God’s Rebrand Guide: declutter your heart (bitterness edition)
A new years resolution guide that guarantees you real results.
You can’t move forward if you’re swimming in the abyss of your past.
Kids who’ve been swimming all day get a mini heart attack when they hear the words: “it’s time to go home.” Those words alone send shockwaves of dreadful tantrums. So they’ll try to bargain more time with their parents. But mom and dad just won’t budge as they begin packing up the towels and loading up the car. Life moves on. It’s time to go home.
But did you know that as adults, we do the same thing? We wade in our own little pools of past bitterness, sin, and regret. We have mini heart attacks when when God tell’s us, “Let go of the past. It’s time to move forward.”
So this is your sign that it’s time to get out of the pool.
Swimming sucks the years out of you and so does bitterness.
Sometimes it feels like there’s some sort of time warp when you go swimming. How is it that every time you get into the water, it’s suddenly time to get out? Imagine swimming on a perfect sunny day. But then as you’re in the pool, your stomach begins performing somersaults as you haven’t eaten all day. So you finally get out the water to eat a light sandwich, and you take one quick peak at the time on your phone: four hours have passed. You take a double glance at the time as the sandwich crumbs start falling off your mouth. Wait … four hours already passed?! You were so focused on swimming that you literally lost track of time. You lost sight of everything around you because you only cared about being in the water. In other words, nothing else mattered to you beside swimming. So what felt like four minutes to you in the water easily became four long hours in the blazing sun.
Biblehub’s Topical Definition of bitterness
Time gets warped when you harbor bitterness against people. Bitterness literally sucks the life and years out of you as it becomes the number one thing you’re hyper focused on. It’s the reoccurring negative thought of the friend who betrayed you. It’s the persistent reminder of the family trauma that’s always been swept under the rug and hidden in secret. It’s the constant nagging of hopelessness you feel towards the parent who fails in being a parent. It’s the deep stubborn refusal to trust in authority because of that one leader who ruined you. It’s the last floating painful thought of the day you have of your spouse who keeps hurting you the same way and hasn’t changed one bit.
And so that bitterness becomes the one thing you can never not think about. It revolves around you as you revolve around it. It consumes you as you consume it. That’s what bitterness does to you. And slowly but surely, you lose track of the time. The months. And the years. You don’t know it, but your body is slowly destroying itself as it continues swimming in the bitterness. It’s like when you find the tips of your fingers mysteriously appearing in wrinkles after swimming for a long time. It’s your body’s signal that you’ve overstayed your visit in the pool. You’ve overstayed your visit in the bitterness.
You’re going to get hurt, and unfortunately it’s going to hurt.
It’s inevitable to hurt someone and to be hurt by someone. And so it is going to be inevitable to feel emotions of pain, anger, and betrayal when someone hurts you. Unfortunately it’s part of being a sinful imperfect human. But it’s important that you face that feeling of hurt head on. Recognizing and even acknowledging your real emotions is not something to be afraid of, and it should never be something you try to ignore. I actually believe that true healing happens when allow yourself to acknowledge the reality of your pain and hurt. However there is a danger you need to be aware of. It becomes dangerous when you let those emotions trap and control you. Hurt that lingers long becomes the perfect ingredient for untamed anger, and untamed anger that lingers longer will become the monster of bitterness. So here’s some wise words from God the Father when it comes to dealing with your pain and anger before it deals with you:
"Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” Ephesians 4:26-27
But this is how to survive the pool of bitterness.
If you currently swimming in this pool, you must dispel anger and evict the hurt from your heart. And that starts by talking to the person who hurt you and communicate what specifically hurt you. Communication is key for growing relationships and healing relationships too. But how you approach this delicate conversation matters. There’s a couple of things you have to do to prepare yourself for this moment:
Mind action: Turn on the forgiveness switch in your brain (Colossians 3:13)
Forgiveness is not just meant for the other person, but forgiveness is really meant for you. Forgiveness helps free you to move on in life. It releases whatever bogged you down. But if I can be quite honest with you, you’ll never naturally be in the mood to forgive. It’s rare to ever feel ready to forgive. You will never feel emotionally excited to do it because it’s a really hard thing to do. So that means that you have to mentally prepare yourself to forgive no matter what happens in the conversation. You need to make the decision to forgive way before even going into the conversation of laying your whole heart out on the table to the person who hurt you. And your strength to do this will come from holding onto the reality of God’s forgiveness onto you. The strength to forgive has to depend on your remembrance of God’s forgiveness in your life. This mindset switch is going to change the direction of your conversation. It’s going to altar the flow of your confrontation. Why? Because when you go into the conversation with the strength of choosing to forgive them before hearing what they have to say, your choice of words and tone is going to be more gentle and merciful in your approach of talking to them. It’s because you will be humbled by God’s gentle mercy to you. So the conversation isn’t going to be an accusing interrogation to shame that person into begging for your forgiveness. But instead, it’ll be a space that naturally overflows with compassion and understanding because you’ve already chosen forgiveness and to let go of of the past regardless of whatever happens. You’ll found strength to forgive because you’ll remember you’ve been forgiven.
Heart action: Pray God’s peace over your heart (Philippians 4:7)
The truth is, the conversation can go 50/50. What I mean by that is that you’re never guaranteed how the person who hurt you will respond when you confront them with your hurt. They could either 100% own up to it and genuinely apologize to mend the fractured relationship with you (which is what we’re hoping for!), but they could completely deny it and refuse to say sorry. That is a very real possibility. If you place your peace on their response and it doesn’t go the way you want it to, then the bitterness in your heart will double in size. And it’ll be extremely hard to let go of it. So you have to find that peace outside of the circumstance, and that is only through praying to the triune God and asking for His peace that passes all understanding. Prayer shows dependence on God. It acknowledges you need help outside of yourself and that you’re willing to surrender any situation and place it into God’s hand.
The conversation might be messy. But trust me, it will be worth it. Remember, we are messy people because of the messy sin in our world. But God gives us His strength and wisdom to untangles the knots in our hearts and relationships. He’s only going to build your character up though uncomfortable situations that require extreme obedience to Him. So what do you say? Are you finally going to get out of the pool of bitterness? It’s time to dry yourself and finally go home.
