Food for Thought…

How many of us are guilty of this?

Someone has done something you don’t like; offended you, been rude, hurtful, or simply annoying, with their words or actions towards you; and so you’ve cooked up an entire fight in your mind and you are absolutely boiling….. Planning how badly you’re going to ‘go off on them’, or maybe even just not speak to them ever again.
(We each have our personal ways of dealing with people who upset us, but you get my drift). 

I have a question for you friend,
Do they even know they’ve done anything wrong?

In many cases, the answer is actually ‘NO!’

And in all cases, whether or not the other person is aware of their fault,
We have to understand the importance of communication – we ought to remember and appreciate the importance of being sensible enough to verbally address situations with people when we feel that they’ve done something displeasing to us.

Communication not only allows a resolution, but it also gives you peace and freedom, from an anger that actually has the potential to eat you up, and completely destroy that relationship, if harboured too long.

Communication allows you to understand where they are coming from; it develops your perspective – you get to understand why they said those words, what they intended to achieve by doing what they did.

Communication allows them to understand you better – by you explaining how their words or actions or decisions made you feel, you allow them to relate with you better. They have the opportunity to think of it from your point of view and therefore widen their outlook on the situation.

Communication allows growth – they now not only know what displeases you, but they can be mindful that it could potentially upset others also.
They are therefore able to reflect on why/how they were perceived as hurtful, and (if deemed necessary) they can revise their delivery/choice of words, or work on changing that action to something less selfish/aggressive/(whatever it was perceived to be by yourself).

The bottom line is this;
They won’t know unless you tell them.

Therefore there is no point walking around sulking, moaning and telling others, or sizzling up a storm of an argument to attack them with.

Your most important step, and responsibility, is to speak with them.
You’ll notice I didn’t say it’s your first step, and that’s because some of us will benefit from stepping away from the situation and calming down, and reflecting on it.
Once this is done, all of us, not just those who get heated easily, but all of us, will most definitely benefit from asking God to direct our words and our entire approach, because the last thing we want, is a full blown argument.

Therefore let us remember to speak to God first, before we speak to them…
Ask Him to soften our hearts
Ask Him to sanctify our tongues
Ask Him to open up our minds.

And with this, we will be able to;
Have a cool, calm and mature overall approach,
Say things in the right way, for the other person to understand well, and understand in love,
Receive what the other person says without creating a bigger problem or dismissing/doubting their reasoning/explanation for their behaviour.

I’ll end by saying this;
For as long as you aren’t a mind-reader, I can assure you that the next person also ISN’T!
So Go!
C O M M U N I C A T E  with them, and smooth things over; remembering that the word of God encourages us not to last long in a state of anger (Ephesians 4:26).

Keep the Faith, Don’t Stop Believing,
God Bless you.