Ever been frustrated when you know you are right but somebody doesn't think so? Ever been dissappointed when you feel your ideas aren't received from someone, but then that someone receives the same idea from someone else and thinks it's great? These are only a few examples, but there seems to be a need for us to feel justified...to be proven right. It's normally not enough just for us to know that in our our minds, but we need it to be validated.
I've experienced this a few times over the past several weeks, and it's starting to get my attention. I feel I've been wronged in some circumstances. Perhaps in some ways I've wronged others. Other times I think the way I would do things would be better. At the moment I am hurt or passed over, but within the course of the day or days there are little things that come to me letting me know I was right. There's a big part of me that wants to go to the ones who've hurt me, the one's who've overlooked me and say, "See, I was right"...or something to that effect. There seems to be a need in me...and I think in all of us...not only to be right but to be proved right.
I think there is a lesson to be learned here. Justification happens before God, not people. Our attempts to justify ourselves before others neglect God's justice and the need for forgiveness.
In speaking of God's justice: Instead of feeling the need to prove ourselves right we accept that in God's sight we are right. We no longer need to hunt the person down or prove ourselves, be we take comfort and delight in the fact the God of the universe approves of us.
In speaking of forgiveness: Something amazing occurs when you care more about the approval of God then of your peers. This whole subject goes straight to the trivial things of life. People say things that are taken the wrong way. Some people say hurtful things they weren't aware of as hurtful. Sometimes things happen with the best intentions but still hurt others. We're human and we have great propensity to hurt others. However, we also have a great power to forgive. Forgivness cares about God's opinion and it acknowledges the humanity of the hurting party. The seeds of bitterness are disposed of because we are seen as right in the eyes of God.
Ministry demands those involved to look to God for their justification, worth, and rightness. I'm not sure if there's any other arena where one's heart is put on the line so consistently with the possibility of it being continually crushed. But the crushing happens, and as we love those who crush us we are able to forgive and allow our heads to be lifted from bewilderment to worth.
