"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."
Hebrews 12:15
A certain man had a problem with unsightly weeds on his lawn. He tried everything, but nothing seemed to work. One day his wife noticed that the weeds were gone. She asked him how he did it. He said, "I finally decided to do it the old-fashioned way. I pulled them up by the roots." It wasn't easy, but he knew that it was sure to work. A lawn may illustrate our lives. The weeds speak of deep-rooted issues that bother us, but they just don't seem to go away.
The root problem that we all face is sin, missing out on God's best for our lives. We can see the weeds, and even cut the weeds away, but the root problem is still there. The chief sign of a root problem becomes bitterness. Anytime our attitude toward life becomes bitter, we have a root problem that is usually not seen. We may not want to deal with it, but it just will not go away. We can cut away the symptoms to hide the problem, and even pretend that everything is okay, but the root of bitterness is still there.
When we fall short, which is another way of describing the way we miss God's best for us in life, there is only one way to deal with the problem to resolve it. That is the grace of God. As we become honest to God in our prayer, we confess our sins and trust His grace to be sufficient for our every need. Grace is the undeserved favor of God. Faith receives His amazing grace. His grace and favor becomes a daily experience, after we deal with the root problem.
Father, deliver us from the bitter root.
