When someone disagrees with you, be tender without surrender.<\/i> You will never be able to please everyone. You will always meet people who like to argue and quarrel. Some people will contradict everything you say. How should you respond to them? One of the tests of spiritual maturity is how you handle those who disagree with you. Some people have a need to demolish anyone who disagrees with them. If you challenge them or offer a comparison, complaint, or criticism, they respond with a full-blown personal attack. Then what do you do? You have three alternatives: <\/p>\n
(1) You can retreat in fear.<\/i> Many people choose this route because they haven\u2019t developed the ability to respond in gentleness. So, if you\u2019re a \u2018peace at any price\u2019 person, it will have hidden costs in your life\u2019s most important relationships. <\/p>\n
(2) You can react in anger.<\/i> Anger is often a tell-tale sign that you feel insecure and threatened by someone\u2019s disapproval. It\u2019s a warning light that tells you you\u2019re about to lose something, often your self-esteem. When we become angry, often we become sarcastic and attack the other person\u2019s self-worth. <\/p>\n
(3) You can respond in gentleness. \u2018A gentle answer quiets anger, but a harsh one stirs it up.\u2019<\/i> This is the kind of response that requires a fine balance between maintaining your right to an opinion, while equally respecting another person\u2019s right to their opinion. It requires being tender without surrendering your convictions. Sometimes you must stand by your convictions. But other times you will find you\u2019re answering this question: \u2018Is our relationship more important than the point I\u2019m trying to prove?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When someone disagrees with you, be tender without surrender. You will never be able to please everyone. You will always meet people who like to argue and quarrel. Some people will contradict everything you say. How should you respond to them? One of the tests of spiritual maturity is how you handle those who disagree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}