There you go. Messed it up again. Said something you shouldn’t have. You knew it wasn’t the right thing to say, but you did it anyway. You watched as the words formed in your brain and traveled to your mouth and shot out before you had a chance to grab them and reign them in. The damage is done. Hearing ears were hit. You blew it.
It’s fun to unnecessarily make others mad, isn’t it? Of course it isn’t. So when you find yourself in this situation again, what can you do?
Acknowledge. You can’t regain any ground unless you let the other person know you know what you did. It will help if you state what it was that you just did to them. For example, “I just made you mad, didn’t I?”
Apologize. There is a right way and a wrong way to apologize. What makes the difference is the presence of sincere humility. Words, alone are not going to cut it. You must be able to bring yourself down. Humility is like willingly accepting the role of a servant. Be a servant to the person you just hurt.
Accept. Once you’ve demonstrated you are contrite, accept their apology and move on. What if they don’t accept your apology? Accept God’s forgiveness anyway and move on. You cannot drag something like this with you into your future of ministry leadership. It’s too heavy and it wil only get heavier. Let it go.
Next Steps:
Read 2 scripture verses back to back. First, from The Message translation read Proverbs 18.7 and follow it up with Proverbs 18.20
Write down 25 affirming words (i.e. “tremendous”, “good”, “fantastic”…) and work over the next 25 days to work these into your everyday vocabular.
Scott Couchenour, Serving Strong