The Destructive Harvest of a Bitter Heart - Part A

Listen, of all the human emotions that are out there, this is one that you ought to fear the most. Because bitterness is emotional cancer. As one leader put it, bitterness blows out the candle of joy and leaves the soul in darkness. Unresolved anger in your life can quickly result in bitterness and resentment.

And that's when you are robbed of peace and perspective. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzing, Skip shares how bitterness gets planted in your heart and how you can weed it out and cultivate good things in your life. Then, at the end of today's program, Skip and his wife Lanya share about one important thing to cultivate in your life to avoid bitterness. Change your routine. What I mean by that is if you're kind of a person who says, woe is me, I'm bad, or I'm, you know, I get the raw end of the deal, everybody else gets blessed, I don't, and you start getting bitter.

How about change your routine, go visit a hospital, go visit a convalescent home. Thank you, Skip. If you want to hear more, please stay tuned after the teaching. Now we want to tell you about an encouraging resource that will help you dive deeper into God's truths. What would it look like if God threw a party? Well, the Old Testament shows that the Jewish calendar is anchored with regular mandatory holidays and celebrations. And the Book of Esther says that God wants his people to experience light and gladness, joy and honor at such times.

Sound like your family celebrations? Listen to this insight from Skip Heitzig about one of our own regular holidays, Valentine's Day. It's for God so loved. That's the essence of his nature. The Bible says God is love. Boy, that is so simple to say, and it's so hard for some of us to believe. Happiness, Holiness and Holidays is a four DVD collection of celebration messages from Pastor Skip, messages that could be a game changer for your family. Take holidays from toxic stress to celebrations of light and joy.

Here's a sample. You are loved by God, not because you deserve it, but because, just because. That is his nature.

It is his decision. Imagine that foundation for the next holiday on your family calendar. This selection of some of Pastor Skip's holiday teachings is our thanks when you give $25 or more to help connect more people to God's word.

Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely, or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy of Happiness, Holiness and Holidays with Skip Heitzig. Okay, we're in Hebrews chapter 12, as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. We're in a series we've called White Collar Sins, and I've worn a white collar for the occasion. And we're studying something today that some of you might find very appropriate.

In fact, something that some of you struggle with. In the 16th century, there were two renowned artisans who were both hired to beautify the Vatican in Rome. One was Michelangelo, the other was Raphael. Michelangelo was a painter who fancied himself a sculptor. Raphael, of course, was the renowned sculptor. Both of them did very different tasks. Both of them were highly regarded in their own particular fields. But interestingly, a bitterness broke out between them, a rivalry broke out between them, so that whenever they would pass each other in the hall, or even meet, they refused to speak to each other.

Everybody could see it. It became a renowned bitterness. And the ironic thing is that both of them were doing this for the glory of God. Doing it for the glory of God while holding on to bitterness at the same time. One fourth of them went on to bitterness at the same time. Unfortunately, when you get people that are that revered and renowned, that bitterness, that rivalry, everybody can taste it. It defiles so many people.

And it becomes renowned. For example, Winston Churchill. Everybody knows, most people know, that there was this long ongoing rivalry between Winston Churchill and a woman named Lady Astor. And they would often say things to each other, publicly even, to put down each other.

And it got to be really bad. So for example, on one occasion, Lady Astor said to Winston Churchill publicly, sir, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your tea. Unfazed by that, he turned to her and said, madam, if I were your husband, I would drink that tea. Most everyone can think of a bitter person. But seldom will you find someone willing to admit that they are a bitter person.

And yet, I think more people may deal with, struggle with, a root of bitterness than we think. I will admit that when I was a young man, a young boy, I became angry. And that anger turned to bitterness toward my own father. He was a harsh man, not very gracious, very demanding, very exacting. And I struggled with that.

And it became, for a period of time, very dark. And God had to do a work, and God did do a work, of restoration and reconciliation. But it was something that I struggled with as a young man. And I was reading a little article blog by a counselor by the name of Mike Dubose, who lived for years being bitter at his own father. He was angry and bitter because his dad left the family when Mike was a young boy. He said he was talking to a counselor who said, you know Mike, it's interesting that people from similar backgrounds, same circumstances as you, even within the same family, can react different ways. For example, he said, you might have one child, like you, become very resentful.

At the same time, in the same family, you might have a child who doesn't become resentful but learns from it and grows from it and becomes better because of it. So that set him on a path of healing. But Mike Dubose tells of a conversation that he had with a friend who was 70 years old.

I'll let him tell the story. He said, we spoke about his bad childhood and how he still resented his father, who had been dead for years. You can imagine, if he's 70 years old, his dad would have been gone many years before. I advised him to forgive and move on, but he said angrily, I will never forgive my father, even to the grave. His dead father, said Mike, his dead father and his negative childhood experiences were still haunting him and generating anger more than 60 years later. And he concluded by writing, bitterness had taken deep root in his mind and his heart.

Listen, of all the human emotions that are out there, this is one that you ought to fear the most. Because bitterness is emotional cancer. As one leader put it, bitterness blows out the candle of joy and leaves the soul in darkness. You know, bitter people are like porcupines, a bit.

They may have many fine points, but they're very hard to get close to. And they're hard to get close to because they're harsh, they're critical, they're unforgiving, they're judgmental, they're sarcastic, angry. But it's more than just anger.

It's anger that has grown into something, morphed into something. Or they're like icebergs. They're very cold toward you.

They're very cold shouldered, aloof, act like they don't need you, they don't want you, they got nothing to say, I'm good without you. And like icebergs, most of the problem is underneath. You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

The real problem is what's going on under the surface. Now today, we're dealing with the garden of your own heart, so to speak. What you allow to grow in your soul. So we're going to look at bitterness. And I want to show you out of this text, the book of Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse 12, four attributes of bitterness.

We're going to follow the stages of its growth. From a small seed, put into a certain kind of soil that nurtures and nourishes it, that eventually grows a root system that eventually produces fruit. So let's begin by saying that bitterness begins with small seeds. I'm taking you to chapter 12 of Hebrews, verse 12, where he begins in this paragraph, therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather healed.

Pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. Now this paragraph opens up with a metaphor of a racer, of a runner. It's something the author begins with in the first few verses of the same chapter, where he says, let us run the race that is set before us. Now he returns to this metaphor, and now here is the runner on the track, whose hands are drooping down. He's losing the proper form for running. He's becoming exhausted, and in his exhaustion, his knees get wobbly, and in the very second verse, verse 13, he's veering off his own path, getting into the next lane, which can become detrimental. It can dislocate his own joints, or it can hurt a fellow runner. So the picture then is of a Christian, a believer, running the race of faith, who becomes discouraged.

What is it that discourages the runner? People. Because you'll notice that he says, pursue peace with all people. You know, the biggest challenge to your peace is people. Of all the circumstances in life, people are the source of rattling your cage.

Why? Because people can hurt us, they can upset us, they can offend us, they can affront us, they can ignore us, and all of those things hurt. However, what we fail to lose sight of when people hurt us, and that is where bitterness begins, by the way, with that anger due to hurt, what we fail to see is that perhaps God is actually using those difficult people to get our attention, to use them as a course correction, to chasten us. By the way, that is the context of the entire chapter. He starts with a runner metaphor, goes back to it, but in between, he talks about the chastening of the Lord. I want you to see a few verses of this. Look at verse 3. For consider him, that is Jesus, who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin, implying that's what Jesus went through. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons.

Here's the quote. My son, do not despise the chastening, that is chastising, that is correction, that is spanking. Do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and he scourges every son whom he receives. Now when you lose sight of that fact, that God could be using a difficult person to chastise you, to course correct you, when you start seeing people not as God's correction, you start thinking that they're the devil's aggravation. This can't be from God, it has to be from the devil. Well, maybe it's from God, because he's chastening you.

God can use those difficulties. But that word that the person says, that deed that that person does, it becomes a seed that is planted in your heart, that if you allow it to grow, leads to bitterness. And I've noticed something, when people are discouraged like this runner is here, when you are discouraged, you are most vulnerable to those kind of thoughts inwardly that lead to a bitter heart. So where does bitterness come from? It comes from a seed of anger planted by somebody who has hurt you. Bitterness begins to germinate when something happens to you that you don't think you deserve. I don't deserve this.

I don't know why this is happening to me. I don't deserve this. It's like the student who went to his professor in college, very angry because the professor gave him a zero on his test. And he said, excuse me, I don't deserve this zero.

Professor said, I agree with you, you don't deserve it, but it's the lowest grade I could give you. Now sometimes people want to hurt you. It's an intentional statement or deed. Other times it's not intended at all to hurt you. In fact, sometimes it's imaginary.

You just are imagining this whole thing. And yet, though they're not trying to hurt you, they hurt you. You feel slighted. Bitterness is simply internalized anger that you let fester over time. You hold onto it long enough and the anger will change. It will morph into something else and that is resentment and then bitterness. An article I found in Psychology Today, the author said, all bitterness starts out as hurt. And then the author says it festers into an anger. He continues, for anger and its first cousin resentment is what we're all likely to experience whenever we conclude that another has seriously abused us. Left to fester, that righteous anger eventually becomes the corrosive ulcer that is bitterness.

So, the picture in Hebrews chapter 12 is discouragement has planted a seed of hurt. The hurt has turned to anger. The anger becomes resentment and eventually the resentment becomes bitterness. According to Stephen Diamond, a PhD on this subject, he defines bitterness as a chronic and pervasive state of smoldering resentment. And I thought that was very picturesque, a smoldering resentment. And he said he regards this as one of the most destructive and toxic of all human emotions. So, bitterness begins with small seeds. But then it grows.

And the second characteristic, the second attribute I want you to see is that bitterness requires the right kind of soil. So, you look at something and notice it in verse 15 if you don't mind. The author says, looking carefully, that means paying attention very diligently, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God. Now, the truth is you can never outstrip or outrun the grace of God. The Bible says where sin abounds, grace overflows.

But you can come short of it. You can lose sight of the grace of God. And when a person misses the grace of God in his or her life, they become susceptible to a life of bitterness.

Why? Because when we forget how gracious God was to us, then we cease being gracious to other people. And why aren't we gracious?

Well, this is what you deserve, this is not what I deserve. You know, we start forgetting just how merciful and gracious God was to us. So, we need to grow in grace. Because if we don't grow in grace, bad things can grow in us. And one of those bad things is this, bitterness.

Now, some soils are easier to plant things in than others. So it is with human hearts. There are some people's hearts that are just ripe for growing a harvest of bitterness.

And what kind of heart is that? People who hold on to things and never let them go. If we keep ruminating on wrongs in the past, keep chewing on something that somebody did to us in the past, it begins to affect us in the present and it becomes an essential part of who we are. It is our new identity. We are that hurt one.

We are the victim. Let me tell you a story of somebody who was like that in the Bible. She didn't start out that way. Her name was Naomi in the book of Ruth. Naomi is a name that means pleasant, agreeable, friendly. What a great name. Here comes Ms.

Pleasant. I can see her coming down the road and Bethlehem smiling at everybody. Well, she gets married and has kids. There's a famine in the land of Israel in Bethlehem where she's from.

That's sort of the breadbasket of ancient Israel. It forces her family to go out and seek food in Moab, a neighboring country. And things go from bad to worse. She loses her husband, Elimelech. She loses her two boys, Malon and Killian.

They both die. So she's bereft of three males in her family. All of that pain that occurs to her becomes a seed that grows in her heart, a seed of anger that becomes bitterness toward God.

God's the only one left that she can blame, so she blames God. So she comes back to Bethlehem because now there's food back in the land of Israel. She comes back to town. People see her and they go, oh look, Naomi's back. Ms.

Pleasant is back with us. And listen to her response. She said, she said, don't call me Naomi, which means pleasant.

Call me Mara. The word means bitter. Now she's defining herself as a bitter person.

Self-admission. Don't call me pleasant. You call me bitter. Now listen to why. For the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

I went out full, not really true. And the Lord brought me home again empty. The Lord has testified against me.

The Almighty has afflicted me. Now in that little group of sentences, four times she blames God. Four times she says I'm bitter and it's God's fault. Four times she says I'm not happy and it's God's fault. She's now defined her very life by that destructive emotion of bitterness.

And that'll happen. Bitterness turns you into a perpetual victim, which is a bad place to be, but it's a very convenient place to be. Because if you're always the victim, you can justify your anger.

I'm angry and I have a right to be angry. If you're always a victim, you hold on to that anger. You blame others. It's always somebody else's fault.

You play the victim. And if you analyze it carefully and biblically, you'll discover something. Bitterness is really a form of pride. Because in bitterness you are saying, God, I don't deserve this. By the way, it's not smart to pray, God, give me what I deserve. Because what you deserve is far from what you may think you deserve. But this is a form of pride to say, I don't deserve this, I deserve much better.

So, when a hurt comes your way, if it's a word somebody says, if it's an action somebody does, don't let that take root in your heart. You can't let that thing continue to grow. Don't water it with self-exalting thoughts. Don't fertilize it with other people's sympathies.

You've got to root it out. Because if you're holding on to it, it's going to grab hold of you and not let you go. The world is filled with people who have not dealt with past hurts. And people who don't deal with past hurts, there's a profile that they eventually fit into. They are critical. They notice bad things around them, not good things. Always they notice all the bad things. Not only are they hypercritical, but they're fault finders, they're sin sniffers. Somebody's rotting around here, I can smell sin. And when they talk about people, they can't help themselves. There's going to be a put-down in that conversation somewhere.

It's going to go negative. Bitterness is what puts a scowl on one's face and puts venom in one's words. It's bitterness that has grown.

So it begins with small seeds, it requires the right kind of soil for it to grow. But the third characteristic, the third attribute is that bitterness develops deep roots. Again, look at verse 15. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up causes trouble. And by this many become defiled.

That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series White Collar Sins. Now let's head into the studio with Skip and Lenya as they share about one important thing in your life to avoid bitterness. Today you mentioned that when we forget God's grace in our lives, we become susceptible to bitterness. Skip, what are some practical things a listener can do to grow in God's grace every day? You know, a root of bitterness, I was thinking about the cause, I think it's unbelief. I think you get bitter when you fall into the sin of unbelief because you're now disbelieving God's sovereignty, you're not believing God's grace, you're not believing God's wisdom and superintending your life.

And because you don't believe that you start getting jealous, angry, bitter. And then another thing I would say is that a notebook helps write something down, write one thing down every day of what you can be thankful for. And then take that thing and pray, thank you for this Lord, because that's going to sort of turn your heart if you're inclined toward bitterness, it's going to give it a different direction, a different bearing, you're setting it in a different place, and you're learning slowly to be thankful.

That's so good, not just writing down thankfulness in your life of what you're thankful to God for, but maybe trying to turn that around and find good things in that other person, that you could write down things that you are grateful about, if it's your mother or a spouse or a child, write down some of the good things, remember. Or a boss. Yes, yeah, exactly. Here's another thought. How about change your routine?

What I mean by that is if you're kind of a person who says, woe is me, I'm bad, or I'm, you know, I get the raw end of the deal, everybody else gets blessed, I don't, and you start getting bitter. How about change your routine, go visit a hospital, go visit a convalescent home, go visit a prison, a rehab center, see what people who are much worse off than you are have to live with every day, some of whom are very thankful. And that's going to help turn things around. Thank you, Skip and Lenya. We hope this conversation with Skip and Lenya encouraged you in your faith.

Now, we'd like to tell you how you can help keep these biblical messages coming to you and others so you can keep growing in your walk with Jesus. Just visit connectwithskip.com and connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate, or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can take your eyes off a bitter situation and focus it on Jesus instead. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.