Show All » 2009/08 » Lessons from my Weaknesses – Part 1 of 3
Saturday, August 01, 2009Lessons from my weaknesses – Part 1 of 3
Two weeks ago, my whole family and I went on vacation. During our four hour flight, I wrote down my draft for this blog on a piece of paper.
Three days ago, after arriving from our vacation, I couldn’t find the paper on which I wrote my draft! I searched all our bags, but I still couldn’t find it!
I might have left my draft inside the pocket of the airplane seat, or in the hotel, or anywhere! I couldn’t remember a word I wrote… talk about growing old!
Here’s the irony, this blog is supposed to be about overcoming my weaknesses and sharing the lessons I have learned during the process. Now here I am facing my tests...
Here is the scripture that helped me to overcome my weakness - “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” (James 1:2)
Here’s the exciting part of serving the Lord, you can face these circumstances with joy!
This is the lesson I learned during the process of overcoming my weakness – “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
I recall a similar incident in which I invited a guest speaker to talk to our church community. For some reason, this speaker never called to advise me if he was coming, let alone if he was going to be late. Fifteen minutes before the prayer meeting, the church was already half full and I had received no word from our invited speaker!
Show or now show, the prayer meeting had to go on and somebody would have to be speaking for the congregation!
I had no choice but to go home (our house was five minutes away from the church by pedicab - a bicycle powered tricycle. I didn’t have a car during that time – this is another story) and grab my notes from one of my topics, as I was a speaker myself at that time.
On my way back, I prayed like I had never prayed before. I prayed for courage so that I could apologize to the crowd for the absence of the guest speaker. I prayed that I had selected the right topic to preach. I also prayed that I would be able to deliver the talk effectively. Lastly, I prayed that the pedicab driver would pedal faster for I was already late!
To add more excitement to my dilemma, I had my tooth extracted that afternoon, exactly 3 hours before I found out I would have to speak before the congregation. The whole time I was speaking, my whole left cheek was numb and my gums were partially bleeding – this is not a joke!
I ask myself, “Should I blame the guest speaker who did not arrive for this?”
After the talk, a lot of people from the congregation came to me and expressed their gratitude. They then told me how blessed they were by the topic.
Instead of blaming the speaker, I became thankful that he did not arrive because then I would have missed this opportunity to be blessed twice with an experience that I would never forget for the rest of my life!
Have you read my blog entitled “What if God does not provide?” In this blog, I somehow got myself to believe that everyone was at fault. I was convinced that everyone were to be blamed, including God. This was the first weakness I conquered.
I programmed myself to think that as long as I kept blaming others, I would never be successful in life.
If I am at fault, I acknowledge my mistake and I make the proper amendments. If I do something wrong or if I find that there is something wrong under my command of responsibility, I take charge and find ways to correct it.
This is what I noticed, when I take responsibility for the things I do, I gain the trust of other people. When I am able to realize my misdemeanors, I can clearly picture my situation which results in my ability to quickly formulate solutions. Being accountable for my actions means that I am responsible for fixing any faults that I make because in my heart and mind I know that is the right thing to do.
Before, I had the belief that in order to regain the trust of other people you had to do self-mortification by humiliating yourself. You show a sad face, bang your head against the wall, walk on top of a barbwire fence, or tie your leg and hang yourself upside down.
This was a wrong belief. Even if you shame yourself in front of the whole world but you do not do anything to correct your mistake, you will not be healed.
Humiliating yourself is not humility.
God does not want you to sacrifice your dignity by shaming yourself. By doing such, you will only hurt yourself more.
Also, you are underestimating God’s love for you. If you have the love of God in your heart, you will face these trials courageously and He will show you what you need to do to fix yourself. Focus on his mercy and not on your humiliation. The scripture says, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” (Matthew 9:13)
The lesson I learned while dealing with this weakness was, if I keep blaming other people, it only gives them power over my situation. I become vulnerable because my negative attitude becomes transparent to them.
I also learned that if I can stop blaming others, I should also stop blaming myself.
Blaming myself magnifies my feelings of self-pity. Instead of passing the blame, I learn from the situation. Rather than wasting my time in blaming myself, I learned to take responsibility. I learned to take charge.
The second weakness that is a close relative of the previous one is considering yourself right while others are always wrong. If you are right all the time, your tendency is to blame others when something goes wrong.
For this weakness, I have to thank Marriage Encounter, a religious based weekend program designed to help married couples improve their marriage. Marriage Encounter taught me a lot about active listening.
Through active listening, I began to understand the wisdom behind each word that was being said to me. I began to have a deeper understanding of why the other person said it and why they had to say it. The advice, comments, or criticisms were mostly for my benefit.
What I learned about this weakness is oftentimes the right answer comes from the people whom you least expect it from.
I also learned not to take criticisms personally. I use other people’s criticisms to identify my imperfections and be aware of them. The more truthful the criticism, the more I get hurt, but I have to challenge myself to correct what I am being criticized for.
Humility is the key virtue to overcome these weaknesses.
In my next blog, I will discuss the next two of the six weaknesses and the lessons I’ve learned from them.
By the way, if you have these types of weaknesses, we would like you to share how you were able to overcome them.
God is great!
Posted By: Allen Espejo @ 4:00:49 AM
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