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What’s the good word today? That’s a cliché we sometimes use. Well, I have good words for you, words of wisdom for the workplace, right from God’s Word. So, here’s our word of wisdom for today:
Learn to overlook insults or hurtful words.
Have you ever been insulted? It’s not much fun, is it? Not too long ago, I discovered that someone had insulted me, and I struggled with it quite a bit. But God showed me some good lessons out of his Word about how to handle an insult, and I’d like to share that with you today.
I was upset about that insult; it had hurt and I wanted to retaliate. I wanted to let that person know they had hurt me. I wanted to make them feel badly about it. Can you identify with those reactions? Then I read Proverbs 12:16, which says “Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.”
I knew God wanted me to overlook that insult. But I thought, “That’s not fair. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.” But I couldn’t deny the clear word from God to overlook that insult. That was the first thing I learned about handling an insult.
Secondly, I had to get it out of my mind, because I found I was thinking of it continually, and it was keeping me from getting anything done, it was keeping me upset, it was doing me harm. So, I had to attack the thought patterns and bring them back in line.
Then I asked God to show me what I could learn from this insult, and amazingly, there was a number of good lessons for me that God made clear through his Word.
So, if you’ve been insulted lately, I recommend this procedure to you. Number one, overlook it. Act as though it never happened. Number two, push it out of your mind every time it starts to come back in. And number three, ask God to teach you a specific lesson from the experience. Then, the whole unpleasant episode will not have been fruitless. You will have grown and learned through it.