A young boy was hurt and resentful because someone had said something about him that he considered to be unkind and untrue. After he had spoken to his mother about it, she prayed for the Father to give her the ideas of truth needed to negate and nullify the erroneous picture of offender and offended.
She felt guided to tell her son that so called enemies can bless us immeasurably. She said, and her young son agreed, that those who love us—our family, our friends—may frequently forgive us, and sometimes pray for us, when they become aware of a lack of good in us. But those who feel enmity toward us tend to look for our character flaws, our faults—and sometimes falsely accuse. Some desire to magnify erroneous traits and would increase or multiply them. However, when others criticize or accuse us, we are presented with a choice of making the occasion a destructive or constructive experience.
The mother further explained that if we will silence self-justification and self righteousness, and abandon indulgence in resentment or a desire to retaliate, we are on our way to healing. Claiming and expressing humility and meekness, we are ready for honest self-examination. We can soon perceive whether there is no validity, a little validity, or a good deal of validity to the charge of our being in error. We then realize that this is an opportunity to gain a clearer view of our human selfhood and can wisely, willingly, set about praying for that selfhood to more nearly approximate our God created selfhood.
