Genesis 27:38 NIV
Esau said to his
father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my
father!" Then Esau wept aloud.
Do You Ever Feel Sorry For Yourself?
I have been limping for about three months now and I
must admit that I have begun to wonder if I will ever walk normally again. I have to hold the rail as I go up steps, I
can’t stand very long before I have to sit in a chair, I stopped going door-to
door inviting people to our church because of how badly my knee hurt. Now I don’t want to feel sorry for myself but
I have had a difficult time trying to see what good this limping has done for
me. Should I thank God for the pain I am
suffering? Is it wrong to pray for God
to heal me? What should I say when
people ask me why I am limping? Is there
a right way for me to respond that lets people know that I am not feeling sorry
for myself or can I be brutally honest about how frustrated I am not being able
to walk very far? What is the right way
to deal with difficulties?
Perhaps you have faced these same questions and were
not sure what you should do. Should you
complain to anyone about your troubles?
Is it Christian for you to be upset by your circumstances? Do you try to be stoic about your
hardships? Maybe you are good at hiding
your difficulties from others. You
pretend as if everything is ok when your world is falling apart. Should you be commended for this? When people ask you how your day went, do you
automatically say, “Good” even if it wasn’t?
Is it better to be honest about how you feel and let people know when
you are struggling with your problems than to keep them to yourself? What is the best way to deal with your
troubles?
Sometimes we can’t help but laugh at some of the
actions people in the Bible have taken.
The story of Jonah, the unwilling missionary is one such example. He famously tried to run from God when given
the assignment of going to the pagan city of Nineveh to warn the people there
that the Lord was about to judge the city for its wickedness. Jonah did not want the city warned; he just
wanted the people judged and so he fled.
When he ended up in the belly of a great fish, Jonah agreed to go preach
in the city and the fish spit him out on shore.
After Jonah spent a day preaching that in forty days the city would be
overturned, the people repented and sought the Lord’s forgiveness. When God relented and did not destroy the
people, Jonah in a huff went up onto a hillside overlooking Nineveh and angrily
stewed. Because it was blazing hot, God
caused a vine to grow and provide shade for Jonah and this made Jonah
happy. But that night, God killed the
vine and Jonah was left without shade the next day. Angrily he told the Lord that he wanted to
die. Now isn’t this interesting. He was sitting out in the hot sun by himself
because he was mad God let the people of Nineveh live. Rather than sitting comfortably in one of the
nice homes in Nineveh, he stubbornly resisted the hospitality of the peopleand
baked under the blazing sun. He also was
mad that God killed the vine that had given him some shade and for these two
reasons the reluctant preacher wanted to die.
We know exactly what was going on with Jonah. He was feeling sorry for himself and angry
with God for not treating him better. We
might have even laughed at Jonah if we were with him for the little pity party
he was having. Of course, Jonah was only
hurting himself we might argue. What
harm was there in him pouting?
The case of Lot is a bit more serious because of how
his self-pity impacted his daughters and the generations that followed. Lot was the cousin of Abraham who went on to become
the father of two great nations. His
life took a turn for the worse when he and his cousin went separate ways. Lot and Abraham each had great herds of sheep
and goats but because of the difficulty finding grass and water for such large
flocks, the shepherds of Abraham and Lot could not get along and fought over
the limited resources they had to share.
To quell the infighting among the shepherds, Lot and Abraham decided to move
away from each other and Abraham gave Lot the option of choosing first where to
settle. Lot decided on the fertile plain
near Sodom and so he settled there.
Apparently, Lot gave up his shepherding eventually because he wound up
living in the city of Sodom, married and had two daughters. After perhaps two decades living in Sodom,
Lot had become comfortable with his new life.
When God sent His two angels to rescue Lot and his family from the
destruction that was about to come, Lot was hesitant to leave and he and his
family had to be nearly dragged out of Sodom by the angels. Although they had been told not to look back
at Sodom as the fire and brimstone fell upon it, Lot’s wife did for some reason
and she was turned into salt.
After escaping the destruction of the cities of the
plain, Lot and his two daughters hid in a cave.
The text says that Lot was afraid of living in the village of Zoar where
they originally fled and set up camp in the cave. What probably the daughters thought would
just be a temporary stay became a permanent home. It seems that at some point Lot must have
known that it no longer was a risk for him to leave the cave and yet still he remained,
year, after year after year, keeping himself and his daughters isolated from
the rest of the world. His daughters,
feeling the heaviness of growing old without children made the perverse
decision to get their father drunk so that he could get them pregnant. The children they bore became the founders of
two nations, each wicked and pagan.
What do we make of Lot and his decision to hole up
in a cave? Certainly his cousin Abraham
would have welcomed him with open arms and he could have lived like a king with
Abraham and his clan. Lot and his girls
would have been safe and could have rebuilt their lives. The daughters might surely have had real
husbands and a normal family life. Lot
apparently never recovered psychologically from the destruction of his home and
the loss of his wife. It wasn’t just
Lot’s wife who looked back at ruin of Sodom; Lot too became as stiff as a
statue psychologically after leaving it behind.
Did self-pity destroy Lot’s personality?
Was he incapacitated emotionally due to feeling sorry for himself? It is not a stretch to think that perhaps Lot
gave in to despair and dragged his daughters down with him. Did he not see how sad they were not having
husbands or did he just ignore all the signs, all the comments they made
alluding to their disappointment. That
is what self-pity does to us. It makes
us so self-absorbed that we can’t see past our own wounds. Those we love become shadows for us; vapors
in our insulated world of hurt.
Our world is tragic, we must face the facts. Sin has brought death to every corner of
life. Yet that does not mean we have to
feel sorry for ourselves. Paul said that
we are to do everything without complaining.
Do everything without
complaining or arguing, (Philippians 2: 14) That seems nearly
impossible even for the most upbeat of us.
There is so much to complain about in our lives! The waiter doesn’t pay attention to our
order, our back is giving us trouble again, the traffic is bad, we have an aunt
with cancer, the kids aren’t doing their chores, work is too demanding. There is in Hebrews 2:10 something that must
be examined with great reverence. In
bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom
everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through
suffering. (NIV) The Greek word
translated “perfect” has as its primary meaning, “completed” or
“finished”. Christ did not need to
become more holy than He was. What
temptation did though in making Christ resistant to sin and fit to follow the
Father in every way, suffering also did in making Him resistant to self-pity
and self-absorption! He became through
His suffering completely trusting in the Father to do what was right with His
life.
Self-pity and its weaker cousin, feeling sorry for
ourselves are the disciples of atheism. If
God has said that He is making everything in our lives turn out for our good,
self-pity is a rejection of that promise and a rejection of God. And
we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who
have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV) Why would I
feel sorry for myself if I know that the result of what I face today will end
in something far better than what I had before?
It would be incredible for a child to cry about getting a million dollars
when he expected a nerf gun. What sort
of fool would feel sorry for himself if he were given a great mansion rather
than a small shed to live out his life?
Jesus never complained about any of His suffering because He trusted the
Father explicitly! If I face an illness,
God will work it for something good. If
I am poor, God’s riches will be poured into me.
If my family is struggling, our Lord will put it together better than it
was. When we complain and feel sorry for
ourselves, we throw Christ off the throne and sit there in His place judging
Him and His care for us. Self-pity is open
rebellion against God and to keep feeling sorry for yourself means you don’t
think the Lord is good or reasonable despite his promises to take care of you.
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