When people are in pain, when people suffer in life, and get hurt by others, often they hold resentment and anger and their heart becomes bitter. When our heart becomes bitter, it opens the door for evil spirits to enter, and to cause sickness and diseases.
I prayed for one young man, and he was deeply bitter against his father. He was angry. He was resentful; and he let it go down into his heart. So his life was bitter. He could not appreciate or enjoy the good things, because he had such bitterness in his heart. The result was, a spirit of infirmity came into him; and it began to steal his health. He developed pain in all his joints, his back began to stiffen, and his life gradually came under threat that he would be paralysed. The bitterness in his heart had opened a doorway for evil spirits.
Whenever people are involved in idolatry, or there’s bitterness in the heart, demonic spirits will enter. I have also found wherever there’s idolatry, people serve under those idols, serve under the demons, their lives become bitter. Idols do not offer us any solution. Rather, they make our life harsher. So these people were made very, very, bitter.
God heard their cries, and He sent Moses to them. Moses is a picture of Jesus Christ. A prophetic picture of a deliverer. Moses delivered the people of God out of Egypt. God sent plagues on the Egyptians. Each plague was an attack against the gods they worshipped. The last plague of all, the people of God shed the blood of a lamb; they put the blood on the doors of their house, and a destroyer went through the nation, and everywhere the blood had been applied, the people were spared.
This is a great prophetic picture, that one day Jesus Christ would shed His blood on the cross, would die and give up His life on a cross, that every person who would believe that Jesus shedding His blood was enough to break the power of sin. Every person who by faith receive Christ, the blood Jesus shed would break the power of the devil, break the power of sin, and set them free. So, there came a great day, when the people of Israel left Egypt. They were saved! The Egyptians had been destroyed; and the people of God journeyed full of hope. But God didn’t want to just save them. He wanted to bring them into a place of great blessing; but in order to go into that place of blessing, God needed to change them.
I want you to look with me in Exodus 15; and we’ll read from verse 22. “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” Verse 27 – “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.”
So when we give our life to Jesus Christ, and we begin to follow Christ, not everything is easy. There are often challenges on the way. God is leading us in a journey to blessing; but He wants to change you. He wants to free you of bitterness in your heart. So God saw all of these people come out of Egypt; and they were rejoicing and celebrating; but God knew they still had a slave mentality. They still thought like slaves. They still fought like a victim. So God wanted to change them. He wanted to free them from slave thinking. He wanted them to become sons and children, and enter in an inheritance; but in order to enter their inheritance, they needed to change.
God has many things planned for you; but you need to grow. You need to let God work in your life. Sometimes there are hindrances in our hearts, hindrances in our life. Sometimes there are bondages in our life. We had them before we were saved; and after we got saved, God says: I want to change you. I want to free you. I want you to experience the kingdom of heaven now. So how am I going to do that?