Today’s passage is Hebrews 12:14-29. Apollo tells us to be peaceful and holy with each other in order to see God. We must be vigilant about any bitter root of evil in us or fellow member because it can poison many in the community. We are not standing by the fiery, thundering Mt. Sinai but going to Mt. Zion and the city of God with angels, the church and Jesus our mediator in heaven. Don’t turn away from God lest you be lost in the Judgment. Let us be thankful and worship God who gives us an eternal kingdom.
What is your “bitter root”?
Are you tempted like Esau to sell your heavenly inheritance for something worldly you want right now?
If I am not careful, the bitter root of disappointment in myself may defile me and negatively affect others because it can foster a lack of confidence and trust.
My bitter root?
My repeated failure to discern the path God wants me to follow.
And then when I did belatedly acknowledge and accept my path, like becoming a teacher, I would throw rocks on my path, such as refusing to go to teacher’s college, thus delaying unnecessarily my knowledge of curriculum, which I painfully acquired by study and by teaching the three major International ones.
God chose me for salvation and called me to faith.
My resistance was great to his call because of my pride.
I wanted to be the lord of me, not God.
I misunderstood that accepting God’s sovereignty in my life was an act of freedom rather than enslavement.
I misunderstood that accepting God’s love was in fact an act of love and would give me the security in life that I so craved.
God had a plan for me that would free me from what I thought were endless choices. By discerning and following God’s plan, I would fulfill my deepest longings of doing something I was fit to do and not feel like a fake or a pretender to skills and knowledge I didn’t have.
Choosing a spouse calls for a major act of discernment.
Only in my most recent marriage did I discern God’s path for me.
In my first marriage, I made a choice that led to great suffering out of which came the call to faith. I didn’t discern the call to sacrificial love for my first wife, however, and my failure to love caused her, me and our children harm, a bitter root that made our lives hard.
Discerning God’s path does not occur just once. It is ongoing.
Everyday calls for discernment as do the moments within each day, some days requiring more discernment than others because there are more decisions to make.
My root of bitterness is not actively seeking to know God’s will for me, but forgetting that I am not really in charge and, in my distraction of the moment, becoming an Esau by choosing what is temporarily pleasing only to become disappointed in myself and full of regret, remorse and repentance.
Application: remember to seek God’s discernment for my life every day.
Lord, open my eyes to the path you want me to walk and give me your courage to walk it
