In my daily life with Christ I have a few struggles. These are things that He brought to my attention a while back and I’m trying – with His help – to overcome these faults. Hopefully, there will come a time that I can move on to new faults 😉

My first fault is my inclination to gossip. I know. It’s such a fine line. Sometimes we really need to talk about what’s going on but still don’t want to gossip. This was the difficult part for me. What I determined – for myself – was the difference in my heart. If I need to talk something through it’s going to be with one person in order to work through my feelings or determine a plan of action. Gossip is when my inclination is to tell more than one person when it serves no purpose. What I do now it to wait. I’ve chosen three people I know are trustworthy whom I talk to and if I feel the need to tell anyone outside of those three or if I can’t see a definite purpose in telling them then I just keep my mouth shut. Defining a plan of action has helped me begin to conquer this.

My second fault is that I can be judgmental. I’m sure several of you are shocked by this. My greatest desire is to show God’s love to everyone I come in contact with and I can’t do that if I’m judging them. It’s just impossible. This one is a MUCH more difficult thing to overcome. I’ve been trying to conquer it by first praying each time I see my judgmental side surfacing. Second, I look beyond the decision or circumstance. I’ve found that my judgments tend to come from things that a person has done or circumstances that they’ve put themselves in. So, I spend some time and pray about forgetting the past and moving forward. What is done is done – move on from here. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to keep that person in my life but it does mean that I’m going to love them regardless.

An example of this is when a while back two very close friends were having marital problems. The whole process hurt me so deeply. I’d cry and pray for days after speaking to either of them. I loved – and love – them both but I disagreed with how they were both handling the situation. I couldn’t talk to anyone about the circumstances because that would be gossiping, however, I did speak to one person about how the situation made me feel. I couldn’t judge the actions of either of them. They each did some very hurtful things to the other and I pray that I’ll never do something like that but I tried to understand that they were both reacting out of hurt, fear and desperation. I finally had to completely remove myself from the situation. To the point that I’m not close to either now. They’re each getting ready to have their first child with different spouses and, though it pains me, I’m not there for either.

Overcoming your own faults does hurt – but ultimately I believe that it’s worth the struggle.

What about you?