Roots Grow in Dirty Darkness
By Peggy Park
On Friday’s, Christ Compels Ministry welcomes some of our dear friends as guest devotional writers. Peggy Park is the author of “The Power of the Lamb’s Blood”. Please see more of Peggy’s material at www.parkpraisepublications.com.
Read Hebrews 12:14-24
“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.”
Hebrews 12:15 NKJV
Do you ever find yourself facing issues you thought you had released? In searching for an answer, I realized that it is because the roots were cut off and not completely pulled up. We have all experienced this in our gardens as we hurriedly weeded a flower bed only to see the same pesky weeds reappear in a week or so.
Some of us bury our hurts. Then we are dismayed to have them reappear. When we dig around in the soil of our hurts, we end up dirty in a spiritual sense. Our personhood becomes littered with resentments, offenses, and hurts of all sort which lead to bitterness.
We can be vigilant and check ourselves to keep the garden of our life clean of wrong attitudes. Of course we know this is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in each of us believers.
I have found it helpful to bring the pain that surfaces out into the light of Jesus Christ by talking it all out before Him in prayer. I expose every hurt in the situation. Beth Moore refers to this as “tattling” to the Lord about someone with whom you are experiencing conflict. After all, He already knows all about the circumstance. I call it having a “pity party” with Him. This allows me to vent to Him rather than spewing to my friends about the problem which often results in maligning someone else. When I skip this step of catharsis, I am not able to release the pain because it has not been fully exposed to the light. I may be fooled into thinking I released it, but soon it pops right back up again just like the weeds in my flower garden. I didn’t really get to the root of the issue.
When I really pull up the roots of hurts and hold them in the light of Jesus Christ, they lack the nourishment of the dirty dark. They lose their power over me. Just as a weed dies if the roots are pulled up, so bitter roots can be dealt with by pulling them up and completely exposing them to the One who is called the Light of the World. In Him there is no darkness.
Pray with us at Christ Compels: Lord, help me to keep my roots of bitterness, or any other negative root that has a hold in my life, exposed to the light of You so that it can no longer continue to grow. Show me how to replace the negative roots with roots of Your love and Your grace. God, I want my garden of life to reflect Your touch over it. So pull up those weeds by the root so they no longer have a chance to choke out the good things from You. God, we love You so much and pray all of this in the precious name of Jesus Christ, the name above all names! Amen.