Without a doubt, the world is far from a perfect place! Without a doubt, evil exists in the world! And without a doubt, if you a doing your best, living for the Lord, and trying to be a blessing - you are going to encounter some "blessing busters" out there!
It is what we do in the face of the "blessing busters" that pretty much determines what kind of life we will have! Living for Jesus means that we have His blessing! It does not always follow that living for Him means we escape the trials of life. I do think that when we live for our Lord, we avoid most of the "self-inflicted" wounds. But we certainly don't escape the rough and tumble of a fallen world.
What kind of life we have is largely a matter of our choices. When things don't go our way, and I would guess that for the average person that amounts to about 15 - 20% of the time, we can either make that our WHOLE world, or we can go on living for Jesus! About 85% of the time, my life is pretty good! More than 90% of the people in our church love me, help me, pray for me, forgive me, and have compassion on me. Less than 10% do the opposite. I have to choose to be encouraged by the 90+% instead of being blown apart by the less than 10%! Mine is not some special case - we all face this wherever we live and work.
Focus on the good! I'm not saying just ignore the bad, but we do need to be discerning as to what we can realistically do about the negative people in our lives. We can either spend all our time responding in kind, trying to "one-up" the opposition, and basically losing all the joy in our lives - OR - we can just love the Lord, speak well of all people, and place the burden for bad talk on those who are given to that sort of thing. The Bible tells us to pray for our enemies - and I believe it tells us that so that if we pray properly, we will no longer see them as enemies.
Most people in our lives who are "thorns in the flesh" are actually "wounded" people! They need love, possibly correction, and the Lord! They will not receive correction and the Lord until we treat them with love - in spite of what may be going on!
As I reflect back over my life to this point and consider the people who have been more difficult and some who were downright ugly, I realize that most of them never accomplished much towards diminishing my life and my life opportunities. Where they did, it was because I allowed those things to become my focus.
FOCUS ON THE 85% - 90% that is good with life - and really live out LOVE with the Lord! God is good! All the time! And our lives here are too short to spend in constant battle with other folks!
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