Bitterness has taken root in my heart.
And I hate that it’s there. But honestly, I want someone to validate that bitterness for me. To tell them that I’m right. To justify these feelings I’m having.
And there’s nothing Christlike about that.
I just finished reading Adam, the new book by Ted Dekker. It’s a psychological thriller that, like most of his books, deals with spiritual warfare. This one specifically deals with demon possession. In talking about why he wrote the book he said:
The reason I wrote this novel is because a significant portion of my readers are under twenty-five, and these people in large part, even within the church, have no understanding of Satan. They no longer believer that evil is anything more than a generic force that is set against all humanity. Evil: the bad things we do, temptation. I wanted to write a dramatic story in which one person who didn’t believe in evil as a personal force ultimately became trapped by the very evil he dismissed.
So how can a book about Satan and posession and evil relate to me, right now, where I am? Easy. Dekker goes on to say that demon possession is very dramatic, and is obviously not the struggle the we deal with on a daily basis. He asked the question, “How would you say Lucifer and all of his minions wage war on an average Christian in the course of an average day?”
John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart, answers:
Well, he seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. And Jesus said you should know them by their fruits. This is such a simple test. You just look at the fruit of some event, or some sabotage of a relationship, you look at the fruit of some thought you’re believing, some emotion that you’re feeling, and should ask, “Well what’s the fruit of that?” If it looks like something is being stolen, or killed, or destroyed – guess who’s involved? You shall know them by their fruits.
Yeah. That has me written all over it. At least lately. Bitterness. Relationships destroyed. And this is why I haven’t been able to get over it. I haven’t turned it over to God. I haven’t resisted .
As a Christian, I understand that there are two worlds. Two realities. And I know that most of you reading this will laugh and scoff and tell me I need a stint in the loony bin. But it’s true. There are two realities. There’s this world of flesh and blood that we can see with our eyes, and there’s also a spiritual world. And in that world, there’s a war being waged.
Right now, I completely surrender everything to my God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The bitterness. The destruction. The thoughts that have held me captive since last summer. Today I am freed from the voluntary bondage that I have put myself in.
