The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (13 page)

• The way we think about people affects how we treat them.

• Every person has a story. If you get to know them, you might begin to think of them in a different light.

• Jesus loved people, and He instructs us to do the same.

• With God’s help, our first response to people can be to love them instead of to judge them.

The best way to kill a relationship is to look at the other person and think,
You will never change
. Thankfully, God always believes we can change, and therefore, He continues to work with us. We would be more patient and long-suffering with the flaws of people if we purposely thought,
God is patient with me and I will be patient with you
. We can always choose to pray for people instead of giving up on them.

The first few years of my marriage to Dave, my behavior was at its worst. I had never been in a healthy relationship and honestly had no idea how to behave in one. My thoughts about marriage, and what to expect from a relationship, were all warped and unrealistic. Here are some examples of some of the wrong thinking I had:

I am sure you can see the problem. All my thoughts were about what I needed and how Dave needed to focus on me and do everything I wanted him to do. I must say that I was totally self-absorbed, but I was also totally unaware that there was any other way to live. My experience to that point in life was that nobody really cared about me, or was going to take care of me, so it was my job to look out for myself. If I didn’t do it, nobody would. I expected things from Dave that God would not allow him to give me, because I was looking to the wrong person. God wants to be our source and, although He does use other people to encourage and help us, He wants us to lean and rely on Him rather than them.

It is surprising that Dave was able to stay with me during those years. I am sure he felt defeated at times, because no matter what he did, I wasn’t happy. I could not have ever been happy, no matter what my circumstances were, because everything going on inside of me was wrong. My thoughts and attitudes were all wrong, and that controlled my moods and behaviors. I thought about me. I thought about what was wrong with me. What was wrong with other people. What was wrong with life. I thought about what people were not doing for me. How unfairly I had been treated most of my life. I was almost paranoid about what people thought of me.

You don’t have to be a genius to see what my problem was. When I have asked Dave what enabled him to stick with me, he says, “I knew that God could change you!” Wow! He had to be a man of faith. His belief that God could change me was a key
factor in my healing. I didn’t know how to trust God yet, so He used Dave to do it for me. His faith opened a door for God to work in my life. Those years were not easy on Dave, and he has said that he often wept about our situation, but no matter how difficult things were,
he always believed that God could change me
.

It is obvious that there are people who don’t change, but they could change if they would open their hearts and let God in. Nobody is beyond change! It may take a long time for them to do so, but it can happen. My father was in his eighties when he finally apologized to me for his abusive behavior and asked for forgiveness from me and from God. He received Christ, and I saw a genuine change in him. I am glad I didn’t give up, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t tempted to, or that there were not times when I did for a season. But the Holy Spirit would always stir me up again by reminding me that although no person could change my father, nothing was impossible with God.

I wasn’t in a relationship with my father during some of those years, because it would not have been wise or safe for me or my children. But faith transcends distance, and we can trust God to do what is impossible with men no matter what our geographical location is. I suggest that you pray for people who need to let God into their lives and then “say what you pray.” If you are praying for someone, then don’t go to lunch with a friend and talk about how you doubt that they will ever change. It is also destructive to look at the person you are praying for and perhaps in a time of anger shout at them, “You will never change.”

Even if you see no change at all yet, you can continue believing that God is working and guide your conversations with others in
that direction. Fill your mind with thoughts like
I believe God is working and all things are possible with Him
. You will feel better, and your attitude toward the person in question will be much better.

According to God’s Word, “love endures long” (see 1 Corinthians 13:4). I was not able to love my father as a real father, or have kind and pleasurable feelings toward him, but I could still love him with the love of Christ. God loves us whether or not we ever love Him back, and that is a totally different kind of love than what we normally think love is. Romantic love, parental love, and the love we have for friends are all based, at least in part, on what others do for us, and how they treat us. God’s love is based on who He is and His decision to love us unconditionally.

I think it is important that we understand the difference in these various types of love. In our English language, we use the word
love
for lots of things. We
love
vacations, movies, ice cream, and our families, but each requires a different commitment. God’s love is referred to in the Greek language as
agape
, and we can have that when all the other types of love have vanished.

God placed His love in Dave’s heart when he was a young boy, and it was with that love that Dave loved me. God gives us His love, and it enables us to love others. It enables us to endure some difficulties and be the type of people who don’t give up.

I think to endure means to outlast the problem. Dave endured. He outlasted my problems! I endured and outlasted my father’s problems. If you have given up on someone, you can make a course correction right now and start believing that
God can change anybody
.

I have frequently had to go to this Scripture for comfort and courage to press on when I have become weary of dealing with a person who seems to never improve. This is one of the Scriptures that has encouraged me often:

I have learned that I am not responsible for changing people; I am responsible only to fulfill the law of Christ, which is love! I think we focus too much on the results we are or are not getting from our sacrifices, instead of just being fulfilled in knowing that we are doing what God is asking of us and the results are up to Him. We should do what is right because it is right and not only to get results!

Avoid thinking that leads to weakness and giving up. Don’t think:

Believe that you can do anything God asks you to do through Christ (see Philippians 4:13).

We have all heard amazing stories of how people have been changed by God. Many of them involve God using someone who was willing to believe and not give up on them. Let God use you. Start believing that anybody can change.

Our job is not to try to change people, but to believe that God can change them. Are you trying to do God’s job and in the process not doing your own? Dave shared that he knew God could change me, but he also knew that he himself couldn’t, so he didn’t try to. I can honestly say that I never felt a subtle threat from Dave that if I didn’t change he would leave. I felt only love from him. Sadly, most of the time I couldn’t receive it, but that didn’t stop him from being who he was. He kept offering love, and he remained joyful. God keeps giving even if we have not yet learned how to receive, and we can learn to do the same thing in our relationships with other people.

A man we will call Bob, who was always a happy fellow, was waiting one cold winter morning for a bus. Another man was selling newspapers on the corner where he waited, and as usual, Bob offered a friendly greeting. The newspaperman scowled and said something rude to him, but Bob kept right on being friendly and happy. Another man who was also waiting for the bus asked Bob, “How can you just keep being friendly and nice to that man after the way he talked to you?” Bob responded, “Why should I let his unhappiness steal mine? I will pray for him and remain as I am.”

Too often we let other people’s problems and behavior change us, and that is one of the worst things we can do. It doesn’t help us and it doesn’t help them either.

Dave didn’t let me make him unhappy, and that was eventually good for me. Through his example, I finally saw that a joy is available to us that is not dependent on other people or on our circumstances. I wanted that joy! But I would not have even known it existed if Dave had given up on me. He simply stayed and remained joyful. How many great opportunities do we miss in life simply because we give up too easily? I can assure you that if Dave had driven home from work at night thinking,
She
is never going to change, and I can’t take this much longer
, he would have missed many of the amazing opportunities God has given us over the years to use our testimony to encourage other people. We never get a testimony without going through a test!

I spent a lot of years frustrated most of the time, and thankfully, I now know how to avoid it. Frustration is always caused from what the Bible calls “works of the flesh,” which is our human energy trying to do what only God can do. Stop trying to change things you cannot change, and frustration disappears. We have two options in life and they are to either struggle or trust God. Since we cannot change people, we can change our attitude toward them. Dave could have felt sorry for himself, but I think he realized how miserable I was and felt more sorry for me. He was able to see beyond how I made him feel to how unhappy I was. He felt true compassion for me, and it empowered him to not give up.

If Dave had been continually thinking bad thoughts about me, I would have felt the impact of them. I would have felt his rejection and negativity. However, as it was, I never felt any of that. I desperately needed to see Jesus, and Dave was showing me what He was like. Perhaps I was finally able to believe that I could change because I could sense that Dave believed I could.

Dave did confront me if I got what he called “too sassy” with him, but he definitely picked his battles, and he didn’t confront me about every little thing I did wrong.

You can find almost unbelievable relief by facing the fact that you cannot change another person. Sometimes what we want from
people is unrealistic, and we have to learn to let them be who they are, but if they truly do need to change, God is the only One who can do it. Controlling ourselves should be our goal, not controlling someone else.

Even when an individual comes to the point that they want to change, they cannot do it alone. Only God can work from the inside out, and that is what we need. For any change in behavior to last, it must come from the heart. I can muster enough discipline to change some of my behavior, but only God can change my heart.

As I said, anyone can change, but God has to be invited to do the changing. Our job is to want to change, and God’s job is to do the work while we believe and cooperate with His instructions.

The Bible says that when God gives your enemies over to you, then you must utterly destroy them (see Deuteronomy 7:1–2). I was struck by the realization that I could not destroy my enemies of anger, selfishness, bitterness, jealousy, and many others until God gave them to me. God deals with things in our life one at a time—if you get ahead of God, you will get very frustrated and confused. You will have no success; you will struggle and feel defeated. You will be discouraged and want to give up.

The Israelites could not leave the bondage they were in while imprisoned in Egypt until God’s perfect time came. Joshua could not take Jericho until the exact right day. Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead until the third day. Why the third day? Why not the first or second day? The simple, but often difficult, answer to receive is that it was just not the right time yet. We can believe that God is working, even when we don’t see any evidence that He is. That is what faith is.

We may want someone to change before God is ready for that particular thing. There are many things that God knows of which we have no understanding at all. I have had to accept that my little corner of the world is not the only corner that exists. God works all things together for good, not just our things. I may be frustrated because God is not doing something that I think needs to be done, but He is working on someone or something else that has to be in place before He does the thing I am asking Him to do. God has a perfect way, a perfect plan, and a perfect time, and He will not be rushed. All things work together for good in due time.

Think of buying a five-thousand-piece puzzle. You buy it because you like the picture on the box, but when you dump out all the pieces on the table, you feel overwhelmed. All the things going on in our lives are a bit like that. We like the picture God presents in His Word of what we may become, but will we be patient enough to see the picture put together?