Wednesday 27th of August 2008

Hebrews 12:15 (NIV)
" See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many".

The root of bitterness is one of the worst things that can happen to our lives. Do you know that one of the first signs that bitterness is starting to take place in our heart is when the supply that comes and gives us joy, peace and prosperity starts to dry up in our lives. We start to enter into a path of strife. Rather than a tree planted in the rivers of water drawing its substance and bearing green leaves even in the year of drought, it begins to taint us from the inside out. Bitterness can do a real job on you. "In my heart there is a melody", but instead we sing, "Inside my heart there is a lemon tree".

More relationships, more marriages, and more relationships with God are destroyed through bitterness than can ever be imagined. People will even want to avoid us rather than to talk to us because all we get is our dreams trodden under foot rather than to be edified and built up and spurred on. We need to take heed and guard our spirit from a root of bitterness being developed within side of us. Jesus said to lay the axe to the root of the tree. The tree He was talking about is the tree of bitterness. Jesus taught so much on forgiveness because the axe that we use to lay at the root of bitterness is forgiveness.

Wednesday 27th of August 2008

James 4:6 (NIV)
But He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

You see, more than anything else when we have a heart after the Lord the type of thing that we should be praying is not, "Lord take me, use me, break me, oh God send me to the nations yes, and I want to be the prophet that speaks Your word." All of this comes from the ambition of our hearts. Do you know that there has never been a person like that, that God has ever used? Every single person that God has used has been a person that has said, "I don't really want to go, I don't need this in my life, look God I stutter, send someone else." God always takes the reluctant leader.

You see what God is looking for is the heart of a servant. God can take you from the prison to the throne overnight. God can bring a person into your life that can change your entire life within twenty four hours. God has the ability. All He asks of us is a thankful and clean heart. That is why I preach on it so much because I know that without it, applying all those other principles becomes dead works, it becomes striving and you could even get yourself involved with a wrong spirit, not intentionally but it is our life styles that can lead us that way. God blesses the heart of a servant. I once asked an elderly American missionary to Australia and I asked him, "What gets us into the ministry?" and he looked at me and said, "Ego" I said "Ego", "Yeah, ego son. But if you hang around long enough, God will knock that ego right out of you".

It is true. God will hand us over to the lusts of our own hearts and we will get into trouble after trouble until we break, until we seek to do what is right. What type of heart should we have in us? We should have a heart like David. David had a heart after God. See he sinned in his emotions but he never sinned in his heart. His heart was to follow God.