Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Meet the Great Red Dragon. Part 8. A believer’s energy must be harnessed and projected in the right direction.
Friday, May 16, 2003
A believer’s energy must be harnessed and projected in the right direction, and so this brings us to the concept of the harness.
A harness restricts and restrains.
The harness which includes enforced and genuine humility is first composed of category one doctrine, the laws of divine establishment; that is where we first encounter the harness to accept it, or to reject it.
When you allow bitterness to cause the grenade to explode, you hurt your own life = self-induced misery.
If you harbor bitterness you have a very serious spiritual problem, which is not correctable apart from personal love for God and impersonal love for all mankind.
Bitterness = animosity, jealousy, hostility, and is a part of anger and harshness.
It means to be caustic or sarcastic.
It means to have pain in the mind.
Bitterness = an expression of misery and disappointment.
Bitterness = severity of temper, biting sarcasm, painful inward affliction, deep distress of mind, and it defiles others as well as self.
Bitterness = inward pressure, to poison with a painful and piercing and unpleasant irritation.
Bitterness results in hatred, cruelty, antagonism, implacability, vindictiveness, vengefulness, and inordinate ambition and inordinate competition.
Turn to 2Ki 14
In the administration of divine discipline to Israel, especially Judah, they were a bitter people. Bitterness was the reaction and demonstrated their weakness and failure to take responsibility for their own negative decisions.
“Bitter people” are self destructive just as a bitter person is a walking grenade ready to pull the pin and explode in numerous directions at any moment.
Turn to Deu 32
Suffering causes bitterness to people who do not understand the principles behind suffering and who do not give number 1 priority to their relationship with God.
Ridicule is a manifestation of bitterness, LAM 3:14.
It is inevitable that when the truth is taught, there is going to be the reaction of bitterness.
GAL 4:16 Have I therefore become your enemy by telling you the truth?
The greatest source of bitterness is arrogance because arrogance is bitterness, it is simply the other side of the coin.
ACT 8:23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.
The 20th century translation –
“For I see that you have fallen into the bitterness of envy or jealousy.”
The Phillips translation – “You are a man bitter with jealousy.”
Being rejected is a strong reason for bitterness in the lives of most believers.
Degeneracy is the source of bitterness –
ROM 3:14 Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Turn to PRO 14:10
A believer’s energy must be harnessed and projected in the right direction, and so this brings us to the concept of the harness.
Bible doctrine is a harness because it restricts all of us in a manner which is beneficial for the spiritual life.
To the extent in which you have virtue as an individual, to the extent to which you have integrity or self-restraint, to that extent you have already put on the harness in life.
To see yourself as others see you is generally impossible.
Every person has, in his self-consciousness, one concept of himself; however, others often have a very different concept.
To see yourself as others see you is generally impossible.
Not only idle hands, but the wandering mind is the Devil’s workshop.
Turn to PRO 19:15
The key is that the harness of self-discipline, integrity, restraint, humility, honor, virtue, which produced both stability and consistency in life must be effective every day.