{"id":7825,"date":"2019-09-30T04:48:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/better-not-bitter\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:48:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:48:02","slug":"better-not-bitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/better-not-bitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Better, Not Bitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If we are not thankful then we can become bitter.  If we are not thankful, then it becomes too easy to sit around and ponder the question: why me?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Jim Moore, pastor of St. Luke\u2019s UMC in Houston, wrote a book entitled &#8220;You Can Grow Bitter or You Can Grow Better&#8221;.  He writes that he got the idea for the title from a young woman who once came to him in a most tragic moment in her life.  She had tears in her eyes and her knuckles were white as she twisted a handkerchief.  She had just received word that her twenty-six year old husband had been killed in a farming accident, leaving her alone with three pre-school age children.  One moment he was alive and vibrant, the next moment gone.  &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how I am going to be able to get along without him,&#8221; she sobbed.  &#8220;But I do know one thing.  I can either get bitter or I can get better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One way that we can get better rather than bitter is to develop a thankful heart.  We must learn to be grateful to the Lord with whom we shall spend eternity.  Our morning prayer should always begin: O Thou who has given me so much, I pray that you give me yet one more thing &#8212; a grateful heart.<\/p>\n<p>_________________<\/p>\n<p>Staff,  www.eSermons.com , November 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If we are not thankful then we can become bitter. If we are not thankful, then it becomes too easy to sit around and ponder the question: why me? Dr. Jim Moore, pastor of St. Luke\u2019s UMC in Houston, wrote a book entitled &#8220;You Can Grow Bitter or You Can Grow Better&#8221;. He writes that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,104,520],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825"}],"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=7825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}