Hearing from God Each Morning (July 13)

This blog is about today’s devotion in the book Hearing from God Each Morning by Joyce Meyer.

Today’s devotion used the same verse (Ephesians 4:31) that my lesson from a Bible study I went to last night used. It talks about casting off all bitterness (along with indignation, wrath, resentment, quarrelling and slander, along with all other malice). The emphasis of this devotion is casting off bitterness, which is the one that got me last night, too.

Sometimes I am bitter without really realizing it. Today’s devotion tells us not to be bitter towards God, because He doesn’t control what people do to us, and He’s the best friend we could have. If we’re bitter toward Him because of things that happen to us, we’re putting a wall up in that friendship, and we can’t hear His voice as clearly.

But my thoughts to a little further than just saying bitterness towards God hinder our relationship with Him. I believe if we have bitterness against anyone it hinders our relationship with God, and blocks His voice from our hearts. And right now, I’m really struggling with that. I’m bitter over a situation that happened between my best friend and me less than a week ago. I try to tell myself the reason we haven’t talked is we just haven’t had time or we have nothing to talk about, but the truth is, I’m usually the one to initiate conversation and I’ve had no desire to talk to him this past week, because inside I’m still really hurt. I fear it has started to turn to bitterness. In fact, just yesterday I was in my (old) room crying and thinking about how much I don’t want to move right now because I don’t want to see him.

It’s something I really need to hand up to God, because only God can erase those feelings from my heart. I can’t do it on my own, because on my own I want to stay bitter and mean and see him get what he deserves. But Christ living in me wants me to forgive and restore that friendship completely.