I am growing personally. As I have shared in my writing.
‘The Emerging Man Chronicles’
I have mentioned the topic ‘veiled discouragement’.
Here is the scenario that I am finding myself in lately.
I will become engaged in a conversation with a person. It is usually a topic of our position in Jesus Christ.
I will share how the Lord has revealed himself, a principle or an instance of how our sinful natures operate, to me in my walk with him.
I am usually quite elated and try to convey my excitement to the other party.
Invariably the other person is ok for the first half of the conversation until I comment on the point of how close we can be to God and how the physical changes I am making in my life are helping to clarify spiritual aspects of my life and how I have found COMMITMENT to be a powerful worldly weapon as well as a 10 mega ton nuke in the spiritual realm.
God loves a true commitment!
Then I get hit with the ‘veiled discouragement’ comments, things that inevitably start with, “yea, but…” “… you can’t really understand God that well, because you know, his ways are not our ways.”
Did you catch that? If that isn’t a Marie Barone sneak attack I don’t know what is. You remember Marie, from Everybody Loves Raymond?
They continue to share verses ‘of encouragement’ that are actually deflating you to the point of making you feel like the ‘dirty little sinner that you know you are.”
Now when I mention a verse like 1 John 1:7 “… and the blood of Christ purifies us of all sin.”
They stumble around and hem and haw for something to say and have to fall back on ol’ reliable and tell me, “well you must be reading that out of context.”
What!
So you know me, I started to test if what I thought was happening was actually happening.
I learned if a conversation starts to start watching for the signals. Once I get the signal from God I start asking all kinds of questions in my own ‘stupid way’ and it only takes about 2 or 3 past the first surface question to know where that person is coming from.
The thing that has me baffled is that it doesn’t have to be a Christian person, it can be Jew or Gentile and all walks in between.
I don’t think they understand how absolutely negative that they are being!
In the book the ‘The Art of War’, war is defined as ‘deception’, requires deception and winning hinges on who is better at the deceptions used in war.
The bible says that even the devil masquerades as an angel of light.
Then when all else fails they will toss out a verse or use the story of Job to prove their point. Every time.
But they always stop at the boils of Job and toss out Gods Sovereignty as a wet blanket to your growing relationship with Jesus Christ. Every time, poor Job, look at Job, look what God did.
So this last time I exclaimed, “yea wasn’t that awesome how God so blessed Job in his afflictions.”
Hitting them with that is equal to a spiritual 5 gallon bucket of cold water!
“Huh, what, do mean?”
“You know how it ends, right?”
“Job is shown Gods glory, comes away with a better understanding and God blesses him with twice as much as he had before. Isn’t God just wonderful?”
I haven’t gotten an answer to that one yet.
The word stops the mouth.
Stop using your mouth to spread ‘veiled discouragement’.
Remember what your Grandma used to say, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”
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