The Room With One Chair

7:53 needs. He will provide us individual needs. He will provide our corporate needs. He will provide with all the needs that we have in our midst, in our church body, in our buildings, in our outreach. God will provide. There's nothing that God can't do. All things become possible through him. Father, we just thank you today for just giving us

the ability to even gather together, Lord. Many nations don't even have that. And they risk their lives to come and just to participate in a church service. But we thank you, Lord, that you have given us this place, that you will continue to provide for this place. And each and every one of us get to participate in that, Lord. We get to participate in just

giving back a portion of what you give to us, Lord. Let each and everybody in this place today be blessed tremendously, insanely abundantly, more than we could ever ask and imagine, Lord. And just as it leaves our hand today, let it fall into this service, Lord, as a blessing unto you. And we thank you in your precious name. Amen. God is great.

I'm so glad you did that, Son. All the time, God. Oh, I don't want to disappoint anybody today, you know. So I've been losing a lot of weight lately. I guess GLPs, you know, but I'm losing weight and I decided I needed a new belt, so I'm going to make one out of watches. But I figured out it was a waste of time.

See, the good ones, I don't even let, Donna doesn't even hear them at home, you know. She gives me some of her opinions on some of the jokes that I find, you know, plus I get a good blow of the ones that everybody sends to me, so. But yeah, it is true that I've been losing a little bit of weight lately. But we are all wearing something,

10:29 and some, we may be wearing something that has hurt us over the years or continues to hurt us, and we've worn it for a very long time. I, you know, I talked about my mother before, and, but one thing I, in my studies this week, I began to understand a little bit more

about bitterness and how it can really destroy our lives if we allow it to. We've all been hurt. We've all been hurt by people, we've all been hurt by situations, but when we're hurt by people, those are the really hard ones to give up. Those are the really hard ones to let go of. You know, if we're holding on to that,

thinking that we're right because they were wrong, you know, that you're really not helping yourself at all. You keep holding that bitterness in, it will eventually destroy you. When I started to study the word of bitterness, I found four or three definitions in the Hebrew and one in Greek. And what's interesting is that I look at the definitions in the Hebrew text,

it, it's a meaning to grieve or to sorrow, calamity, it can be calamity in your life, and it could be trouble. In Strong's, in Hebrew, it talks about it being us, trouble. But what's interesting is all of those are things that have happened to you. When we look at the Greek, it says that it's poison. If we let it linger too long,

it becomes poisonous in their life. The bitterness that we hold on to, for whatever reason, whether we believe that it's right for us to hang on to that, it really gets to the point that you're really not hurting anybody but yourself. These three words describe something that happened to you, but the last one is poison, something

12:58 that keeps working inside of us as long as we let it stay there. Nobody in this room has ever gotten bitter over nothing. I'm not saying that we haven't been hurt or we've been wronged, those things just happen in life. And I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't, it just doesn't make sense for us to do that. But somewhere between the grieve and today,

the thing that was done to you started doing something inside you. If we just refuse to let go of that bitterness, it will destroy us. And we're going to talk about that this morning. It came as an injury, it stays as poison, and you are the one that continues to drink it. One thing about when God gave you messages, I think he speaks to me first.

Maybe I get past the initial pain or the initial hurt or the initial rebuke, which is, that's okay. I've learned teaching over the years, even in my, the job I left, you always learn something when you begin to teach. Proverbs 14, 10. A joke I didn't have quite this one because this is, I have it in the

New Living Translation, just because each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can fully share its joy. First, is there any joy at all in the bitterness? So the heart knows what bitterness we have, we have fallen, that has fallen upon our lives and who has caused it and why, and why we feel that way. But what's interesting is we don't share that bitterness

with anybody else. Now, that's not exactly true because if somebody, if we grow bitter with somebody in our life, that will reflect in your communication with others. You know, people can just see it. Each heart knows its own. It doesn't belong to the family, but it belongs to you. You continue to drink that poison that has been planted,

15:28 that poison of bitterness that's been planted in your life. We can walk through the different scriptures in the Old Testament in Samuel 1 10. She in bitterness of soul and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. And then down in Job, it's three different passages, 7, 11, 10, 1, 21, 25. And therefore, I will not refrain my mouth. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit.

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. It's not the bitterness of others, the bitterness within our own souls. It's the bitterness that has settled inside our hearts that is causing turmoil in our lives. My soul is weary of my life. Job 10, 1. My soul is weary of my life. I will leave my complaint upon myself. I will speak in

the bitterness of my soul. Again, it's the bitterness that had rested inside our own spirit, inside our own soul, inside our own heart that is causing pain and discomfort for us. And we really don't even know it because we've been holding onto it for so long that it just became a part of our life. Job 21, 25. And another dies in the bitterness of

the soul that never eateth with pleasure. Bitterness steals away our joy. Bitterness steals away our happiness. We may look at ourselves and say, well, I'm righteous because I didn't do the things that had happened to me. Or we may look at the situation that happened and find excuses for those that we hold onto that bitterness because we feel that this is

just the right thing to do. The word bitterness shows up 21 times in the Book of Job. Five of them have asked unto the soul and one to the heart. Church, why has nobody been able to help you with this? We have to look back at those verses and what it says, one cannot share in that joy. There's nobody that can help you with

17:51 bitterness that you're holding. You have to pray that God will release that from you and help you be healed from that bitterness. Samuel 1 10, which we spoke earlier, bitterness of soul and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. The only way that that bitterness can be removed from your life from within your heart is we need to speak up to God and ask

God to help us remove it. Second Samuel 2 26. This is a relational heart of a whole study and it's battlefield. The Abner called to Joab and said, shall the sword devour forever? Knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? How long shall it be then thou bid in the return? People return from the following their brethren.

Here we have two warriors and they're, you know, they're comparing the bitterness to in the battlefield. Does anybody win with bitterness? No, we can be bitter with each other and nobody's ever going to win. Nobody will ever win that battle if we let that bitterness remain inside us. Abner shouts across this gap, shall the sword devour forever? Are we

not asking whether he's right? He may well be right. The person that has hurt you or the individual that has hurt you or the church that has hurt you, they may even had been right or you may be right. But in this we're asking whether he thought that it was finished if the

bitterness would end. Bitterness always has an ending and it never has an ending that is good. What I see happening and I know it's happened in my own life, you become bitter and it just remains there and it becomes like a boil that you just can't get rid of because I keep, you keep being reminded of it. Whether you see that individual or you talk to them or you

20:30 think about them or that church, how many have heard that I can't go to church but the last church hurt me? Again, churches don't hurt people, people hurt people. But we need to move on from that bitterness but we can't do it on our own. That's when we have to call upon God

to help us, relieve us from that bitterness that has been planted inside of our hearts. Proverbs 17 25, a foolish son is aggrieved to the father and bitterness to her that beareth him. A foolish son will grieve his father and the bitterness of the mother. If bitterness, if you don't get the bitterness out of your life, now it's going to,

become generational. It can become generational. How we act, how we treat and how we communicate with people today as adults, as parents. I have two grandsons here today and they love to imitate what you do. You know, if you grow up with a bitter heart, that bitterness will jump on their hearts as well.

So I'm saying we need to protect our hearts from bitterness. If both husband and wife are carrying the bitterness, they'll lose that communication and they'll carry that on to the next generation. I know it's not an easy message this morning, but it's just something I think God, I know that God wanted me to share with you today.

Bitterness is the only sin that convinces you it's protecting you. Think about it. Why are you holding, why are you holding on to that bitterness? Because you feel that you're right. You feel that you're just, you feel that it's right for you. You know, that so-and-so really hurt me. I don't know why he said that. I don't know why he did that

22:45 to me. And every time I see him, I'm going to bring up that bitterness again. And but I won't say anything about it. I'll just hold on to it in my heart. We struggle even to confront those people that we have that bitterness towards. Isaiah 38 17. Behold for peace I had great bitterness, but thou has in love to my soul

delivered from the pit of corruption and thou has cast all my sins behind my back. This one verse has the cure completely for bitterness. First he names the trade honestly. For peace I have great bitterness. He doesn't make it spiritual. Is that bitterness a spiritual thing that's happening inside of you? He got hand in bitterness instead

and he says out loud to God, church, if you can't say the sentence, you'll never get to the next one. Because the second part of this verse, and it comes, where thou has cast all my sins behind my back. God reached down into a pit and pulled something out. That's what can happen. That's what needs to happen in our lives when we let that bitterness, it's gotten

so deep inside of us, so dwelled within us, and many times we just forget that's even there, but only God can reach down and pull that out of us and then make us whole again. We've talked before about the root of the tree and the fruit. If we let bitterness live inside of us long enough, it will be rooted inside of us and it'll just become a part of

our personality. And that's sort of sad because bitterness robs us of our joy. Bitterness robs us of our, of completing the things that God wants us to do in our life. But Jesus can reach down inside of us and pull that bitterness out of us. For peace, I had great bitterness. That's what Ezekiel said. I can never say, I struggle with

25:38 all these names in the Bible. Isaiah 38 17, we'll jump back there. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness. Here he even knows you have great bitterness. Do we know that we have the bitterness within us? Sometimes we don't, but many times people around you can see that there's a bitter spirit in there and we have to help them to deal with that.

The bitterness can even be towards each one of us, each other. I can say the best thing to do is to confront that person and talk to them and just, you know, here's how you hurt me, here's what, how you made me feel. We need to be able to talk to one another. That's what we're,

we're one big happy family and bitterness is something that I think can hinder us from doing what God has called us to do. Every one of us are in this house today because we need something from God. We love one another. We love one another dearly. I know that, but I'm looking at God's looking for all these, all the little things in our lives that may be

hindering us from completing what God had called us to do. And I just, God just impressed on me this week to, I started a different message, but then I sort of turned directions and we moved on to bitterness and began to study it and found that it's usually hidden inside of us and if we let it linger there and we let

it continue to hurt us and not only ourselves, but hurt those that come in contact with us. Robert says the heart knows its own bitterness. You know your own bitterness. Many times you do. Nobody had to tell you today about your bitterness. I don't know what the bitterness is in my heart or what I'm bitter about all the time. I had to deal with that

28:17 especially in my work relationships. I gotta be careful with that, but now this is all my work relationship. But in the past and the thing is it will actually lead to making some quick and drastic decisions sometimes. That really wasn't the, now I've watched you know where I got upset with a manager or I got upset with people at work and I became bitter

and my younger days it was easy. I would just leave, but really that didn't fix the problem. If you can't get along with people in one position at one job, you're not going to be able to get along with them in your next. Now some people change and we can change and even when I begin to pray for those people in this place or friends and family,

when I begin to pray for them I always pray for myself first. I say, God show me what's wrong with me first and show me how to help my brother and my sister or help my son and daughter and grandkids or whoever it may be. God needs to help me to do that,

get the plank out of my own eye before I can help somebody else with theirs. Amen. I was a person who reached into the pit. God reached in and lifted me from a pit of hell where I was going and he changed my life. When I look back at my situation, a lot of things

that when I was growing up I think I had become bitter with. I know I became bitter with my dad because my dad didn't want to have any relationship with me, but before he died I had a great relationship with my dad. We learned to love one another. I don't care who has hurt you

30:21 in the past. If you're holding onto that bitter spirit, you're not doing yourself any good. You're letting that hinder you from having that full relationship with God that God wants you to have. So I pray this morning that if you're struggling with bitterness, whether you feel it or don't, I just want you to look into your own spirit and see what that bitterness might be,

what's causing that bitterness, and how it's holding you down from everything that God has for you. I know it's something that I can pray with you, and I can pray for you, and everybody, but it's up to you to pray to say, God, I need this bitterness removed from my heart. Will you please reach down and take it from me?

And as long as you let that bitterness in your heart, it's holding the place there. What does God want to fill that bitterness with? His love, His joy, His peace. He wants us to be fully in love with Him. He wants our heart to be fully in love with Him so that He may use us

and greet us and meet us where we are so that all the pain, all the hurt, and all the suffering that we've been holding onto can be lifted and taken away. Let's pray. Father, I just thank you today for the words that you have given me, Lord, but I don't know who it's

for, or it was only for me, Lord, but I thank you for this word today. I pray with great desire, Lord, that you move in this house, that you continue to help each and every one of us to be everything that you have called us to be. Let us go in the highways and the byways,

32:27 sharing the gospel. Let no one see that any bitterness within us, let that bitterness be taken and relieved and pulled out of us so that you can fill that same place with your joy and your love and your peace. Father, we just come to you today knowing that you are the almighty God,

you are the almighty protector, you are the almighty healer, and we know that you will do all that you have set out to do, Lord, and you're going to use each and every one of us to do it. Lord, just heal us today, Lord, and be with us over the next time that we're going to have

together, Lord, for we know that you are in control and you're helping us make the right decisions and changing our own lives and changing the lives of the people that we come in contact with. And today, Lord, we just thank you for being with us and loving us and with great gratitude, Lord, there's nothing that we can do to repay what you have already

given for us, to us, Lord. In your precious name, Lord, we just thank you and let us be a blessing, let these words be a blessing into our spirit, Lord, as we proceed throughout this week and come back on Wednesday, Lord, and receive and learn more of your word. In your precious name,

Lord, we thank you. So let's, I know it was a little bit of a, these messages are a little bit harder to do, so why don't you do it? Let's take, if we take a five-minute break, so people can do things that they might have to do before, and then we'll just gather back in

34:16 here and we're going to, I got to go to my office and get a cup of something, still, John's telling me something. But yeah, so let's take a five-minute break, we'll gather back in here and then we'll have our meeting and we'll talk about some things that related to our church.