Why I Was Bitter (How Jesus Makes Everything Better)

What is bitterness, except that we work so hard for something, and we do not get what we were working for.

Or worse, we get what we wanted, and yet what we get is still not enough for this sense of emptiness in our lives.

Such was my fate one year, when I had found the job that I had always wanted, only to find that I was still empty, still frustrates, that I was trying to hold this life up together on my own, on my own.

I had believed that everything still depended on me, and all of that effort was not enough.

We are saved by grace through faith, not by works (Ephesians 3: 4-8)

Yet like many Christians, I believed that receiving Jesus Christ as my Savior was just an initial reception. I was on my own for the rest of my life, to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, and who I was supposed to be meeting with or getting engaged in.

I had no directions, no ideas, no clear direction for my life.

And I had believed that I was on my own for everything.

Such a sense of demand and confusion will make anyone bitter, including me.

But I have since learned that Jesus Christ did not just die on the Cross for my sin. He also died to grant me His life, His standing, and all the blessings connected with being a son of God.


"Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17, ASV)

When God sees us, He sees us in Christ. In a sense, He is not dealing with us as us, but with every believer as we are in Christ Jesus!

So, for me to think that I have to strive and fret just to get through this life frustrates everything that Jesus Christ has done for me.

Any thinking or believing, acting or doing based on my doing will only frustrate the New Covenant, in which Christ Jesus promises to take care of us in all things:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

and then

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. 34Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." (Romans 8: 31-35)

If Jesus Christ supplies all things, and we have all things through Christ because of His death and resurrectkion at the Cross, then we bring nothing but our willingness to receive from Him all things.

For this reason, Paul would tell the Ephesians, and all believers, to be gracious to others just as God for Christ's sake has been gracious to us (Ephesians 4: 31-32)

Do you know how gracious God is to us through His Son Jesus?

Romans 5: 17 could not explain it better:

"for if by the offence of the one the death did reign through the one, much more those, who the abundance of the grace and of the free gift of the righteousness are receiving, in life shall reign through the one -- Jesus Christ." (Romans 5: 17, Young Literal Translation)

Because of all that Jesus Christ has done for us, because the blood of Jesus continues to cleanse us from all sin (:1 JOhn 1: 7), we can rest in the knowledgfe that Jesus is causing all grace to superabound in our lives (2 Corinthians 9: 8). This grace is more than potential, but certainty that He favors us in every endeavor which He works within us both to will and to do:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." (1 Corinthians 15: 10)

I was bitter because of other people, what they had said, done, committed, perpetrated, whatever.

Then I would reason carnally.

"If it weren't for  this person or that person and what he or she did, then I would have been able to. . ."

The phrase that gave everything away for me:

"I could have"

I do nothing without Jesus, for He blesses me with all spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1: 3)

The issue for all believers, including myself, is that we have too poor an understanding of all that Christ Jesus has done for us, and more importantly that to this day He is ministering on our behalf, He is working within us and around us.

I had believed for too long that I was stepping into this world myself, and that I had to make sure that I never felt angry or frustrated, or else my feelings and thoughts would impede my ability to let God live and work in me.

Nothing could be more wrong:

"