{"id":6336,"date":"2019-09-30T04:15:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/breaking-free-from-bitterness\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:15:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:14","slug":"breaking-free-from-bitterness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/breaking-free-from-bitterness\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Free From Bitterness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victim-thinking permeates our society, including the church.  The trouble with bitterness is that it does not stay the same; like a cancer, it grows.  It distorts reality.  It keeps us chained to the past.  In a world of inequity, we&#8217;re going to have our share of bitter experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Ten steps to becoming better rather than bitter.<\/p>\n<p>   1. Acknowledge the problem.<br \/>\n   2. Stop feeding bitterness.<br \/>\n   3. Stop making excuses for what happened.<br \/>\n   4. Live in forgiveness.<br \/>\n   5. Give yourself time to process your feelings.<br \/>\n   6. Initiate reconciliation.<br \/>\n   7. Rid yourself of every root of bitterness as soon as possible.<br \/>\n   8. Renew your mind.<br \/>\n   9. Make things happen.<br \/>\n  10. Proclaim God is sovereign.<\/p>\n<p>Psalm 10 is called the &#8220;victim&#8217;s psalm&#8221; by the author.  A fill-in-the-blank self-study follows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victim-thinking permeates our society, including the church. The trouble with bitterness is that it does not stay the same; like a cancer, it grows. It distorts reality. It keeps us chained to the past. In a world of inequity, we&#8217;re going to have our share of bitter experiences. Ten steps to becoming better rather than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,272,91,1425,548],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}