Pray before I speak..

Some  of you know … I have a very close hand on bitterness, pride, unforgiveness..  Unfortunately, I want to just push these emotions away, but when I do it pushes the person they are hooked into away too.. I can’t have that.  

  My biggest piece of the puzzle I keep asking is how can someone be so blind?  

How can someone not see how much Jesus loves us? That’s when I have to have a humble moment and remember times I was lost and in the dark and I didn’t want to face the dark hole I created around myself. 

But the thing is when you have a relationship with Jesus, you can’t wait to talk about him. It’s like when you are first in love, you just have such giddiness to you when that person’s name is mentioned, and it’s like that with Jesus too.  But like with all marriages, the giddiness isn’t always present and some days you just go through the motions. 

Church is like a date night with your spouse. 

It rejuvenates your soul. It forces you to stop what you are doing and just be present with God. Date night does that too.. It forces us to only think about our spouse and just be present with them.  There are times when date night comes with excuses. Just like we do with church.. It will cost money.. Can our child be alone? What about our routine? And you know all the excuses that can be found when it comes to getting up to go to church..

But when we actually push those excuses aside and go.. do we ever come back home and say wow, that sucked?

But back to bitterness.  I learned that when I am on fire for God and just spouting off scriptures to this person who is trapped down by despair that they are just bouncing off them. I can’t get angry with them for not hearing.. that approach doesn’t work with everyone. I learned that just because I’m telling someone scripture doesn’t mean I’m doing God’s work.  I needed to pray before I dove in.

Everyone’s approach to spirituality is different. 

Learning that one.. whoo… hard for me.  It’s not easy to pray before we speak but boy when we take the time, there is no regret no time wasted on thinking  should have’s. Praying before we speak is another attempt at putting our needs aside and always putting the other person first.

When you are speaking to a person drowned in their own self- pity it’s like preparing yourself for an encounter with a pit-bull tied to a metal link chain. ( I chose pit bulls because they are scary to me on a chain  you can insert your own scary thing :)

You see it laying there in the dried up dirt and you walk up slowly.  Always careful not to set them off.. You get closer and start speaking Jesus’ word, and the dog starts barking violently.  That dog sees you as a threat.  You start saying Jesus loves you … there’s hope you don’t have to be on this chain forever. The dog starts getting so angry you tremble for a minute thinking it’s gonna break loose off that chain. You want to run away. Why should you have to get bit when you are just trying to do something to help? But Jesus sent u there for a reason.. sent you there to love this dog.. So you put your arms up in attempt to show the dog you bring no harm.. It continues to bark but doesn’t pull forward on the chain as much.  Should you go in for kill, or run away and think you’ve done enough?

Brace yourself. You gotta go in for the hug. So you kneel down and put your arms out and wrap them around the dog. The dog stops barking. It can feel that someone loves them. Someone cares.  The rest is up to God. Trust God to use you to help this dog feel safe off the leash, out in the new world. But this situation probably wouldn’t play out like that unless you spent time with Jesus.. hearing how you should approach it..

That is just like dealing with this relationship of bitterness for me. I have to remember to act in love with that person.  To keep my arms open and to never stop loving. Also remember patients. For I may not get an answer right away.  It’s scary and there have been times I have been bit because of my approach, but when I pray before I speak, if  I get bitten I won’t be looking at the scar in regret, I’ll be looking at it as a sacrifice to share God’s love with someone.  Which is exactly what we are to do! Have an awesome weekend!