Bitterness

Last night I dreamed that I was driving a food truck. This is a pretty common dream for me because it combines calling with real life experience. I used to be a truck driver and I drove food trucks and oil trucks, both come with symbolic significance. But in this dream I pulled up to the dock and there was nowhere open to unload. I was stuck and I was trying to find someone who worked there that could help me make my delivery.

When I found someone and a spot opened up, the man asked what I was delivering. I told him they had ordered a 55 gallon drum of sulfuric acid. Then I looked at the truck and it was buried all the way in the back. I needed help and I needed the right place to get it off of the truck. But that dock wouldn’t accept it because it belonged in another department. So I went around the building to another department, I got stuck and ran into the building. The people there didn’t want the delivery either, it belonged in a department around back. But I was stuck there and they started complaining about generic people, like drug dealers on the news and that sort of thing. They were very upset. I found a way to back out of that place and try to go, now I had directions. It wasn’t going to be easy to get there, but I knew the path.

When I woke up I looked up sulfuric acid to try and find out its significance and I found it very quickly. It’s also known as ‘oil of vitriol’ and that unlocks the whole thing. This dream is about my own person issues. Before bed I was praying to break strongholds. You don’t know me, but I’ve come a long way with the Lord. But coming a long way doesn’t mean stop going or growing. I’m not going to camp out here because it’s better than where I came from, I’m going to where God has called me. So I was praying to be more like Jesus and break the wrong thinking that I can’t see in my own life.

Vitriol is that tough stronghold that I couldn’t see but the Lord has shown me. It means cruel and bitter criticism. I was raised in an atmosphere where everyone was polite but instead of yelling or hitting or other methods of confronting problems, we confronted issues with vitriol. I just learned that this morning the depth of understanding will come as I begin walking differently. But I can tell you that my mind, my self talk and sometimes my words go from loving and happy, to extremely hurtful in no time.

This is a great dream because God has shown me the root of many issues in my life. This deep vitriol causes me to turn inward and say things in my mind like I’m worthless or I have no value or I want to die. I know these to be lies Biblically and I have come a long way. I can address these evil thoughts and get better. But knowing the root can help me stop having the thoughts altogether as I address the thoughts by knowing when I was taught these lies and how they got there. This is an issue with my parenting and relationships too. I can’t imagine how many people I have upset as I switched into this. It was my only defense, but I don’t need a defense because I stand free from accusations. When the accuser comes I am already found not guilty by the blood of Jesus, so now I need to learn to pick up my cross and stop making my own defense.

That’s a pretty huge deal for me and I hope it helps some of you if you were raised around a great deal of criticism. But now let’s get into the Bible and see if we can find Jesus in there. Today’s reading is out of the book of Judges. Each of the Judges shows something about Jesus, His meekness, His strength, the give and take of the relationship between God and man… But I want to talk about Samson’s parents. It starts with a woman who can’t have children, that’s a recurring theme through the Bible because it prophesies of a woman who literally could not have children, a virgin. Isaiah actually says the virgin will give birth but a barren woman also gives birth to Samson, Isaac, Joseph, John and Samuel off the top of my head. If I searched that out I think there are a lot more.

Next it says that a ‘man of God’, ‘angel of God’ and ‘God’ came to see them. Through chapter 13 the Bible describes this almost as if it were a visit from the trinity. Whoever this is, he announces that they will have a son and he will be a Nazirite and what that means for him. Now a Nazirite doesn’t mean someone from Nazareth but it does sound similar enough that people get it confused. I think that play on words is also prophetic, there are many little word game riddles in prophecy all through the Bible and I suspect this is one of them because it would point to Jesus.

When they make the ‘man’ some food, the food and the man all blazed up in a fire and shot up towards heaven. Then they suddenly decided this was God. It’s funny what it takes for us to recognize Him sometimes. I remember when Jesus met Moses and Elijah, there were a lot of people standing around who heard the audible voice of God. But they didn’t even recognize it, they thought it was thunder. Same thing here, they didn’t just know this was God until they saw the crazy fire thing happen.

Samson’s dad had the same problem so many people have, he didn’t understand God at all. He really thought God was going to kill him for seeing his face. But God always wanted to walk with us face to face, He spoke with Moses face to face, He invited all Israel to speak to Him face to face, and He just keeps trying to get people to come closer. Samson’s mom respectfully says, stop being dumb, God came to tell us something and didn’t kill us. I think this is also a great prophecy of Jesus.

“If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and grain offering from our hands, nor shown us all these things or now told us this.” If God had wanted to harm people, He wouldn’t have set up a system of offerings, He wouldn’t have given the law, He wouldn’t have spent all of this effort showing people things about Himself and He wouldn’t have revealed Himself in coming to the earth. Jesus is the offering, and He is the revelation of who God is, not a God that wants to kill everyone, but God is love and He came that we might have life abundantly.

I hope you can see Jesus in this verse. And I hope that if you were raised with a level of vitriol in your heart, that you would see it and the stronghold over your life and mine could be broken today! May we be loving like God and treat the people around us like they are worth dying for, because God thought they were and He thought you were that valuable too! Today’s reading was Judges 3- 15, I hope you will jump in and read along. May all your thought align with God’s thoughts and may God bless all y’all.