The Christian Digest
Presents
MAKING THINGS RIGHT
Excerpts from the book by Paul Faulkner
(Dallas, Texas: Word Books, 1993)
How are you going to make things right in this old world of ubiquitous ambivalence? (Those big words just basically mean the world's a mixed-up place.) There's good, there's bad, there are all kinds of problems in life. It doesn't come to you straight--it comes all mixed up. You have to straighten it out for yourself. But how? Where do you start?
ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
If you want to make wrong things right, if you want to set the world straight, if you want to get your act together, you have to get your attitude right. Get your heart right. Everything you are and do is a product of your attitude about life.
All of God's creatures lug around an atmosphere, wherever they go. When a little black-and-white bundle of fuzz called a skunk is around, he's in full charge of the atmosphere--both his and yours. The skunk has no choice. But if your attitude stinks and is fouling up the atmosphere for those around you, it's because you choose to stink. When your attitudes go wrong, you can choose to make them right.
Your disposition sets you apart, in one way or another--a positive way or a negative way. Do people stay away from you as they would a skunk? Or are people attracted to you as they are to a single bright star in the night? "Do all things without murmurings and disputings; that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world" (Philippians 2:14,15).
Right attitudes are the foundation stones of successful living. All that you are and do today is the sum total of your thoughts and attitudes of yesterday. You will travel the path tomorrow which your heart and mind blaze today. The thoughts, images and perceptions cast upon the screens of your mind become the blueprints you will use to build your future.
The Bible says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7). It adds, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23).
Do you hear what the Bible is saying to you? Peter looked at Simon the magician and said, "You've got heart problems" (Acts 8:21). Jesus looked at the people of Jerusalem and said, "Their hearts are far from Me" (Matthew 15:8). Heart problems can mess up your life.
Karl Menninger, a celebrated psychiatrist, said, "Attitudes are more important than facts (appearances)!" But we humans have always had a tendency to judge a person by his outward appearance (facts). This happened when Samuel saw Eliab and thought God would surely anoint him king. Eliab was good-looking, tall, seemingly a fine man. But God said: "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1Samuel 16:7).
You can always spot folks with bad attitudes. They swell up like a toad when they don't get their way. They're always grumpy and out of sorts. Read this out loud to yourself: "Murmur, murmur, murmur." Sounds just like what it means, doesn't it? God said the Israelites were murmuring and complaining. Can't you just hear them? Or there's the boy murmuring as he walks through the garage into the yard after you have told him to mow the grass. Can't you hear him? As I was growing up, my mother would sometimes tell me, "Paul, you just have a bad attitude!" And you have probably heard the response loud and clear: "I do not!" I gave myself away with that answer.
I heard about one fellow who said to his complaining friend, "Did you wake up grumpy this morning?"
And the friend replied, "No, I just let her sleep!" He couldn't see his own grumpy attitude, but he could sure see it in someone else. And that's typical, isn't it?
If you get right with God, and your heart's right with Him, you don't have to worry about having a problem with other people; it will take care of itself.
Is your heart right with God? If so, you are likely right with your family, friends and coworkers, too. If your attitudes rebel against God, you're likely "out of sync" with those around you as well. It's a direct parallel.
PREDISPOSITION
Do you ever decide before you even meet a person that you're not going to like him? Do you ever make up your mind before you go somewhere: "I'm not going to like it"? Or before you go to the company picnic, do you think, "It will be boring"? The fact is you usually find exactly what you expect to find. Your predispositions determine beforehand the way you will see things.
Consider the perceptions of two neighbors: The first husband wakes up in the morning and looks at his wife. Her hair is in rollers. Her face is covered with cold cream. There's a rip in her robe. The guy thinks: "Man, what on earth am I doing married to this?"
The fellow next door wakes up in the morning, looks at his wife and sees the same things. Her hair is in rollers. Her face is covered with cold cream. There's a rip in her robe. But he thinks: "Isn't she a doll? She jumps up in the morning, fixes breakfast and gets the kids off to school before she takes care of herself! What a wonderful wife!"
What made the difference? Attitude! Psychological tests reveal that our responses toward others are determined more by our attitudes than by what others actually do. It's all in how we look at things.
For example, a child spills a glass of milk. Mama is in a good mood, so she says, "Oh, dear, the milk is spilled. I'll make a dam with this napkin. You run get a towel, and we'll clean it up." When her disposition is cheerful, the mother addresses the issue, which is the milk, not the child.
Two weeks later, the same child spills some milk and the same mom points her finger at the horror-struck child and shouts, "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times not to set your milk so close to the edge of the table! (and then there is the usual question) Haven't I? Haven't I?" The mother makes what the child does the issue, not the milk. Do you remember being at the end of one of those pointing fingers? You don't know whether to shake, cry, or just roll over and play dead.
How do you treat someone when they mess up? Do you put them down with a barb like, "I've told you a thousand times, haven't I?" Do you kick them while they're down? Or do you gently pick them up, dust them off and get them going again? It all depends on whether you are predisposed to find the negative or the positive in life and people. You'll find what you're looking for every time.
Negative attitudes toward people and things distort our mental capacity to see things as they really are. So, we respond foolishly or irrationally to the bogus notions our minds invent about people and events.
TURNING THINGS AROUND
Here's the key to a changed attitude about life: Not only can we change our attitudes, we can change them in any set of circumstances. Think about the thief on the cross, for instance. He was nailed to a cross, in excruciating pain. It was a horrible circumstance, to say the least. He had apparently been railing away at Jesus; then he had a change of heart, a change of mind. He changed his attitude from bad to good in the midst of the most horrible circumstances. You can change your attitude, your mind-set, your heart, in any set of circumstances.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote this truth in poetry:
One ship sails east and another west
While the selfsame breezes blow.
'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale
That bids them where they go.
As the winds of the air are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life.
'Tis the set of the soul that decides our goal
And not the storm and the strife.
The Apostle Paul said it this way: "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" (Philippians 4:11). And that was a mouthful for a guy who was beaten, put in prison, stoned, shipwrecked and chased out of town after town. Yet, do you find it difficult to be content even in the lap of luxury? Attitude, that's the difference.
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
Things are going to go wrong in your life. That's the way life is. It's a series of mishaps and problems that you must solve. It's like a mouse trying to run a maze. There's a place to go in and a place to come out, but there are a lot of dead-ends and walls to overcome in between. When you hit a wall, you just have to change your attitude, your heart and your action to make them right. If you don't change your direction, you just keep butting your head against the wall, because the wall won't budge.
It's up to you to change your life. It's up to you to make things right when things go wrong. And God has given you the power to do it. "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13).
WILL TO, WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT
Robert was physically handicapped. He was confined to a wheelchair because his muscle movements could not be controlled. Robert's speech was so slurred that he was difficult to understand. You're probably thinking: "Poor guy. What a miserable life!" But wait!
Robert was a student in the university where I taught. And what a delightful person he was. He was a favorite among the students because his attitude was so wonderful. He had his "willer" in control and was living a full and exciting life.
Robert couldn't write, so he would carry carbon paper with him to class and ask the student next to him to put the carbon paper under his own paper as he took notes. If that student took good notes, Robert had good notes. If not, Robert had poor notes, too.
He couldn't pull himself forward in his wheelchair, so if no one was around to push him, Robert just turned around and pushed himself backward with his feet, looking over his shoulder to see where he was going.
One day Robert came too close to the edge of some stairs in the administration building. Robert, wheelchair, books and all went tumbling and crashing down the stairs. The wheelchair rolled off down the hall, and Robert ended up sprawled out on the floor but relatively unhurt. Several concerned students rushed over to help him. From his rather undignified position, Robert looked up at his rescuers, laughed out loud and said, "Let me teach you how to dance!"
Robert was a Christian and he wanted to preach and share the message of Christ with others. One Sunday he spoke to a large crowd of over a thousand Christians in church. He sat in his wheelchair on the podium with his Bible in his lap. He struggled hard to speak plainly and to not let his arms wave about. Very few people in that audience understood all of Robert's actual words that day, but not one person missed the message of the love of God he communicated. There wasn't a dry eye in the place when he finished. And everyone went away trying to remember what their own flimsy excuses were that kept them from sharing God's love with others. How legitimate it would have been for Robert to make the same excuse Moses made: "Lord, I just don't speak well enough!" But he didn't.
The last time I heard about Robert he had gone overseas with a group of missionaries. He had them put posters on the sides of his wheelchair and park him on a busy downtown street corner. There he sat all day every day handing out tracts to passers-by about the Lord that was so important to him. He truly had the mind of Christ. And he had, indeed, become the dynamic preacher he so wanted and willed himself to be.
See, folks, Robert had learned to be content in his seemingly impossible circumstances. He was making the most of what he had and not worrying about what he didn't have. He had mastered his circumstances with his good attitude, instead of allowing his circumstances to master him.
LIVING RIGHT IN AN ALL-WRONG WORLD
What's needed is an inner attitude, an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the circumstances which life may send your way, with God's help you can triumph in your troubles, if not over them. To triumph in your troubles is really the only victory you need, "for great is your reward in Heaven" (Matthew 5:12).
In the first century, the Apostle Paul demonstrated this principle. Here's what he wrote to his brethren in the city of Philippi: "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" (Philippians 4:11). And Paul had been in some miserable circumstances. On one occasion he was falsely accused, beaten and thrown into prison, where he was shackled hand and foot. He was put in the inner prison (which we'd call the maximum security cell). But at midnight, of all things, Paul was singing. And he wasn't wailing the words to "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" either. He was singing praises to God (see Acts 16:25)! What a fantastic attitude in such dire circumstances. But if your heart is right with God, circumstances just don't count. Now, that may not sound very revolutionary the first time you hear it, but the idea grows on you. It suggests a truth that everyone has to wrestle with sooner or later: Until you're able to be happy in every situation, you can't really be happy in any situation.
No matter how hard you try to convince yourself to the contrary, your happiness and satisfaction in life are not determined by your actual circumstances but by your attitude.
HOW DO YOU CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDES?
How can you learn to be content in any situation? How can you achieve this significant goal in life?
Believe You Can
The answer is simple: Believe you can. Some psychologists would say that you can find happiness and contentment in life through your own human resources. They view each person as a self-sufficient being who can manufacture his own do-it-yourself kit to achieve whatever he believes. But I question that philosophy. I know many self-sufficient folks who see no need for an enabling power above or beyond their own. Yet, I know very few who have learned to be content "whatever the circumstances!" God has made it clear that whatever we accomplish is not by our own power, "but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty" (Zechariah 4:6).
How did Paul learn to be content in any set of circumstances? Did he learn it through his own human self-sufficiency? No way! Rather, he said, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.... I can do all things through Him (Christ) who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:11-13).
What exactly did Paul mean by this stunning claim? Was he actually saying that with Christ's help he could do anything? Some folks take it that way, but does that fit the context of what Paul said? I don't think Paul is claiming to be some sort of superman who can pray for Christ's help and then leap buildings in a single bound or catch bullets in his teeth. He is simply saying what any committed Christian can say: "In Christ's strength I can be content in whatever circumstances life may choose to hurl at me. His Spirit will help me do anything God wants me to do."
Role Models
Another good role model to follow in learning contentment is the prophet Habakkuk, who could say:
"Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls; yet, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior" (Habakkuk 3:17-18).
These are certainly not the words of a man who allows negative circumstances in life to spoil his personal happiness.
One Christian who found great strength in the Lord, despite much personal suffering, was Edith Reuss, a young wife and mother who died of lupus at age 34. Before her death she wrote:
"Joy is knowing that even our crosses in life can be used by God for His glory and our good. We are too finite to see the overall picture, but we can trustingly thank Him even for the pain, because we have the assurance that though He doesn't deliberately cause us pain, He is still there and in control. Joy is this reassurance, but it is also more. Joy is a deep, soul-realizing knowledge that whatever our situation, God is hanging in there with us. He rejoices when we rejoice; He cries when we cry. He allows us our free will, even though He knows we will hurt ourselves by it, just because He loves us so much. He is always there. Emmanuel, God with us. As far as I know, this is the ultimate joy. It is something that death and depression, doubt and lupus flares cannot weaken. Is there even more joy than this? I wonder and thrill at the possibilities."
Contentment, even in the face of death. It is the art of looking at what you have left, rather than what you've lost. It's looking at the donut and not the hole. It's seeing a glass of water as half full, not half empty. It's accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative from your life.
It's a thought worth repeating: The way to change your attitude is to believe through Christ that you can.
GRAB YOUR WANTER BY YOUR WILLER
Once you believe you can change your attitude and learn to be content in any set of circumstances, then you must decide you will change. The fact is, you can will to change. You can grab your "wanter" by your "willer" and turn your life around! You can will to, whether you want to or not.
Abraham Lincoln once observed that, "People are about as happy as they choose to be!" And that's about right, isn't it? Even among non-religious folks there are some who are happier than others. Why? It's because they have come to grips with life in a more responsible manner than others. Their lives are under control because they have their wanters in submission to their willers.
Comparison Kills Contentment
Contentment largely depends on your ability to be satisfied with what you have and not worry about what everybody else has. Life is filled with this type of thing. You probably have a friend who makes more money than you do. He lives in a larger house and drives a finer car than you (even though you're obviously smarter and more talented than he is). How you handle the difference depends on your attitude. If you're always comparing yourself and your situation to others, you'll always be discontent. You'll spend all your time at a personal pity party that will destroy your happiness and contentment. But you can choose to rejoice in the good fortune of others, and you will spend your life rejoicing and happy "whatever the circumstances."
Change Your Way of Thinking
Now that you believe you can change, and you've decided you will change, you'll most likely have to change the way you think. Fundamentally, our challenge is to learn how Christ thought and then make His thoughts our own. The Bible says it this way: "Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2Corinthians 10:5).
"You can change motivation and improve performance by changing the way you ... think," says David McClelland after a 25-year research study conducted at Harvard University.
Reframing--A Way to Change
One way to change your thinking is to reframe the way you perceive the circumstances that surround you until you can think of them in their most positive and favorable light. An artist can take an ordinary-looking picture and, by putting a decorative color-coordinated frame around it, completely transform the picture. You look at the reframed picture and think, "My, I didn't really see that picture's beauty until it was framed!" That's the gift of an artist. He has learned to display his handiwork in its most attractive form. Life can be reframed, too! Reframe the things around you until you can see them in their best light.
Biblical Reframing
The Book of James urges us to reframe our thinking this way: "Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations!" That seems illogical. Why should we be happy about hard times? "Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting (lacking) nothing" (James 1:2-4).
And 2Corinthians 4:7-9 emphasizes it again: "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed."
But what if something horrible, a real catastrophe, happens to you? Can you reframe catastrophe? A friend of mine was mugged and shot in the face.
When I saw her a while back, and the conversation fell into a discussion of this past incident. I said, "You must really resent that guy!"
Surprisingly, she answered, "No, I had to work through those feelings!" Then she grinned, pointed to her chin and said, "Say, have you seen my new dimple?"
If a catastrophe like that happened to you, could you handle it as well? Many would allow such an incident to rob them of happiness and contentment for the rest of their lives. But my friend shows that it doesn't have to be that way. You can reframe your thinking and find the dimple in the disaster.
The Say-Yes Face
President Thomas Jefferson was once riding horseback with some companions, and they came to a swollen stream. A foot traveler was there by the stream, waiting to ask someone on horseback to give him a ride across the rushing water. The President responded to the man's request. He pulled the man up on his horse and later set him down on the opposite bank.
"Tell me," asked one of the men, "why did you ask the President to help you across?"
The man answered, "I didn't know he was the President. All I know is that on some faces is written the answer `no' and on some is written the answer `yes'! He had a `yes' face!" What you put in your heart will reflect in your attitudes and actions. If you have the mind of Christ, the yes attitude of Christ will show on your face and in your actions. Be more thoughtful than necessary, kinder than necessary, more compassionate and sympathetic than necessary. Keep practicing it and doing it, and people will begin to see that attitude written on your face.
USE IT OR LOSE IT
If you put your arm in a sling and keep it inactive, soon it becomes limp and useless. The fish in Mammoth Cave are blind because they do not use their eyes. Stop acting in faith, and faith dies. Stop hoping, and hope dies. Use it or lose it; that's the message.
When I speak with appreciation of my wife and children, my attitude of appreciation toward them increases. When I go out of my way to do something that puts the interest of someone else above my own, my attitude of goodwill toward that person grows. When I express my love for God through my actions, the attitude of love for God blooms.--So exercise the qualities you want to acquire, with God's help, and you'll soon find yourself actually becoming like that.
ACT BETTER THAN YOU FEEL
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you always felt like doing what you ought to do?
"Honey, the yard needs mowing, and you need to clean up after the dog!"
"Oh, good," you say. "That's exactly what I want to do!"
"Sweetheart, the clothes need to be ironed, and the bathroom needs cleaning!"
And you say, "Great! How did you know that's what I've been waiting to do?"
If life worked like that, you wouldn't have nearly so many problems. But life has its uncanny way of hurling you into situations where you must act better than you feel. Following your feelings often leaves important things undone. And it's so easy for feelings to misfire, lash out and cause devastating results. But there's good news: You can make things right when they've gone wrong by acting better than you feel.
JUST DO IT!
Do you like slick okra?--You know, the slimy, boiled kind. Well, me neither when I was growing up, but there is a way you can learn to eat that slick green stuff and like it. You have to say to yourself, "Eating boiled okra is beneficial to my health, and I'm going to keep on eating it and acting as if I like it until I do like it, even if it kills me!"
The attitude to want to like it plus the action to seal the commitment will work six times out of ten (nine times out of ten, if you don't give up too soon). You have to just do it. You have to act better than you feel about it.
FAKE IT 'TIL YOU MAKE IT
You may be thinking: "Faulkner, acting better than you feel is hypocrisy!" But you are a hypocrite only when you deceive others into thinking you are what you never intend to become, like an insurance salesman who goes to church to make sales rather than to become a better Christian. In contrast, acting out a part on the stage of life because you honestly desire to adopt the noble qualities of that character springs from genuine motives, not hypocrisy.
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous use a motto to encourage each other to succeed: "Fake it 'til you make it!" You can be sure these people are not using the term "fake" in a phony or hypocritical sense. Their intent is to make it. Their intent is to fake the feeling that they don't want a drink, one day at a time. "Acting as if" they are recovered alcoholics, they cast themselves in the direction of sobriety, until they really make it.
Hypothesis, Not Hypocrisy
The hypothesis is, "If you will keep acting as if you like to do what you do not want to do, the time will come when you will like and want to do it!"
O. H. Mowrer said: "It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of acting!"
I also like the way William James put it: "You don't sing because you are happy, you are happy because you sing."
Waitin' for the Urge?
The odds are overwhelming that you will never do what you ought to do if you wait for the urge to strike.
Let me level with you. If I had waited for the urge this morning, I would not have gotten out of bed at 6 A.M. to write these lines. By nature and temperament, I'm a night person. Mornings are not my thing. I throw one leg out of bed, and if it survives, I throw out the other leg. Then an arm. But when I finally get all my parts assembled in a standing position and the blood circulating, I feel downright cocky and proud. I don't feel like getting up early, but I feel good once I've done it.
Ernest Newman, an English music critic, said: "The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job at hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration!"
ACT AS IF--THE CHANGE AGENT
By changing your actions, you can actually change your attitudes and the way you think. One psychologist observed: "Behavior causes attitudes. There is now sufficient evidence to suggest that ... one of the most effective ways to change hearts and minds of men is to change their behavior!"
"Acting as if" allows you to transcend and transform your own nature--to do what's unnatural until it becomes natural.
THERE IS A PRICE FOR FEELING BETTER
Jesus sealed His commitment to us and paid the price on the cross. Where do we get the idea that God put us on Earth to indulge our feelings? He promises us a cross, not cushions, and scars, not medals. He makes it clear that if we are not willing to nail ourselves to the cross again and again and act better than we feel--willing to pay the price for the privilege of following Him--He would rather that we not follow Him at all. He has never admired the lukewarm attitude (see Revelation 3:16).
The Power of Commitment
Charles Garfield and his associates at the University of California School of Medicine interviewed 500 high achievers. They concluded: "The single most powerful predictor of success in the long run is commitment--a passion to pursue well-defined goals."
Arie Kieve, a psychiatrist, has written, "Observing the lives of people who have mastered adversity, I have repeatedly noted that they have established goals and, irrespective of obstacles, sought with all their effort to achieve them. From the moment they fixed an objective in their minds and decided to concentrate all their energies on a specific goal, they began to surmount the most difficult odds."
DON'T GIVE UP
When Thomas Carlyle had finished writing his history of the French Revolution, he took the manuscript to a neighbor, John Stuart Mill, for proofreading. A few days later, Mill came to Carlyle's house with disastrous news. His maid had used the manuscript to start a fire in the fireplace.
Carlyle raged like a madman for several days. For two full years he had poured his whole being into that manuscript. Now, it was gone. Two years of his life were reduced to ashes. In view of that tragic blunder, Carlyle thought he could never again give himself to the difficult discipline of writing.
One day Carlyle stood looking out his second story window over the rooftops near his home. Across the way he saw a stone mason slowly and patiently rebuilding a collapsed wall, putting one stone upon another, until finally the new wall took form. For the first time Carlyle accepted the unfortunate mistake of his past and began to rewrite his book. Diligently, one page at a time, one day at a time, he wrote and finished what was probably his finest work.
To make things right when they go wrong in your life, you must rebuild by carefully replacing one stone of your life upon another, one day at a time.
COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE PAST
Perhaps you've observed that some people have stumbled and failed times without number. Yet, they are able to come to grips with the past and move ahead with the living of today with greater zest and vigor than ever before. How do they do it? How can you do it?
You would do well to talk to yourself about the past. You need to say: "Self, the past is gone. There is nothing you can do to change it. So why waste your strength wrestling with the past when you need all your power to grapple with the vital issues of today!"
In the closing scene of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero says of Alonzo: "Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that's gone!" Vivien Larrimore gives similar advice in her poem, Keys.
I've shut the door on yesterday
Its sorrow and mistakes:
And now I throw the key away
To seek another room
And furnish it with hope and smiles
And every springtime bloom.
I've shut the door on yesterday
And thrown the key away.
Tomorrow holds no fears for me,
Since I have found today.
It's foolish to cling to unresolved problems and difficulties from the past and to bring the burdens and worries about the future into today's schedule. Our shoulders are just not broad or strong enough to carry the loads of more than one day, and only then by the grace of God.
ONE DAY AT A TIME
The members of Alcoholics Anonymous have a slogan that says: "I can make it, one day at a time!" And that's the only way they do make it. Don't tell an alcoholic to not take a drink for the next nine months. It's too much of an overload. He will break under the impossible thought. But if you encourage him not to take a drink today--just today--that's a possibility! "I can make it, one day at a time."
God's power comes as you yield your will to His will one day at a time. "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24).
Jesus makes it clear: "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). Why? If you take your eyes off the things God wants you to do today to look over your shoulder at the headache of your past, it makes you unfit for kingdom service today.
As hard as we may try, we can live only one day at a time, and that day is always today. Yesterday is past, irrevocably and irretrievably gone. We cannot walk back into it or lay any new claim upon it. And the future belongs to us no more than the past. We may prepare and plan for the future, but we will never be able to live in it. For when it arrives, it becomes the now of today. Live today!
RESENTMENT DEFINED
Do you know the origin of the word resentment? It comes from the Latin word resento, which essentially means to re-feel. Someone may hurt you deeply. Temporarily, you may shove that tragic experience into your subconscious. But then something happens to conjure up that painful memory. And you re-feel the full agony and hurt of it. You may even externalize those feelings by lashing out in anger at someone else.
Married couples are often specialists in resentment. They probe around in the garbage dump searching for old, sharp bones of contention from the past they can use as weapons to wound one another. They delight in deliberately lashing one another with old mistakes and probing old sores. It's tragic, isn't it? All that resentment and hurt! And there's not one positive thing to be gained by it.
When you were a kid, did your mom or grandma have a slop bucket? You know, it sat over in some out-of-sight corner in the old kitchen where the smell couldn't be detected too easily. Sometimes it even had a lid. And every few minutes when she was cooking, Grandma would throw something in there that she didn't want to keep--trimmings off the meat, potato peels, spoiled milk and all the rest of the leftover food garbage. I think "slop" was a good name for it.
Then about every two or three days someone would have to take that bucket full of slop and go pour it into the pig's trough. Sometimes that old pig would get so excited about eating he couldn't wait for them to finish pouring, and he'd stick his head under the pouring slop. Well, I've found out that folks carry their own personal slop buckets around with them. Especially married folks do. But these are emotional slop buckets. We fill them up with all our leftover feelings and emotions from spats and quarrels. We throw in the trimmings from old conflicts and disagreements. We just collect all sorts of emotional slop from our past.
Then, every so often, when our emotions are running high over some current problem, we grab up our slop buckets and empty them on the heads of our husband, wife, kids or friends. We pour out all the slop from our past and muck up the present with it. It's disgusting! We're far more expert at resenting and begrudging than we are at forgiving.
Christ Took the Initiative
Well, let's face it. It's going to take a deep conviction to inspire you to impale yourself on a cross to forgive someone who hates you. Only a compelling love for the One who loved you and gave Himself up for you could provide you with the necessary incentive.
The Christian concept is this: When people mistreat you, and feelings of resentment arise within you, don't express resentment toward them. Take the initiative by forgiving them in the same way that Christ forgave you. Let them see in your actions the Christ who is eager to forgive every person.
Take the Initiative in Forgiving
Take the initiative. Forgive the one who has wronged you unjustly, whether that person requests your forgiveness or not. This is why resentment is so much harder to resolve than guilt. Not to forgive in advance of someone's request for forgiveness tends to harden our hearts, it keeps the door closed on the relationship and gives us a reason to continue to harbor hate. It's really rationalized hate.
When someone wronged me in the past, my following that formula did nothing to remove my feelings of resentment toward them. In fact, my resentment increased because of their stubborn refusal to request my forgiveness. Instead of soothing my conscience, playing the game of "I will forgive you if you will ask me to forgive you" only served up more trouble. What about all those Scriptures that insist I love others and return good treatment for wrong? Shall I just ignore them and continue to resent the person who wronged me?
It's tough to forgive because it's so costly. If you've wronged me, it means that I must bear the suffering you've caused me, in order to bless you with my forgiveness. The person who takes the initiative to forgive pays a tremendous price. For instance, suppose someone has slandered you and ruined your reputation. You must be willing to bear the loss of your good reputation in order to "Forgive as freely as the Lord has forgiven you!" That's tough. But with God's help, it's possible. After all, look at the reputation Christ gave up for you.
HOW DO WE OVERCOME?
How do we overcome the problem of resentment? What is the solution? I dare say you know the Biblical answers to that question already. No doubt, these phrases flash back: "Love your enemies!" "Do good to those who hate you!" "Overcome evil with good!" "Do not return evil for evil ... ; but on the contrary, bless!" Understanding these Scriptures isn't our problem, is it? The thing that trips us up are those tough decisions required to translate these beautiful ideas into our daily behavior.
Be Vulnerable
To cut the line to resentment, you must choose to become vulnerable to hurt. When you respond to hate with love, to resentment with forgiveness and to cursing with blessing, you will expose yourself to cruel and abusive treatment from a few people, but it's worth it! If you never risk, you will never know love.
Learn to accept rejection. It's a fact of life. It's the folks in this life who use rejection as a stepping stone to higher ground that succeed.
Forgive
Next, you must choose to forgive the person who has wronged you. You must cut the line and "forget what lies behind!" When Paul said, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before," he is not suggesting a literal forgetting of the past but rather the development of a right attitude toward it. It is true that we can never forget the cruel and abusive treatment that we have received from others. But we can forget to nurture those feelings of resentment caused by such treatment.
It's similar to looking at an old cut on your body that has become a tough, permanent scar. When the cut was fresh, it festered and was painful. Now that the cut has become a scar, you've forgotten the pain. In fact, you seldom think of it at all. But you can still see the scar. Similarly, it is possible to forget the hurt of past resentments.
Jesus summed it up this way: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.... Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:27-31).
Easy? Nope. Possible? Yep. "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).
How Do You Get Rid of the Pain?
Well, unfortunately, you may have to live with some of it for the rest of your life. But, thank God, you can learn to use that pain to bless other people who have experienced similar tragedies.
You're not alone in your pain, you know. There are a lot of people who have been right where you are. A lot of other people have been abused. A lot of people have had misfortunes. Those people need you to minister to them.
You can reframe the pain into a strength. You can use your thorn in the flesh as a source of power or turn your disaster into a dimple.
By laying your hurts and abuses of the past next to the current hurts and abuses of someone else, you can help draw the festering out of their situation and help them move on to healing. They need you and your reframed pain to help them see the picture as it really is.
It's like the university professor who told me recently how he shared the sudden loss of his son with a policeman whose son had killed himself. He said, "It allowed both of us to find some resolution and peace in the problem of a missing son!"
So, use your pain. It is a gift from God with which to minister to His other hurting children.
Love Lets the Past Die
You simply must learn to reframe life's rejections and abuses into stepping stones to power.
In his book, Love Within Limits, Lewis B. Smedes writes this beautiful and inspiring summary:
"Love lets the past die. It moves people to a new beginning without settling the past. Love does not have to clear up all past misunderstandings. The details of the past become irrelevant; only its new beginning matters. Accounts may go unsettled; differences remain unsolved; ledgers stay unbalanced. Conflicts between people's memories of how things happened are not cleared up; the past stays muddled. Only the future matters. Love's power does not make fussy historians. Love prefers to tuck the loose ends of past rights and wrongs in the bosom of forgiveness--and pushes us into a new start."
SERVE OTHERS
Karl Menninger, the founder of the famed psychiatric clinic in Kansas that bears his name, was once asked, "What would you do if you thought you were going crazy?"
He replied, "I'd go out and find someone less fortunate to serve!" Life just seems to make a lot more sense when you're helping someone who has more problems than you do. And it's somehow reassuring to be the one helping another person up, rather than being helped up yourself. For instance, when you pass a man sitting on the sidewalk who has no legs and you put a dollar in his cup and take a pencil, you walk away thinking, "My life's not so bad after all!"
It's your perspective on yourself and on others. You see, good relations come from serving one another. When you serve others, you serve yourself, too. You have to just get out there and serve.
CHARITY BY STEALTH
Charity by stealth is doing something good for someone else without letting them know who did it.
For example, there was this little guy named Billy. And it seemed that everything went wrong for him, especially at school. He just wasn't very good at many things. You know the kind, he was always the last kid chosen for any team. Nobody wanted Billy. He was a born loser, it seemed. The teacher noticed the problem and wondered what she could do to help.
One day the teacher was walking home from school, and Billy pulled up beside her on his bicycle and began to pedal at the same slow, steady pace that the teacher was walking. She noticed that, even at that slow pace, the bike wasn't tipping, wobbling or anything. So, to test it further, the teacher just started walking even slower. Sure enough, Billy just slowed down, too, and his bike stayed steady and upright. No matter how slowly she walked, he stayed right with her. "That's amazing," she thought.
The next day during recess period the teacher said, "Hey, kids, we're going to do something different today. We're going to have a slow bike riding contest!" And who do you suppose won? And who do you suppose "made little Billy's day"? It was the teacher with a charity-by-stealth spirit.
GO FIRST, EVEN WHEN IT'S NOT FAIR
It's not always easy to take the initiative or to do charity by stealth, especially when someone has taken advantage of you or treated you unfairly. But it's still the best idea in the long run.
Watchman Nee tells the story about a Chinese Christian who owned a rice paddy right next to one owned by a communist man. In order to irrigate his rice paddy, the Christian pumped water out of a nearby canal by using one of those leg-operated water pumps that make the user appear to be seated and riding on a bicycle. And every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his field, the communist would come out and remove some boards that kept the water in the Christian's field and let all the water flow down into his own field. That way, he didn't have to pump water.
Well, this process continued day after day. Finally, the Christian said, "Lord, if this keeps up, I'm going to lose all my rice and maybe even my field. I've got a family to care for. What can I do?"
In answer to his request, the Lord put a thought in his head. So, the next morning he arose much earlier, in the predawn hours of darkness, and started pumping water into the field of his communist neighbor. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. In a few weeks both fields of rice were doing well, and the communist was converted.
There are two ways to handle a situation like this one. One way is to become angry, chew the guy out and take measures into your own spiteful hands. The other way is to become a servant. You just keep on loving and serving until, finally, you gain a hearing for the Gospel of God. It's how to take wrong things and make them right.
Oh, I know, it's easy to talk about being a servant or to write about it in a book like this. What's tough is getting out there and working until your legs ache, pumping water into the field of a lousy communist who's doing you wrong. But the joy of it is discovering when at last you have finished pumping that you haven't been serving a lousy communist at all but a brother in Christ. And the rice in his field that you watered, he will now gladly share with you.
Sometimes you just have to go first anyway, even though it's not your turn and it seems unfair. Just bite the bullet and do it. The end result will be worth it when a relationship that's gone wrong is made right again.
Listen Louder
Some people listen louder than others. I like that way of saying it. It may not be proper grammar, but it makes the point that attentive and sensitive listening is hard work. It takes concentrated energy and control. The ears of servants are fine-tuned to sense the vibrations of need in the tones and emotions of the speaker. They pay close attention and look for opportunities to draw you out and help you express what's on your heart.
That's one of the differences between men and women. Women are really wired! They have little emotional wires sticking out from them in all directions. They are wired for sound and two-way communication. They talk and receive. They hook into another person's line and listen loudly to that person's emotions and needs.
We men are hardly wired at all. We have two little wires sticking out, and often they're both bent. Our speakers are usually hooked up, but our receivers are dead. So, we have to work a lot harder to listen loud than the women do. We're just wired differently.
Servants are good listeners. They are listening for opportunities. They are listening for hurts to heal and joys to share. Learn to be a loud listener, and you'll be amazed at what will happen to you.
DOIN' WHAT COMES NATURALLY?
If you want to grow, change and move in the direction of love, there is only one person in a relationship whom you can reasonably expect to change. You know who that is, don't you? The only person I can change is me. Thus, if my relationships are to change, I must be the one to initiate the change.
There's a myth going around called naturalism. The myth assumes that "doing what comes naturally" is the authentic thing. It's the real stuff. And if you have to change or make adjustments, then it isn't natural or real. Hogwash! Many marriages suffer from this myth. In their book Vitalizing Intimacy in Marriage, Pat and Robert Travis say, "Many couples feel guilty when they find they have to work on their relationships. It is as if they perceive working on their marriage as meaning that they are not successful or that they do not `naturally' love each other."
This myth grows out of statements like, "And they lived happily ever after," as if you naturally find a one-and-only and all else just flows beautifully like a stream to the sea. Ridiculous. Pardon my grammar, folks, but there ain't nothin' that simple in this life. Most good things in life require hard work to accomplish. You have to do your homework to learn math and English. You have to work hard to learn how to ride a bike, swim or play tennis. The "good life" requires growing, learning, unlearning and relearning. Life is a colon, not a period. There's more to come.
RISKS AND THRILLS
Life is risky business. In fact, you can't get out of it alive. But you can't sit around with your hands folded in your lap trying to avoid the consequences of taking a risk either.
It's like the trapeze artists in the circus. They swing back and forth hanging on to the trapeze bar. But if that's all they do, there's no thrill for the audience. It's that split second when the artist lets go of the bar and is "flying through the air with the greatest of ease" that makes the audience stand up and cheer. It's the letting go, taking the risk that the other trapeze will arrive at just the right moment, that gives life excitement.
Sure, the danger of falling is always there. But the guy who clings to the trapeze bar and never lets go cannot know the exhilaration of the guy who releases himself to take the risk. He may live longer, but he won't live better.