What Keeps Me Grounded When I"m Feeling Bitter

Nobody gets through life without feeling a little shortchanged at one time or another. Sure, there are dream-like seasons when we feel the sailing couldn’t be smoother. But these seasons tend to evaporate with a snap of the fingers, and our bliss goes up in smoke as some unwelcome misfortune parades its way into our lives.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic; I’m just being real. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of one’s own health, financial troubles, relational strains, romantic unfulfillment, lack of friends, wayward children, or another of the million and one woes commonly experienced, we all — at some point — suffer the pains of life in a broken world.

And if we aren’t vigilant in protecting our hearts, these pains, losses, and troubles can lead us into bitterness . . . bitterness toward God.

I mean, He is sovereign, right? God is in absolute control of all things at all times, correct? Correct. Though it can feel to the finite human soul that this world is in chaos — and in some sense, it is — God is ruling over the chaos. No teeny particle passes this way or that without him permitting and guiding its movement. God foreknows and permits all things that come to pass. All things.

Now this doesn’t mean that God wants things like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina — or our wife’s cancer diagnosis, our job loss, our mother’s death, or our friends deserting us — to happen. Human logic is quick to come to the conclusion that if God allows something, he must heartily desire for that thing to occur. But this isn’t true.

Logic and reasoning are gifts, but they have their limits; our minds are incapable of comprehending the wisdom and knowledge of God (Romans 11:33). However perplexing it may be, the truth is that the Sovereign King of the universe allows many things to transpire that anger and grieve him. Remember how Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus? He was moved to tears over the pain that the people he created were enduring. God takes no delight in suffering, but for mysterious reasons that we aren’t entitled to know, he allows it.

But hear me: God is not to blame for our suffering. 

Brokenness creeps its way into our lives because of sin — not necessarily our personal sin, but the sin brought onto the scene by our first father, Adam. The unblemished perfection of the world shattered into pieces when the representative of all humanity rejected God’s good rule over his life. And you and I have done nothing but add to world’s problems with our own sin.

We have all — with merry hearts — joined Adam in his rebellion against God. We, humanity, are to blame for why things are the way they are. But we so easily lose sight of this. We forget the big truths about why things are messed up (sin), and what God is doing to remedy it (Jesus), and so easily become bitter with God about why things are the way they are.

A few years ago, I found myself extremely embittered over various things that God had allowed, and was allowing, to exist in my life. At the beckoning of more mature brothers in Christ, I began asking the Lord to help me counter this bitterness by cultivating humility, gratitude, and an eternal perspective. I started setting my mind, day by day, on the hardest and best truths in the world.

-Matt Moore

What Keeps Me Grounded When I"m Feeling Bitter