Bitterness Series

Bitterness has an insatiable appetite.  It will devour all hope you have.  Bitterness will cycle us into the most painful reliving our past pains.  We have been given the opportunity to be given freedom from these pains.  We can be HEALED into wholeness by Jesus Christ.  It will take time, but there is freedom on the other side of the pain you are currently living in.


The Bitterness Series has been given its own website

http://pastordaniellabitternessseries.weebly.com/

Safe Guard Your Dreams

Safe Guard Your Dreams

Doubt has an insatiable appetite, and it quickly devours our dreams.  Each of us have dreams within our heart.  You might not have spoken them to a single other soul in life, but they are none the less a dream you feel will come to fruition.  I know from personal experience just how hard it is to believe that a dream once placed upon your heart, will in fact come to pass.  Doubt, at times almost seems in step with your every thought.  You exert effort towards believing, and just as quickly, doubt rushes up beside you to tell you how ridiculous your efforts are.  With doubt so quick to war against our dreams, we must learn how to “safe guard” our dreams against it.

The Bible teaches us that we overcome all evils with good.  Since doubt is an evil thinking in our lives, we must apply positive thinking in order to overcome it. 

1.       Invite Christ in.  John 15:5 tells us, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”  In everything we must include the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the most vital step you take in setting out to accomplish anything in life.

How do we invite Him in?

First, ask Jesus Christ to help you in being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s quiet nudging.   The Holy Spirit seeks to lead us to Jesus daily.  By requesting that Jesus help you to be sensitive, you are admitting that the human spirit can very quickly drown out the Holy Spirit, in order to follow our own ambitions.  You might not think of doubt as an ambition, but our soul seeks emotional extremes at points in our lives, and doubt can lead us to a great emotional extreme. 

2.       Trust that Jesus does want to bring the dream to pass in your life.  Isaiah 30:18 shares with us this, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you.” Niv   Christ planted that seed of a dream in you.  But just as everything planted takes time to come to harvest, so too do our dreams.  The waiting period that we go through while we anticipate our dream to come to pass is a blessed and has  anointed time.  Luke 12:48 expresses why the waiting is needed. “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.”NLT   Too often in life, much is given and an utter failure shortly follows.  Jesus is not a careless giver.  He is preparing you to be ready for all your dream is going to require of you in life. 

3.       Learn to rejoice in the journey towards the dream with each day that you wait, and are willing to be changed and molded by the love of Jesus Christ, you are coming closer to the dream coming to fruition.  When we learn to trust that Christ knows what He is doing by having us wait, we will start to learn that each day’s wait is another day closer.  Remember, we overcome evil with good.  Perspective greatly determines how we can overcome many of life’s difficulties.

4.       Find daily things you can do that cause you to daydream about your dream coming true.

Examples: 

v  Find music that inspires you, and uplifts your spirit. 

v  Place motivational scriptures in places that remind you that God is good and what He starts, He finishes. Philippians 1:6  

v  Make up a poster that announces your accomplishment as if it has already come to pass, place it in a room where you will pass by multiple times a day.

v  Find something motivation to wear.  My husband had a ring made up for me that has “Abide, Pastor” written on it.  Do you have an heirloom that means something to you?  If it is small enough place it on something you can wear, a chain, or a jacket, some place where you will see it daily. 

5.       Guard Your Dream Many dreams are stolen by the devil in the blink of an eye.  Just one bad day can be enough for the faint of heart to give up.  If God placed this dream in your heart, then you have to understand, it is not up for grabs by the devil.  It is your dream that only you and God have together.  Protect your dream as you would the front door of your house.  You don’t just leaving it standing wide open and go to bed.  Why would you leave the door to your dream open to anyone who wants to walk in and steal from you?  You wouldn’t, but we do get lax in guarding our dreams.   Don’t leave your dream up to the interpretation of other people’s opinions.  Many people, whether deliberate or not, snuff out others dreams.  Their criticism is taken to heart, and when our dreams are unguarded, the criticism can be the poison that taints the entire work God has begun in you.

Vitally Important:  This thought has been very empowering for me in my life, JESUS IS THE LIFTER OF OUR HEADS. Psalms 3:3 He loves you with a real love.  One that you will experience nowhere else but in a relationship with Him.  It is out of this love for you that He has planted a seed of His dream for your life, in you.  Believe in Christ first, then together you and He will bring that dream into a beautiful state of reality. 

A personal note.  I do understand just how difficult is it to overcome the appetite of doubt in our lives.  We are never given more than we can handle 1 Corinthian 10:13.  The most empowering thought to my life, is knowing that Jesus loves me. Not just any love, but a love that sees me for who I am and all that I am not.  He knows my strengths, my weaknesses, and STILL wanted to use me.  He is a faithful Christ.  Open your heart to Him.  He does not harm you, He loves you.  Pastor Daniella http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com/

Bitterness-Part 7

Yesterday, we covered Abiding in Jesus.  Jesus instructs us that if we abide in Him, and He in us, we will receive a constant flow of strength through Him. (Liberties taken with John 15:4-5) Bitterness penetrates deep into our thinking and emotional reactions.  When we are starting to release bitterness, we must first fill ourselves with empowering, healing thoughts.  We can only receive these thoughts from Jesus.  He builds us up, sustains us, and empowers us to make the changes necessary in our minds in order that we can start to see bitterness for the poison it is to us.  We cannot receive from Jesus unless we are correctly abiding with Him.  I spoke yesterday of prayer, and a constant invitation to Jesus to be involve in our lives.

Bitterness catches us in a cycle of reliving our past/present hurts.  This recycling starts a reverberation of the irritation in our lives.  The louder this reverberation becomes, the more difficult it is for us to receive what the Holy Spirit is trying to lead us to.   

BREAK THE CYCLE:

Calm- a beautiful thought, but to many of us, it is so foreign.  Situational calm takes place here or there for us during the week, but to live in a status of calm is almost unimaginable.  Bitterness seeks only to feed on the frustrating, irritating, painful events of our lives.  Without it, it would die off.  This is what CALM does to bitterness, it cuts the feeding tube.  Calm is the antidote to the poison that bitterness is to our lives.  Hebrews 12:15 speaks of the poison that bitterness becomes in our lives as a root that will only serve to trouble us. 

Good overcomes evil.  Romans 12:21.  The pains of our past leave voids.  I spoke of how quickly bitterness seeks to set up residence in your heart.  When we are abiding in Jesus, we are filling the voids left by the pain with something good and empowering.  In other words, we are overcoming the evil pains of life, with the pure, good love of Jesus. 

Seek Daily Bread We have been designed to need food and water daily.  Our Spirit is no different.  We cannot binge on the Lord.  We are to seek Him daily.  Just as food is the fuel that our human body runs on, so is our Lord Jesus Christ to our Spirit.  “Apart from me, you can do nothing”.  (John 15:5) To fight against this thought by trying to accomplish moving past bitterness without the daily involvement of Jesus will result in your failure to truly be healed. 

Acknowledge the HEALER for WHO He alone is in your life. You see, ONLY Jesus can heal the pains of our past.  To be safe, secure, and KNOW who you are, only is accomplished in Jesus Christ.  Pains are going to take place again in life.  Our lives are not impervious to them, but with Jesus as our Lord, we have the HEALER living inside us. 

Article by: Pastor Daniella

Personal Note: My heart “ached” for so many years to be correctly filled.  Bitterness stripped my life of so much.  I would show the joy and happiness on the outside, but on the inside I was so scared by the pains of my life.  Jesus has and is healing me.  I pray this for your life as well.  

Bitterness-Part 6

In Part 5 we talked over what it means to have Jesus be “The Way, The Truth, and The Life” in our lives.  We saw that Jesus is also “Our Shield, Our Glory, and the Lifter of our heads.” All beautiful titles given to Jesus, but words mean little unless we learn where to apply them in our lives.  Yesterday we discussed why each of these titles are helpful in our learning Who Jesus is and How to trust Him to heal us from the bitterness of our lives. 

Today, we will cover one of the most important ways to receive the needed fortification for our relationship with Jesus, abiding with Him. When we abide in Jesus, we are in a constant state of receivership from Jesus.  The importance of this is that our Focus remains on Him, not the pains of our past, or current frustrations.  In other words, we aren't leaving our “emotional” doors open and vulnerable to others.  When we are receiving from Jesus the nutrients we need in life, all other sources of nutrition seem to pale in comparison.

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit [a]of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5) I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5 NASB

Abide-We are being encouraged by Jesus to stay/live with Him.  The most obvious question that comes to mind here is, how do we, humans, abide with Jesus?   Jesus desires to be the vital part of our daily lives.  Abiding with Jesus can take on many forms, I wish to cover only a few in order to help you understand how to apply such a powerful scripture to our lives. 

Abiding, what can that look like?

·         Prayer:

The more evident application of abiding would be that of prayer.  Most of us are familiar with prayer in some form or the other.  I will not offer an opinion on prayer other than to ask you this, when you pray…..do you let your heart show?  Do you come to Jesus with the barriers of your life down?  There is one person in life that you can take such an approach with and it is Jesus.  He IS that best friend you have needed. He IS the One who has known you since before you were formed in your mother’s womb. Jeremiah 1:5   He IS the One that offers Peace that passes all understanding. Philippians 4:7   He IS the love of your life, in whom you can place all your darkest secrets and pains.  He IS the ONE person you can truly surrender to in life.  James 4:7

There is no need to place a false pretense between you and Jesus.  He knows you, sees it all, and loves you RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE AT.  He has seen you bitter ridden and still loved you. Please, if you are not already doing it, see prayer as time with the one who already gave ALL to be with you. You weren't meant to try to deal with life all by yourself.  You were designed to be in a relationship with Jesus, and denying it will only prolong the pain in your life.  Please, let Him in.

·         Involvement:

Many will tell you, “Jesus is just too busy with the troubles of the world to fuss with the small messes of your life.”  I will allow others their opinions, as I am allowed mine.  I do not personally share in this opinion.  I believe if ANYONE needs to bother with my life, it is Jesus.  If ANYONE deserves to know the daily interests, stresses, joys, and hopes that I have for my day, it is my Jesus.  In turn, I involve Him in all aspects of my life.  Feeling that I could release “control” over my life enough to ask for the involvement has taken time. But, now when I am asking for His help to guide my day, I see it as a state of empowerment, not impotence.  The more you involve Jesus in your life, the greater the detail you present Him, the more He can help you with.  As you learn more what trusting Jesus looks like, this will become easier.

                Tomorrow we are will start learning the idea of quieting our spirits, as being a way to abide with Jesus.  I pray you are finding these articles a blessing in your life.  God’s peace and comfort be with you.  Pastor Daniella

Bitterness-Part 4

Bitterness-Part 4

Yesterday, we covered the need for us to practice patience while Jesus helps us to work through the pains of our past in order to heal of from the poison that bitterness is in our lives.  We discussed that the scars left by the pain we have been caused in life, are very deep.  A quick “band aid” healing is not going to work with this type of damage.  Jesus knows this.  Too often, when we seek a quick fix in our emotions, without ever getting the root of what causes them, it leaves a door open for the pain to reappear in another manifestation of our lives.  Jesus seeks to heal fully.  We spoke of how Jesus knows that damaged people have had their trust broken.  He knows that in order to heal you of your bitterness, He will have to start to teach you WHO He is and just how different His love is from anyone else’s in your life.  We know that Jesus is the Savior of the World, and the Son of God.

Today, we will talk over some of just Who our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is.

Learning WHO Jesus is.

The beautiful understanding here, is that your relationship with Jesus is in a constant state of metamorphosis.  Each stage of your life is going to be met with you understanding more of just WHO Jesus is.  The way to start learning of Jesus is through scripture.

Jesus is gentle and humble of heart.

One of my favorite of these scriptures is: Matthew 11:29 NLT.

“Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Words like, gentle, and humble of heart.  These are words not readily used in this world, are they?  And if they are used, they many times are used to describe someone that people think of as powerless.  With Jesus, you have the genuine article of all power, and yet, at the same time, someone who will walks with you in the smallest moments of your life.  Humble of Heart is another way Jesus speaks of Himself.  Humble of heart, moved by compassion, mercy, genuine desire to help, never full of oneself, always seeking to give, these are thoughts that come to mind when I read this scripture about Jesus.

Jesus is dependable. 

Bitterness causes a great deal of mistrust within us.  Jesus seeks to heal this by allowing us to understand what stability looks like, for the first time in our lives. Hebrews 13:8 speaks of Jesus of the stability of Christ.

“I am the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

To be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Heck, I can’t even keep the same hair color for one year, let alone be the same every day of my life.  The stability of Jesus is so appealing.  Having Jesus be the same, always, means that His mood doesn't change when the dramas of life come to envelope us.  His love never fails to remain utterly perfect for us.  He desires a relationship with us, even if we are in the middle of denying it to Him.  HE REMAINS THE SAME.

Join me tomorrow, we will cover the last two points on learning Who Jesus can be for us in our lives.  God bless your day.  Pastor Daniella

  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com/

Bitterness-Part 3

Bitterness-Part 3

Yesterday, we learned why, many times, we allow bitterness to enter into our thinking.  We also started to explore the steps that we can take towards Jesus Christ that will invite Him into our pain.  This invitation opens the door for Jesus Christ to HEAL us out of our bitterness.  

Today, we will cover the next two steps in learning how to walk out of the bitterness that is in our lives. 

So….You’ve prayed, now what?

1.       Learn why we need to be patient for the TRUE Healing that comes from Jesus, alone.

Voids are left in our soul by the pains of our lives.  Bitterness quickly comes to fill in those voids.  The Bible speaks of bitterness being a poisonous root.  Bitterness will use all areas that have been painful in order to derive the momentum it needs to continue to grow in your body.  Once you have prayed for healing from Jesus, and His involvement in your desire to remove bitterness from your life, start trusting.  Please remember, Jesus is not a careless healer.  He does not just topically fix you.  He seeks to heal you from the inside out.

2.       Learn how to trust (for the first time) enough to open the vault doors of your painful past to Jesus.

Trusting:  A time stamped process.  Trust is built over time.  For now, just trust that Jesus IS. Start trusting that you will learn to open up to Him.  Understand that Jesus knows how HARD it is for a hurting person to open their lives to Him.  Jesus is patient.  I want to share a scripture that changed my life. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. Isaiah 42:3 niv.  No matter how small the glimmer of hope we have, Christ will not ignore it.

You see, when you have been damaged by life and you feel so broken inside that you are sure that there is no hope to ever be repaired to wholeness again, you feel as if your life is made up of shards of broken dreams, and shattered trust.  But the above scripture assures us that Jesus is willing to stoop down, sweep up the shards, and promise to heal you to wholeness.  HE IS SO FAITHFUL. 

Jesus knows in order for you to trust Him with the shards of your life, you will have to come to a true understand of just Who He is. 

Tomorrow we will begin to talk about Who Jesus really is for us. 

criptures biblegateway.com

Bitterness-Part 1

Bitterness-Part 1

When something is poisonous, we know to avoid it.  The Bible expresses bitterness as a poisonous root. (Hebrews 12:15)  The poison of bitterness penetrates into every spectrum of our life, when left undealt with.  Roots branch out in search of nutrients.  Bitterness is much like this.  When we have bitterness in our hearts, the bitterness will branch out through every life event, looking where to draw its next supportive nutrients. 

Identifying Bitterness in our lives.

So, how do we identify bitterness in our lives?  First, we have to start seeing bitterness for what it is.  I discussed that it is a poisonous root that takes hold in our lives.  Let’s take the definition further.  What really is bitterness?  It is an unwillingness to allow trust into our heart that God is the avenger of the harm done to us in life.  Exodus 14:14 assures us, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."   When we are unwilling to wait upon the Lord, we take bitterness into our heart as a way of defending ourselves against being disappointed or harmed again.  We start allowing our bitterness root to be what anchors us in life, rather than allowing love to continue to flow through us, and trusting God. 

Bitterness Can Disguise Itself

Be cautious to not be tricked in life.  Bitterness can easily be defined as being “wise”.  Are we to be wise, yes?  Proverbs talks in great depth about the importance in the application of wisdom, but Wisdom comes from the Lord, Bitterness comes from the devil.  Wisdom knows to trust Christ first in order to form an opinion, Bitterness only forms opinions spawned by poisoned thoughts.  Thoughts like anger, frustration, doubt, disappointment, fear…accompany bitterness.  When we are looking to identify bitterness in our lives, we must make sure that we are willing to separate all wrongful thinking, no matter how logical it might seem, from correct Godly wisdom.

Tomorrow, we will cover why we let bitterness take hold in our lives and begin the steps in learning how to remove it.   God bless you in His Peace and Love.  Pastor Daniella http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com/

Bitterness Part 2

Bitterness-Part 2

In yesterday’s article we learned that Bitterness is a poisonous root.  Hebrews 12:15   We learned that this poison, when left undealt with, can penetrate into every spectrum of our life.   We saw that bitterness can quickly be dismissed in our lives, when we think of it as being wise.  But, wisdom comes from the Lord, Bitterness comes from the devil.  Wisdom knows to trust Christ first in order to form an opinion, Bitterness only forms opinions spawned by poisoned thoughts.

Today, we will cover the following areas concerning bitterness:  Why do we let bitterness take hold in our lives, and begin seeing the first step we can take in removing it from our lives. 

Why do we let bitterness take hold?

When we are hurt, we want an instant resolution to the matter.  We want someone or something to make the pain of being hurt go away.  The latter part of Exodus 14:14 speaks of our need to wait upon God.  Honestly, when you are hurt, about the last thing you want to do is practice patience or grace.     Trusting in God goes against our fleshly desires.   Trusting God takes faith.  The pain that you feel in life is very apparent, every day, you wake up with it “wrapped” around your heart.  Trusting God is something that we have to clothe ourselves in daily.  You don’t just decide to trust once and that’s all the effort you have to exert towards it.  But, by bitterness, you can be hurt badly once and it take root in your life very deeply.  It is similar to eating something that you is going to cause you to gain weight.  It takes only a few minutes to eat the item, but it is going to take you hours of hard work to get the weight back off your body.  Bitterness shows up in a single event in life and in an instant can transform your viewpoint.  Trusting God takes effort, and a constant application of prayer, communication, faith, and surrender, to keep trust active in our lives.  In order to fight bitterness, you will have to work daily at keeping it out of your life.  I think this very requirement is why many people just allow it to form the foundation of their opinion.  They just get tired of forgiving, practicing patience, grace, or turning the other cheek.  (Matthew 5:39)   

How can we remove bitterness from our lives?

1.       Ask Christ to be the Lord of your desire to overcome the bitterness.  The only way to approach anything in life is to remember a very core thought, apart from Christ we are nothing.  (John 15:5)  I believe that this scripture serves as a reassurance to us.  We are not alone in any struggle in our lives.  Jesus is right at our side, but if we are unwilling to invite Him in, we have cut ourselves off from the source of strength that we needed in order to overcome the weakness. 

• Example of how to apply this to your life:  Susan has lived for years with deep resentment towards her mother.  She had a very difficult childhood.  Her mother pressured her to be perfect.  Each time Susan came home with a good grade in school, her mother would neglect celebrating it with her, and instead critique her for the grade not being perfect.  When Susan came home with perfect grades, her mother would say, “You should have been doing this all along.”  Each step of Susan’s life thus far, had been spent with her mother Lording over her with a dominating, mean spirit.  Susan, in the natural has every right to be bitter.  Remember, I said in the natural, meaning in the human way of looking at things.  God expects that Susan will lean more on His love for her, than the pain that Susan’s mother is causing her.  Susan has not done this yet in her life.  Susan recently became engaged.  She is a very defensive person.  Her fiancé is a very loving, kind man, and yet she keeps finding herself so full of bitterness in her life, that no matter what he says, she is sure it is meant in a critical and mean spirit.  Recently an event took place where Susan was able to see that she was transferring bitterness from her childhood onto her new life with her fiancé.  She knows she does not want to bring the baggage of her life with her mother into her new relationship, but how does she do this?

Idea for a prayer of healing

Susan is told that the first way to start anything in life is to begin by asking the Lord Jesus Christ to be the source of strength that upholds your desire for change.  Susan comes to her knees in prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, my life has been so broken.  I have not wanted to become a bitter person.  I have wanted good in my life, and strived to do the best I could by my mother, but it never seemed enough Lord.  I know that you see the wrongs that were done in my life, and I know that you love me.  I am asking you to help me to remove the bitterness in my heart from my life.  I know it will not be easy.  I have a great deal of fear and defensiveness built up in me due to the damage my mother has caused me, but I am committed to YOU, Jesus.  I know that you are faithful and whatever you begin in me, you will bring to completion.  I know that by removing bitterness from my life, I will draw closer to you, and my relationships will be blessed.  I know that although my mother may never know what pain she has caused me, your HEALING will have more effect on me than her apology ever would.  I love you Jesus.  Please walk me out of this trouble. Amen”

This example of a surrendering prayer exemplifies how we take an identified problem to the Lord Jesus Christ, and involve Him in our first desires for change.  Tomorrow we will move on to the next step in removing bitterness from our lives.  The Lord Jesus Christ is willing to take the journey with us to remove bitterness from your life, are you?  Pastor Daniella

So many of the disappointments that I have suffered in life are ones where no human reconciliation of the letdown is applicable. You are probably familiar with these sorts of disappointments. They are the ones where a death of a loved one comes from out of nowhere. What about major injuries suffered, diseases, unemployment, unforeseen expenses, events once greatly hoped for falling through? Life seems to hand out more than our fair share of disappointments. Should we allow these disappointments to birth a belief in us that Jesus doesn’t want positive things to work out for us? No, according to John 10:10, Jesus came to give us a full life. Hoping for great things to happen in your life, is not wrong. Psalms 37:34 says, “Put your hope in the Lord. Travel steadily along his path.” These scriptures are to serve as a strengthening to our weary souls. We do get beaten down at points by hoping for something, only to have it not work out. So how do we reason out why things once hoped for are dashed? Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding”. There are going to be disappointments that will not yield understanding in this life time. Why? Because we, as humans, can’t make sense of something that is serving a greater purpose. In these situations, we will have to lean greatly on trusting Jesus. Trusting when there is no sense to be made of a disappointment, is one of the greater stretches of a believer’s life. Pastor Daniella

When We Are At Our Weakest

Do you remember the first time that defeat met your efforts, instead of victory? In 2 Corinthians 12:10, we are told that Jesus works best in our weakness.  When is the last time you thought of applying this scripture to an area where you have evidently fallen short?  Was the application of the scripture more just a reading over the passage, only to forget it soon after you closed the Bible?  Many of us have been guilty of doing this very action in our lives.  The Bible has such amazing words of power within it, but if we are only going to read over it, with no real desire to apply it, we are not going to see the level of Freedom that Jesus is trying to impart into our lives.

In a world where admitting “defeat” is quickly met with a hard hearted person taking advantage of you, it is not easy to admit that you have a weakness. Jesus is unlike the world.  When you admit to Jesus that you are struggling with something, you are opening a passage of power in your life, not an Achilles’ heel.  Pastor Daniella

The Shackles of the Mind

In John 8:36, we read, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” NLT   We have been set free, but so many of us have allowed the shackles around our minds to bind us so tightly that we aren't willing to allow the freedom to become a reality to us. 

Let’s pretend that I set the box in front of you.  When I set the box in front of you, I tell you that within the box you are going to find items you have wanted for years.  You look at me, look down at the box, but you choose not to open it. Due to this decision, you will not benefit from the contents of the box.  This scenario can be used to help further our understanding of the freedom made available in Jesus.  We are free, but we can live an entire life in shackles if we choose. 

In Mark 2:22 Jesus says, "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost". NLT
For me, this scripture shows us that Jesus does not want to pour new thinking into an old mindset.  In other words, if someone has a mindset that keeps them in the shackles, and they are unwilling to part with it, what good is their freedom doing them? 

When we allow ourselves to be transformed by the love of Jesus, we will start to soften in our mindsets.  Through this softening, we can begin to identify areas in our lives where we are hindering freedom to be a current reality in our life.  Just one example of this hindrance to freedom would be negative thinking.   Humans can set their minds to see the negative in almost any situation. I will example what I mean.  Years ago, I was at a birthday party for a lady I knew.  When it came time for the husband to give a gift to his wife, he very excitedly presented her with the gift box.  She took one look at the unwrapped box and began to complain about his “gift wrap” selection. She was so irritated at what he chose, that she refused to open the gift.  Find this ridiculous?  It is, but if we allow our minds to stay in the shackles of wrong thinking, we too will miss out on what Jesus has brought to offer us.  Again I site this scripture.   “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” John 8:36 NLT   The freedom that Jesus offers is there for us.  Please remember that the Lord gives gifts that look different than the World’s definition.  Try applying this realization to your life the next time that you are facing a difficult situation.  God is offering you freedom in the trouble, but it probably does not look the way you are expecting it to, you have to be willing to dig deep within the “gift box” in order to receive of this offering.  Pastor Daniella http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com/ https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella