Negative Vs Positive

So lately I have been thinking a lot about how negative the culture we live in often is. Have you ever noticed that in work, or anything you do, no matter how many times you do something well, people only tell you how bad the one thing you got wrong is?! Don’t get me wrong I am not for a minute saying that I only ever get one thing wrong now and again, It definitely happens much more than that!

But sometimes this really gets me down; the main thing that this happens with at church is the sound system!! And the most annoying thing, I’m usually at the other end of the room and it is nothing to do with me! All I want to say is, ‘yes I know its awful system, if you can’t stand it then please go to the back and do it yourself! (Or get out your cheque book and buy a new one!)’ But obviously this is probably not the way to conquer the situation.

This is something I have really been asking God to give me grace for, because it is easy to take the negative stuff to heart. But actually I think there is 3 things we need to do…

1 – Don’t take it to heart, more often than not its just someone’s opinion, one of the amazing things about the world we live in is that no-one in the world seems to share all the same opinions about anything, so sometimes take it with a pinch of salt.

2 – Criticism is a positive thing, however negative it is! It’s amazing how often I do something and suddenly think back to some constructive criticism I received even years ago, and think oh hang on a minute, I’m still learning from that.

3 – Be positive. I find that I seem to get more and more skeptical as time goes on, and I really do ask God to help me to find positive things in everything. Sometimes it is so hard. But I’m getting there!

I find that with some things, we look for negative comments just for the sake of it. Yes, like I said negative things are good because we can learn from them. But we really need to stop searching for negative things just for the sake of it. It’s actually ok to say, hey hang on a minute. That was good!

So my challenge… Go find something you hate, and find something in it that you love!