God's Favor or Men's Curses?

We have all been attacked verbally by others. Their words hurt us. It could be they are spreading a lie about us. Other times, it comes in the form of slandering our character.  It could even be that someone curses us or asks for God to curse us. Whatever they do, it is very important for us to respond in a godly way. King David did just this when he was leaving Jerusalem because of the rebellion of his son Absalom, who wanted to take over the kingdom. As David's household and mighty men left the city a man named Shimei started yelling curses at David. Abishai wanted to go and kill Shimei, but David stopped him. (II Samuel 16:12) David chose not to fight back, but to depend on the Lord to restore goodness to him, instead of him receiving the curses of Shimei. That is hard to do when we are being cursed, but it is what we all should do.

When we get hurt by words, our human nature, the flesh, tells us to use words to hurt the person who is hurting us. We all know that Jesus told us not to retaliate against people that way, and Paul commanded us not to repay evil with evil, but with good. However, I want to add another dimension to this that I believe David knew. Even if we hurt or kill the person who curses us or hurts us in another way, we still can't restore goodness to us. All we do is remove the source of the hurt, but that doesn't heal our heart. It doesn't cause God's favor to shine on us. He has to do that for us. The fact is that God can do that, even if the one who harms us goes unpunished. Yes, God will punish them soon enough at the Judgment, but I mean they are not punished here in this life. We ought to desire God's goodness to be restored to us more than anything else. We should always seek His favor, no matter what people say about us. When the Lord of the universe loves us and is pleased with us, all is well with our soul. May God grant us goodness out of His favor, instead of the curses of others.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read II Samuel 17-19.