Following a recent presentation, a young man wanted to know if I had time for him to ask me a question.\u00a0\u00a0When I agreed that I had time, he asked his question – \u201cWhat do you do when someone criticizes you?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A lot of questions need time to think through an answer before responding.\u00a0\u00a0Some that need time, don\u2019t get time.\u00a0\u00a0This was like that.\u00a0\u00a0He was expecting an immediate response, and I\u2019m afraid it was not as good as I would give again, having now had time to think about it.\u00a0\u00a0First, I grew up with a Pastor\/Father who never seemed to be bothered by anything.\u00a0\u00a0Good role model.\u00a0\u00a0Second, I spent fifteen years in collegiate ministry.\u00a0\u00a0University students are being trained to challenge everything, so my every decision was analyzed, sometimes criticized, and challenged.\u00a0\u00a0I learned not to let it bother me.\u00a0\u00a0Then I spent twenty-two years trying to teach theological education in a seminary.\u00a0\u00a0Traditionally, many of these want-a-be ministers at least thought they already knew more than their professors, so I walked out of every class, assuming that someone in the room probably didn\u2019t like me or appreciate my lectures. In other words, I just learned from an early age, to not let criticism or disagreement, bother me.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve also served as Interim Pastor twenty-nine times.\u00a0\u00a0I would be deceiving myself if I thought every member of every church loved me and my ministry.\u00a0\u00a0But I got up every Sunday morning and preached what I thought God was leading me to preach, thus becoming lunch-time criticism for a few.\u00a0\u00a0In my mother\u2019s words, I let it roll off of me like \u201cwater off a duck\u2019s back.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I actually never knew what that meant, but it sounded good.\u00a0\u00a0Did the criticism ever hurt, oh yeah, but a good night\u2019s sleep and I was usually good to go again.\u00a0\u00a0The young man also asked if I had a verse of Scripture that helped.\u00a0\u00a0I couldn\u2019t think of one at the time, but how about the instructions of Jesus in Matthew 5:48, \u201cI say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Try this the next time you are criticized.<\/p>\n
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Following a recent presentation, a young man wanted to know if I had time for him to ask me a question.\u00a0\u00a0When I agreed that I had time, he asked his question – \u201cWhat do you do when someone criticizes you?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A lot of questions need time to think through an answer before responding.\u00a0\u00a0Some that need time,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3573,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}