This is a very good teaching about bitter roots.
Transcribed from a radio broadcast by Kathy Tolleson from her biblical counseling series.
What we’re going to talk about today, is one that I call the prison of Bitter Root Judgment. And I want to take the time to really explain this because if you don’t really fully understand what we’re talking about and if you can’t fully see the prison that you’re in, you’re not going to be able to figure out how to get out of it.
And so I want to share a couple of scriptures in the beginning because it really sets two elements of God’s word into motion in our lives to form the prison when we have the prison of bitter root judgment.
The first scripture that we’re going to look at today is one in Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 14 – 15. It says, “pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up, cause trouble and by this many become defiled.”
So this tells us in the Word of God, that we can allow a root of bitterness that can spring up. And bitterness will come when unforgiveness sets in too long. Unforgiveness and hurt plants a seed for the root of bitterness to spring up in our lives. That’s why it’s so important that we take care of any hurts and unforgiveness on a daily, regular basis when we walk with God, and we also have to go back into the past and clean up and allow God to heal us and to forgive the people from our past in order that we might pull up those seeds where a root of bitterness may set in.
The part that I really want you to hear though, in that scripture today is this, “and by this, many become defiled.” Now that’s a little bit unusual, if I have a root of bitterness, you would think that I’m the one who would be defiled. But this says that I can have a root of bitterness, and through my root of bitterness, I can defile many.
Okay, we’re going to look at some examples of this, but before we do, I want you to turn to Matthew, chapter 7. Because it’s important to see how these two elements work together.
Again, we’re talking about bitter root judgment. In Matthew, chapter 7, verses 1-2, it says, “Judge not, that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”
This tells us again, that as we judge people, we are going to end up with that same measure back. We will be put in that same place to have others judge us in that area. And when you combine those together for bitter root judgment, its then the judgments we have made out of our bitterness.
Because we were hurt, because we were angry, and we were bitter, we judged. And see, the hard part of this is, many of our bitter root judgments, once again, stem back into our childhood, when we really didn’t know any better. If we were not raised in godly Christian homes that taught us forgiveness, taught us to be angry and sin not, to talk about our problems, to be able to take them to God, to pray, to ask God to heal our hurts, and we were not raised in those homes like that, what happens is, we many times, have bitter root judgments with the people around us. And especially our family members, and especially our parents.
And so, if we have out of the bitter root, judged others, the Word of God tells us in Matthew that, by the same measure, we will be judged. It is going to come back to us. And so it kind of packs a double punch. It’s bad enough that the bitter root will defile many, and it’s bad enough that when we judge, we’re going to be judged, but when this comes back at us, combined and working together, there is a double force to bring us into a very negative place.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you judged your father for how he disciplined you, and you still have that anger towards authority, you still have a bitter root expectancy towards authority, and here’s the kind of things that will happen in your life.
First of all, if you have children, you will end up entering into some of the same types of behavior, if this is not broken in your life, and you will find that your children will be harshly judging you. Your wife will judge you on what kind of disciplinarian you are, and because of your bitter root expectancy related to authority, every time you have a boss, or a pastor, or anyone in authority over you, they will probably be harsh authority, even if maybe they don’t even want to be, because your bitter root expectancy will draw that out of them, or draw that situation to yourself and you will find yourself repeating that over and over again.
Your bitter root is defiling many. It’s defiling your children, it’s defiling your wife and defiling any authority that you come in contact with. And you can pray to God all day long and say, “God, change my children, change my bosses,” and guess what? God can’t do anything because you have set some of his laws and principles in motion.
Now let me explain something. You can forgive your father all day long, and you have to. You have to forgive him for how harshly he disciplined you, and you have to release forgiveness, but until… forgiveness is NOT repentance. Until you see your sin against your father, and again, it doesn’t mean that he was right, it doesn’t mean that it was okay, the way he disciplined you, because he was harsh, and he was cruel, and he humiliated you and he physically hurt you and all those different things, and that was wrong. But you judged him in your heart. And so if you just forgive him, but do not repent… see, when we have judged, bitter root judgment takes two things, two elements. The bitterness, we have to forgive to be able to pull up those seeds where the bitterness came from and ask God to heal us from the hurt, but we must also repent for how we judged. Because as long as we have judged someone, somewhere down the line, that is going to be reaped back in our life. By whatever measure we judge, what, it will be meted back to us. We will be judged for that very same thing.
And so, it’s very important. I would encourage you, if you have any area in your life that there seems like there’s a repeated problem in your life. You run into a certain type of person over and over again. You run into people and they all remind you of your mother, you know, or different things like that. You need to stop and take a look, again, it’s not about God changing the lives around you, it’s about God ministering to you and healing you and dealing with you and bringing conviction so that you can repent.
I’ll give you a good example that happened to me a few years ago. As we were coming into understanding about bitter root judgment, I was really praying one day because I was getting really upset with our church. We’re pastors, and there was an attitude, and sometimes spoken comments toward me, and basically the attitude was that I cared more about work and getting things done, than people. And it really bothered me, because probably of any of the ministers in our church, because I work so much in the counseling, I probably spent more individual time ministering to individuals and their families, their loved ones, their friends and everybody else than most of the people, the other ministers in our church. And it was like, “Why can’t they see this? I don’t understand this.” And then I saw it even with my own children, I got into a place and position, because of divorce, that I had to work and take care of them, and they too had the attitude that work, many times, was more important than them. And I knew again in my heart, that wasn’t true, I had to work, but it was just not true. And it really made me… I was starting to get angry, and I was wanting God to change everybody else. And I said, “God, you really need to change this attitude because… show them the truth!”
And I was praying to God one day, saying, “God, I just really can’t deal with this anymore, it’s really making me angry.” And the Lord spoke to me this. He said, “How does it feel?” And I said, “This does not feel good.” He said, “Kathy, the majority of your childhood, you judged your father in this very arena. You judged him because of the long hours he worked. You judged him because many times, work was a real high priority, many times even more than family.” And again, it doesn’t make what he did right, but I still judged him. And I had forgiven my dad even. Please understand this, I had already gone through ministry and counseling and forgiven my dad for a lot of things, but I had not repented of my own judgment of him. After I did that, that began to change. It began to change in my children, it began to change in the church, has not been a problem for the last few years. Haven’t heard anything of it, hasn’t bothered me, attitude has totally changed.
Now what changed? Did God change everybody else? Did God change my kids and straighten them out? Did God change everybody else in the church? Or did he change me, which allowed…, because my bitter root was defiling many. My bitter root judgment had set in motion in the spirit realm the need for me to be judged back by the measure. I judged my dad on a harsh measure with this. And so I was judged with a harsh measure by my children, and my church. See, when we release grace, grace is released to us. If you feel like in your own life, that people just don’t give you enough grace, they’re very critical, that they judge you too harshly, the only person that you can take a look at is you, because you look at other people with the same measure.
If we measure grace to people, grace and forgiveness in abundance, grace and forgiveness will be meted back to us. We draw this and again, I want to emphasize that forgiveness and repentance for judgment are two different things.
I remember one time I had been to a seminar, and I would encourage you, if you want any more information about bitter root judgment, Elijah House, John and Paula Sandford’s ministry, is an excellent way to get a hold of more information, they have videos and tapes on it, I don’t have their phone number right now, but if you call, check around, you can call our ministry and we can get you more information on Elijah House. But when you begin to look at this, and I had been to a seminar, and during this seminar, I felt like the Lord had shown me that a family member that my husband had judged, one of his family members, and that he really needed repentance in that area. And so what happened is, we were driving up to Atlanta and I brought up the subject and he said, “No, I don’t need to, I have forgiven them, I know I’ve forgiven them, God’s healed me of it, I’ve released them.” And once again I said, “You’re not hearing what I’m saying. I know you have forgiven them, but you also judged them, and you’ve not repented.” And I just said this, “Look, don’t trust me, just ask the Lord if there’s any areas where you judged them, and if there was, then just start repenting.”
Well, guess what? God showed him clearly 39 specific judgments he had toward this person that he had judged and he also saw where he had reaped and was reaping back the same problems and the same situation in his own life.
And see again, we can pray all day long and ask God to change certain things, but if, through our own bitter root, and if, through our own judgment, we have set in motion spiritual principles and spiritual dynamics, God can’t fix them for us because he has established certain principles that govern the natural world and the spiritual world.
The force of gravity, the law of gravity is a principle that governs our world. And we can jump out of a building all day long and not want to fall, but we will fall. It’s just the law of gravity. And we can want things to be different in our lives and people to treat us different all day long, but if the laws and principles, and we are dealing with bitter root judgments in our lives are set in motion, we will continue to draw those things from us and we can have someone in our life that does not want to be a certain way and we can end up defiling them.
Let me tell you a story. This is a true story. I had heard some counselors share it at a time. And in it, there was a young woman, and in her high school years, her mother passed away, her dad and brother ended up, they were alcoholics, she ended up having to quit school, work to support the family, take care of the house, be the responsible party. So as soon as she got old enough, she wanted to get married and leave home. And again, because she had judged them, and this was her expectancy, this was the way men are, she ended up marrying another man who already had somewhat of an alcohol problem, but as soon as she married him, guess what? It got worse. His alcohol problem got worse, he ended up losing the job he had, not working, she was working and taking care of the home, once again.
She ends up divorcing him, and marries someone who used to have an alcohol problem, but had quit, had a stable job and was not drinking. But yet, she still has the bitter root expectancy and the bitter root judgment that she’s not repented of towards her father and brother and so that expectancy says in her mind, “men will always not work, they’re useless, you have to take care of them and they’ll always drink.” Okay, so that expectancy, that bitter root defiles, so this husband, within just a short time, again, had a stable job, he’s out of work, and guess what? He relapses, and he’s back drinking. After a period of time, she says, “that’s it, I’m divorcing him.” And we can maybe see some of that, because there was alcohol in their background.
But then, she marries a man who has never drank, has worked at the same job for a number of years. She still has not repented for the bitter root judgment. She still has not been healed in this area of how she views men. She still has this expectancy, even though she doesn’t want, just like I said, even though you don’t want to fall when you jump out that window, you want to be able to fly, you’re going to fall, because you were not created to fly and the principle and law of gravity is in effect. So she marries this man, once again, has never drank, has had a stable job. This is the answer, right? No, because she has a bitter root that will defile many. And so, after a period of time, a few years, she finds herself… this man starts drinking and this man loses his job and once again, she is working, having to support the family and dealing with an alcoholic. And blaming everybody else and not looking at herself.
I can’t tell you how important it is, that when we examine the fruit of our lives, we look to ourselves, we look to areas where we need healing and where we have judged and need repentance. One of the greatest areas, as I said earlier, is with our parents. Ephesians, chapter 6, it starts in verse one, it says, “children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
Okay, and I know that many times it is difficult as children, to give honor to people who are not acting very honorable. It’s not easy. But if we have sinned in this area, we must repent. If we did not honor our mother and father, if we judged them, if we’re still angry at them, we must deal with it because of this promise. That it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.
I can promise you, if you will look back in areas of your life that are not well with you, they have not gone well with you, you will find areas that you have dishonored your parents by judging them or being upset with them in those areas. So, if you want to get set free, you must go back. I don’t care if it happened forty years ago, I don’t care if it happened fifty years ago, if there are areas in your life that you continue to have problems with, you need to go back and ask the Lord for the heart of repentance and begin to repent for areas where you’ve dishonored your parents and where you allowed a bitter root to spring up against them.
Again, it does not mean that you are saying that everything that they did was right. A lot of times too, we may judge our mothers and say, “I’ll never marry a man like my father, I’d never put up with that. I’m going to marry someone totally different.” And we marry them, and they look totally different, and pretty soon, we’re saying, “Oh my God, he’s just like my father!” Three, four, five years down the line, he’s just like my father.
Now let me ask you this, could it be that he wasn’t just like your father, but your bitter root judgment against your father and your bitter root judgment against your mother, could it have defiled the man and created the very thing that you did not want to have?
I believe it can, I believe it is a force that is that powerful. I believe the example that I gave you earlier of the woman who married the man and finally married one with no alcohol problems and a stable job, and again, years later, ended up with the very same thing. And I just want to share in this forum, we must take responsibility for the fruit of our life.
Most of the time, we are always pointing fingers outward, saying, “If my husband would change, if my wife would change, if my kids would change, if my boss would change, if the people I work with would change, and if my pastor would change, and if the other people in my church would change, then I could be happy! Then things would go good for me.”
And I’m here to tell you that’s a lie, because you can go across the world with your bitter root, and guess what, when you get there, you’ll defile everyone there too. You can go to a city where nobody knows you, you can go someplace where you have a totally clean start, but if you bring your bitter root judgment, if you judge people for rejecting you, and you have a bitter root expectancy that people will reject you, you will bring that with you, and that message will speak louder than you. And you will have set in motion certain spiritual principles and laws and you will end up with the very same thing in your life.
If you judged your parents because they couldn’t handle money and you judged your parents because they never had anything and you were angry and bitter, I promise you, you will end up, until you repent, being in the same place and the same position and your kids will be judging you and they will be unhappy, and you will wonder why these things always happen to you, and want everything else in life to change but you.
I’m here to tell you brothers and sisters, we must take responsibility for the fruit in our lives, because only by doing that, are we able to change things. And again, I hear many Christians say they are praying and praying to God to change everything but them. And God wants to change us. He knows that we are what is drawing the problem to us. He knows that we must change.
Again, did God go and change our whole church? Did he go and change my children? Did he change all of them? Or did he do a work in me of repentance and forgiveness and healing that released everybody to change around me? That is the key.
A couple of ways that we can identify… you know, we might be looking and saying, “well how can we identify where we have bitter root judgments?” Let me tell you this, first of all, the Holy Spirit wants to bring you into all truth. And the Lord Jesus Christ wants to set the captives free. So if you’ve been in the prison of bitter root judgment, one of the main things you can ask the Lord is, say, “Lord, just begin to show me. Show me areas in my life where I have judged others and I have been reaping back in my own life.” And the other thing is, is just to look at problem areas, bad fruit in your life and say, “Okay God, this is some real bad fruit here, I know there’s probably got to be a bad judgment underneath all of this. Because I am getting a measure meted back to me that I’m not really happy with in life.” And as you do that, again, you can trust the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to be able to help you identify, to be able to help you repent and release.
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about generational sin. And one area that really helps you be able to release, especially your parents and family members, is when you realize that they were also under the force of generational sin many times. That they didn’t just choose to be bad parents or they didn’t just choose to live in poverty, but that there was generational sin and curses that they were also battling against that hindered the fullness of what they could have been or what they could have given you.
And so it’s really important that as we look at this, I believe that the key main area that we must start with as we do this is with our parents. Number one, they have the most impact on our lives, whether they were there or not for you. A parent can have just as much impact on your life by leaving you in an orphanage and never seeing you as they can raising you on a daily basis.
Parents were designed on earth to impact their children. And I just want to encourage you today to, again, especially in this area of parents, examine your life, say, “what areas of my life are not going well?”
The word says, “Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise.” That means this is promised, this is guaranteed. That as you do that, it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. I wonder how much premature death that we’re suffering? People dying at a young age, because they’re not honoring their parents. Okay, this is a promise of God. He says, “This is the way it is.”
So I really want to encourage you again, to allow the Holy Spirit to set you free. You will not get out of this prison of bitter root judgment without identification and repentance. You can’t just say, “Oh God, I just repent if I have any bitter root judgment. Just forgive me God if I did that.” It’s not like that. God really wants you to identify.
The day the Lord showed me about my bitter root judgment against my father, I identified with his pain that day of being judged because he had to work so hard and trying to make a living and all of that, and because of what he must have felt like, I had to identify, and that helped me to release the judgment.
And so many times as we’re getting free of this, God wants us to identify specifically, not just do one of our little blanket prayers that says, “Oh, get me out of this prison, just forgive me if I judged anyone, if I have any bitter roots.” God wants us to literally expose… when we’re trying to destroy a plant, we have to expose the root system many times in order to totally destroy it. So the Lord, by identification and showing you, he will pull that bitter root up, expose it to the light and destroy it. You know, a root can only grow in darkness, if you have a plant, it grows in the ground, in the darkness. But when it’s pulled up and exposed to the light, and if it’s left on top of the soil long enough, that will die. And that bitter root within you can die.
So I just want to pray for you right now, “Holy Spirit, I just ask that anyone listening to this message God, that you would bring them into fullness of truth and understanding to what I’ve been trying to communicate to them Lord, that they would have revelation of the Spirit, Lord, and Holy Spirit, I pray a release now, that you will begin to convict and show them the areas and the individuals in their lives that they judged and the areas where they have bitter roots within them that are defiling everyone around them, in the name of Jesus.
The study, titled "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique," measured surprising improvements in vision and hearing in economically disadvantaged areas where eyeglasses and hearing aids are not readily available. (Photo: Iris Ministries)