#013 Receiving Criticism - 86 Seconds Video Devotional - Gary Wilkerson

What do you do when someone criticizes you? It could be a real deep criticism, or it could just be something like don't park your car there. Do you find yourself going one of two routes? I, sometimes, do this. They call it fight or flight. One of them is to run away from that person and say, "They're so critical. I don't want to be around them." The other is to fight like, "Oh, yes? Well, you're like this too."

Instead of receiving the criticism that you might learn from and grow from, instead, there becomes a brokenness of relationship. Whether it's through your own returning of anger. Somebody emailed me recently and it was a bit of a critical email. My first response was to fight back and say, "Oh, yes, I can't believe you think that because you're like this." It was taking it the wrong direction.

Instead, I wrote back a nice letter, "I understand where you're coming from. That makes sense. Thank you for bringing that to my attention." This person wrote me back and said, "I'm in tears. I thought you were going to be all angry at me. That really changed my perspective on some things. Thank you so much."

You see, that fight or flight that that criticize back or run from that it's going to destroy relationships. You'll look back on your life and you'll have a trail of people that you've broken relationships with over something that didn't need to be broken. Be cautious, be careful and look to love rather than to divide.