I may not be gentle by nature, but I can be gentle by obedience. If – and only if – I equip myself with predetermined biblical procedures that I can rely on when I start to feel the great unglued coming on.
You can’t fake yourself into being okay with what happened. But you can decide that the one who hurt you doesn’t get to decide what you do with your memories. Your life can be a graceful combination of beautiful and painful.
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”1.
But weeping with them and rejoicing with them does not mean trying to take control of their out-of-control choices and behaviors. We can forgive them. But we cannot control them. And we should not enable them.
I have to trust that first comes the dust, and then comes the making of something even better with us. God isn’t ever going to forsake you, but He will go to great lengths to remake you. What if disappointment is really the exact appointment your soul needs to radically encounter God?
Forgiveness releases to the Lord your need for them to be punished or corrected, giving it to the only One who can do this with right measures of justice and mercy.
I only needed to bring my willingness to forgive, not the fullness of all my restored feelings.
As soon as sin was their choice, the cover of darkness was their preference.
My broken perspective is not proof of His broken promises.
My counselor says, “Adults inform, children explain.” I will state my boundaries with compassion and clarity. But I will not negotiate excuses or navigate exceptions with lengthy explanations that wear me down emotionally.
Walk confidently in the fact that our all-sufficient God did not make you insufficient or broken.
Healthy relationships don’t feel threatening. Loving relationships don’t feel cruel. Secure relationships don’t feel as if everything could implode if you dared to draw a boundary.
What we look for is what we will see, what we see determines our perspective, and our perspective determines our reality.
God calls us to obey Him. God does not call us to obey every wish and whim of other people. God calls us to love other people. God does not call us to demand that they love us back and meet every need we have.
A hurtful statement can be called a mistake. But a repeated pattern of hurtful statements or uncaring attitudes or even unjust expectations is much more than a mistake. These patterns are misuses of the purposes of a relationship. Why is this so crucial to understand? Because unchecked misuse of a relationship can quickly turn into abuse in a relationship.
But we can’t enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can’t tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can’t pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it’s really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.
The devil turns powerless when our minds turn to our all-powerful God.
People laughed at Jesus. People rejected Jesus. People misunderstood Jesus. We know this in theory, but as I sat on that rock that day, I suddenly realized what an everyday reality this was for Him. And because this was a reality for Him, He is the perfect one to turn to when rejection is a reality for us.
We must respect ourselves enough to break the pattern of placing unrealistic expectations on others. After all, people will not respect us more than we respect ourselves. No, it’s not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can’t ever possibly meet.
If we are living honest lives that honor God, we must not forget that people not liking our boundary does not mean we aren’t living right before God. We mustn’t let unhealthy people control us or have too much access to our hearts so that their negative opinion shakes us. God’s is the only opinion that matters!
God, I don’t understand this situation. But I do understand Your goodness to me. I thank You for the protection that is part of this rejection even when I can’t see it. I trust You.