John 1:1 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I want to thank all of you for waking up in the right mind, the right spirit, and finding the right road to get here today. Like someone once said, get right, get straight or get left.
Today I wanted to focus on something that we have all dealt with at one time or another in our lives, some of us have proclaimed victory, and yet I find myself constantly struggling with this; 'Rotten Roots Produce Rotten Fruits'.
14Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
We have a lot of things to be bitter about, the bitterness of rejection, the bitterness of depression, the bitterness of low self esteem, the bitterness of chemical dependencies, the bitterness of alcoholism, and the bitterness of abuse. You can even go back to when we were all kids…..how about the bitterness of not getting chosen to be on a team, how about the bitterness of jealousy, maybe growing up you didn’t have things that your friends had. Or how about being bitter about your job because you didn’t get the promotion or didn’t get the raise you deserved? How about your spouse…are you bitter because she only nags (in your eyes)? Do you know what the definition of nagging is….being right at the wrong time. Are you bitter towards your kids because they don’t listen, or have they not grown up like you wanted them, or are you bitter because you feel they’re not realizing their full potential..the list goes on and on and on. So many things to be bitter about, it’s like having our personal pity party.
Let’s look at the 2nd half of the verse, ‘…and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
That root or that seed of bitterness will taint everything you do...everything. Let’s look at it another way, how many of you ever had to pull weeds when you were growing up, like small kid time. You know, when you went to grandma’s house, or if you had to help your parents….funny, kids don’t do that anymore, shoot, everyone is so busy, we have a yardman do that now. But for those of you who can remember pulling weeds, did anyone have to pull out ‘nut’ weeds? Do you know how that weed got it’s name? If you didn’t pull it out by it’s root, it’d drive you nuts. But the best, and I mean the best, way to solve that problem was to ‘pull’ it out. Slowly and gently, if you just yanked it, you’d take the top off, but the root, the ‘nut root’, would still be there and create even more stress.
If you didn’t get the root, it would literally grow up to cause trouble and defile many. If you are not careful, that weed has the potential of ruining your entire lawn, the whole yard…from that one little nut weed. Why is that, because it will grow up to cause trouble…..You had to get the root, the very root of that weed if you even hoped to have a fighting chance. The root was about 2-3 times longer than the weed itself, talk about frustrating. It would drive me nuts, literally, the nut weed would drive me nuts…
Just like how some of us are holding on to that root of bitterness inside of us. When we had the chance to remove that bitter root years ago, we avoided it, it was too hard to do, we’d get to it later, or how about this…..it’ll go away. Yeah right……….
Nothing we do will ever reach the full splendor of God if we keep just a speck of bitterness in our inner core, our relationships with our wife, with our kids, with our coworkers, our ministry,....WE will never fully realize the blessings of God because of that seed, or that root of bitterness has the potential of preventing us from receiving the full blessings from God. Let all of us pray every day for repentence and for the removal of all roots of bitterness in our hearts, so that we may fully realize the blessings of God and continue to live in His favor.
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