Unconfessed Bitterness

Bonswa from Haiti! Today God turned what seemed like an ordinary day into an incredibly spiritual night. 

When we first arrived to our guest house in Haiti we learned that two Canadian pilots would be staying with us as well. Little did we know they would change our outlooks as well as our lives for ever. 

Today we arrived back at the guest house after spending the past three days at a church retreat in the beautiful Haitian mountains. We spent the day planning, resting, and debriefing the trip this far. After dinner Rick, one of the pilots, approached us after dinner and asked if we could have a small worship service tonight...  in all honesty what happened tonight can't be put into words. After singing three songs Rick stopped us and  said that he felt the Holy spirit leading him to speak to us about a certain topic, he also said that the Lord was telling him more than one person in the group would benefit from the topic.

Rick spoke to us about forgiveness, but more specifically the forgiveness of unconfessed bitterness and resentment for our parents. As he revealed to us the topic of his talk my mouth dropped... normally I do a great job of shutting off thoughts and focusing on one particular thing, I'm in Haiti serving others therefore I was solely focusing on that and nothing else; however, literally minutes before worship began I had a strange feeling come over me, I started thinking about my family and the different obstacles we are facing and have faced and like any normal human the feelings of bitterness and frustration began to build. As the talk began one by one everyone in the group opened up and shared their story, it was truly amazing to see how everyone's story related. 

God is a very mighty, powerful, creative, and all knowing father, he created each and every one of us in this guest house for this very moment. We all now share a bond and will forever carry a piece of each other with us in our hearts. Though we may never see each other again on this Earth we have created an eternal family. Tonight many hearts were broken and then repaired by the Lord himself. We let go of a lot of negative feelings that for some of us have been growing for years. Tonight was an awesome experience that none of us will soon forget. I would like to ask for those of you reading this blog to say a small prayer of thanksgiving and encouragement over us as a team. Confessing and releasing bitter feelings is only one part of the process, we now have to abstain from falling back into our old ways of resentment and anger. We've already given it to God but now we have to leave it there and move on. 

"May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you." - Psalm 33:22

-April Kirby