Words

[Guest jckduboise]

Brothers and Sisters,

Let me start off by saying that I am a person who has lived a life of both being cruel and cruelty being given to me.

This is a confession of my heart.

I have been in many situations where the verbal abuse from another to me has wounded me so deeply that I wonder if I will ever heal from them. I used to take those scars and use them as a means to destroy others with my words. This has not only been in my non-believers walk but also in my believers walk. My words sought to destroy another persons day, their self-woth, self-esteem, their ability to look any body in the eye because they are too ashamed just to be human. The problem with this is that the person I was really hurting was myself because of the shame I carried afterward and I also harmed the Lord. For He made us all in His image and He loves us all the same.

So today I seek to find love in my aproach to people. Be it to praise or be it to correct. When I am witness to what may seem being cruel to another I get offended. It is like someone is commiting this act of cruelty against me. I take it personal. I feel myself wanting to protect and defend the one being offended. And I am not always perfect at it.

Something that I think many of us do is bring our own scars to the table and don't chose our words carefully.

God told us that words can destroy. And yes they can. I have been destroyed and I have destroyed. Today I chose to speak more carefull to others and bring Christ into it because that is where I believe all of us should be. But we are not all in that same place and at times it is difficult for me to accept and see. But the Lord will heal me of that as well.

So today I confess to you all that I have been guilty of causing pain, of reading more into the intent of words from others and have carried the burden of others pain as my own.

Will I stop defending the opressed? NO! But I will work on being less proud in my defense of those opressed and say what God is telling me to and keep my personal feelings out of it. Because the bottom line is that this is not about me it is about the teaching of Christ and his commandment of love. Once I become proud or arrogant in my response I take Christ out of the equation and I always want His presence. Because I desire to be a light to Him not a spot-light to myself.

[Dad Ernie]

Greetings JckDuboise,

We can ask no more than to have the heart toward Christ that you do. But I caution you to be careful about defending the oppressed. They may seem oppressed to us, but God may be dealing with them. Most often I have found that you need to get to the bottom of the barrel before you begin looking up. Only go where the Spirit directs. There are "street people" who will stand by the side of the road with a sign pleading for money. I have heard several stories now where they often make more money than a working person. It gives a bad rep to those who are truly needy. So don't go by "feelings", but by the Word of God as the Spirit directs.

Blessings,

Dad Ernie

[tah]

I certainly felt your heart in this post and can tell you with

near certainty that most here feel as you do...

There is a book called "Hurt people, hurt people."

I think we can counter that with..

"Loved people, love people."

And His Love for us is amazing...

Thank you for sharing your heart on this..

don't consider this a counter to Ernie but a compliment to it..

Because Love sometimes hurts in order to heal..

The wisom of it is all in God and what He is saying...

[Guest jckduboise]

Greetings JckDuboise,

We can ask no more than to have the heart toward Christ that you do. But I caution you to be careful about defending the oppressed. They may seem oppressed to us, but God may be dealing with them. Most often I have found that you need to get to the bottom of the barrel before you begin looking up. Only go where the Spirit directs. There are "street people" who will stand by the side of the road with a sign pleading for money. I have heard several stories now where they often make more money than a working person. It gives a bad rep to those who are truly needy. So don't go by "feelings", but by the Word of God as the Spirit directs.

Blessings,

Dad Ernie

More than likely DE you are misenturpreting my use of the word opressed. Of course if I saw abuse of someone who is say standing on the side of the road for money, I would do what I could to protect that person from being abused by that other person.

Sir my use is for those who are normal everyday people on the outside but have a softer spot in the middle (inside) and others purposely seek that person out to hurt them in some way or another with words. Words can never be taken away.

I thank you for the concern about watching what I am doing and there are times that I have been caught in the middle of something that bites me. But you know God said you never know who you are entertaining.

That is the opression I speak of. My step father opressed my sisters and myself. We were ridiculed and quieted as a means of opression to the point of being afraid to say anything or even to exist. But time did not heal these wounds and I think it is because of the ability we as human beings have to smell out the vunlarablities of others and use it to hurt them. So instead of the pain getting less it became greater because I only knew how to attract people into my life who loved to opress.

Praise God for the love He has for me and that His desire for me is to experience love and gives me so much that I have overcome a lot of the old pains.

[Guest jckduboise]

I certainly felt your heart in this post and can tell you with

near certainty that most here feel as you do...

There is a book called "Hurt people, hurt people."

I think we can counter that with..

"Loved people, love people."

And His Love for us is amazing...

Thank you for sharing your heart on this..

don't consider this a counter to Ernie but a compliment to it..

Because Love sometimes hurts in order to heal..

The wisom of it is all in God and what He is saying...

You are right and the more the Lord reveals His love for me the easier it becomes for me to love, even the detestable.

I have an ex who is very spiritualy sick and very cruel to anyone who does anything he feels goes against him. These days instead of allowing him to hurt me with words and actions I stay out of his reach and simply pray for the scars that obviously control his life. I have gotten past the place where I was even a year ago when I wished that God would literally wipe him out because of the pain he inflicted on me. That was probably one of the hardest points in my life to get to.

Today I pray for him to Live.

[50_Cent's_dog]

If only once we got saved we would have a new nature. My nature is still sinful. It is so much easier to do evil than good. I wish that it was easier to do good than evil. Where is my heart? Is my heart for God or evil? I wish that I knew.

[Candi770]

I appreciate your openness. We all should always let the Lord help us to understand our true motives behind why we do things-and allow him to change us or deal with us.

Let him deal with the root issues.

We shouldn't seek to rescue anyone-we can bring a word from the Lord, or pray but them, but our goal is to lead them to the truth- they have to receive and allow the Lord to deal with them. We aren't Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Always ask the Lord to check your motive. Our motives could hinder what the Lord is doing in others.

Stay under the refiners fire and continue to let him burn up the dross.

Blessings

[vitality22004]

One of the root issues we all have to deal with is rejection and a lot of what was described in the post has its root in rejection. I used to think that I didn't have any roots of rejection in me until one day God showed me the deep-seated anger within me that manifested in my irritability in relationships, my low self-esteem and my people-pleasing behaviour. It is but one step in this journey with Him but aren't we glad that He was rejected and despised so that the curse of rejection can be broken over our lives and yes, repentance is the way to go...God Bless

[Guest jckduboise]

If only once we got saved we would have a new nature. My nature is still sinful. It is so much easier to do evil than good. I wish that it was easier to do good than evil. Where is my heart? Is my heart for God or evil? I wish that I knew.

Let's just use Paul (aka Saul) and his letters. What was it he said? That which I know I should do I don't do and that which I shouldn't do I do.

We are flesh and blood. We are human and our flesh and humanness are two of our greatest enemies. Bottom line is God knows we will never be perfect. That is why Jesus was sent because if He hadn't it wouldn't matter what we did we would fail in being the spirits He requires of us. Especially in this day and age. Evil is so evident in just about every dark corner we see. But we can leave our sins at the foot of the cross and move beyond it. We can seek progress, we do have the ability to stay within the boundries of His commands and not be taken into any type of sinful bondage.

See the thing that I know about myself is that I am full of sinfull thoughts and actions. My heart is not good. For no one has a GOOD heart except for our Father because he is God and incapable of sin. But I am NOT evil. I am human.

Acceptance of being a human being and incapable of perfection will take us beyond the cross. It will take us into a much more intimate relationship with God. We will be raised higher and higher each and every time we hand it over to our Father. He wants us to be dependant on Him not independant of Him.

You just keep moving forward and if you stumble stand up dust off your knees and continue forward. Satan is the only being that wants you on your face and he has already lost the battle so don't give him the chance to think he has the upper hand. Claim your authority in Him and praise His name.

Today IS the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.