I told him I’d been having difficulty communicating with my spouse and was struggling to listen to “critical comments” without reacting negatively. I had never stopped to consider that God might be using situations that spurred defensiveness to work on me until a recent conversation with my friend and spiritual mentor. Instead of diffusing the conflict, it escalates. In an effort to protect ourselves, we “fight back” by explaining, defending, or shifting blame. Defensiveness occurs when we believe we are unjustly accused, attacked, or criticized. In our day to day life, we can feel threatened by other people’s words and actions.
God is fully in control and we can trust that the same work He is doing in our hearts, He is doing in those around us. What an important truth it is to recognize that it’s not our job to fix people and that healthy communication starts when we are willing to take responsibility for our part of the problem-no matter how small-and leave the rest to God. Letting Jesus work on me is where real progress can happen.” “ The more I focus on wanting others to change, the more frustrated I will become…Trying to ‘fix’ another person will only add to my anxiety…But frustration can turn into forward motion when I ask Jesus to take on the project of me. Looking back, I can understand why, because the original article focused on strategies to deal with difficult people and external situations without confronting the underlying issues driving my defensive behaviors.Īuthor and President of Proverbs 31 Ministries, Lysa TerKeurst, put it well when she posted this on her Facebook page:
Just days before I planned to publish it, God convicted me that I wasn’t ready to share it. I wrote the first draft of this post in April of 2018 and it remained unfinished on my computer.