“Messy Grace for Messy Drama”

This is not the first time I have blogged or talked about this subject, but I am led to do so again.  I believe that what hinders us from being great at what we do in this world hinges on how we act and react to negativity spewed by others.  I have never been malicious to anyone and I have never allowed someone’s perception of me to hinder me from being who I am.  I am not perfect and guess what…neither are you!  Now before I continue any further this topic has nothing to do with me and was not brought on by any direct attack on me that I know about.  I do know that people will talk, gossip, converse and text about other people negatively.   That is just the way of the world.

If I could determine why we do this and how to fix it, I would be a famous person.  I can’t answer the question and I don’t know how to solve it.  The only thing I can do is that I can control how I respond to certain issues.  As a pastor, I have had to be on both sides of the issue.  I have heard many different sides to the same story.  I have dealt with missed conceived perceptions and I have dealt with how a person has manifested negativity for personal gain.  I’ve seen and heard it all.  I believe that is why I am becoming immune to allowing what I have heard about me to affect me.  We, as people, love drama.  I was amused at seeing all of the social media post about Victor Newman dying on the daytime drama, “Young and the Restless.” I used to watch that show growing up and he has been on there since I can remember.  We love drama, especially when it is not about us, but about someone else.   At what point do we implement God’s formula for how to handle these types of situations? 

God says on one hand, don’t let negative conversation come out of your mouth that is not beneficial for the Kingdom of God.  Then on the other hand He says, if you have an issue with someone else go to them and try to work it out.  So, God is telling us that we need to be intentional in not being the catalyst for drama and we need to be intentional on working through drama.  Whatever side of the coin that you are on, God wants us to be intentional in our dealings with others.

How great the Kingdom of God would be if we worked as hard to maintain relationships as we do trying to maintain staying strained in relationships?

We are purposeful in our actions when we feel like someone has wronged us, but we are passive peacocks when we need to restore and reclaim a relationship with someone who we have perceived wronged us.

I think the reason people lived longer in the biblical times was because there was no social media, there was no telecommunication service such as: phone, cell phones, texting or pagers.  In order to get a message through they had to send a pigeon, a dove or a messenger.  By the time the message arrived and was resent you forgot what the original message was. 

I don’t know if you are dealing with messy drama in your life, but I do know that where there is messy drama there is messy grace.  God has grace for every aspect of your life and if He has shown you grace then you must reciprocate that grace and mercy to others.  Stop having a hard heart, stop being prideful, stop saying you can’t deal with a person anymore, stop lying on God and saying that God wants you to leave them alone.  Find that scripture for me and I will retract my statement.  God says in Luke 6:28, “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”  That is a heavy, intentional command for all believers.  Don’t limit God.  Pray for God to allow you to mend whatever relationship is broken in your life.

Michael O. Oyedokun II