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November 28. 2006

Bitterness – Webster’s Dictionary - Hard to bear, grievous – Causing pain – Characterized by
showing intense hostility, resentful, or cynical.
Anger – A strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong; wrath

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. (Hebrews 12:14,15)

 I’ve always known that anger and bitterness were not in God’s character and from the
beginning of my walk with God I’ve been blessed with two Spiritual leaders who have always
pointed me toward having the character and nature of God. Somehow, though, in our
ignorance we think that just knowing something isn’t right, and wishing that it would change
will magically, someday, make it go away. The problem is that I’ve now been walking with God
eight years and anger and bitterness still show their ugly heads in my house on a somewhat
regular basis. The bouts with these archenemies usually leave me feeling exhausted and like
a big fat failure.
A few months ago God gave me a vision of a soldier lying on his back in a foxhole. The
enemy would come after him every so often and the soldier would fight the enemy off with all
his might. After a very intense and long battle the enemy would back off. The soldier was so
worn out he would go to sleep and being too afraid and tired to do anything else, he would
cower in his foxhole until the next attack came. God told me that it was time to get out of my
foxhole and go on the offensive, to annihilate this enemy so he couldn’t attack me anymore. I
knew this would not be an easy battle and I knew I couldn’t accomplish it alone. I had to get
my orders from the commander, the Holy Spirit. What I am sharing with you today is the
beginning strategy that He has given me in this attack. Seeing the things I have in this world, I
know I’m not the only one who’s laid in that foxhole terrified and exhausted and knowing the
enemy will launch another attack at any moment. So I hope you will join forces with me and
together we will defeat this enemy of bitterness and anger, if nowhere else at least in our own
hearts.
In a natural army the first thing that must be done is to find out where the enemy lives and
how he operates. The great thing here is God has already given us the bible as our
handbook. He already knows where the enemy lives and how he operates and best of all he
knows how to defeat his plans. Did you understand that last statement? He doesn’t think he
has a good plan that might work on the enemy, He knows with out a shadow of a doubt how
to defeat the enemy, no guessing, no poke and hope, no shock and awe, just the no fail
strategy to take him out. My job now is to search out this strategy and implement it into my life.
I want to inject a little side note here. I know that many times our hurts and strongholds come
from generational curses and things that people have done to us in our lives, I also know that
dwelling on where the curse came from will not deliver you from it. Psychologists have been
trying to do that for years with little success. Dwelling on the problem only magnifies it in your
mind and makes you think about it more. I believe we must forgive the people who have hurt
us and move on into taking responsibility for the way we are acting today. Today is the day of
salvation and today is the only day we can deal with. Today we have anger and bitterness in
us and today we must go after it like there’s no tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow only gives it
another day of strength in us.
With all this in mind let’s dive into the scripture and see what God has to say about defeating
this enemy.

"Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the
devil. Ephesians 4:31

 Whoa, what did that say? If I let the sun go down on my anger I will give place to the devil.
Well there you go, our first lesson in where the enemy lives and how he operates. We now
know where one of the camps of our enemy is. How many times have you been mad at your
spouse and went to bed doing everything you could to make sure you didn’t touch him or
her? Have you laid awake at night replaying over and over what you’d say to your boss in the
morning because of the way you were treated today? Has the name calling running through
your head at bedtime toward that bill collector not been exactly the words Jesus’ would have
used? 'Be angry' means to be provoked to anger. In other words someone has done
something to you that in a worldly sense has given you every right to be angry. So God is
saying you will be provoked and you will feel anger but when you do, do not sin. Sinning is
missing the mark; our mark is the character of Jesus. So when someone provokes us to
anger we must react like Jesus would. What did Jesus do when the Pharisees provoked him?
He either didn’t answer them or he spoke to them from the Spirit of God. We must be able to
answer someone who is provoking us with the Spirit of God or we must keep our mouths
shut. Then we must go to God and deal with that anger until we can answer them the way
Jesus would. Yes your husband was a jerk and yes your wife did hurt your feelings and in the
natural you have every right to rip them a new one but, when you gave yourself to him you
gave up your rights. You were bought with a price and you are not your own. You must get in
His presence and stay there until you can handle the situation with His Spirit. Our scripture
says do not let the sun go down before you deal with it. I believe that means deal with it today.
Do not let it carry over into tomorrow because if you do, you give place to the devil. You will
give him a place in you, not in the person you are mad at. Your boss and that bill collector   
don't even know your wasting a good night’s sleep over them. And because you probably
won’t say anything to them anyway, you’ve just fought a battle from your foxhole on your
back (literally) and now you are exhausted and unable to function in your day-to-day duties.
This plan of the enemy has been uncovered and it’s now up to us to decide we are not going
to fall for it again. The next time you head for bed mad, I pray the Spirit of God will bring this
teaching to your remembrance and you will decide to not let the enemy have place in you in
this area.

Father God we thank you for Your Holy Spirit to guide us on this journey out of our foxholes.
We have seen in Your Word that we give place in our hearts to the devil when we don’t deal
with our anger today. We are praying that Your Spirit that dwells within us will give us the
strength and wisdom we need to see when this is happening and that we will submit to You
and allow you to wash us of our anger today, so we don’t carry it into tomorrow.


November 29, 2006
Self Centeredness

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works
are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your
hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but
is earthly, sensual, demonic, for where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil
thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing
to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, and without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the
fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:13-18

 This is the big one. Self-seeking. Here in one hyphenated word sums up about 99.9999999%
of our problems. We as the human race spend most of our time seeking things, ideas, and
wants for ourselves. The more I come to know God, the more I see how self-centered we are.
We always want to feel good, be comfortable, spend our money on ourselves; we as a nation
neglect our children because we are too busy catering to ourselves. We abort our babies and
end our marriages because they are inconvenient to us. INCONVENIENT? Inconvenient
means not suitable for one’s needs or purposes, of course that would be my needs and my
purposes, not my spouses or my babies and certainly not God’s.
What does all this self-seeking have to do with our anger and bitterness study? It has
everything to do with it. I heard a very wise man say one time that when we get mad at people,
especially when we are in a leadership position, it is because we are trying to take a short cut
to get them to do what we want them to do. Boy did that hit me where I lived. As I pondered on
that, I realized that this is the only reason most of us get mad. Think about it, your children
don't call you and let you know they have practice after school. This has now messed up
your schedule because you have to go get them. You don’t really care that this habit of not
being responsible will hurt them in the future, all you care about is you have now been
inconvenienced. You see there heads drop and the pain in their eyes as you yell at them,
something in your heart hurts as you continue to badger them all the way home. The Spirit
inside of you says many times okay that’s enough but you have a right, they need to know
that they screwed up your day. Sorry, you are the one who has screwed up, they are children,
our job is to teach them principles for their lives, not beat them down until they have no life
left in them, so that they can grow up to be as miserable as we are. The buck must stop here.
We must become mature enough and open our eyes wide enough to see that we are
producing a generation of people who don’t feel one ounce of love because we have been
too focused on ourselves and our needs.
The other side of this coin is the parent who never corrects their child for any reason. It is the
same self-seeking spirit, it just manifests in a different way. These people don’t want the
confrontation that might come if they address issues that are hurting their children. Again the
inconvenience of dealing with things is too much for them to handle. They want their children
to love and adore them to fill that empty place in them not realizing that they are the ones who
are suppose to fill the empty places in their children with God. But when your focus is
yourself, you will do whatever it takes to get what you think you need.
Okay, enough toe stomping let’s get back to where the enemy lies in this scripture. This
wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic, for where envy and
self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. Well what do ya know, there is
another hiding place of the enemy. It says self-seeking does not come from above but is
demonic. It comes from the camp of the enemy. It says when we are self-seeking there is
confusion and every evil work. This scripture about every evil work really came alive to me,
when my husband and I were in the beginning years of our marriage and our walk with God.
We would get into major yelling matches and then go to our separate corners to fume. The
thoughts that ran through my head were outrageous. “I just wish something bad would
happen to me then he’d be sorry he acted like that, wait a minute that means something bad
would have to happen to me, bad idea!” “I’ll just go get in the car and leave, I’ll stay gone a
long time and he’ll be sorry he treated me like that, wait a minute he might be worse when I
get back and where would I go, the bar’s not an option, I’m serving God now you know!” “He
hates you, he wishes he’d never married you, he’s going to leave you some day you know, he
thinks you’re a b****, he can’t stand you and the truth just comes out when he’s mad, he’s
lying the rest of the time when he says he loves you!” I’m sure you can add hundreds more of
your own, the point is, this is every evil work. I finally caught on to this plot of the enemy after
several years of stupid thoughts that I knew weren’t true. Here is the battle plan God gave me.
One day I was laying on my bed fuming, thinking he’s just awful, he treats me terrible, I can’t
stand this and all of the sudden I saw a vision of demons all around my room laughing and
pointing at me and whispering these very things that were going through my head. They were
planting every evil work in my head and in many cases it would come out of my mouth. Talk
about working for the enemy. So that day, out of my mouth I started saying, NO, my husband
is a Godly man! He loves me! He treats me good! He will accomplish everything God has for
him to do! He is a great husband and he treats me good! (All of which is very true about my
husband, if you don’t think it’s true about yours, maybe you need to ask the Holy Spirit to let
you see him through God’s eyes.) And do you know those things shut up and left me alone.
Now if I could do that every time I’d stop most of the problems in my life. Not just with anger,
but with sickness, and money problems and just about everything that comes my way.
What a great lesson God has given us today. We must stop seeking our own pleasure and
thinking about our own needs above everyone’s around us. Just the opposite of what the
world tells you isn’t it? They say look out for number one, take some time for yourself, you
just need to pamper yourself. Well from what I see around me all this has done is create a self-
centered generation whose children, marriages, and lives are a mess. I include myself and my
life in this, so don’t think I’m standing on a soapbox. I’m only where I am today because of
who God is and what he can do in a life. Let’s be realistic and wise and see that the world’s
way isn't working and let’s give God and his way a chance. What’d ya say?

Father, we recognize that we are a self-seeking generation. That we have focused so much
on ourselves that we have hurt many around us and they have focused so much on
themselves that we got hurt. It’s time for it to stop with someone and God we volunteer for the
task. You are always asking who can I send and we are always saying send me. So God this
time we are asking for you to send us as the ones who will take our eyes off of ourselves, our
wants, our needs, and we will put You first and everyone around us, we will love as we love
ourselves.
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Deliverance From Bitterness And Anger