Have You Yelled at Other Drivers?-Guest Post by Sus Schmitt
My friend Sus Schmitt is my mentor and helper in all things online. I am so grateful. Plus she is a wise and godly woman. Here is a lesson she learned that she keeps living.
The light turned green, but someone ran their red light, turning left, just a few feet from my bumper! Fortunately, I was alert and hadn't moved, or we would've collided. Then, I did what most motorists do, exclaiming out loud about how stupid this driver was. Immediately, the Holy Spirit brought a verse to my mind (see notes) that cut my tirade short:
"...but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. We praise our Lord and Father with it, and we curse men who are made in God’s likeness with it. Praising and cursing come out of the same mouth. My brothers, these things should not be this way." ~ James 3:8 - 10 (HCSB)
I immediately confessed my sin to God......not knowing that incident 35 years ago, and that verse, would shape my life. Naturally, I stopped disparaging other drivers. I expect errors and rarely react emotionally to them. Obviously, I'm not a likely recruit for the Road Rage Club.
What really changed in me was deeper still. God laid a foundation stone that afternoon in building my character. Since all people are created in God's image, I'm very sensitive to how people are treated. I hate real-life shootings and "entertaining" movies when people are killed indiscriminately. I'm grieved by hate crimes and "us versus them" attitudes. I'm horrified when people are treated like animals. The list goes on.I'll never forget this intimate lesson from my loving Father.
How has God shaped you?
Sus Schmitt serves as a Technology Ministry Developer in our Women’s Resources department at Cru. Her goal is to equip Campus Crusade for Christ staff to have more effective ministries through learning technological skills. Her main medium to do this is through her blog, eQuipping for eMinistry. Sus also maintains a personal site, MikeandSus.org, and an evangelistic site, The Sovereign. You can find her on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. (Go here for all these links). She's enjoying her new role as “nana” to two cute little boys.
NOTES:
The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins. See John 16:7 - 8.
This image is available from Wikimedia Commons.
Have You Yelled at Other Drivers? by Sus Schmitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.