Journal 3-2-14

Read Hebrews 12:12-29 and James 5:7-20

Hebrews 12:12-15 – Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of the Lord: that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled.

James 5:8-9 – You also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers so that you may not be judged; behold the judge is standing at the door.

            Have you ever had resentment? Have you ever been mad at somebody? Have you ever just wanted to not like a person or situation in your life? Did you wake up today and just feel like being pissed off with everyone because a “root of bitterness” has sprang up in your life somewhere? Maybe with your mother or your boss or your significant other or the child support agency? I haven’t. I’ve never had anything like that in my life to deal with at all so this lesson must be for someone else! LOL…

            I decided to write this lesson today because someone I love very much is struggling with how to love something that they don’t really want to. You know who you are! All people get mad and have resentment from time to time. I’m not exactly clear on what is right or wrong sometimes, but I feel like being angry is o.k. as long as you don’t let that anger spawn into something more or cause you to self-destruct. It’s important how we process that anger. The process is releasing it. Do we run and hide? Do we sleep? Do we fight? Do we drink and do drugs? Do we repay with the old eye for an eye technique? I’ve been guilty of many of those and probably many more. Everyone handles things different.

            The 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous deals a lot with forgiving ourselves and doing the best we can with clearing our conscious and angers with people basically because it spreads through our bodies like cancer causing bitterness and it could possibly create many opportunities for sin in our lives to spread like wildfire. It could even spread to the trees of the forest that are just innocent bystanders. The trees, or people, Zarria, that we want never to get burned. I learned a long time ago that if I didn’t try to release the feelings I had in a way that would be healthy for all, it usually turned out to be worse for me! That’s me talking and even today there are things that I am still working on to let go of. Sometimes it takes a while. Maybe months, or years.

            I’m going to name a few to help me today get started on the healing process. My father, my childhood, my marriage, and the child support agency are all some I still struggle with a bit. Oh yeah, and my parole officer. I know that the best thing for me to do is to pray for those situations in my life. Write them down on paper and share them with people, so that I can create some type of accountability with my issues. At some point I will need to go to those people and try to make amends to clear my conscious, to settle my debt with them for my spirit to be able to be free of the cancer that is can spread. I know this may sound selfish but it’s not about them and they may not want to agree or they may not want to hear what you have for them. It’s about us and our relationship with God.

            James 5:16 says “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you, not you and them, may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working”. More times than not, the relationships I had in my life caused me to sin and create more negative consequences in my life only adding fuel to the fire and increasing the strength of the bitterness and that then creating more sin. A vicious never ending cycle, until we lose it and handle it the way God has instructed us to. Those are not things that always take place over night but with prayer and obedience to God He will make a way for us to live without those concerns in our lives!

Prayer: Father God, your will be done in our lives! Please give us faith and insight as how to remove all of the things that hold us back from being the men, women, and children of God you want us to be. In Jesus name, Amen.

Random Thought: Everyone I know has struggles in life and all people make mistakes. God makes it clear to me today that sometimes these struggles we face are opportunities for us to grow! Most of my life I’ve not realized that was the case. I chose to see the tribulation in my life as a pain in the butt and not an opportunity to grow and become a stronger person. Thank you God for helping me to see that anything in life can be looked at as an opportunity to grow and become closer to you! Help me every day, please, never to forget that and once again self-destruct!