The Hindrance Of Bitterness

The Hindrance of Bitterness

Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many. Hebrews 12:15

JONATHAN GOFORTH, a Canadian missionary to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was discouraged about his mission stations. “Cold and fruitless,”^a he called them. He planned to visit and try to revive them but felt an uneasiness in his relationship with God—as if an issue first needed to be resolved. Goforth prayed and soon realized the issue: He had a bad attitude toward another missionary from an earlier conflict. The other man had been at fault and confessed with tears, and Goforth had forgiven him. “But you still aren’t loving each other as brothers,” the Lord impressed upon him. Goforth felt intense internal pressure to make things right.

Once when Goforth was preaching at the church at his home station, that pressure intensified. He felt an unbearable hindrance. In the middle of the message, he thought, Lord, as soon as this meeting is over, I’ll go and make it right. He said nothing about it in his message, and no one knew what was going on inside of him. But the meeting immediately shifted with that decision. An unresponsive congregation suddenly became engaged and attentive. At the end, people broke down weeping in prayer. After having spent years of fruitless labor in the region, he began to see lives transformed. Prayers that Goforth had prayed years before were suddenly being answered. The tour to the mission stations was enormously fruitful. One simple decision to love had prompted breakthrough.

Our unresolved internal issues can hinder the Holy Spirit’s flow in our lives, and our decisions to deal with them can release the flow again. If we want breakthrough to come in our lives, this is a key—to be aware of our attitudes, attentive to God’s voice, and humble enough to respond. Our prayers and faith become uninhibited and unhindered when we release the bitterness that constrains them. Our perspective becomes more aligned with God and his mercy. There’s no limit to what he can do through vessels that have allowed him to cleanse them.

If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.