2022-01-17
Proverbs 15:1 GNT
When someone disagrees with you, be tender without surrender. You will never be able to please everyone. You will always meet people who like to argue and quarrel. Some people will contradict everything you say. How should you respond to them? One of the tests of spiritual maturity is how you handle those who disagree with you. Some people have a need to demolish anyone who disagrees with them. If you challenge them or offer a comparison, complaint, or criticism, they respond with a full-blown personal attack. Then what do you do? You have three alternatives:
(1) You can retreat in fear. Many people choose this route because they haven’t developed the ability to respond in gentleness. So, if you’re a “peace at any price” person, it will have hidden costs in your life’s most important relationships.
(2) You can react in anger. Anger is often a telltale sign that you feel insecure and threatened by someone’s disapproval. It’s a warning light that tells you you’re about to lose something, often your self-esteem. When we become angry, often we become sarcastic and attack the other person’s self-worth.
(3) You can respond in gentleness. “A gentle answer quiets anger, but a harsh one stirs it up.” This is the kind of response that requires a fine balance between maintaining your right to an opinion, while equally respecting another person’s right to their opinion. It requires being tender without surrendering your convictions. Sometimes you must stand by your convictions. But other times you will find you’re answering this question: “Is our relationship more important than the point I’m trying to prove?”
Soul food: Gen 35-36; Luke 3:11-20; Ps 81; Pro 2:11-15
2022-01-16
Romans 14:1 NIV
When someone upsets or disappoints you, God expects you to be gracious toward them instead of judgmental. The Bible says, “If someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted” (Galatians 6:1 NIV). You say, “Tempted how?” Tempted to become judgmental or “holier than thou.” That’s the wrong response. “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling.”
Instead of criticizing their faults, you’re supposed to help strengthen their faith. You set yourself up for Satan’s attack in your own areas of weakness the moment you begin to pass judgment on someone else. What’s your reaction to people when they mess up their lives? Do you say, “I told you so,” or “I could see it coming,” or “It serves you right,” or “How could you be such a fool?”
Jesus didn’t do that! His reaction to the woman caught committing adultery was full of compassion and sensitivity. He defended her publicly, then restored her privately. He was gracious, not judgmental. Why should you work at not being judgmental? Because that is the way Christ treated you. “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7 NIV).
God puts up with a lot from you, right? And if He puts up with your inconsistencies and weaknesses, you can learn to put up with other people’s shortcomings. Whenever you’re tempted to judge another person, pause and remember how much God has forgiven you. The more you recognize God’s grace to you, the more gracious you will be to others.
Soul food: Judg 16:23-31; 2 Cor 12:3-11
2022-01-15
Philippians 4:5 GNT
The Greek word used for gentleness means “strength under control.” It pictures a wild stallion that has been tamed. It doesn’t mean to be weak and wimpy. The only two people in the Bible who were called gentle – Moses and Jesus – were both strong. Gentleness is restraining your reactions. It’s choosing your response to people rather than merely reacting to them. For the next few days, let’s look at what it means to be gentle.
When someone serves you, be thoughtful and not demanding. Paul writes, “Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing” (Philippians 2:4 TLB). How do you treat restaurant servers, clerks, administrative assistants, employees, bank tellers, police officers, and others who serve you? Are you rude and difficult? Are you aloof and impersonal, as if they were just “part of the machinery?” Do you realize they may have had a difficult day too, or do you think only of yourself?
The first way you develop gentleness is to try and understand the people who serve you. And the first place you should be gentle is at home. The Bible tells wives to adorn themselves with “a gentle…spirit” (1 Peter 3:4 TLB). Peter is simply saying that gentleness can be more attractive than any clothes or jewelry you choose to wear. To husbands, the Bible says, “You husbands should try to understand the wives you live with” (v. 7 PHPS). If you are normally insensitive and overbearing, you will have to work extra hard on this. The Scriptures say you must be understanding, not demanding toward the people who serve you and the people with whom you live.
Soul food: Gen 32-34; Luke 3:1-10; Ps 79; Pro 2:9-10
2022-01-14
Proverbs 10:19 NIV
The story is told of a wealthy grandfather who went to his doctor to be fitted for a unique hearing aid. The device not only allowed him to hear perfectly, it was hidden so no one could see it. When he went back for a follow-up visit, the doctor said, “Your family must be happy to know that now you can hear.” The grandfather said, “Well, I haven’t told them about my hearing aid. I just sit around and listen to their conversations – and I’ve already changed my will three times!”
The Bible says, “The prudent hold their tongues.” And this isn’t only a law of speech, it’s a law of science. The odds of putting food in your mouth grow exponentially the more times you open it. To put it another way, the potential for saying the wrong thing rises proportionately to the amount of words you say. Ever notice that the person who habitually throws in their “two cents’ worth” frequently says something that’s worth about two cents, or less? The writer of Proverbs says, “Do you see someone who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for them” (Proverbs 29:20 NIV).
A man walked into a pet shop one day, where a colorful parrot was sitting on a perch. The man looked at the bird, and in a cocky tone asked, “Hey, stupid, can you speak?” To his amazement the parrot replied, “Yes, stupid, can you fly?” Why does God say so much about offenses of the tongue? Because when you sin with your tongue, you offend Him, affect others, and hurt yourself.
Soul food: Gen 30:25-31:55; Luke 2:41-52; Ps 74:12-23; Pro 2:7-8
2022-01-13
Psalm 78:4 NIV
A legacy, good or bad, is something handed down from one person to another. I hope, over time, God has healed your hurts and you have moved on, but what are you leaving behind? The harsh words you spoke may have been based on what was happening in your life at the time, but now you see things more clearly. It’s wonderful when you move from resenting others to forgiving them – but have you left unhealed wounds?
James writes, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires” (James 1:19-20 NLT). Your words can do lasting damage, and that should concern you. Paul writes, “See…that no one falls short of the grace of God and…no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:15 NIV). Have you planted seeds that caused a root of bitterness to grow in someone’s heart?
If possible, you must make amends by seeking forgiveness and trying to set the record straight with those you have left festering over a situation you now feel differently about. It’s humbling, but you must do it because you won’t feel right toward God until you’re right with those He loves. Jesus said, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and…remember…your brother…has something against you…go and be reconciled…then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24 NIV).
Dr. Dale Turner writes: “It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them….A mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows weakness of character.”
Soul food: Gen 28:1-30:24; Luke 2:34-40; Ps 74:1-11; Pro 2:6
2022-01-12
Romans 1:21 NLT
Contemplating the amazing design of our universe, physicist and Nobel laureate, Arno Penzias, tries to explain it this way: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe…created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life. In the absence of an absurdly improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould describes humans as “a glorious accident” of evolution which needed sixty trillion contingent events. Cosmologists estimate the earth to be 4.55 billion years old. So, to accomplish those sixty trillion events would necessitate more than thirty-six essential events a day for 4.55 billion years – just to get Homo sapiens. And conveniently, each of these thirty-six new events would have to occur in the right place, at the right time, in the right sequence. And this doesn’t take into account the astronomical number of “accidents” required to form the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of individual ecosystems.
One individual put it this way: “The odds would be better of getting hit by lightning at the moment you won the Power-ball lottery while dying in the crash of a plane that got struck by a meteor.” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, a believer himself, describes exploring nature as “a way of getting a glimpse of God’s mind,” and observes, “All truth is God’s truth, and therefore God can hardly be threatened by scientific discoveries.” God is real, and when you reach for His help, you will get it.
Soul food: Gen 25:19-27:46; Luke 2:21-33; Ps 71:17-24; Pro 2:3-5
