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Text Sermons : Classic Christian Writings : It Is Not What Other People Do To Us That Harms Us – It Is Our Own Reaction By Paul E. Billheimer

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It is the treasures that cost us mast that enrich us. The world’s greatest blessings have come out of its greatest sorrows. The poet Goethe is reported to have said, “I never had an affliction which did not turn into a poem.”

Many of the finest things in Christian character are the fruits of suffering. Many a Christian had entered a trial, cold, worldly-minded and unspiritual and emerged from it with a spirit softened, mellowed and enriched.

Afflictions, sanctified, soften the harshness and asperities of life. They consume the dross of selfishness and worldliness. They humble pride. They temper human ambitions. They quell the fire of passions.

They show us the evil of our own heart, revealing our weaknesses, faults, and blemishes and making us aware of spiritual danger. They discipline the wayward spirit.

In no other school can some of us learn the lessons of patience, tolerance and forbearance—except in the school of suffering.

One of the methods which God uses to perfect Christian character is to per­mit us to suffer wrongfully. Most of us think that suffering is enough and that suffering wrongfully is surely too much.

But Peter, speaking of suffering wrongfully, says, “If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called” (1 Peter 2:20,21).

Called To Suffer Wrongfully

That is a very sharp tool to use in fashioning a soul, but you know, when the operator of a lathe has a very fine piece of work to do, he uses a very sharp tool.

When God wants to carve a very beautiful design into a Christian, He uses the sharp tool of wrongful suffering. It is difficult to receive injury from others and always return kindness for it, but God has not finished with us until that pattern has been deeply in-wrought into the fabric of our souls.

We cannot avoid suffering at the hands of others. It is certain to come. But in the last analysis, no one can hurt us but ourselves.

All the wrong which men inflict on us cannot injure us unless it causes us to grow resentful and unforgiving. Only if we give way to bitterness and anger can anything really injure us.

Give Your “Hurt” To God

But perhaps you say, “How can I help being bitter? How can I help being injured?”

There is a story of an Indian child who came to an old Indian chief with a wounded bird in his hand. The old man looked at the bird and said, “Take it back and lay it down where you found it. If you keep it, it will die. If you give it back into God’s hands, He will heal its hurt and it will live.”

Here is a lesson of how we should do when we are hurt by sorrow. No human hand can heal a wounded heart. It must be given to God (Luke 4:18; Matt. 11:18-30).

But perhaps you have tried to lay your hurt down and you cannot. You have resisted the temptation to bitterness and you find yourself overwhelmed. You want to love, but your heart is numb with grief and you feel that you are not victorious.

Love Is A Principle
Love May Be Stern

Here we must take the position of faith. Many people confuse love with sentiment or emotion. Love is more than an emotion. Love is a principle. If you really desire the highest and best for the one who has wronged you, that is love, even when all emotion seems to be dead.

Love is more than weak sentiment. Love may be stern. Love considers not itself, but always the good of the loved one.

Love does not act upon the basis of emotion, but of principle. Emotion is unstable. The question is not what kind of feelings you have, but what you do with them. That is the index of the real man, the will, and not the emotion.

Many a time my heart yearns to express affection toward one of my children, when I know for his own good I must chastise him. In that case. I act on principle instead of emotion.

Reckon … yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:11).

Are You Tempted To Be Bitter?

The bitterness is not yours as long as you refuse to accept it. and as long as you act in the interest of the one who has injured you. If you are in Christ and Christ is in you. His love for the unlovely is yours. even when you have no sense of affection.

Here is where reckoning comes in Paul says that after we have died with Christ, our death is to be made real to us by reckoning, that is, by taking a position of faith and counting the thing done which you do not feel is done (Rom. 6:1-14).

“All things are yours … and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).

If you feel bitterness in your heart, refuse to acknowledge it as yours, and reckon Christ’s love as yours. It is yours if He is yours. Accept the injury as coming from God, and as intended to be a blessing to you. See God behind the person who has injured you.

Reckon and claim Christ’s love as yours, and as you take this position of faith, it will be made real. You must let go of the hurt, and place your broken heart in God’s hands.

Putting Off Self, And Putting On Christ

If you do not feel a forgiving spirit in your heart, take a position of faith and say to God, “Because Thy forgiving love is mine, I therefore forgive everyone of everything.”

As you stand firmly upon this position of faith, refusing to yield to bitterness or resentment, God will work the forgiving spirit into your life and you will be freed even from the temptation of bitterness.

In the last analysis, no one can really harm us but ourselves. Others may treat us unjustly. They may falsely accuse us, and thus reflect upon our name.

They may even do you bodily harm, but none of these things can really injure you, unless you permit them to goad you into growing bitter and resentful, and into an attempt at getting even or at revenge.

It is not what other people do to us that hurts us. it is our reaction; it is not even our feeling toward them, it is what we do with our feelings. If our feelings congeal into resentment, or result in an attempt to get even—then we are injured.

If we give out hurt to God and refuse to cherish ill will, and take a positive attitude of wishing and praying for God’s best for the one who has wronged us. And if we maintain this position until all bitterness and resentment is swallowed up in a forgiving spirit, then we have actually gained from the attempted injury. See Matthew 5:43-48.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Faith In God’s Moral Government

One of the reasons for resentment and unforgiveness is that we do not really have faith in God’s justice and moral government. In Romans, God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

If we really believed this, we would not try to right our wrongs ourselves. It was because of Jesus’ sure confidence in His Father’s love and absolute justice that when “He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23).

When God says that we are not to avenge ourselves, He means that He will do the avenging. And the very cornerstone of God’s moral government is His absolute justice. The moral law is as inexorable as is any physical law. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), is as impossible to break as the law of gravitation.

The man who does the mean or unjust thing is the man who loses, not the injured person, if the injured person remains sweet, with no spirit of antagonism or vindictiveness in his heart.

If we are really sure of God’s justice, we will not be tempted to take things in our own hands. We will rather pray for the unfortunate person who has wronged us.

And if we keep sweet and forgiving, we shall find that we are stronger for our victory over resentment. And when our training days are over, we shall be able to see with our eyes just how much these battles have meant to us. “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:18).

Here and here alone,
Is given thee to suffer for God’s sake;
In other worlds we shall more perfectly
Serve Him and love Him, praise Him, work for Him,
Grow near and nearer Him, with all delight.
But then we shall not any more be called
To suffer, which is our appointment here.
Canst thou not suffer, then, one hour or two?
If He should call thee from thy cross today,
Saying, It is finished—that hard cross of thine,
From which thou prayest for deliverance,
Thinkest thou not some passion of regret
Would overcome thee? Thou wouldst say, “So soon?
Let me go back and suffer yet awhile,
More patiently: I have not yet praised God.”





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