Tag: Bitterness

Tough Skin and Tender Hearts: Bye Bye Bitterness

My first couple years in the Dominican Republic were really lonely. I was sort of thrown in to work and the culture while left to figure a lot out on my own. There is a whole lot that happened during these years that God has been healing me from even years later.

After my husband and I left this ministry, we felt really discouraged and hurt. I am such a relational person, and those years took a toll on me. So, I began to shut people out, and I allowed resentment to take root in my heart. 

I craved depth and connection, yet I would unconsciously push people out because I was so wounded. It wasn’t until I was stuck in the United States for 3 months waiting on a visa, thousands of miles away from my new husband (at the time), that the Holy Spirit spoke directly to me and called me out. He showed me that I was stuck in a cycle of unforgiveness, and I had to break that cycle and forgive in order to experience freedom and depth again. I spent so much time on the cold, wooden floor of the house I grew up in crying out to God to help me. I had no idea where to start in my journey of forgiving. Little by little, year by year (yes, it has taken many years–and He is still working on me!), the Holy Spirit started to soften my heart and show me how to love those I felt had hurt me. 

I have been reflecting a lot on all my years here, and how far the Lord has brought me. Seriously, it is only by His hand and His mercy that I am who I am and where I am today. 

Over the past year and a half, God has given me a tender heart to love and to receive love again. I have even seen Him use the things that my husband and I have gone through to help me have more compassion on others and be able to better relate to them. Pain can either make you more bitter, or it can make you more compassionate. We get to choose what kind of person we want to be.

 My husband and I have an INCREDIBLE church family who has come around us in some really difficult moments. We have found fellowship with others who are after the same things of Christ as we are. God has surrounded us with coworkers who have poured into us and have been so generous with us as we step into this new season of welcoming our sweet, baby boy into the world. I am in awe of the Lord and the work He has done in both my heart and my husband’s. 

It is an everyday choice to forgive. I ask the Lord to guard our hearts from unforgiveness. It is breeding ground for the enemy, friends. I pray often that God gives us thick skin and tender hearts. We do not have to carry everything people do or say to us, but we do need to love and demonstrate grace. God will take care of the rest. 

I think about bringing our son into the world and the things that I want to teach him. I want our boy to know that we must always be quick to forgive and never harbor hurt feelings. It is something I must continue to work on, so that I can train him well! 

If I have learned anything over these years, it is that relationships and connection are worth it. We were made for community. And the enemy loves to isolate us. BUT we have the ability to recognize his schemes, and the Holy Spirit gives us the authority to shut him down and say bye bye to bitterness. 

I’m Getting My Fight Back

If you have been here a while, then you have undoubtedly witnessed my struggle of walking through valleys and still trying to cling to God’s faithfulness. There were so many times where I felt tired from the wrestling, and I chose to stay and pout in the valley. 

“This is too hard. When is it going to end, God?”

“Why us? Are you not hearing our prayers, God?”

“Would you just show up and defend us already? Enough is enough.”

These were common things that I would cry out to God. Maybe you can relate. 

But do you know what I recently realized? I have been playing victim for far too long, and that ends today. I am getting my fight back.

I could write a book full of crazy stories of things that my husband and I have walked through. Man, we have gotten knocked out so many times, and then we always get back up and try to keep fighting. BUT. Now here is the big but…I thought that by getting back up that meant that we were being resilient. But I realized that every time we got back up, we just felt more worn and angry. We were not in control of our emotions. Instead, we were hanging on to the frustration or hurt of the things that had happened to us. We were falling into self pity and almost expecting bad things to happen. 

I have been praying that the Lord would renew our minds. That He would knock out that spirit of fear and timidity and give us power, love, and sound minds. I have also been praying that God would work on our hearts and that we would stop looking at things with our earthly eyes but rather with a spiritual lens. When we look at our circumstances with our earthly eyes, we fall right into the enemy’s trap of feeling defeated and stuck in a cycle of poor me. But when we look at things from an eternal perspective, we recognize that every thing that happens and every piece of our story will be used for His glory. 

Now I am telling you guys, God has been answering my prayers because the way I process things has changed, and my heart and perspective have dramatically flip a switch. 

I am getting my fight back. I am no longer playing the poor me card or anticipating the worst to happen. I am not going to sit and sulk in things of the past, but rather step up to the plate and declare victory over whatever is about to come. We cannot claim victory in Christ if we are stuck in a victim mentality. We cannot step into all that Jesus has for us when we are hanging onto the baggage of things that He desires to free us from. 

So I will no longer walk around with my head low and moping over the hard that we have walked through. I will choose to let harsh words roll off my shoulders and not allow them to brew in my heart where bitterness threatens to grip me. I will seek to find joy and declare that we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus even when my human brain does not understand. I will do everything for Jesus and not for man. I will keep growing in Scripture and learning that the Word of God is my sword and the breastplate of righteousness is my shield. I will stand back up with grit after being knocked down because God has renewed my mind and transformed my heart. 

This is how I am getting my fight back. Because of Jesus’ work in me. And my desire is that others can get their fight back too. That we will not fall into a cycle of feeling defeated but rather step up knowing that we are whole and complete in Christ no matter what happens. Let’s get our fight back people. 

DOES YOUR LIFE SHOW JESUS?

The other day I wrote out a list of things that I would like the Holy Spirit to help me change in my prayer journal. These are things that I have recognized about myself that I know are not from God. Things like:

-pride

-selfishness

-bitterness

-being easily offended

-and many more

My husband and I have been having so many conversations lately about the way that Christians do or do not reflect God through the way they live out their lives. We always come back to the fact that when we are full of the Holy Spirit, then we are producing the fruits of the Spirit. 

In case you are asking, “What does she mean the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Like actual fruits?” The fruits of the Spirit are what we produce as Christ followers when we have died to ourselves and allowed Jesus to consume us and transform us so that we look more like Him. These are the fruits of the Spirit that can be found in Galatians 5:22-23:

LOVE

JOY

PEACE

PATIENCE

KINDNESS

GOODNESS

GENTLENESS

FAITHFULNESS

SELF CONTROL

Now, friends, I have to be frank with you…sometimes the way I respond or act does not reflect that I am full of the Holy Spirit. Especially when it comes to the lack of respect that I experience from men when I walk down the street or when people up the price and try to take advantage of me when they see my skin tone. These, sadly, are things that I experience often and really push me to gird my tongue. 

But I want to be better. I want to be someone who oozes Jesus. Where my Bible is worn from studying the Word and my life is a testament to this. The kind of person who knows how to speak truth in love, keep her heart tender towards others, and who can let things roll off her shoulders.

 That’s why I made this list. There are sins that I have been wrestling with for so long. There are some days where I feel like I have overcome some of these struggles listed above, but then something will happen and I respond in a not so loving way that brings me right back to my sin pattern. This is why I need the Holy Spirit. 

Shoot, we all need the Holy Spirit, am I right?

Galatians 5:16 says, “I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire for the flesh.” I have this jotted down in the open column next to this verse, “If we walk by the Spirit, we crave what the Spirit craves and the desires of the flesh are less appealing as we have the Spirit’s lens.” 

I want to be clear that the battle of our flesh does not just go away when we have the Holy Spirit in us. Unfortunately that is not how it works. BUT–the big BUT– the Holy Spirit gives us the conviction and strength to turn from temptation. When we live by the Spirit, we no longer want to gratify the flesh. But from the deepest parts of us, we long to honor Jesus in public and in private which is why we no longer crave the things of this world. We instead crave the things of the Kingdom. And as we write the Word of God on our hearts, ask God to forgive us our sins, and we seek to honor Him in all we do…then comes the fruits of the Spirit gushing out of us. 

And so I ask you, when you look at your life, are you producing the fruits of the Spirit? Is your life led by your desires and emotions or by the Holy Spirit? Are your decisions made using your worldly lens or your eternal lens? 

As disciples of Christ, the world looks to us. Sometimes for hope, sometimes for wisdom or guidance, sometimes to see how we respond in crisis, and also sometimes to see if we are real Christ followers or just people that say they are in order to make themselves appear as righteous. 

So when people look to you, will they see Christ in you? Will they recognize that you are someone who is not just preaching Jesus but producing His fruit too? Does your life show Jesus?