I Obey It And I Resent It

You do it right.

Every part of it, every time. If anybody came and stood behind you for a week they would find nothing, because there is nothing to find.

And about eight months ago something changed inside the doing.

It used to be neutral. You did it the way it is written, you had your own private opinion about a few parts of it, and neither one cost you anything.

Now there is a taste.

It happens around the third or fourth time in a day. You feel your own hands doing a thing you would not do, and something in your chest tightens, and a small hard sentence goes through you.

You would not say the sentence out loud. It is not even a good sentence. It is just hard.

And here is the part that has actually frightened you. Last week you were short with somebody who had nothing to do with any of it. A person asked you an ordinary question and you answered it in a voice you did not recognize.

You apologized. They said it was nothing. It was not nothing, and you have been thinking about it since.

So you have started to suspect that you are turning into something, and you cannot tell how far along it is, and you have no idea who to ask.

There is a verse that deals with exactly this, and the good news in it is about timing.

Lest any root of bitterness

The writer of Hebrews gives a warning about something that grows, and the whole warning is about catching it early.

Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. (Hebrews 12:15, King James Version)

A root. Springing up. That is a growth image, and growth images always carry a clock.

The warning is not aimed at a man who has become bitter. It is aimed at the stage before that, when there is something in the ground that has not fully taken hold.

You have caught this at the root stage rather than at the fruit stage, and Hebrews 12:15 is written to somebody looking diligently rather than to somebody already lost. The Holy Spirit is the one who made you notice your own voice last week, and that noticing is the looking diligently the verse asks for.

That is worth sitting with, because the fear has been that you are far gone.

A man who is far gone does not notice. He has explanations. He thinks the voice he used was reasonable and the person deserved it.

You are the one who apologized and then could not stop thinking about it, and Scripture puts that response on the diligent side of the verse. The Spirit of God is the one who raises that kind of alarm in a man, and it is written in Hebrews 12 that this is exactly the point at which it can be dealt with.

Now the phrase that matters most. Thereby many be defiled.

Bitterness does not stay where it starts. It has nothing to do with a step in a pattern by the time it is finished. It gets into how a man speaks to a stranger, and to his wife, and eventually to himself.

You have already seen it reach past its own subject, and the written word says plainly that a root does exactly that. The Holy Spirit is the one who showed you the reach of it in a voice you did not recognize, and He showed you early.

The resentment has the wrong address

Let me do the practical part, because there is something specific happening and it can be fixed by being accurate.

The hard sentence in your chest is aimed at people. It has quietly acquired faces. Somebody who wrote the page. Somebody who visited once and did not listen.

But the actual thing you resent is not a person. It is a situation: your hands doing something your judgment does not endorse, several times a day, with no end date.

A situation cannot be resented for long. There is nobody in it. So resentment goes looking for a person, because it needs a target to be a feeling at all.

You have a feeling with the wrong address on it, and it is written that a root springs up and defiles many rather than staying with its subject. The Spirit of God is the one who can show a man where a feeling was actually born, and Hebrews 12:15 is why it matters to find out.

And here is why naming it works when swallowing it does not.

Swallowed, it stays general. A general resentment can attach to anybody in the room, and it does, and that is how it reached a person who asked you an ordinary question.

Named out loud, it becomes specific again. And a specific resentment about a specific step is a small thing that a grown man can carry for years without it going anywhere near his wife.

You are able to shrink this back to its actual size, and the written word treats a root as something to be dealt with rather than endured. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that work in a man who says the true thing out loud once.

Name it at the sink

So here is the thing to do and it happens tonight.

At the sink, with your hands in the water, say out loud in one sentence what it is you actually resent.

Not who. What. The step. The eleven minutes. The specific thing your hands do that your judgment does not endorse.

Then say out loud who it belongs to, and the answer is: nobody in this house, and nobody who asked me a question today.

You are putting an address on something that has been wandering, and Hebrews 12:15 warns about exactly that wandering. The Spirit of God is the one who takes it at the sink, and He is not shocked by the sentence.

The reason to do it at the sink is that your hands are busy and your face is pointed at a window. A man will say a true thing there that he would never say sitting down across from somebody.

And the reason it is out loud is that eight months of a silent sentence has already taught you what silence does with it.

You have somewhere to put this that is neither swallowing it nor spreading it, and it is written that a man looks diligently so that a root does not take hold. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives it, and Hebrews 12 says the whole point of catching it now is that now is when it comes out.

Then you go in the next morning and do it right again, which you were always going to do anyway.