There's a Crack in Your Armor Perry Stone

makes the heart sick.” The Hebrew word for “deferred” means, “to delay, to prolong or to draw something out for a long time.” As an example, when a person is taken hostage in a foreign nation, that person may spend months in a prison cell, not reading a paper, seeing the news, or hearing a report that indicates the world’s news media are reporting his or her plight. Without the hope of a negotiation, the longer the captivity, the more the sense of hope is delayed, and the soul becomes sick. The common Old Testament Hebrew word for “sick” is chalah . The root word can mean, “to rub worn.” 2 Thus the continuing pressures of life begin to wear down the mind, body, and spirit of a person to a level of total tiredness and weakness. It reminds me of how raindrops continually dropping on a section of asphalt can eventually wear a dent or small hole in the black tar substance, or how small grains of sand blasted against granite with compressed air can actually carve letters into the hard rock. A small tree can reach for the sunlight through a crack in concrete when it’s as small as a weed, but in years to come the roots underneath the cement will cause the hard concrete surface to buckle from a root force underground, hidden from the natural eyes. For a season we may hide our own roots of bitterness and other spiritual hindrances deep in our spirit, but eventually any planted root will produce some form of fruit—and in this case, bitterness breeds rebellion. We know this because in Proverbs 17:11 the Hebrew word for “rebellion” is meriy and figuratively means, “bitterness.” 3 Marah , which is Hebrew for “rebel,” means, “to make bitter.” 4 Thus a rebellious person is rooted in some form of bitterness,