There was no way I could ever be truly happy until I dealt with those things. Dave could not deal with them; I had to. I was placing responsibility on Dave to make up for pain he had not caused. I was literally trying to punish him for the unfair abuse that someone else had perpetrated.
Over time, I noticed that no matter had badly I acted, Dave remained happy. It irritated me but also served as an example. I eventually became very hungry for the peace and joy I saw in his life, which were not dependent on any of his circumstances. In other words, he never made me responsible for his joy. If he had been dependent on me to make him happy, he would have never enjoyed life, because I gave him no reason to rejoice.
Are you perhaps trying to make someone else responsible for things that only you can do anything about? Are you blaming people for your problems when Satan is actually your true enemy? Let us take responsibility and stop expecting people to do for us what we should, in reality, be doing for ourselves or trusting God to do.
If I give someone some of my time by doing a favor for him or her and then expect to receive the same thing in return, I am setting myself up for disappointment. He or she may not know of my expectation. When people don’t know what we are expecting from them, it is unfair to become angry when they don’t meet our requirements.
The Bible says when we give a gift, we are to expect nothing in return from people. It is God who returns to us what He wants us to have according to our investment and heart attitude (see Matthew 6:1-4).
We often think people should be able to read our minds when we should be willing to clearly communicate what we expect from them. If I have a certain expectation for return of a favor I am willing to grant, I should say in the beginning, “I will be glad to do this-or-that for you, and then would you be willing to do thus-and-so for me?”
I can say to Dave, “Well, I expected you to stay home tonight.” But if I did not communicate my desire to him ahead of time, it is not fair later to blame him for something he did not even know I wanted. I agree that some people should frequently be more thoughtful than they are, but we should also be willing to ask for what we want and humble ourselves by being quick to forgive those who do not fulfill our wishes.
If you truly want to have peaceful relationships, examine yourself and ask God to show you if you have expectations for people that you should not have.
We all have times when perhaps we have worked really hard or endured a difficult trial and need some special blessing to balance things out. I have learned over the years to ask God to give me encouragement when I need it. True, He frequently uses a person to do so, but I put my expectations in Him as my source, and not on people.
I ask God to provide encouragement when I feel that I have reached a place in life where I need something special to happen. I spent many years getting angry with people when I had times like this because I looked to them to make me feel better. It never produced anything but strife and offense. People are not our source, God is.
Go to God, and if He wants to use people to bless you, He will; if not, trust that whatever He chooses is what is best for you at the present time. Even if God should choose not to give the encouragement immediately, you can trust that His timing is perfect in your life.
ACCEPT WHAT OTHERS HAVE TO OFFER
We expect people to give us what we would give them. We also expect people to love us the way we would love them, but this produces disappointment—and quite often, even more serious problems. We need to appreciate what other people are willing to do for us and receive their offerings with thankfulness.
One of the ways I show love is through communication. I say uplifting things to people or spend time talking with them. My husband, on the other hand, is not a big talker. I have often wanted him to sit and talk for long periods of time, but he says what he wants to say and then prefers to be quiet. I will often go over and over the same thing, talking about it in different ways; Dave hates to do that. I have expected Dave to talk to me in the way I want him to, but he is not able to comply. It would be unnatural for him. Dave and I do talk and have good conversations, but I like to analyze things and people while he absolutely loathes doing that.
Another way I show love is to buy people things, so naturally I would like it if Dave bought me more gifts. He will let me buy whatever I want that we can afford, and he will buy me anything I ask him for, but he is not the type to go out shopping and bring surprises home to me on a regular basis. He is more logical, and his logic says, “Why should I spend all day shopping for a gift for you when you will probably take it back and exchange it anyway? Why not just let you go get what you want to start with?” I, of course, like most women, would like him to spend the day shopping for me just to know he did it.
One of the major ways Dave does show love for me is by protecting me. That is very important to him. He feels he is my covering and should make sure I am safe. For years, some of the things he did while trying to protect me irritated me immensely.
For example, Dave might tell me to make sure I bend my knees when I pick something up off the floor. He does that so I don’t injure my back as I have in the past. I, however, don’t want to be told how to bend over, so it has irritated me. When I get out of the car, he reminds me to watch for traffic. He is making sure I don’t get hurt, but I have felt as though he thought I was dumb and couldn’t cross the street without his advice. (I am sure you can see that my main problem was that I just plain did not want to be told what to do.)
After several years of his protectiveness becoming a bone of contention between us, I read an article explaining that not everyone shows love in the same way, and it set me free. I now realize that Dave is showing me love in his way, and I received it wrong because it was not my way.
One of our daughters had a similar experience with her husband. She is very affectionate, like most women, and would like lots of pretty words, hugs, kisses, flowers, and candy. Her husband is not like that at all, so for years she felt that he was not showing her love. She even shared publicly in one of our conferences that she was very unhappy for a long time because of how she viewed her situation. She read the same article I did and realized that he did indeed love her very much. He showed his love by being a good provider, by taking care of things around the house, making sure the walk was shoveled during snow or ice so she didn’t get hurt, and other things like that.
This does not mean that women have to settle for having no affection, but it does mean that women are different from men, they approach life differently, and we cannot expect our spouses to give us what we would give them.
Men are providers and protectors; God has designed them that way, and it only causes trouble when wives constantly try to make their husbands be something they are not. Should men show affection? Absolutely! But most of them will never demonstrate their affection as women do. Of course, there are men who are very affectionate and some women who are not, but I am making my statements based on what most women experience.
I am sure my husband would like it if I enjoyed sports with him, simply because it is something that really gives him pleasure. But I don’t like playing or watching sports very much, and he has accepted that. I don’t think he feels that I don’t show him love because I don’t watch football or play golf every week. I do play golf occasionally, and I do listen when he shares about sports he enjoys, but my enthusiasm level is certainly not what his is. He knows I love him, and he accepts me the way I am.
Being accepted by those we love is very important because we all want to receive acceptance. But are we giving it to others? Remember, according to God’s Word, we should esteem others as a prize—just the way they are—especially if we want to enjoy peace in our relationships with them.
I believe a humble attitude and a willingness to accept what demonstrations of love others offer to us may really help a lot of people, as it did me. Realize how your family and friends show love for you, and stop concentrating on how they don’t. Be positive and not nega
tive.
DON’T GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT
We’ve already studied in previous chapters how stress causes a great deal of diseases. We know that the symptoms are real, but how many bottles of medicine are sold to combat emotional disorders when the root cause is actually a lack of peace in an individual’s life?
I wonder how many cases of stress and depression are the result of strife between relationships in the home or on the job. We treat the symptoms of stress, but we often ignore the sin of pride as the underlying cause of our lost peace. Our general health is much better when we live in peace. Humility, always esteeming others as higher than ourselves, will keep us full of peace and free from grieving the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 4 teaches us that we grieve the Spirit of God (“offend or vex or sadden Him”) when we are not getting along with each other—when we lack harmony and unity. Paul exhorted us to let go of all bitterness, wrath, passion, rage, bad temper, anger, animosity, quarreling, clamor, contention, slander, evil speaking, abusive or blasphemous language, malice, spite, ill will or “baseness of any kind” (see vv. 30-31). If we are living in those conditions, no wonder the Holy Spirit is grieved! Yet many homes are filled with these demonstrations of strife every day.
But it is quite plain; in essence, the Word says we are to stay in peace at all times. The power of peace binds us together. The presence of the Holy Spirit produces peace, and Paul encouraged us to “be eager and strive earnestly to guard and keep” it (Ephesians 4:3).
The thought of grieving the Holy Spirit makes me very sad. I am willing to humble myself and resist strife when I remember that what I do affects the Holy Spirit. When He is grieved, we also feel that way because He lives in us.
AVOID BLINDNESS TO YOUR OWN FAULTS
One of the ways to maintain godly humility and promote peace in our relationships is to take a good, long, honest look at our own faults. Self-deception is one of our biggest problems as human beings. We easily and quickly see what is wrong with others but rarely, if ever, see what is wrong with us. We judge others, and the Lord tells us there is no justification for this: “Therefore you have no excuse or defense or justification, O man, whoever you are who judges and condemns another. For in posing as judge and passing sentence on another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge are habitually practicing the very same things [that you censure and denounce]” (Romans 2:1).
Why would we judge someone else for the same thing we are doing? Because we look at others through a magnifying glass but see ourselves through rose-colored glasses, a tinted glass that makes everything look lovely whether it is or not.
In our thinking, there is absolutely no justification for the wrong behavior of others, but for us there always is. We always seem to have some valid reason why we have behaved badly that excuses us from being responsible. For example, someone might be short-tempered with us, and we feel it was inexcusable for him or her to treat us that way. We might have treated someone the same way on another day, but we had done so because we felt ill or had a bad day at work.
In reality, we should practice being harder on ourselves than others simply because the Word tells us we will not be asked to give an account of their lives, but of our own: “Why do you criticize and pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you look down upon or despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10).
I read this Scripture often because it reminds me how God views my critical judgment of other people. Second Corinthians 13:5 says we are to examine ourselves, but we are usually examining others, which produces nothing but judgmental attitudes and eventually trouble.
Paul said to examine ourselves before God, not unto condemnation, but in order to recognize areas of need in our own lives, and to ask God for His help. But nothing will change if we are blind to the truth of our own shortcomings. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you desire truth in the inner being; make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart.”
Jesus has paid for our freedom to see the truth, yet it does us no good until we are truthful with ourselves, about ourselves. We fear looking at ourselves; our pride keeps us from wanting to see our own selfish tendencies. The way we evade facing this needed truth about ourselves is by finding fault with other people instead.
But when we judge others, we are setting ourselves up as gods in their lives. We have no right to judge others; they are God’s servants. James 4:12 says it very plainly: “[But you] who are you that [you presume to] pass judgment on your neighbor?”
Can you remember a time, or times, in your life when God has strongly convicted you of some fault? Perhaps some situation exposed it. Times like this tend to humble us, at least for a while.
I had always been short-tempered with people who gossiped about me, not admitting that there were times when I also gossiped about others. Then I got caught, and a friend who heard what I had said confronted me. I had no way out and was terribly humbled. For a while after that, I was very patient with other people who said things about me, but eventually my pride crept back in, and I had to be humbled all over again.
God tells us to humble ourselves, but if we don’t, He will do it for us. He either corrects us privately, or if we persist, He will do it publicly. We either fall on Jesus (the Rock) to be broken, or the Rock falls on us to break us—the choice is ours.
If God begins to deal with us about some wrong behavior, there is no point at all in trying to avoid Him. When God admonishes me for my behavior in a relationship, it is particularly difficult for me if I feel the other person does the same thing that God is asking me to change. I have told God more than once, “This is not fair. What about the other person?” He always reminds me that how and when He corrects another is His business. All I need to do is receive my chastisement from Him without complaint or comparison.
I remember one particular time when God was strongly dealing with me about not being rude to my husband. However, I felt Dave was also being rude to me, and I told God so. I was so frustrated about God confronting me and not Dave also, that I went to Dave and asked him if God was correcting him about anything.
He pondered for a moment, and then with an innocent look on his face, he said, “No, I don’t believe He is.” I look back now and those events amuse me, but they sure were not funny at the time.
Being willing to be first to do whatever is right is commendable behavior. Being willing to do what is right, even if no one else ever does what is right, is something that God may call upon us to do. We also may have to do what is right for a long time before we will get right results, and we may have to treat people in our lives right (humbly love them) a long time before we begin reaping the good seeds we have sown.
CORRECT WITH SINCERE LOVE
Remember, we have a right to pray for people but not to judge them. Should we ever try to correct another brother or sister in the Lord, or someone in our families? Yes, as we read in the beginning of this chapter, there may be times when God will use us to confront someone for misconduct, but once again it must be with humility, not having an exaggerated opinion of our importance or spirituality.
Paul was an apostle, and therefore God used him to bring correction to the churches quite frequently. But he said, “By the grace of God given unto me, I warn you not to estimate and think of yourself more highly than you ought to” (see Romans 12:3). I have always been struck by the fact that Paul said he corrected people because of God’s grace in him to do so, not just because he had an opinion and wanted to express it.
When we do anything by God’s grace, it has God’s power on it and therefore produces good results. When we try to correct people, but God has not given us the assignment to do so, we only cause trouble.
I quickly learned in the early years of my marriage that I am not my husband’s teacher, nor have I been assigned the job of correcting him. There have been rare occasions when God has used me in that way with Dave, and each of those times he has received the correction. The times I
just decided I was going to tell him a thing or two only initiated a small war between us.
When we do correct people, it should be because we truly love and care about them, not just because we want to tell them what is wrong with them and act superior. I do have an assignment from God that requires frequent correction of people, both in my teaching and among my staff. I try to maintain a truthful attitude about myself also, lest I become bossy with them.
I can be the boss and not be bossy. I always share with people what they are doing right as well as wrong, and I also try to admit my own faults with them as well because I find this puts people at ease.
BE WILLING TO BE WRONG
Most of us have an out-of-balance craving to be right about everything. My personal belief is that the need to be right rises from insecurity, which is also a manifestation of pride. If we have peace with God and are secure in ourselves, why do we need to be right all the time? Why can’t we be wrong about something without feeling wrong about ourselves?
It is amazing, the fleshly feelings we have when we try to sit quietly and let someone else think he is right when we are convinced we’re the one who’s right. Dave and I both have rather strong personalities in many ways and neither of us enjoys saying, “I was wrong.” We both do it at times, but we are still in the process of learning to enjoy it.
First Corinthians 13 says love doesn’t demand its own way. That means there are times when we will have to give up what we think is our right to be right. It is amazing how many arguments we can avoid if someone is willing to say, “I think I’m right, but I may be wrong.” Even if one party has the humility to say he could even possibly be wrong, it seems to dissipate the argument.