Overcoming Bitterness

Bitterness is poison. You can't hold hate and love in your heart at the same time. Hate and bitterness is poison and toxic.

Ben Stuart's talk from a few weeks ago is really powerful. It's called "Overcoming Bitterness."

A few main points I got from it:

• A proper understanding of God's sovereignty gives you the power to forgive.
• Forgiveness is making the decision to not hurt them
• The reason why you're so bitter at someone in your past who hurt you is because they had a power over you and you don't like the fact that an evil person did that bad thing which has power over your life.
  
• You keep telling me you got past it but you didn't, your bitterness there is ruining your story now.
• That very act you meant for evil, God meant for good.
• The person who hurt you doesn't run your story, God does.
• I have the resources to forgive you because you don't run my story, God does.
• When I get power, I use it to love. I don't use it to hurt people, that's crazy.
• The powerful God forgives and I can forgive that person.
• You can forgive when you realize you have a loving and sovereign God.
• Forgiveness you can do alone, reconciliation takes two.
• Reconciliation comes when two people can speak grace and love.
• Reconciliation happens when you speak truth, "Your hurt me." "Yes I did." And then you extend grace and I'm sorry and I'm not retaliating. You come to them with grace and truth to reconcile.
• Living a life of grace and truth and I can forgive you because of the Sovereign God working in my life.

This podcast was so good. It's definitely life changing... I definitely learned a lot from this one podcast.

There's only so much you can do to repair a relationship. In AA, they say "clean up your side of the street." That's all we can do sometimes. Like it says in the bullet list, it only takes you to forgive someone. But I know that it has to be honest to let this go. If it's not, it's pointless.

I definitely learned a lot.
Thanks Ben..

God bless,

Beginning Again

People make mistakes, and sometimes it seems an apology isn't enough to repair the damage. But, I feel that it should be accepted and you should be able to forgive someone or that shows some bitterness. If someone can get the courage up enough to apologize and mean it because they know they screwed up, you should accept it and move on. Maybe this means that person will never be in your life again, but the least that you can do is end on good terms, rather than hatred.

This happened to me recently and it's changed my view on life, drastically. People walk in and out of my life often, but the people who stay are ones who changed my life. I think time away from people is a good thing. The last week or two all I've had in my memory are the good times, the times I laughed, acted stupid, and was happy. Does that mean I'm unhappy? Not at all. I hate when I know I screwed things up, and apologizing isn't enough for certain people, but I guess that shows me something.

I'm just at this hard spot, because with the people I had a falling out with, all you wanna do is everything in your power to fix it, but sometimes that just screws things up. I guess sometimes saying sorry is all you can do. I know God has this situation under His complete control.

You can't just throw out memories so fast, and maybe that's a good thing. Memories of anything keep us alive. Good memories are essential to life. I'm grateful for those good memories with certain people. Of course, I want nothing more than to fix what happened, but what can I do?

The last couple weeks have been well, different. It's weird not having that one person you can text and just talk about all these things with. It's weird having to almost remake friends. But, it also reminds me how precious friendships are. And how precious new beginnings are. I'm grateful for new beginnings, and new chapters. I'm sad to close old ones, but grateful for new ones. I've learned a lot in the last couple weeks, and I don't regret one thing that happened to bring me to this place, now that's something I didn't think I'd ever say.

Also, everything I've been reading on my Tumblr and Pinterest Quotes relates to this situation right now.. Funny how that always works out.

I'm so blessed, even though I've lost a few friends in the last few weeks, I'm blessed.

Maybe those friendship will be healed in time, because people make mistakes. We're human, which is why Christ had to come to Earth. Thank God for that.

Have a good week,

"Not everything turns into what it’s supposed to be and not everybody is supposed to just walk out of your life. Sometimes surprises and second chances do happen.. And when they do, you’ve gotta not be afraid to let them happen."

"You should never forget about the past, everything happens for a reason. Instead learn from the past, learn from your mistakes and learn from every experience in life. Never forget those that have changed you either for the good or the bad because they have made you who you are. Always remember that life is meant to be tough, to challenge you, and to make you stronger."