Spiritual Brillo® pads

Let’s talk about relationships. We all have them. The way I see it there is three types of relationships that I have; with God, others, and myself.

 I have a relationship with God.  That’s what the tools are all about. They are designed to remove blockages and to grow my relationship with God.

I have a relationship with others. If that relationship is stressed then my relationship with God is blocked. God is present in others and one way he speaks is through others. If I’m mad or judgmental or criticizing or complaining about someone then I’m effectively putting up a wall between myself and God. I sometimes think God puts people in my life that are like a spiritual Brillo® Pad. They just rub me wrong or we just don’t see eye to eye. Anyway, God uses these people, Christian or not, to help me to become a better person. I used to sit around and complain about these people until I realized that God was using them to shine me up for him.

The third relationship is with myself. This is really not often looked at. Yes, I do have a relationship with myself. I believe we all do. I talk to myself all day long and I have found that if my relationship with myself is messed up, it too will have a tremendous effect on the others. For instance; if I have unforgiveness towards myself I become bitter toward others. I may be easily offended, or become angry when they don’t perform the way I think they should. This is really a pride issue, but I think it also stems from unforgiveness. But it causes me to be judgmental and insecure. (If someone makes me mad there’s a pretty good chance that there is something in that person that reminds me of myself.) And if I’m not right in any of these relationships. It will mess with both of the others.

What’s the tool to use to fix this. Well, here’s what I did. For example: I would be driving down the road and someone would merge and cut me off. I would be mad. And it would go something like this: I would call them some name. Then I might even make a gesture. Then, I would realize that this is not the person that I want to be so I would ask God to forgive that person for being an idiot and I would ask God to forgive me for judging that person. Then I would say out loud to myself, “Keith, I forgive you.” It took around six months of this before I realized that when someone would do that it didn’t hardly bother me any more.

 Self forgiveness is one of the biggest tools that I can use to improve both my relationship with others and God. How are you doing at forgiving yourself? Do you think about your relationship with yourself? Do you have your own tools for forgiving yourself that you could share with me?

Pressing On With Excellence,
Keith