You Don’t Have To Defend Yourself

When someone does you wrong, the first thing your flesh wants to do is defend yourself. After all, they’re wrong, and they should know it . . . right?

Wrong.

As difficult as it may seem, that’s not what God has instructed us to do (see today’s reading). And it always turns out better when He takes care of it.

Just think about Moses.

After everything they’d been through and all the miracles they’d seen, the Israelites refused to go into the Promised Land! No matter what Moses said, they wouldn’t listen to him. They refused to be encouraged, got mad at Moses, and some even wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb!

How did Moses respond to all this?

He could have been angry and downright frustrated after everything he’d done for them. But instead, he prayed! Rather than getting angry and resentful, he and Aaron responded with gentleness, “fell face down on the ground before the whole community of Israel,” and called on the Lord (Numbers 14:5). 

When we allow gentleness to flow in our lives, we won’t retaliate when people say bad things about us, blame us, and find fault with what we do. We won’t strike back at them and say things like, “Well, you’re not so perfect yourself!” and then list a few of their faults. We won’t even try to convince them we’re right and try to make ourselves look good.

No, if we’re walking in gentleness, we’ll just fall on our faces before God and turn the situation over to Him. God can handle anyone who comes against you! It doesn’t matter if it’s a few relatives or literally millions of people. If you’ll respond with gentleness and depend on God, He can, and will, defend you.