ARE YOU WILLING TO BE THE THERMOSTAT IN YOUR HOME

What are the major stress causing sources in your home? How are you reacting to those problems? Are your reactions helping or irritating the situations?

If another family member is the cause or the root of a problem in your home, you need to remember one important fact when dealing with them! That fact is, that no matter where the problem is coming from or who is causing it, you yourself have a very important part to play. As a matter of fact your reaction to every problem will either flame the fire or play an important roll in controlling the temperature of how hot the situation gets!

Someone must be willing to be the thermostat to anger in your home. Will it be you? Are you really willing to let God use your life to reach your family....if so, you must learn the life of sacrifice....You must learn to adjust your anger and your attitude about being right in order to calm a situation.

In the summertime, in your home, when you feel the heat rising, you will go to the thermostat on the wall and adjust it to bring balance to the air in order to make it more bearable. The same principle applies in bringing balance about in a heated situation between two or more people that are disagreeing over something maybe said or done.

Instead of thinking through what you would like to say to make your point, you might try thinking about what you can say to calm the situation and bring the temperature down to where the conversation can be discussed in a more controlled order or manner. Many times you may even have to just let it go...don't "have to have" your way or prove your point. I love a verse in the Bible that says it best....I Peter 2:13..."submit yourself for the Lord's sake...." sometimes we just need to humble ourselves, not having it our way, and let God do the rest.

Once you have identified the problem and surveyed the situation, determine a plan to transform the source. For instance, if your mate is angry at you, instead of trying to defend yourself over and over, state your case once, leave the rest to God (knowing that He knows the real facts) and simply apologize for any wrongdoing on your part. I am saying for the sake of arguing, be willing to calm the situation by not flaming the fire with your efforts to prove your credibility and correctness. Remember we all see things from our own frame of reference....and point of view, not necessarily the truth or the facts, but by the truth and facts as we see them.

Try to see things from their perspective, even if they may be wrong, still try and see it their way. I am not saying see it their way and believe it the way they see it....but simply understand why or where they are coming from and then you will at least be able to see it from their standpoint. At that point as you do, your patience and understanding of them gives you credibility for them to trust you with how they are feeling and in turn lowers the temperature to a level of talk and discuss and not arguing and fighting. 

These helps are never meant to give total victory over family problems....but I will tell you this, they have helped give guidance in my own home as well as victory as I have applied what God has taught me through them. I pray that as you become more willing to be the thermostat in your home in aiding arguments that are apt to break out at any given time, you will be the broken bread in your family that will lead them to the Lord and be the visual Christ for them through your humility, brokenness and willing spirit to bring them the peace that they are seeking.

Loving you today,

Bren