Self-Improvement

How does it make you feel when someone does wrong towards you? How does it make you feel when someone lies to you? How does it make you feel when someone hurts someone close to you? Angry? Probably. How do you react? How do you want to react? Sometimes you just want to bop them in the head. Right? I know the feeling. But how are we supposed to react to these difficult people in our lives? Jesus said we are to love our enemies and do good to them.

Why, that's not justice. Or is it? When we love our enemies it not only helps us but them as well. Many a war has been averted because one of the parties chose love instead of violence. Loving and forgiving our enemies is healthier for us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. When we choose to love our enemies it rids us of all those negative harmful emotions of hate and envy. Have you ever been cut off in traffic? After that has happened, how many people did you tell about this situation? You talked about it all day, didn't you? Who is that hurting, you or the one who cut you off in traffic? You, right? The one who cut you off probably didn't give it a second thought.

Also, loving our enemies will either frustrate them because we are not giving them the reaction they want or it might actually began to help them change to an action of love as well. So, when someone does you wrong just - STOP, PAUSE, and choose to LOVE!

Self-Improvement Success

want you to think about someone you trust. Is that a person you would allow to borrow your car? The answer to that is probably yes. How about a stranger? Would you allow that person to borrow your car? Probably not unless the circumstances were extraordinary. Why is the answer different? Because one has earned your trust and the other has not. It's not that the other person is a bad person, it's just that you do not know him.

What about the person who has wronged you? Does that person deserve your trust? Maybe, maybe not. It depends whether it was a one time situation or whether the situation occurs over and over again. The challenge here is to keep from being judgmental of this person. Many times when we don't trust someone who has wronged us our anger turns into judgment. This is a dangerous path to walk.

So, what is the answer? Forgiveness towards the person and the willingness to take a chance on trust. Forgive the person who has wronged you and give him/her another chance. What about strangers? We need God's wisdom and discernment in trusting them. I think in most cases we will know whether their motives are pure or not. As the Bible says, by welcoming strangers some have entertained angels.

You and I can't reach the top of success mountain by ourselves. We need help. We need success partners. We need to work together and to do that we need trust. So, we do need to trust our way to success.