Being hasty in our actions and conversations with others, failure to restrain from assumptions and words that we want to say, anger that flares up when we get our feelings hurt and not being on our guard spiritually can do more damage in relationships than any other thing. When our moments become moments that are all about us moments and we fail to see the real issues, we are missing out on opportunities to be Christ to others.
But, when we model the Lord’s behaviors, we become more loving, more willing to sacrifice our rights, seeing a little more of how God may be looking at the situation and we can be a great blessing to others, instead of what they may perceive us as being in a negative way. Letting go of those moments of control, judgement, haste, and pride will bring us closer to God and help us to win others.
I know that the Lord is committed to me, so I need to commit to Him. I want to have a teachable spirit and be willing to accept His correction, or discipline. Yes, God disciplines me! He disciplines you too if you belong to Him. His discipline may hurt, but it is not harsh, nor does it scar or tear down. His discipline corrects, reveals and builds us up and moves us into the direction of better actions if we choose to summit to it.
Learning how we speak to one another is not a onetime process. It is continual. We all possess the opportunities of producing a harvest with our words. But in order to produce a transforming harvest with our words we need to be ever cautious to bless, lift up, show love and build positive and loving relationships, not tear down.
That thing that causes friction, conflicts, even fights and quarrels between yourself and someone you may care about is found in James 4:1-3, it says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it…. .”
God’s Word teaches us that conflicts can come from the wrong desires that battle within our hearts as well as others and are the result of our sinful natures. Sin in us is always lurking to threaten our happiness and our fellowship with one another. The enemy uses everything and every opportunity he can to cause our focus to be misplaced, because he knows when that happens, even the smallest of things can escalate.
Once we give in to our sinful nature, God is ignored, and we take matters into our own hands. It is with great effort that we train our minds to be set on God for those moments and what He has instructed us in truth to do in those situations, otherwise truth becomes concealed as if we did not know it or worse, it becomes twisted.
Sometimes, what we think are good desires, can be escalated to reach a sinful retaliation, if our thoughts and ways are not His and we do not deal with our emotions and feelings by making the choice to put them to death in us. When something is dead, it has no voice, no feeling, no emotion, and no response.
When my daughters were little, I found myself constantly picking up and cleaning up messes that they made. There were times that I thought they would never learn to stop making messes. As they got older, and I continued training and working with them to be more aware and thoughtful about making messes, the less they made.
This is how God deals with His own children. As His children grow in His grace and knowledge from the point of their new birth, they struggle trying to do the right thing. Like small children, they make messes in their lives. Those messes can often even affect others as well. Yet, as they grow in truth, desiring to do better, they begin to make less messes and they learn how to clean up the messes that they make by responding in the right way. School yourself in God's truth and watch your messes get fewer and far between.
Hold Fast,
-Bren
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