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BITTERNESS AND THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY  

Have you ever wondered why so many prophets act in a way that makes you ask if the person is really called of God. So much anger and bitter words?

Today, I would like to share with you a piece I have titled, “Bitterness and the prophetic ministry.”

If you are very active in church and very discerning, you would agree with me that bitterness has taken deep root in the body of Christ for obvious reasons.

Truthbetold, bitterness has become a serious problem to the church. It is something that has sent many people out of the church back to the world.

It is not surprising that we have such development in the house of God. That is because the church is filled with humans with different motives and emotions. Most importantly, today’s church is fast becoming empty of God’s true love. So Satan has taken advantage of that to attack the brethren.

Bitterness is one of the consequences of the lack of love we see in the church today.

The essence of this post is to help us see there is demon operates as “bitterness”  This  has affected and is still affecting the body of Christ in a very negative and destructive way.

The most worrisome aspect of it is that many ministers of God, especially prophets are under the influence of this demon called, “bitterness”.

May I say that apart from greed and the crave for fame, some of the funny behaviours we see in most prophets has been born out of bitterness.

A lot of prophets we see today in our churches are bitter because of their background both in family and the church where they grew up.

You see,  “A bitter soul is a danger to both self and others”. It takes only the Holy Spirit to restore such a soul. I will share my personal experience with you.

I and my mother.

As a child, even up to my teen years, I was bitter with my mother. My mother separated from my father when I was only nine years old and left me with a little brother who was only six years old then.

After Mama’s depature, I and my kid brother were meant to live with step mothers who showed us no  love. We went through so much hardship and pain. No one cared for us apart from our dad who himself had so many other children to take care of.

You can imagine what life was like in a polygamous family where my father, a village farmer in a remote village had many children from seven wives to take care of.

My father, a man I respected so much and I still respect even in death was a good man by human standard. He respected everyone and loved peace to a fault. To the best of my knowledge, my father never deliberately offended anyone and never took advantage of anyone. He was a man of peace who loved truth and justice. That is a legacy I have vowed to maintain and bequeath to my own children. I would say that by human standard, my father was a good man. May his soul rest in peace.

On the other side of the coin was my mother whom as a child I knew was a very godly woman. She was a prophetess in her own way. She loved singing praises to the Lord and never missed praying. She also never missed church and will never leave us behind. 

My mother had a good heart. She loved children, no matter who their parents were. My mother was a very pretty woman who loved God. Her love for God was so much she spent a lot of time in church. No wonder she gave birth to me on a Sunday inside the church house.

Like my father, I am also proud to say that my mother was a good woman by human standard. May her soul rest in peace.

But then something was wrong about their marriage.

Truthbetold, I have no idea what really happened and why my parents separated. But the events that took place after my mother left my dad made me to become bitter with her over the years. I thank God that we made peace a very long time ago before she passed away some years back.

Please I plead with you, if you are reading this and you are bitter with any of your parents or anyone at all, I encourage you to forgive. No matter what they did to you, please forgive them. Make peace with them whilst they are still alive so God can bless you.

Truthbetold, parents are parents no matter what they have done to us. We must let go so we can be free.

So in those days, we had three step mothers. We lived with them all at one point or the other. I dont know if it was hatred or wickedness that made our step mothers treat I and my kid brother like slaves.

We were forced to work in the farm even when we were sick. We were starved if we didn’t. We were never given enough food to eat despite our hard work.

Few years later my little brother died from an internal bleeding because no one cared about us. The boy loved football and had fallen down whilst playing with his mates. Upon falling down he hit his neck on a rock and refused to tell anyone. He was certainly afraid to speak about it. If he did, he would be rebuked, beaten and starved instead of being comforted. In his fear, he hid the incident from everyone.

I was no more in the village when it happened.  So he had no one to tell his ordeal. He suffered in silence but no one noticed. His mother was not there, his brother way away. So no one really cared. By the time they realized that he was sick, it was too late. He died of internal bleeding because no one cared about him. Yes, my brother, my only brother from the same mother in a polygamous family of seven wives and many children died because no one cared.

When I learnt about it, I hated my mother and blamed her for being the cause of my brothers death. Considering how the step mothers treated us, I had told myself that if my mother was there, she would have known that her son was sick and would have saved him. So in my little understanding of what many women suffer in my marriage and what sometimes leads to divorce, I concluded that it was her absence in our lives that killed my kid brother. That incidence led to so many years of bitterness against my mother.

But I am grateful to God that we made peace and I forgave her. By God’s grace, the Lord has taken away all the pain and healed the wounds. I am free from the demon called “bitterness”.

I just wanted you to know that I have been through the agony of bitterness and equally suffered the consequences. It is not something you want to go through. You may not be fortunate to survive like I have done which is by God’s grace. So I urge anyone who reads this to let go of bitterness because bitterness is equal to “self destruction”.

That was an introduction to this message. Now, let us discusss ” bitterness”.

Truthbetold; one of the most serious problems besetting the world today is “bitterness”.

A whole lot of people are bitter with someone.

Some parents are bitter with their children just as some children are also bitter with their parents.

Most spouses are bitter with each other despite the fact that they live together and sleep on the same bed every night and have sexual intercourse.

Many work colleagues are bitter with one another.

Most of the wars going on amongst many nations today are because of bitterness.

This canker called “bitterness” has done and is still doing a lot of havoc in the world such that if it were not checked and halted, it might consume all of us someday.

Note that bitterness is not only in the world. It is also in the church where love should be reigning supreme.

Truthbetold, the church has its own fair share of bitterness and it is very common especially with people who have been called into the prophetic ministry where “prophetic people are suppressed by church leadership on one hand, and many prophets with established ministries are fighting for supremacy over one another on the other hand”.

It  would suprise you how much bitterness and hatred there is among church leaders. Some leaders even consider it a sin if their member visited the church where another Pastor or prophet is in charge. It is sad to say that there is so much envy in the body of Christ. This envy has opened huge doors for bitterness in our churches. 

The prophetic ministry attracts a lot of attention, envy and hatred at the same time. This is why most Pastors attack prophets and those with the gift of prophecy and end up suppressing their giftings.

Because God speaks to his people through those gifted in the prophetic, attention is given to them by church members. When that is the case, envious church leaders get angry and want to render them redundant by either rejecting their messages or forbid them from prophesying. Consequently, they are offended and when they refuse to forgive, bitterness sets in.

There are several reasons why church leadership hate those in the prophetic. The prophetic not only reveals the mind of God to us, true prophets reveals our error and exposes our hidden sins. It makes church leaders uncomfortable.

On the other hand, people respect and honour prophets so much, others become envious and enmity sets in.  All this opens door to bitterness.

So what really is bitterness?

Bitterness is a dangerous emotion that gives a feeling of deep hatred. It is a very toxic emotion filled with both anger and hatred.

It is very destructive and has the power to rob its victims of things like peace of mind, good health, joy,  fulfilment and other good things of life.

Truthbetold; bitter people find faults in everything as well as in everyone that comes their way.

Bitter people are very hard to please.

They judge everyone and condemn everything apart from what they do.

Almost everything about life pisses them off.

Bitter people find it very hard to appreciate God’s goodness and blessing upon their lives.

This is because they are so buried in pain of what people had done to them, they don’t ever see the hand of God upon their lives.

The question however is how does one become bitter? Was anyone born bitter? Is it something we inherit from our parents? Is it a generational or ancestral curse?

The answer is no!

Truthbetold, every child is born without the knowledge of good and evil. At the time of birth, a child does not recognize hate or love.

Note that “Love and Hate” are seeds that are sown into our lives after we have been born. It is down into our lives by those around us.

Research has shown that children born and raised in a happy and loving home are likely to appreciate the good things of life, including fellow humans. The same way, children born and raised in a bitter home and harsh environment will grow up with bitterness and hate in their spirits. Cast your mind back to my story and how I became bitter with my mother. It was a product of the environment I grew up in.

Bitterness is therefore not something we are born with. It is something we either get from the attitudes of those around us,  or we create it by ourselves.

This means that bitterness is a choice. We can choose to be bitter or vice versa. The choice is really ours. But let me say that bitterness is a product of unforgiveness. People will offend as we also offend them. But offence must not be allowed to have a place in us. If we are offended and refuse t forgive, we open a huge door for bitterness.

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Let us look at the following scripture.

Colossians 3 vs.13: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

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Why are we asked to forgive one another?

Truthbetold; we are asked to forgive one another because unforgiveness is a serious sin that can open door to so many ugly emotions into our lives. When we are offended and refuse to forgive, we give room to anger;  anger would lead to hate and finally settles as bitterness.

The scripture clearly tells us to forgive those who have offended us even as the Lord himself has forgiven us. Looking at the above scripture, we would see that the root cause of bitterness is unforgiveness.

When we meet someone who is bitter, we must understand that the bitterness the person exhibits is an effect of something. The underlying cause is the spirit of unforgiveness which is hiding inside the person. This situation is like a blossoming tree whose root is hidden deep inside the soil. The tree gets all its nutrients from the roots which we don’t see. Note that without the roots, the tree cannot survive. That is how bitterness is.

Truthebtold, bitterness manifests in the lives people who are offended. But the root cause is lack of forgiveness.

Are you offended? Please forgive.

May I repeat that bitterness feeds on the spirit of unforgiveness which has filled the life of its victim. Bitter people are usually people who have taken offence over some wrong done to them by someone. They see the offence as the cause of their bitterness; but the truth of the matter is that it is their inability to forgive their offenders that created room for bitterness. That is why the scripture encourages us to always forgive one another for our own good.

For example, research has shown that women who are raped develop awful emotional and spiritual bondage. This is not really because they were raped, but because they allowed the trauma of the experience to get to them such that they refuse to forgive the rapist. When that is the case, it is not the rape that makes them bitter. It is the spirit of unforgiveness in them that creates bitterness in their lives.  If only they would forgive the rapists, the pain would go and bitterness will be uprooted.

Please note that I am not saying that it is right to rape anyone. It is wrong. Those who do such should stop it please. It is a big sin. And God will deal with all sin and all sinners alike.

I can assure you that a lot of women who are in bondage today after being abused by men is basically because they refused to let go of the pain. I am not saying that it is easy to let go of such things. I know how painful and traumatic certain experiences can be.  However, it is necessary to forgive those who have offended us if we want to be happy in life.

So usually, what triggers bitterness in people’s lives is offence. When the offence is not forgiven, bitterness and unhealthy feelings of hatred will build up within the person who has been taken advantage of. All this is simply because the victims refused to forgive their offender.

The spirit of unforgiveness has put many people in bondage, spiritually and physically.

Bitter people have a lot of bottled up feelings.

They trust no one because they think that everyone is out to take advantage of them. They live in fear of people because they trust no one.

Bitter people concentrate on past hurt and become defensive.  Once we become bitter, we become defensive and accusing, which makes it difficult to receive help. This is very sad. Consider the following scripture.

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Hebrews 12:15

 “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be despoiled.”

Once we become born again, the grace of God sets us free as our sins are forgiven.

But the grace of God also fails us when we sin, except we repent and ask God for forgiveness. 

We are therefore advised to ask for forgiveness of our sins at all times and also advised to forgive those who offend us so the Lord will also forgive us.

Truthbetold, our inability to forgive those who offend us will rob us the grace of God and give satan power us again. This is something that every child of God must avoid at all costs. 

According to the above scripture, when we lose the grace of God upon our lives, the root of bitterness will spring up which leads to defilement. 

I love the way the Good News Bible puts it. Hebrews 12  vs. 15:

“Guard against turning back from the grace of God. Let no one become like a bitter plant that grows up and causes many troubles with its poison.”

Truthbetold; bitterness is a spiritual weapon which has defiled (poisoned) many children of God without their knowledge.

It is no doubt the source of countless spiritual and physical problems affecting a lot of people today in the church and the world at large.

Bitterness has polluted or poisoned the spirit of so many and left them devoid of the Holy Spirit. Though in their ignorance, they still believe that they are spirit filled children of God. This is sad.

Bitterness is very subtle and may not be easily recognized by its victim which makes it difficult to help those who suffer from it.

A very good example of an unforgiven person in the Bible was Joab, the commander of the Israeli army under King David.

Because of bitterness, Joab killed someone whom King David himself had forgiven. Joab’s killing of Abner would lead to David placing a heavy curse upon his father’s house.

Truthbetold, everyone in the prophetic ministry must do well to avoid bitterness. Satan will deliberately push people to offend you. If you refuse to forgive, bitterness will set in and you will become a wounded prophet who ends up cursing instead of blessing. You sure do not want that. Remember, we have been called to bless and not to curse.

We will end here for today. Expect part 2 part soon.

God bless you all.