Contemplations

I have had problems with bitterness for a very large portion of my life.

I remember being a small child, and a strong anger came over me in church service.  I stood up in the pew and said, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"  My mother was horrified!

She never went back to that church.

Different pastors that I have had since then, they've all been very special to me.  I know that they will also remember me.

For a long time, I resisted the help and love of pastors that I had.  I'm not sure when it changed, but he eventually started acting differently toward me.  It was my fault, I'm sure.  He was tired of me.  Tired of striving with me, tired of putting up with my "stuff".  I don't want to blame him for the way it was toward the end. I could say this about more than one.

Since I got saved, I have seen the world completely a different way.  It even increases every day and every year. I know that there are problems, but I know that if I had really been saved, I would have been different.  If I was different, then things would have been different.


My eyes fill with tears, when I consider how ungrateful I am and have been.  I am ashamed at things I did and said.  I have not been as thankful as I should be for the people in my life.  I have focused on petty things, and not on the whole picture.

I also have let things make me upset that I should have just pitied and prayed for.  I should have, I should have.  And this is the strength that stays me in the midst.

It's not so much about attitude as it is altitude.  When I am walking closely with God, I am flying up higher.  It is a hard thing to explain.  When I am not staying closer to God, I am living in a land of emotions, and succumbing to them.  The difference is I am either living in deliberate action, or taking life as it happens to me.

Even when I think about the horrible things that people can do and maybe even have done, as long as I am close to God I don't live there.  I can also look past it, and love them anyway.

Most of the time, my heart is so hard when I'm in the wrong place emotionally, that I am so blinded that I feel like I want to stay there.  I let the anger hold me down.  I let fear hold me down.

I wish that I could say that walking close to God made me completely immune, but that bridge is always going to be there, to go where I should not.  It will be there as long as I am in this flesh.  The devil stands on the other side, convincing me.

I stand convicted.

Ex. 18: 27     Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.
28     Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.
I would to God that I could blot out his calls and tempts.