me that I’m sinful, that I’m not the best but that he in fact is; it is His righteousness that makes me righteous, His glory that is worth pursuing. And this sin, this one that I’m so prone to run to, will always be a battle. I need to understand these things so that I’m armed to fight for Christ. I am gifted to consider this lustfully temptuous feeling to be one that Ephesians compares wrath and clamor to. Dang. My lack of control and justice shan’t produce my resentment but shall instead influence my race toward Christ, the one I get to become like.
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