Who Are You Really Hurting
Proverbs 17:9 Amplified Bible (AMP)
9 He who covers and forgives an offense seeks love, but
he who repeats or harps on a matter separates even close friends.
Psalm 7:15 New Living Translation (NLT)
15 They
dig a deep pit to trap others, then fall into it
themselves.
One of my dear
friends helped me to understand the message of these two scriptures within a
story that they relayed to me recently. The
story was they were working in an environment where they were left unprotected
by those in charge; they had hired someone that had self-serving motives and
was unkind to their staff. When they gained an opportunity to speak to this
individual’s boss, whom they had known longer and who had been a valued
individual in their life, they were so frustrated with the situation they told
him, how upset they were and then told him, that because they felt that way
that they did they would not renew any of certifications for the position they
held. As she told me her story one of
first things she said after her tale, was, “I was stupid, who did I hurt but
myself?” I heard recently that someone
said that they would not pick up the phone and call someone that has been in their
life for quite sometime, for various reasons, even though they had been a
valued person in their life. They qualified
a phone call as having to chase people; why would anyone feel they are chasing
someone they love if they know them and understand the dynamics of their life
and they know the person loves them, genuinely.
Every time I hear things like this, I shake my
head and a place in my heart breaks, because every time an individual loses
true focus and a grasp on what is needed for their own well fair or well-being,
we will make decisions that are detrimental to relationships and in reference
to what we will and will not do. We will
dig ditches (pits), thinking that we are hurting others and the result are
quite the opposite, we are the ones who end up, falling into the trap that intend
for others or we receive negative results because of the things we have said
and done in our time of anger, frustration or misunderstanding that causes us
to end up as my grandmother would say on the short end of the stick. Hezekiah Walker wrote a song “I Need You to Survive”
often times we don’t know who is praying for us, or is on our side, because we
do not properly discern the situation or the individual and we let our emotions
and imaginations and even our baggage run away with us. Our Bishop says quite often how he is nice to
everyone because he does not know who God may use to bless him. I am a psychology major and last week we
studying something called automatic thought, it is when we are trained to
automatically think of something in a situation that produces feelings that
cause us to react or have behaviors that may be counter-productive to positivity
or good things. Often it is these
automatic thoughts that cause us to think that we should take things in to our
hands and pay people back for what we think is occurring, and this because the
thing that causes issues that we are destined to live with the consequences of
for a long time.
Before you think that you will do something to
pay someone back, or bring someone down in some way, stop and look, not just at
the feelings of today, but the history of the relationship, and how the
decisions you are making out of emotion will ultimately affect who you are,
where you are going and who you are to become.
Be sure that you understand that when we act out of a lack of wisdom
that we will reap the foolishness in our own lives and that we will reap the consequences
of our actions. Understand that when we
become God there is no room for the real God to move, and he does not like
anyone doing things and acting out of spite and anger that leads to sin. Think before you act, or before you dig your
next pit!
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