“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.” Ps.100:4
Can you imagine the above verse saying, “Enter His gates with anger and bitterness, and His courts with yelling and thoughts of hatred”? Not. Our Lord beckons us to communicate with Him in positive attitudes and words of affirmation in return for His faithful fellowship with each of us.
So then just where are we in our relationship with Him when we try to enter His fellowship with bitterness, angst, deception? ...Definitely outside His fellowship, as we pain His heart.
Equally, can you imagine how it pains God’s heart to see how His kids talk and treat one another so much of the time? Facts are, we are made in God’s image, and when we communicate unkind words and actions to others, we pain God’s heart and hearts close towards one another.
Whether this be our friend, our child, our spouse, our sister/brother/parent/relative or some obscure jerk at the check out stand…not only is each of us held accountable to God for our responses, but we live out the consequences of our communications here and now. For when we are angst towards another soul, and self-justifiably act out our animosity towards this individual, we experience hearts closing. And the situation usually gets worse, not better. ~~So why do so many of us choose to treat our fellow sojourners in this manner? Can’t you just hear God calling out to us something like this: “Yogh, you there! How about using some basic people skills? I know that (_______) is a jerk in your eyes right now, but you are responsible for your own thoughts, words and behaviors, dear one. And what you’re scheming right now is only going to make matters worse.”
Last week we had an unfortunate encounter with an airline agent… (Ohhh, how my flesh would love to tell you the name of this wretch and the name of her airline, but I will refrain…cause God'll SMACK me big time!) Anyway, this woman self-righteously stood on her “policy podium” and proceeded to treat our daughter and me like dirt. ~~Oh, I was mad as a hornet!! Thank God my Shaun walked up right then. He took one look at my face, kissed me on the cheek and told me that it would be best that I leave and let him handle this. (Praise God for my man, or I think I would have strangled this woman given another minute or so.)
After I left, I got to thinking about what made me so angry? What I found was that it was not this new ambiguous airline policy that had me so upset, but it was the spiteful manner and words of the policy enforcer. If this woman had merely shown some sort of compassion of any kind, some basic people skills, we could have avoided all heart ache and worked productively towards a solution.
But there, as I was bemoaning this woman and feeling justified in doing so, God spoke quietly to my heart: “Bets, where are you doing this exact same thing? How are you treating the precious people I’ve placed in your path? Strangers? Friends? Family? Kids? Spouse? ~~~ Oh, ouch Lord. He then prompted me take a hard look at my life right now and ask myself if my ‘communication outcomes’ are ones of blessing or ones of strife?
~~~How about you? Praise God if we are experiencing blessings from our communications! But if we are receiving consequences of strife, it’s time to own up and make some changes. (Living in strife is not abundant life.)
God bless you!
Shaun and Betsy
