Bitterness — Roy Daniel

Bitterness and the Call to Forgiveness

Well, good morning to every one of you. It's good to be here again after a good night's sleep. There with the baby in the night. My baby was laughing in his dreams. I wonder if he was laughing at me. I suppose it's interesting having me as a father, because I'm quite a strange guy.

Can we open up the Bible at Matthew 6, verse 15? Matthew 6, verse 16. There in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, as it's called. Read there these words. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

You know, I was in the car with Aaron this morning, and it was interesting. We were talking about stuff in Africa and stuff. We were talking about a whole lot of things, I suppose, including the rusted poles on the side of the road.

But one thing I mentioned was that in Africa, I once worked with a missionary. And every single week we have to write a letter to our mission boss, the very head of our mission. And he writes a letter in turn to all the missionaries.

And if you had a good enough story, and someone got saved, or something happened where some life was changed, then he would take that story, and he would put it in his little letter that he sent out to all the missionaries.

And so your story got to be heard by all the missionaries. And my friend that I worked with for about a year as a missionary, he really wanted to be in that mission boss's letter that he sent out. And he used to literally sit down and write pages of anything he could think of to this mission boss in the hope that one of these stories that he sent, he really wanted to put up his hand and say, please, use me, you know.

And he was so cross, because weeks went by, and months went by, and there was none of his stories which got into that letter of the mission boss to us missionaries. And he was cross. Oh, he actually lost his temper.

He flipped it. He was screaming on stage. You just cannot believe it. He got the latest letter from the mission box, and I'm not there. And I sent him so many pages that he could have put in, you know.

And I'll never forget with this old missionary couple. And the lady, the wife of the main missionary in this one area, she looked at him and said, why do you want people to polish your marbles? Or your marble?

And he just looked at her, and he flipped again. It was quite funny. You know, when people get bitter about things, it can be funny, but it's very sad what it does in their lives. And with that thought, I'd like to go over to pray.

Father, thank you so much for thy word, and that in this word we have, it's like a light to our feet and a lamp unto our pathway. It is literally something that can show us if we're in the right way in every area of our lives.

And I just ask today as I bring this sermon that you would speak through me, and that your light would shine upon us through thy word, and that you would show us if there's an area of our life in which we are wrong and not walking right before thee, whether it's in our heart or in our deeds.

And that you'll grant us the grace to be humbled and repentant and come to thee for grace, cleansing in the blood of Jesus Christ, and to be set free from this area of our life. And I ask this in Jesus Christ's name.

Amen. I'd just like to read that again. Matthew 6, chapter 15, For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Now, in the Bible we've got a lot of examples of forgiveness.

Joseph and the Error of Conditional Forgiveness

It's almost like you could say the book of forgiveness in a sense. And one of the obvious examples is Joseph. Now, I've heard there's preachers in America, and they go around and they like to preach on the topic of forgiveness.

And one of them that I love very much, I know that he likes to talk. He talks to me and says, Roy, the story of Joseph is a story that I use very often. And it's an amazing story because he has a man who was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, eventually threw that, landed up in jail for many years, and only later he was in a position of power where he could really get his brothers back.

If he wanted to, he could have destroyed them, he could have killed them, he could have put them in jail, he could have done what he wanted as the second highest, or even in a sense, the highest authority in Egypt under the Pharaoh.

And yet he didn't. He forgave. But one of the things of this story which people like to point out, and it's a wrong idea, is that Joseph only forgave his brothers when they were kind of humble. He waited a long time to see that they were really sorry, and then he kind of came out after weeping and so on, he came out and told them, eventually, I am your brother.

And I've met a missionary in South Africa, and there are many people like this who believe with all their heart, yes, we must forgive. But we should only forgive those who have asked us for forgiveness.

We should only forgive those who are humble, because we, like God, God only forgives us when we repent. And they kind of put themselves in the position of God, and they say, and one missionary, I remember, he said that to my face, I will never forgive someone who hasn't first asked me for forgiveness.

And right now someone visited him, sorry, recently this man, he was very sickly, he had affected his health late, and he said, nothing to do with what he said to me, but he just said, Roy, the first thing I saw, when I saw this, he was a missionary, he was an old guy, he's retired now, the first thing I saw in his eyes was bitterness.

Isn't that sad? Because he believed this one lie, that we must only forgive those, he literally, one person came to him and asked him for forgiveness, and said, now I will forgive you. But you see, that's not biblical.

Christ, Stephen, and Forgiveness Under Persecution

In Luke 23 verse 34, we see Jesus Christ on the cross as a human being, not in his position as God, but as a human being, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment and cast lots.

Yes, Jesus Christ, as a human being, God the Son, and he, from his heart, forgives these people and asks God to forgive them. And here comes the second argument of carnal man. They say, but that's Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ could do that, or should do that, but you know, for us it's not really necessary, we should forgive those who ask us to forgive them, or are really humble, or at least prove themselves for 10 years, you know.

Build the church, build the church again, they burn it down, and then hold a Sunday school meeting, you could say. But in the Bible, we have another example. We have Stephen. And there's, in the death of Stephen, we have two of the most precious examples of living out the cross of Jesus Christ.

Because Stephen did two things which Jesus Christ did. We read this in Acts 7, 59 -60. It says, And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. That was the first thing Stephen did, which Jesus Christ did on the cross.

He said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. In Luke 23, 46, Jesus Christ said, Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit. And the second thing he does, we read, and he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep. In other words, he died. So there's two things which Stephen did, a mere human being like us, which Jesus Christ did. He gave over his spirit to God in death.

He trusted God with that. And number two, he literally showed his heart of forgiveness by asking God not to lay the sin to their charge. He didn't want revenge upon them. He knew they were going to face judgment one day if they didn't get saved.

He didn't want a personal revenge, that God would hurt them for what they did to him. Because he had a heart of forgiveness towards people who had not asked him for forgiveness. They were stoning him.

The Many Objects of Bitterness

And here comes the question, what can a person be bitter against? Well, to be honest, you can be bitter against anything. The Africans in Africa, they get bitter against their teeth when they saw, and they asked the dentist for the tooth back, and then they smashed the tooth up afterwards in revenge.

You know, people can get bitter against their body. I mean, there are many very good-looking guys and girls who honestly believe that their nose is very ugly, and they're bitter against that. They're very, very cross about it in their hearts.

They can't accept this. And you know, just to be honest, some people are not as good-looking as others. And I've never seen anybody that made a mirror break. But the point of the matter is, even if you are, there are people with mutilated faces.

There are people who are not that body of perfection. But you have to get to the point where, you see, bitterness is sin. And much more important than the outward is the heart. The beauty that can radiate.

There are many people with extremely beautiful bodies, and yet they have ugly hearts. But you can. Anybody can have a beautiful heart. And I'm sure that if you have a husband, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and he will love you for as you are.

Or a wife. My wife is a typical example. She's pretty. She loves me. Some people are bitter at their parents, because their parents don't have time for them, or their parents get angry with each other.

And these things, they will stand before God for these things. There are things which parents do, provoking their children, you could say, which they will stand before God one day. But that does not excuse us having bitterness in our hearts against them.

Then there's people who let you down. You know, someone might have promised you something. I'll take you for a bike ride. I'll take you out for this. I'll do that for you. And they just don't do it. And you actually, I mean, some people, honestly, they get promised that they will, for instance, as missionaries be given a lot of money for a project.

And they put months and months and months based on the fact that they're going to get this money into this project. And they work and work and work. And when the money is supposed to come, all the work, and even of their own money that they put in, suddenly the money doesn't come.

And that happens often, to missionaries and to people, and even in the secular world. People don't keep up with their promises. And Satan comes, and we are tempted not just to be angry at the beginning, but to become bitter.

You can be bitter against yourself. You know, when Mr. Finneymore, that lovely old man who died three years back, that I mentioned in some of my other sermons, when he used to do prison work, he said to me, Roy, one day I was in prison.

And I had two people who had come out, and they wanted to pray to accept Jesus Christ, and to repent of their sins. And the one prayed, and his life just changed. It was so wonderful to see, later on, his life changing, it seems.

But the other one just couldn't get through. He just looked at me with an ugly, grim face. Like Aaron. No, I'm joking. But he suddenly thought in his head, he's going to ask this person a question. He said, Brother, have you, do you believe that God can forgive you for what you've done?

He said, Yes, I can believe that God can forgive me. But then he asked a second question. Can you forgive yourself? He said, I cannot forgive myself. And then he found this person's problem. He couldn't forgive himself for what had happened in the past.

You know, many parents, for instance, divorce. And the children blame themselves often for what happened. And sometimes it's not the children's fault, and they sit there and they blame themselves. And other times they blame themselves for their parents arguing, or something happening in the workplace, or whatever.

And it is their fault. But whether it is your fault, or it isn't your fault, you have to come to the point where you get forgiveness from God, if you need it. But then you also have to forgive yourself, because unforgiveness is sin.

Generational Bitterness and the Power of Memory

And it's going to hurt you. No matter what you've done in the past. And then there's the people who are taught to be bitter. You know, in Scotland, in these places, if you read old books. It's amazing how someone used to, one family used to, one guy went over to another family, and he stole a shoe.

And generally it was a wife or something, but I mean, I'm just giving a shoe as an example. And they used to steal this thing, and then that family was cross with them, because they stole the shoe, and this family was cross with them, because they were cross, and they did stuff back to their crops and stuff, burning it or whatever.

And they had children, and they taught their children, you must be cross with that family, and I tell you, you must be very bitter and cross against them, because we stole their shoe, and they burnt our farm, and I'll tell you what more, they are terrifying people, and just their name is terrifying, therefore we should do very much bad to them.

And their children teach their children, when they have children, you know, remember grandfather, he stole his shoe, and they burnt their crop, and his children started fighting, whatever, and eventually it becomes generation, after generation, after generation, after generation, that didn't have to fight each other, that are fighting each other, because they were taught to hate, they were taught to be bitter, they were reminded of the past, something that happened 200 years back, and that's literally in Europe, you'll find many in history, many feuds, family feuds, between great barons, between little families, that literally led to the murder of people, generations down, because of something that happened hundreds of years back.

They were taught to be bitter. In South Africa, we are a typical example of this, I mean, people are so bitter about what happened when the whites were in charge of South Africa, before 1994. But what's interesting is that the people with the most bitterness were born after 1994, when that wasn't an issue.

And the reason it's an issue to them, as young people, and there's such murderers and hating of anybody who disagrees with them, is because they've been taught, they've been told, remember the past, remember the past, on television programs, in the newspaper, in the textbooks at school, remember how terrifying these people were to us, and they are very terrifying, and you should be cross with them, you know, is the basic message that comes across.

But in other countries, where the white people did as bad stuff, the black people often don't care, because they're not being told by the government, remember the past, remember the past, remember the past, so they don't think about it.

It's very important not to think about things that can cause bitterness in our heart. Now you've got husbands who've been killed by cannibals, Jim Elliot, you've got bad times and bad finances and bad health, and there's so many things we can get bitter against, because we're not content with such things as we have in every area of our life.

I remember one old preacher, I went past him in this convention, and you know I'm an absent-minded professor type person without the professor brains, and I was walking past this guy, and I suppose I didn't greet him, I couldn't remember, and in South Africa, everybody had been through the army, and my dad didn't luckily, but at one stage it was law that every young person at the age of 18 had to be in the army, and so a lot of these older guys who had been in the army, and they were used to discipline, and young people greeting them and all this stuff, which was very good, and I've got nothing against it, but you know, I walked past this guy, and he said, young man, and I said, yes sir?

He said, you didn't greet me? I was like, didn't I? Sorry. And he said, I suppose I greeted him then, whatever, and I walked past, but you know that because of that, he developed a bitterness in his heart towards me, which lasted two years, and that's a small thing, but this was not an average guy, this was one of South Africa's best preachers, and I didn't know that at the time, I was just a young whippersnapper, and I remember two years later, now I didn't know who it was that I didn't greet, I forgot about that, he remembered it for two years, and about two years later, I was going to a camp, and I was going to be the speaker at this camp, the main speaker, and he was asked, sometimes very good speakers are asked just to do the cooking, you know, they're also asked to do stuff like that too, and he was asked to come in to help with the cooking and a few little sessions and whatever, and he came in and he realized I was going to be the main speaker, and boy, that was bad, but I, from my side, I didn't know it wasn't the guy that I didn't greet, and I thought, wow, I've heard about this preacher, now that I knew about him, he's a great preacher, I'd love to get his sermon so I can give it to everyone so he can have work to do to put on the internet, you know, those type of things, and I came to this place, and as I walked in, I remember seeing him, this was a few years back, but I remember seeing him, and I thought, wow, I'm going to speak to this great preacher that God has used, you know, through the years and the past, and he, when he looked at me, he thought, what a spoiled brat, and I just walked in.

You know, that night I preached, and when I preached, he suddenly started to realize as God started to work among the youth there, God really broke through among many hearts of very broken kids and murderers and people and car thieves and you want to name it among the youth, God worked there, and he was looking and he suddenly realized, I've been bitter against someone that isn't so bad, and he started to realize that this is wrong, and the next morning at about five o 'clock when we were having our group session, he looked at me and he started to cry in front of everybody, in front of the group of senior people who were in charge of the camp, and he said, Roy, I want to admit something to you.

Two years back, I was a guy who was crushed with you because you didn't shake my hand, and I've held that against you for two whole years, and he was weeping, and he said, but today, I want to admit, when I was listening to your sermon last night, I realized that I am wrong, and he wept and he broke before God, and I was like, okay, it didn't affect me, but anyway, and suddenly someone else in the group, this other young guy, looked at him and said, but now that we're all forgiving each other, he said, I just want to admit to the old, he said to the old guy who was the preacher, he said, for two years or so, I've had bitterness against you, and I'm like, oh my, all these people, and here I am going on enjoying myself.

You know, in their case and in many people's cases, when you become bitter, now this isn't always the case, but bitterness often is something that only affects yourself. When you hold it against someone else, often it's just what's affecting you.

Bitterness as Sin and Giving Place to the Devil

Now, the end of on what can make you bitter, there's many things that can make you bitter, but sometimes that you find out people have been gossiping about you, or they've embarrassed you in front of other people, that's actually a very small thing in the light of what Christ went through on the cross and what he was willing for, and yet without sin.

He didn't become bitter against those who crucified him, yet we easily become bitter because someone in front of other people embarrass us by talking to us about our nose or about us being thin or something else.

But to God, bitterness is sin. Now, what are the consequences of being bitter? Ephesians 4, verse 26, says, Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil.

You know, that word place is jurisdiction. It means that you literally give over a part of a ground in your soul to Satan. And that's serious. When you're bitter, when you see anger, I know some missionaries that fight, and they used to fight, they used to have these little arguments, like Aaron can have arguments with Timothy sometimes.

And, but afterwards they didn't hold it against each other, they didn't let the sun go down upon their wrath. They were, it's bad, it's a bad testimony sometimes to be angry in front of people. You must be careful how easy you are to be angry in front of people because people will know you, they'll say, okay, they just like that, and they're still friends.

But other people can sometimes be turned away from you through that. But, still, in spite of us being careful, sometimes you get guys who have these little heated debates and whatever, and they get a little angry, but they don't hold it against the other person.

And I know that there are people who have been saved through such people, of course, they said of the love which they had for each other. People were drunkards and so on. But if you let the sun go, it just becomes more than anger, it's something that's in your heart that you hold against that person.

And the next day, you wouldn't like to be, let's say, in the same meeting as that person, you wouldn't like to be with that person, you don't really like that person, you wish you could get a little lesson in life, so to say, and not to actually help him because you want to get him back, you know.

Strongholds, Tormentors, and the Consequences of Unforgiveness

Then you've given place to the devil. And that can get very, very, very serious. You know, I'm going to mention an extreme case, but up in Africa when you go, or even down there, I don't know if you've ever seen a demon-possessed kid, there's different phrases before a kid gets demon-possessed, sometimes it's demon-possessed in one moment the child is demon-possessed, but sometimes they first get attacks in the night, they start screaming, their neck starts getting, they start getting strangled, and their parents don't know what to do, and it's terrifying, but sometimes the kid has got a demon inside and often that little kid has got eyes that you can look into and you can't see anything, it's just looking, there's nothing, absolutely nothing.

And that can be a sickness, but often it's demon-possession, I remember once it was so precious, looking at this demon-possessed child, we prayed for it and nothing happened, and then we started to fast and to pray for a few days, and we called other people in to pray for it, and within two days that child was radically set free, you want to see how excited those parents were, and it was absolutely wonderful.

But something that's interesting is many people go up in Africa and they see these so-called demon-possessed people and they try to, you know, like the charismats cast out the demons or whatever they want to do and nothing works.

And sometimes it's because they're doing it wrong, but ultimately many times people find it's because it doesn't help casting out a demon if the ground that is given to the demon is still given, given.

In other words, if that person still has bitterness in their life up in Africa, if that person has a lot of bitterness, that is why you can get to the point of bitterness where it looks like a demon-possessed person, that's how bad it can get.

And obviously at the beginning it's not as bad as that, but that's how bad it can get. And when you are bitter, you literally, you might not be a demon-possessed person like that, but you're giving ground to Satan in which he can work in your life.

And that's very clear from Scripture. 2 Corinthians 10 verse 4 and 5 says, The weapons of a warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bring it into captivity, every thought to the obedience of Christ.

You see, on this ground you've given to Satan, he can build strongholds. And these strongholds are thoughts which keep you, they're lies which keep you. You're bitter against your parents, therefore I don't have to honor them.

That is a lie which keeps you from obeying God. There are many things that come into your life after you become bitter. It's so much easier to be deceived. And therefore, in this deception, which you won't know about because the main point of being deceived is if you don't know you're deceived.

I mean, I've never met a person who's deceived and knows they're. The fact of the matter is these things that you don't even know in your life will be keeping you from obeying God. The lies that you believe.

And then we have tormentors. Now, some people say, they like to illustrate and say out of the towers come the tormentors. But ultimately speaking, you don't need to take scriptures and add them to each other and make strange doctrines.

The Bible does very clearly talk of tormentors for those who are bitter. Matthew 8 verse 18 verse 34 to 37. This is not talking about hell, by the way. This is as we are on earth. And it said, And his Lord was wrath and delivered him to the tormentors that he should pay all that was due unto him.

So, likewise, shall your heavenly Father do also unto you if he from your heart forgive not everyone, not just those who ask for forgiveness, his brother, their trespassers. Now, here are tormentors. Basically, what this portion of scripture is saying, if you look at the verses before this, it's a picture of God forgiving us as Christians.

We come to God, we've got this huge, massive debt, we've broken God's law, we're deserving of hell. We come to God, and humility over that, and one moment of grace, based on the finished work of Christ, he forgives us, he makes us alive, and it's wonderful, and then we go off, and someone has done a small thing to us, we think it's big, you know, he's stolen our elephant, that's big, you know.

But the point of the matter is now we think that's big enough to be bitter against. When God forgave us breaking his most precious law, we think it's big enough things that people do against us to be bitter against them, and God says, oh, look, I forgave you for this, and you can't forgive that, and I'm going to give you the to the tormentors, and in your life these things might be depression, it might be anger, it might be fear, it might be jealousy, you know.

These things which we think are right and make us feel righteous and should be are actually hurting us. Jealousy, I don't know if you've ever been jealous, I've been jealous in my life as a young kid at times, it's something that actually hurts you.

You're sitting there with this thing in your heart and you don't feel good. Fear, who's ever been helped by fear? Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but fear in your heart, these tormentors that you have in your life, they literally are the punishment of God upon us for not forgiving other people when God forgave us so much.

Bitterness That Spreads to Others

One black blind man in South Africa who was preaching, I was under his ministry once, hearing him preach, and he said, you know, one guy came up to me, there was hundreds of people in the hall and he was blind and he used Braille or something, he knew so much of the Bible of God, a wonderful preacher, and he used to sit there and he said, somebody came up to me and he said, brother, let's say his name was Peter, I can't remember his name, he said, Peter, for two years I've held this against you, this thing you did, this thing you said, and I want to tell you that no matter how bad you are, I'm forgiving you.

And you know, this blind guy just laughed, he said, well, what's that to me? For two years I couldn't see that you're bitter against me, it didn't affect me, all you've been doing for two years is you've been hurting yourself, you've been tormenting yourself, now you've become special and I forgive you.

But even though bitterness in and of itself can just torment you, and lead to other areas of your life where you're tormented and lies and where Satan can work in your life, bitterness can, it's a fact that bitterness can lead to things which affect other people, and that's very sad.

You know, Cain was bitter against his brother Abel because he brought God the work of his hands, and Abel brought in faith, he brought a substitute, a lamb or whatever, to be killed as an offering, and God accepted Abel's offering, and God rejected Cain's offering, and Cain was bitter against Abel, and Cain, that became jealousy, and jealousy became murder, and eventually his bitterness led to something that hurt other people, that hurt his brother in a very real and terrifying way.

You know, there are Christians who were once on fire for God in Africa, they used to go around preaching, and God used them for 40, 50 years, and yet they allowed one day bitterness into their life about something, and eventually bitterness so took over their life, that they were willing and wanting to destroy other preachers, and they would gossip about them, they would lie about them, they would do so many other evil things, even though for many years they were used of God, because that is what bitterness eventually led to.

It led to jealousy, it led to wanting to destroy other people, they were so blinded by Satan. You know, many children of missionaries, the parents come home from where they were wrong by other people in the mission, and I can guarantee you in the mission if you have people wronging you, I mean, that just happens, you know.

But they would come home, and instead of just the husband and wife talking to each other, you know, debriefing and praying to God about it, they would come in front of their children and they would say, hey, these other missionaries, oh, how terrifying they are, and these Christians are terrifying, and they go through the whole thing, and you know, those children weren't ready for that.

Those children, they saw the attitude of their parents, and many of those children became rebels, and then the parents would blame the mission, but they didn't realize they were the ones who came back bitter, and it affected their children.

I remember this year, it was Israel. Remember that Pretoria Zoo we went to, and within a little while our car was ransacked. I remember this year going with my wife and my wife's sister. I wanted to take my wife's sister, she had off time to have some fun, so I took her to a zoo, and it's in one of the worst, mind you, South Africa is full of bad areas, but I mean, it's one of the worst areas to be, driving with two women, so I told my wife, and just said, close your windows, but being a guy who doesn't practice what I preach always, I didn't close my window, and I was driving through the streets, and there was no parking, so I drove around the block, and eventually I came to sitting in traffic, and there was hundreds of people just walking up and down, they all looked the same too, you know, Africans, and I had my window open, this one guy just came there, this tall guy, and he put his arm through the window, and he started talking to me, and I said, get your arm out the door, because, I mean, there's a woman in the car, I can't just have a guy putting his arm through the window, he might take a knife out and kill somebody, and I couldn't, but I said, get your arm out the door, I got cross, and I'm not saying that's right, I'm just being honest, and eventually I said, get your arm out the door, and he saw my cell phone that someone had bought for me, it was a very nice cell phone, and he just grabbed the cell phone, and I grabbed his arm, and he ripped it out, and he started running, and I was cross, I was like that guy who wanted these marbles to be polished at the beginning, I got cross, man, it just poofed, and I was like, get the door open, but you know, when you cross, it will take, when you not cross, it takes about 30 seconds, or 20 seconds, or 10 seconds to open a door, but when you cross, it's like, where's the thing, and so I didn't want to lose him, so I turned around, and I saw a guy running away, and then suddenly going slowly, so obviously it's a guy who's running, and then he wanted to be part of the crowd, so I pinpointed him in the crowd, I got the door open, I ran, I tackled him into the ground, poof, and it was the wrong guy, he said, it wasn't me, it was my friend, man, I took him by the scruff of the neck, I was so crushed, and thin as I am, I dragged him around the corner, and I said, you show me my friend, and he said, I'll show you my friend, but he kept on taking me more and more into an area that was dangerous, I mean, alone, so I said, OK, I'll give you an offer, I'll pay you 30 dollars or whatever, 200 rand, if you give me that phone back, because it was a very good phone, and I couldn't afford it, I made a mistake there, because, two mistakes, number one, I told him to come back to me, and there was a police car across the road, so he obviously wouldn't come back to that, and the other thing, the other mistake I made, is I should have offered him double, because they could sell that phone for about double that price, but anyway, I never saw him again, I went back to my wife, I was very stupid to have left my wife in the car, in that area, but men do stupid things sometimes, anyway, my attitude was wrong, but something happened there, I didn't realize, I went to the zoo, now this is what happens, when you've got something that happens in your life, you might not realize that you've become a little bitter about it, because you go to the zoo and you see the animals and the monkeys and you say that one looks like Aaron and you just think it's absolutely amazing, and it's fun and you feel happy and everything, but deep in your heart something has gone wrong, and it'll pop up later, and it did, you see I was driving around, all around Joburg in that time, and at almost every corner there's a beggar, or many beggars, and they'll come to your car and they'll ask you, now it's not wrong to close your window sometimes if you're alone, because they can take a knife and kill you, but I did do something wrong, I didn't just close my window and sometimes just give them something if I could, I immediately as they'll come and I said hey, you keep away, okay, and we drove on, and I meant it from my heart, I was not allowing people near my car just like that, I'm sorry, and then something happened to me that made me break before God, you see many people, many beggars, they grow up in terrifying situations, they grow up with lying in the streets longing for a morsel of bread, they've got no friends at all, they're broken in their heart, and I remember coming to, my wife was with me, I came to a stop street or a robot, whatever you call it, and this man came and I said you don't come near me, and he didn't get cross, he just looked at me with the most broken eyes almost that I've ever seen in my life, and I suddenly realized Roy, what happened there has affected your heart, and the bible says you must love people, how can you be a missionary, how can you reach out to people if you're reacting like this, even if it is dangerous, and I still close my window sometimes, but I'll forgive, and I'll ask God to take back that ground that was lost, and he did, and I started to treat beggars like I used to before that again, but oh, you know how a little thing, even though you're happy and you're going to the zoo and all those things, how a little thing in the past can affect you and take hold of your heart and affect how you treat others to the point that you're just obeying what God says you should love people, even though you're happy at times, and so we get to the answer, what is the answer to bitterness?