YOU CAN’T STOP PEOPLE FROM BEING MEAN

But I am deaf to all their threats. I am silent before them as one who cannot speak. I choose to hear nothing, and I make no reply. For I am waiting for you, O LORD. Psalm 38:13-16, NLT.

People are going to say unintentionally insensitive things that hurt your feelings. Some people are going to say intentionally mean things intended to put you in your place. You can’t stop it. It happened to Jesus. It will happen to you. The question isn’t whether it will happen; the question is, how will you respond when it does happen?

You have died with Christ. A dead man is a deaf man. You cannot hurt the feelings of a dead and deaf man. I jokingly say that as Mike’s hearing becomes worse, our marriage becomes better! The things he thinks I say are actually nicer than the things I really DID say! 

You may not literally be deaf, but you can choose to wear noise-cancelling earphones. You can let negative insults roll off you like water off a duck’s back. The person with the greatest ability to blow someone out of the water is the person who chooses to say nothing at all. Never mistake the silence of a person like for weakness. It is anything but!

And if you are the one dishing out the meanness, do not mistake their silence as your victory. It is quite the opposite. You were the one who didn’t have the strength to keep your mouth shut. What you spewed out is as unimpressive as if you had wet your pants in public. Don’t be proud of your hateful rhetoric. It is shameful weakness. The strongest vocabulary is silence. Silence knows it doesn’t need to defend itself. You can choose to hear nothing because the person you are choosing to listen to is the LORD.  If you have a word from God, who cares what anybody else says. Adrian Rogers has said, “Meekness is strength under control.”