I face this Mob Boss all of the time. Of the hundreds of things that go right in my life, just let two things (well, okay, just one) go wrong and I'm tempted to curl up in despair. Frustration hits. Aggravation seems to want to cuff me and jail me. Yet, I have learned a thing from God that is mind-saving and heart-building. I have learned to focus on the stuff of life that's going right. He promised peace would come quickly.
Two things wear me down. People.
The people of they and then the person of me. Disappointingly I have turned out to be like them in identical ways that I was just hoping wouldn't be true. We push, pull, shove, and neglect all in one big ball of selfish, injurious, wasteful living. We get upset over how someone treats us and then turn around and treat another the very same way. Romans 2;1-5 speaks a bit about this. None of us are exempt from dishing out insult or neglect; but resent it--oh so very much--when it is dished out to us.
Two things wear me down. People.
Just this morning I had to give myself a talking-to and tell myself to sit down and stop the inner dialog of being bummed. I had to lecture me against brooding, pouting, and well...pouting that I was brooding. But, just as promised, when I shifted my thoughts away from the discouraging and upon the wonders already in my world, on my path, what God said came upon me. Peace, an unexplainable calm, rolled in as the sun peeking along a shoreline.
How shall we overcome invisible nagging discouragement? I would offer the following advice:
- Quit courting it.
- Quit taking it out for a Coke.
- Quit playing its recordings in your mind.
- Quit giving it permission to stay overnight.
Two things wear me down. People. Two things build me up. God and patient people.
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