Whose words are you living out of?
I read the female accounts of the words used by their male partners as they abused them. I was left feeling, “How can love ( if that is what it is) wound so deep?”
The partners were left devasted by the words. It wasn’t the words themselves but the person who used them. We see this when parents belittle their kids. The words are not usually true but they have power as they are uttered by someone who we thought loved us.
And I wonder why we humans spend a lifetime trying to render words uttered decades earlier as void. We don’t necessarily believe the words yet somehow because they are issued by someone we believed loved us they go deep. The hurt is not so much the words but that someone who we trusted is using their position to abuse us.
It could be partners, it could be parents or it could be people who have power over our lives such as teachers, bosses. Perhaps it is a little easier to stand back from those who are not so emotionally close. Indeed maybe we have to separate what is being said to how it is making us feel.
My mind started to think about what God says about us. Potiphar wife accused young Joseph of trying it on with her when he spurned her. Her husband believed her and Joseph was imprisoned. It wasn’t true but her words had consequences for Joseph. God did not act in the immediate but in time Joseph was restored.
Poor Joseph, he got in the neck a few times. Earlier his own brothers jealous of him sought to kill him. In the end, they sold him into slavery. So how people treat us often says more about them than us.
My mind was going to Jeremiah and the verse that says “ I will give you a hope and future” to Malachi “Give to me and I will pour out blessings upon you”. God always desires to bless us. Disciplines us, yes but right discipline is not abuse. Indeed right discipline is given out of love.
I did a quick search to check I was correct in what I saying and I found that in the Hebrew Bible there is some cursing by God. It is usually in the context of people being disobedient. So let’s rethink. I am speaking in the context of right relation. So God’s not going to put you down just to make himself feel better. The parable of the Prodigal son comes to mind. Regardless of whatever life the son lived the father welcomed him home. It was his brother who wasn’t happy with his father. It was the brother who wanted his father perhaps to reject him and curse him for his disobedience but the father felt only love that his son had returned. It makes me wonder whether it is us who sees God as the intolerant one but the reality is we are projecting while God is loving.
Whatever the argument maybe it was my sense during the meeting for worship that God seeks only the best for us and seeks to bless us in contrast to those who seek to diminish us and bind us with their words.
I ask myself whose words am I living out of? Am I living still bound by the negativity of the past or even of the present or am I living out of the truth of what my creator has proclaimed?
Best day,
g
