Bitterness
The second consequence of bitterness is found in verses 4-5 of Jonah chapter number four:
“Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.”
This consequence is that bitterness causes you to develop a singular focus on your enemy to the neglect of your own need. Imagine the city of Nineveh has repented and God has accepted, but Jonah, filled with his own sense of justice, goes out of the city, sits on the side of a hill and says, “I am going to sit here until God comes to his senses and kills these people!” I imagine that God may have had more things for Jonah to do, yet he was so focused on his enemy that he could not see anything else.
Bitterness causes you to be spiritually blind. I remember during those dark days of my life, asking people who knew this other person, how that other person was doing, but only to find out if God had started the judgment yet. I inwardly longed to hear bad things were happening to them. It is amazing as I have met and dealt with others that are in the gall of bitterness just how singularly focused they are. Their whole life seems to pivot on a singular event or relationship. Often the other party is oblivious to this and lives a normal life, while these pine away in sorrow. Someone once said that bitterness is a pill you swallow hoping someone else will die.
Yet, it is you who will suffer, ignoring all the good things of your life, laboring under the false pretense that if God did judge them that it would somehow vindicate you and make you feel better. You have succumbed to a lie.
