photo credit: arlette (creative commons)
Stop Pretending from The Confident Woman Devotional by Joyce Meyer
So Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife, I beg of you, between you and me, or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are relatives. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself, I beg of you, from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. – Genesis 13:8-9
Don’t spend your life pretending that you like things you despise or being with people all the time whom you don’t enjoy. I called a pastor one day to ask his advice about letting an employee go. I wanted to do the right thing, but after several years of trying, I just could not be with this particular person and enjoy her. We just didn’t adapt well to each other. My pastor friend said something that was very freeing to me. He said, “Joyce, I have finally decided that I am too old and have been doing this too long to spend the rest of my life working with people I don’t like and pretending that I do.”
To some people this type of thinking might sound very “unchristian,” but it really isn’t. Jesus told us to love everyone, but He did not say we had to love being with everyone. There are people in life with whom we simply don’t fit. I made a change, and we were both better off for it.
If something in your life is pretense, get honest.
Comments
Wow! Joyce hits the nail on the head with this one. If you sit down and think for a minute, how many of us really spend so much of our lives pretending we like things? Or pretending we enjoy being with people we really don’t enjoy?
I touched on this a little bit in my previous post How To Pull The Tooth.
I don’t think we stop being around everyone we don’t necessarily enjoy being around. If that was the case, would we really have the opportunity to be Jesus with skin on to others? But we can still set our boundaries. We can control the amount of time spent around things we don’t enjoy, or people we don’t enjoy.
If there’s a job you hate, find a new one. If there’s a hobby you’re doing because someone recommended it, but you don’t enjoy it, stop doing it. If you don’t like taking the same routine to work and back home everyday, find another one. If that employee is draining you and keeping you from focusing on your job, consider moving them to another department. If all else fails, pull the tooth.
Jesus sat boundaries. He limited his time with people who drained him. He put whiners in their place. He put negative nellies in their place. He used his “no” muscle. We can too!
Name a situation with a thing or person that you had to reevaluate and stop pretending. Comment below.