Do any of you struggle with bitterness and chronic grief from being hurt in life? It is hard to forgive when we have been betrayed or seriously wounded by others… Perhaps you were abandoned as a child or suffered terrible betrayal from a friend or spouse. How do we get past the heartache? How can we move past the pain? There are no easy answers, and deliverance from evil comes at different stages for different people, but bitterness is essentially rooted in unforgiveness, and harboring it means losing sight of how much God loves you — despite your own betrayals and sins against others.
Refusing to forgive enslaves you resentment, pain, and life in despair. Forgiveness is therefore not optional for a follower of Messiah: Your forgiveness of others is your own forgiveness (Matt. 6:15). Give up your demands for justice (Elohim) and appeal to God as Savior (YHVH). Instead of focusing on what harm others have done to you, examine your own heart, confess your own hardheartedness, and learn to be thankful for the grace you hope to partake in Yeshua. “Forgive one another, as God in Messiah forgave you” (Eph. 4:32); “for while we were still his enemies, he died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
The devil offers you the cup of wormwood — a cup of bitterness — as he tempts you to be offended over all manner of things (both real and imagined). Repudiate his dark appeal. Turn to hope. Ask God for the mercy of a new heart that can let go of the terrible burden of bitterness and that can experience the blessing of shalom (Isa. 38:17). Amen.
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