Proverbs Experiment: Day Twenty-Four

Proverbs Chapter 24:

If you fail under pressure, your strength is not very great. (vs. 10)

DUH!

But it's a good reminder. I think one of the keys to not failing under pressure is to be flexible. If you think about it, if an object is flexible, it can endure more stress to it, than something that is inflexible (within reason, of course, I know there are examples where this isn't the case.)

I had a "soft interview" a couple of weeks ago, and I was told that the position required someone with thick skin, because they had to endure the criticisms and bad comments of all that came into the church. Not that those comments and whatnot were personally for that individual - they were usually for leadership of the church - but that this individual would have to be the first person to read all of them. I can see how someone who wasn't good under stress would fail that part of their responsibilities.

I think that I'm a pretty flexible person, which was good for student ministry - because it seemed like there were situations every day that required flexibility - but not so good for worship ministry. A lot of worship team members are drawn to music and such because it's a rather inflexible proposition, and there's a certain personality that is attracted to that. So someone like me, who is flexible, can be infuriating to those kind of people, who want structure and all that.

I used to be horrible at "pressure-packed" situations (speeches in high school come to mind), it took a lot of failure to be able to endure those kind of situations.

Do not rejoice when your enemies fall into trouble. Don't be happy when they stumble. For the Lord will be displeased with you and will turn his anger away from them. (vs. 17-18)

This is hard for most of us - we can get a real sense of satisfaction and thoughts of comeuppance when people who are our "enemies" fall on hard times or bear the consequences of their actions. I think one of the best ways to take these verses to heart is by forgiving people for their offenses against us, and move on. I think I might have learned some of this the hard way because I have had some tough things happen in the past few churches I've been in, and it's hard to let go of those things. I sent an email to one of the people I felt wronged by, and told him that I had forgiven him and that I just needed to get stuff off of my chest and tell him what I thought he had done that was wrong but that it was okay now. He wrote me back and admitted that he had made some wrong decisions and that he wished he would have done things differently. It made me realize that a lot of times, those who wrong us really had no idea what they were doing and had no idea how much their decision would affect us. It was good clearing things up with him. It's not like we became best friends or anything, but I was able to let go of a lot of anger and resentment that was holding me back.

Of course, there's still some work needed on more recent issues. Take them one issue at a time, I guess!