Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. Hebrews 12:14-15.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
If you have things going wrong in your life and your prayers just do not seem to be being answered, you have to ask Me what is the hindrance that is blocking your receiving. Think about what Jesus told you about answered prayer, “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.” Mark 11:24-25. When you stand to pray forgive IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST ANYONE or you cannot receive.
You may not see the resentment or bitterness you have from living or working with a difficult person as unforgiveness, you may be living with them out of duty as a boss, co-worker, family member, spouse, child, or parent, and even serving them, but you may have a bitter root. And a root of bitterness defiles and causes trouble and makes you fall short of receiving the grace I long to lavish upon you.
It gives you a devious heart. It makes you open to the curse. You are not filled with light but in the darkness when you are harboring a bitter root. And the problem is many times you are not aware, for you think you are justified in how you feel about others. But you are not seeing the whole picture as I do. I see hearts. You do not.
You cannot live days of Heaven on earth in unforgiveness, that is, if you have not pulled out the root of bitterness and let My grace flood in.
Today I will set you free to live days of Heaven on earth. But you must truly want to be free, you have to pull out the root with Me.
Walk with the wise. They forgive.
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. It makes your heart sing. It fills you with life with love. I am love. I forgive because of who I am. “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 43:25. Your sins and offenses I remember no more. It makes Me happy. It gives Me joy to forgive. It makes Me who I am. LOVE. And Jesus and I are one and for the joy that lay before Him He endured death on the Cross despising the shame. And what was that joy? Obtaining legal forgiveness for all of you. To forgive makes you joyful. But more than that, it is joy beyond understanding, it is peace beyond understanding, and it is the foundation of relationship with no variation or shifting shadow of turning.
It is not easy to describe how free the one is who forgives. It takes you up to My level. It takes you out of the miry pit to have your feet placed on a height and a new song put in your mouth. It is feasting at My table in the sight of your enemies.
Once you decide to come to Me so that together we can pull out the bitter root you have allowed to grow in your soul, your life becomes a garden of delight where you can walk with Me in peace.
You may be wondering how you can get rid of that bitterness and unforgiveness that seems to have taken over your heart and you cannot get out from under, but if you will come to Me and be willing to obey and declare that you forgive whoever it is causing you the bitterness and pull out that root, that from now on you will have love in your heart for them and begin thanking Me for the joy of serving them something wonderful will happen in you. If you are willing and obey you shall eat the good of the land.
Adam never forgave Me or Eve and it turned his life into one of toil and strife—filled with the curse. The curse can alight on an unforgiving heart and destroy a life that could have been filled with the delights of My house forever. It closed Adam and Eve out of the Garden of abundance I prepared for them and from their closeness with Me.
I forgive but if you do not, you cannot receive forgiveness. And another facet of that is that the standard you use in judgment of others I must use that same standard on you. It is a spiritual law that I will not alter.
My Son gave His life as a ransom for ALL whether they receive it or not it is there for all. He made complete propitiation for all sin, no one is excluded from receiving the forgiveness of their sins in Him. I forgive you by His blood. In Him you have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of your trespasses, according to the riches of My grace which I lavished on you in Him. Ephesians 1:7-8. So if the blood is not enough for you to forgive others, then if I measure by your standard it is not enough for your sins either. But it is really more than enough.
But it is more about freeing your heart to love than it is about obtaining your forgiveness from Me. You have that if you want it. But I want it to flood your being so that your heart becomes like Mine, which is filled with unlimited room for the goodness, beauty, and joy that comes from perfect LOVE.
Imitate Me as My dear children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for you, an offering and a sacrifice to Me as a fragrant aroma. Ephesians 5:1-2. And that aroma, just as that of the burnt offering, the sin offering, the peace offering, and the guilt offering were also to Me from Noah’s sacrifices when he came out of the ark to Abraham’s to those in the tabernacle of Moses, to those in the Temple of Solomon, to that of Jesus on the Cross, which fulfilled all the others and was the sweetest fragrance of all. Why? Because then I could justly forgive you because of who I am to you in Him. I was in Christ taking all your transgressions from you, making you a new creation in Christ—sinless, blameless, holy, and without reproach before Me. I made Him who knew no sin to be sin on your behalf so you could become righteous with My own righteousness in Him. And that was what the sacrifices of the lambs, rams, goats, and bulls did on credit until Jesus came and paid with the true redemption. If you recall the sinner would place his hand on the head of the lamb and all his sin would enter the lamb and the unblemished purity of the lamb would be upon him. And then the lamb would be slain as sin and offered on the bronze altar, burned until it was ash. Leviticus 1:4 (“He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf.”). “And the priest shall offer up in smoke all of it on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD.” Leviticus 1:9.
Forgiveness in your heart is sweet. It is sweet for the one who lets go of the imprisonment of unforgiveness and pulls out the root of bitterness it puts down into your heart. Forgiveness is sweet for the one who lets go and sweet for the one it is extended to. Unconditional forgiveness is a delightful joy for the one who gives it and for the one who receives it. It is a joy to Me to forgive you in Jesus and it is a joy to you to have all that burden that divides us lifted away by Jesus.
Do not underestimate the power of forgiveness. It is what My relationship with mankind is built upon. That is why the foundation must be Christ. “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. The cornerstone of the structure of your life must be Christ.
What are the gold, silver and precious stones of your life? What are the wood, hay, and stubble? It is important for you to know to build an edifice of your life that is filled with days of Heaven on earth, a dwelling place of My Spirit and of the Kingdom, and will give you the maximum reward here and hereafter. I want to show you clearly what it is of which I am speaking. It is how to live the atmosphere of Heaven on earth.
My apostle Paul shares this with you by the Holy Spirit, you must be rooted and grounded in love to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all My fullness. But this is about a condition of the heart that leads to fruitfulness and not just about works of service. For you can be serving someone for Me and yet have a root of bitterness in your heart against them for putting you into that service of which you are, in your thoughts, a prisoner. And Paul knew, for he was taking the Gospel to Jews and Gentiles who would turn on him and stone him, imprison him, scorn him, and be cruel to him. And yet he became all things to all men. Like My Son, who even healed one of the men who came to arrest him by restoring his ear.
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. This may amaze you for these are mighty deeds, and you may even have been getting bitter at yourself for your life in your eyes seems unimportant and lacking in mighty deeds that you long to do, but when your life here is done and you come to Me, nothing matters but our relationship, and that must be one filled with gratitude that comes from an open heart filled with My love. You must be rejoicing in what I have given you, even thankful for difficult people, for it is a great gift I give you to have someone to serve whether they love you or not. For the greatest one among you is the one who serves the rest, but a special kind of service, the service of an eager, open heart of love. Filled with the sweet aroma of forgiveness, no bitter root blocking out the sweetness of My love. An amazed and awed heart at all the wonders I do for you each day.
And what does a heart of forgiveness look like? How does it feel in you? Wonderful. For love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not dishonor others; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, it is no rude, does not take into account a wrong suffered, keeps no record of wrongs, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
If you want to change your heart and make a faith declaration, substitute the name of the person against whom you are growing a bitter root for the word “Love” and say that complete passage three times with that person’s name in there.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:12-13.
Even in persecution and hardships from those trying to block their preaching, teaching and healing, the apostles and other members of the early church could not but be filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Like Stephen, they prayed for their persecutors and interceded for their salvation. And their open hearts of grateful love for what I was working in them made them able to hear clearly all My Spirt was directing them. And they could not stop sharing My love with everyone.
Paul summed it up for the Jews in the synagogue at Antioch, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Jesus forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” Acts 13:38-40. But the Jews incited the devout women of prominence and the leading men of the city, and instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district. But they shook off the dust of their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” Forgiving and giving make you joyful and in tune with the Holy Spirit.
I love you. Forgiveness is sweet. It is victory but it is more than that, it is a place called grace.