21 Ways to Finding Peace and Happiness (29 page)

Even though we find it difficult at times to bear with the weaknesses of others, the Word of God actually strengthens and enables us to do God’s will. When you are being tempted to be prideful, study and meditate on the Word, asking the Holy Spirit to do through you what you certainly cannot do by sheer willpower. Remember, pride is a sin, and it is the culprit behind all broken relationships.

The signs of pride include an unwillingness to admit fault, to take responsibility for one’s actions, and to initiate making peace. Pride wants to do all the talking, and none of the listening. Pride is stubborn; it does not want to be instructed, it wants to instruct others.

Pride was Lucifer’s sin; he said he would lift himself and his throne above God’s! Therefore, we see that pride manifests in one’s esteeming himself above the value of another, but God says we are all equal in His eyes. Lucifer, of course, was not equal with God, but as far as human relationships are concerned, no one is better than another.

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VOID
U
NREALISTIC
E
XPECTATIONS

We all have personal standards that we expect other people to meet, and we are disappointed when people fail to act the way we hoped. But is it really what they do that hurts us, or is it our own unrealistic expectations that set us up for the pain we feel when they don’t perform to our standards?

God’s Word tells us to expect things from God, but not from man. But how can we have relationships and not expect anything from people? In reality, there are some things we have a right to expect, but there are also expectations that we place on people that are not rightfully their responsibilities to fulfill. For example, my joy is not my husband’s responsibility—although I thought it was for many years. If he was not doing what made me happy, I became angry.
I
thought he should be more concerned about my happiness and do things differently. It was
what I thought
that caused the problem, not what he did.

Dave and I have very few arguments now that I know my personal joy is my own responsibility, and not his. Dave should do things for me that make me happy, just as I should try to please him, but there were many years in my life when it would have been practically impossible for anyone to keep me happy. My problems were in me; they were the result of abusive treatment in my childhood. I was filled with bitterness, resentment, rage, anger, and self-pity.

There was no way I could ever be truly happy until I dealt with those things. Dave could not deal with them; I had to. I was placing responsibility on Dave to make up for pain he had not caused. I was literally trying to punish him for the unfair abuse that someone else had perpetrated.

Over time, I noticed that no matter had badly I acted, Dave remained happy. It irritated me but also served as an example. I eventually became very hungry for the peace and joy I saw in his life, which were not dependent on any of his circumstances. In other words, he never made me responsible for his joy. If he had been dependent on me to make him happy, he would have never enjoyed life, because I gave him no reason to rejoice.

Are you perhaps trying to make someone else responsible for things that only you can do anything about? Are you blaming people for your problems when Satan is actually your true enemy? Let us take responsibility and stop expecting people to do for us what we should, in reality, be doing for ourselves or trusting God to do.

If I give someone some of my time by doing a favor for him or her and then expect to receive the same thing in return, I am setting myself up for disappointment. He or she may not know of my expectation. When people don’t know what we are expecting from them, it is unfair to become angry when they don’t meet our requirements.

The Bible says when we give a gift, we are to expect nothing in return from people. It is God who returns to us what He wants us to have according to our investment and heart attitude (see Matthew 6:1–4).

We often think people should be able to read our minds when we should be willing to clearly communicate what we expect from them. If I have a certain expectation for return of a favor I am willing to grant, I should say in the beginning, “I will be glad to do this-or-that for you, and then would you be willing to do thus-andso for me?”

I can say to Dave, “Well, I expected you to stay home tonight.” But if I did not communicate my desire to him ahead of time, it is not fair later to blame him for something he did not even know I wanted. I agree that some people should frequently be more thoughtful than they are, but we should also be willing to ask for what we want and humble ourselves by being quick to forgive those who do not fulfill our wishes.

If you truly want to have peaceful relationships, examine yourself and ask God to show you if you have expectations for people that you should not have.

We all have times when perhaps we have worked really hard or endured a difficult trial and need some special blessing to balance things out. I have learned over the years to ask God to give me encouragement when I need it. True, He frequently uses a person to do so, but I put my expectations in Him as my source, and not on people.

I ask God to provide encouragement when I feel that I have reached a place in life where I need something special to happen. I spent many years getting angry with people when I had times like this because I looked to them to make me feel better. It never produced anything but strife and offense. People are not our source, God is.

Go to God, and if He wants to use people to bless you, He will; if not, trust that whatever He chooses is what is best for you at the present time. Even if God should choose not to give the encouragement immediately, you can trust that His timing is perfect in your life.

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CCEPT
W
HAT
O
THERS
H
AVE TO
O
FFER

We expect people to give us what we would give them. We also expect people to love us the way we would love them, but this produces disappointment—and quite often, even more serious problems. We need to appreciate what other people are willing to do for us and receive their offerings with thankfulness.

One of the ways I show love is through communication. I say uplifting things to people or spend time talking with them. My husband, on the other hand, is not a big talker. I have often wanted him to sit and talk for long periods of time, but he says what he wants to say and then prefers to be quiet. I will often go over and over the same thing, talking about it in different ways; Dave hates to do that. I have expected Dave to talk to me in the way I want him to, but he is not able to comply. It would be unnatural for him. Dave and I do talk and have good conversations, but I like to analyze things and people while he absolutely loathes doing that.

Another way I show love is to buy people things, so naturally I would like it if Dave bought me more gifts. He will let me buy whatever I want that we can afford, and he will buy me anything I ask him for, but he is not the type to go out shopping and bring surprises home to me on a regular basis. He is more logical, and his logic says, “Why should I spend all day shopping for a gift for you when you will probably take it back and exchange it anyway? Why not just let you go get what you want to start with?” I, of course, like most women, would like him to spend the day shopping for me just to know he did it.

One of the major ways Dave does show love for me is by protecting me. That is very important to him. He feels he is my covering and should make sure I am safe. For years, some of the things he did while trying to protect me irritated me immensely.

For example, Dave might tell me to make sure I bend my knees when I pick something up off the floor. He does that so I don’t injure my back as I have in the past. I, however, don’t want to be told how to bend over, so it has irritated me. When I get out of the car, he reminds me to watch for traffic. He is making sure I don’t get hurt, but I have felt as though he thought I was dumb and couldn’t cross the street without his advice. (I am sure you can see that my main problem was that I just plain did not want to be told what to do.)

After several years of his protectiveness becoming a bone of contention between us, I read an article explaining that not everyone shows love in the same way, and it set me free. I now realize that

Dave is showing me love in his way, and I received it wrong because it was not my way.

One of our daughters had a similar experience with her husband. She is very affectionate, like most women, and would like lots of pretty words, hugs, kisses, flowers, and candy. Her husband is not like that at all, so for years she felt that he was not showing her love. She even shared publicly in one of our conferences that she was very unhappy for a long time because of how she viewed her situation. She read the same article I did and realized that he did indeed love her very much. He showed his love by being a good provider, by taking care of things around the house, making sure the walk was shoveled during snow or ice so she didn’t get hurt, and other things like that.

This does not mean that women have to settle for having no affection, but it does mean that women are different from men, they approach life differently, and we cannot expect our spouses to give us what we would give them.

Men are providers and protectors; God has designed them that way, and it only causes trouble when wives constantly try to make their husbands be something they are not. Should men show affection? Absolutely! But most of them will never demonstrate their affection as women do. Of course, there are men who are very affectionate and some women who are not, but I am making my statements based on what most women experience.

I am sure my husband would like it if I enjoyed sports with him, simply because it is something that really gives him pleasure. But I don’t like playing or watching sports very much, and he has accepted that. I don’t think he feels that I don’t show him love because I don’t watch football or play golf every week. I do play golf occasionally, and I do listen when he shares about sports he enjoys, but my enthusiasm level is certainly not what his is. He knows I love him, and he accepts me the way I am.

Being accepted by those we love is very important because we all want to receive acceptance. But are we giving it to others?

Remember, according to God’s Word, we should esteem others as a prize—just the way they are—especially if we want to enjoy peace in our relationships with them.

I believe a humble attitude and a willingness to accept what demonstrations of love others offer to us may really help a lot of people, as it did me. Realize how your family and friends show love for you, and stop concentrating on how they don’t. Be positive and not negative.

D
ON’T
G
RIEVE THE
H
OLY
S
PIRIT

We’ve already studied in previous chapters how stress causes a great deal of diseases. We know that the symptoms are real, but how many bottles of medicine are sold to combat emotional disorders when the root cause is actually a lack of peace in an individual’s life?

I wonder how many cases of stress and depression are the result of strife between relationships in the home or on the job. We treat the symptoms of stress, but we often ignore the sin of pride as the underlying cause of our lost peace. Our general health is much better when we live in peace. Humility, always esteeming others as higher than ourselves, will keep us full of peace and free from grieving the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 4 teaches us that we grieve the Spirit of God (“offend or vex or sadden Him”) when we are not getting along with each other—when we lack harmony and unity. Paul exhorted us to let go of all bitterness, wrath, passion, rage, bad temper, anger, animosity, quarreling, clamor, contention, slander, evil speaking, abusive or blasphemous language, malice, spite, ill will or “baseness of any kind” (see vv. 30–31). If we are living in those conditions, no wonder the Holy Spirit is grieved! Yet many homes are filled with these demonstrations of strife every day.

But it is quite plain; in essence, the Word says we are to stay in peace at all times. The power of peace binds us together. The presence of the Holy Spirit produces peace, and Paul encouraged us to “be eager and strive earnestly to guard and keep” it (Ephesians 4:3).

The thought of grieving the Holy Spirit makes me very sad. I am willing to humble myself and resist strife when I remember that what I do affects the Holy Spirit. When He is grieved, we also feel that way because He lives in us.

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VOID
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LINDNESS TO
Y
OUR
O
WN
F
AULTS

One of the ways to maintain godly humility and promote peace in our relationships is to take a good, long, honest look at our own faults. Self-deception is one of our biggest problems as human beings. We easily and quickly see what is wrong with others but rarely, if ever, see what is wrong with us. We judge others, and the Lord tells us there is no justification for this: “Therefore you have no excuse or defense or justification, O man, whoever you are who judges and condemns another. For in posing as judge and passing sentence on another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge are habitually practicing the very same things [that you censure and denounce]” (Romans 2:1).

Why would we judge someone else for the same thing we are doing? Because we look at others through a magnifying glass but see ourselves through rose-colored glasses, a tinted glass that makes everything look lovely whether it is or not.

In our thinking, there is absolutely no justification for the wrong behavior of others, but for us there always is. We always seem to have some valid reason why we have behaved badly that excuses us from being responsible. For example, someone might be short-tempered with us, and we feel it was inexcusable for him or her to treat us that way. We might have treated someone the same way on another day, but we had done so because we felt ill or had a bad day at work.