bitterness and secondary gain

Bitterness and Secondary Gain

7-30-09

Trials and hardships come into our lives as discipline, and, if we are trained by them we produce a harvest of righteousness (See Hebrews 12:7-11). However, they are sometimes painful and many of us bear wounds from these trials; wounds that need healing.

In our trials we can choose to rejoice in life even if afflicted or distressed by circumstances. By doing so we will find that the strength of God’s grace becomes a strong tower inside, protecting us from the onset of bitterness. This is important because if we become bitter we will not find God’s grace and strength. Then our wounds will not only hurt us, but others as well (Heb 12:15). I feel that the Lord wants to talk to us in more depth about the impact of bitterness on our lives.
Bitterness is not just a bad taste in the mouth. It is a condition of the heart that can form us into its image, and an entity that demands to be served. Bitterness becomes a master we serve. However, serving bitterness makes us feel as if we are in control. As a wounded person we can choose to place our lives in God’s hands, or we can decide to take more control over our lives to ensure we are not wounded again. When bitterness resides within us, we do not see it as a separate entity, but as our own self. (Just as when we think that all our thoughts originate from our own mind, a bitter person thinks that his decisions and actions are his own will.) It takes discernment to know if our thoughts and decisions originate from bitterness or from grace. According to scripture there is One who separates (dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart). It is the two-edge sword of the Word and the Spirit of God (Heb 4:12). Only through the Holy Spirit will we have discernment when bitterness tries to influence us.

How does bitterness defile? And what is its method? Bitterness can cause us to seek a reward for our suffering. This reward is called “secondary gain”. Within his mind, a bitter man will say “What can I benefit from this?” Though we don’t often hear our thoughts speak this, if we are bitter, we can see a sort of bargaining system in our attitudes about suffering. It is this bargaining system that defiles us. When illness incapacitates us, we can seek God’s grace each day and the strength found therein to do His will, or we can withdraw from all contact with God and man, finding our comfort in other places. But if we withdraw we will find that the comforts that come to our mind will eventually become like familiar friends. And this is how a bitter man becomes conformed by his bitterness.

The comforts that come to our mind when serving bitterness wear the cloak of justification. (e.g. “I have had this sore knee for months, with no healing in sight. So I will take the closest parking spot, even though I don’t have a handicapped sticker.”) As a result, If a disabled person comes and finds no close parking space, one’s justification will allow no empathy for the other disabled person. Self-justification disallows empathy because it (justification) looks for self-reward. The friendship of self-justification seems sweet, for it always allows a bitter person permission to avoid unpleasantness, or to indulge in fleshly appetites. But these friends never provide discernment about which thoughts and circumstances are from the Lord. Though the thoughts that befriend and justify us in bitterness seem to lead to comfort, they can never lead us to true strength. Nor can they lead to repentance, for they give permission for us to be molded into our own image and not the image of the Holy Spirit.

What is the end result of bitterness, which is aided by the desire for secondary gain? It is fruitlessness. Remember that the Bible calls bitterness a “root”. It is as if each of us is a tree, and our roots go deep into the soil for nourishment. But bitterness causes a root to change, and nourishment does not come up to our branches to form fruit. We can see this happening in our lives if we avoid God’s calling to lay our lives down and become molded by the Holy Spirit. The end result (or fruitlessness) will be that we become justified within ourselves, feeling that it is right to remain in our own image.

Often our inner healing begins with repentance. Though we are wounded, we must not hold God in the same light as a person who would sin against us. Always, God is good. He remains holy and perfect, though sometimes we may not understand Him. He is just and kind, and unlike bitterness, His grace will form us into a strong fruit-bearing saint.

The Weight of God's Glory and Power

The Weight of God’s Glory and Power
For a man to walk in My power and authority he must yield under My hand and surrender all. Therefore I test a man to see whether he can carry the weight of glory (2 Cor 4:17). It is not something he can offer Me, such as self-denial, which is will-worship (Col 2:23). It is a condition of the man’s heart which can only be brought out through trials.

Yielding the will to Me is only the beginning of the relationship of the heart. Making a commitment and maintaining that commitment cements the relationship into the heart of Man. Trials do not come to test the will of Man, but his commitment to that which he believes in.

The maintenance of commitment comes in the fine points of the day, examining the attitudes of the heart by the Spirit of the Word. What a man will allow or disallow will prepare him for the day of trial. If he has put his confidence in pride then he will look to find his strength in himself. But if he has seen himself as weak apart from Me, he will find grace and strength in his trial.

Now I am a faithful lover Who pursues a pan’s heart. I am looking for a love letter there, lines written with the fiery pen of dedication. However I am also a kind Father who longs over the preparation of the Bride for His Son, bringing forth her best and continually working with her weaknesses. I do not despise weaknesses, but woo the heart unto Myself.

Know this, that if there is a maintenance of the heart required of Man, I am not less in all that I do to maintain our relationship. If a man will find it in his heart to listen to My wooing I will teach him My ways of commitment to our relationship. But he will succeed only in so far as he employs My ways with his fellow Man. For easy is the way set apart to Me. A man’s heart’s attitudes remain unchallenged to the man who trusts that his lover will love him anyway. But to live this life maintaining commitments to his fellow man is to place oneself before a mirror. In time one will either groom himself for the sake of others, or he will forsake his image, detesting the work of maintaining his heart.

One who maintains his heart’s attitudes will be able to bear more and more of the weight of glory. I will entrust to him more and more of My power and authority because his heart is one in which I can trust, for he will do Me no harm (Prov 31:11-12). Amen.

Knowing God's Heart

Knowing God’s Heart
7-8-9

I want My love to be special to My people. Many are the servants who, when loved, become heady and high-minded and the specialness of My love is lost. But a servant must progress to one in authority to be of service to the Master. And a slave must be given worth in order to see worth. So I enter into a relationship of love with My people.

In the past, the law was a guardian, teaching right from wrong (Gal 3:19,24). But it was never My design that Man would get to know Me through rules and regulations. I want Man to know the essence of Me; My heart. So I sent My Son, and then the Holy Spirit. My Son Jesus showed men what I was like. The Spirit will continue to teach a Man about what pleases Me and what displeases Me. He, the Spirit, will open up the scriptures so that My heart can be seen in them. If you know the motive of the Author’s heart, you know what He is writing.

But there is a deeper relationship for My people than one of Teacher-student. To know My motive is an intellectual understanding; to know what moves My heart is love. Love knows the other person’s heart, and cares about it. Now, and evil mistress will learn about her lover’s heart and use what she finds out for her own advantage. Therefore I test My people before I reveal Myself to them in intimacy. I listen to their words Mal 3:16-18), and look upon their actions to see and hear what their heart’s response is to their knowledge of My heart. When I see that I can entrust the knowledge of what moves My heart to a man or a woman, it causes Me treat joy, and the joy is shared with him or her.

Now some servants abide their time doing My will and think in their hearts that I will one day give them freedom to do their own will. These men are not formed into a relationship with Me, for they do not discover what moves My heart, neither are they curious about what makes Me think the way I do. Yet they are obedient and will enter into their reward. However, they see not that their lack of joy will one day compromise their obedience, for a great fatigue comes to those who serve without growing to know their Master’s heart. When I set up the marriage feast they will miss the value of coming, for it will get lost in the shuffle of their busy lives (see the parable of the Wedding feast Mt 22:2-14). These servants are too short-sighted to see that the greater reward is to enter into a loving relationship with Me and the joy I wish to share with them. Therefore it is written that the joy of the Lord is strength (Neh 8:10). The bond of joy between a husband and wife cannot be broken, and the bond of love between Me and My Bride cannot be broken. So the gates of hell will not prevail against Her, My Church (Mt 16:18). My Bride are those to whom I entrust My heart and all that moves me. Amen.

Unbelief and faith 7-6-9

“However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:2) When I was a young Christian I was sure that Jesus would find me and all the rest of my brothers and sisters full of faith. I even wondered why He said this sentence. But that was almost 38 years ago . . . a lot can happen in that time. Life’s circumstances can erode our faith, and some of the battles that seemed like nothing actually ended in defeat for us. After a while, unbelief began looking like a protective coat of armor to keep us from the wounding of hopes deferred, and disappointments.

“What does the walk of faith look like?” I’d find myself wondering. Powerful. In 2 Peter it is written that “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.” (2 Pet 1:3). Clearly, God gave us everything so that we could be godly people. Faith then looks like this; God has given us everything.

A walk of faith is the life of a believer who knows that God gave him everything for a purpose. God gave the children of Israel manna and protected them from their enemies for a reason. He gave them a promised inheritance; the Promised Land. It seems that God believed the people could obtain what He promised them, and so He accompanied them on their journey and met their needs as they traveled. God believed in His people. But His people didn’t believe, and because of their unbelief, they didn’t enter in (Heb 3:19). Those people who held the promise became an example to us of unbelief.

Faith enters into the promises of God and believes God has provided for us, to the end that we would obtain that which is promised. We believe, not in what we see in ourselves, but in what God sees in us. That’s why faith pleases God, and unbelief displeases God. When the 12 Israelites spied out the Promised Land 10 of the spies said “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are . . . The land we explored devours those living in it. . . . We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Num13:31-33). These spies were looking at themselves to see if obtaining the Promised Land was a possibility. But Joshua and Caleb said “And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protections gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” (Num 14:9). Joshua and Caleb were looking at God as the source of obtaining the Promised Land.

The life of faith, then, is entering into what God has promised. It is hoping in what is yet unseen, or not yet obtained, and standing on what God has said alone, as if it has already come to pass.

There is an example of the walk of faith in the Gospel. It is the story of Jesus healing 10 men from leprosy (Luke 17:11-19). Jesus asks these 10 men to “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” On the way to the priests they discovered they were healed. It took obedience to begin the walk . . . obedience to Jesus’ word. After their obedience, the 10 men obtained the promise of healing. Their actions were spurred on by God’s Son’s word, and they believed it enough to act on it. This is faith.

We need faith to enter into God’s promises for our lives and for the Church. Once we enter in to His promises, how do we occupy them? This wording may sound funny, but the Isrealites that entered into the Promised Land 40 years later occupied the land. They found that God would fight on their side, if they were willing to obey His word to fight. Many of the 12 tribes fought and won their battles, and obtained their inheritance in the Promised Land. But the tribe of Dan didn’t fight. This tribe had gone along for the ride, hoping for a nice life in the Promised Land without having to eliminate their enemies. Dan did not have the obedience to God’s word that is necessary to maintain faith, and eventually this tribe left the inheritance promised to them.

Faith wins the victories necessary to maintain the promises God has spoken. Let us not harden our hearts and prefer the shelter of unbelief to the life of obedience to God’s word. There is provision for us to live and conquer, so as to obtain our promises. Let us not, therefore, go along for the ride with our brothers and sisters, not doing our part to drive the enemies from that which God has promised us. And let us also not look at our own capabilities to judge whether or not we can obtain our promises. For it is God alone who is able to bring His word to pass for those who obey and have faith. Amen.